Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The schism the MSY suffered at the beginning of the Unification Wars spelled disaster, and chaos, for magical girls wherever and whenever the MSY lost authority—which until the very end of the wars meant the substantial majority of lands ruled by the Freedom Alliance. While the radical branches of the Mages First movement proved capable of snapping the strained political sinews holding the MSY together, they also proved incapable of consolidating into a large rival bloc, despite their original intentions. They were fractious, ambitious beyond their means, and lacked legitimacy amongst their constituent populations, eventually ruling by force and extracting high grief cube taxes. Had each regional faction only wished to escape the MSY, an effective federation built upon increased local autonomy might have been possible, but in truth most separatists wished to impose their own power and ideology upon as much of the world as possible, including their erstwhile allies.¹

Like with the Freedom Alliance as a whole, conflicting goals and arrogant, detached leadership would come to fatally sabotage their ability to wage ideological war on a global scale. In the early years, however, this end was far from apparent, as the MSY withdrew into its core regions and proved unable to exert the hard power necessary to reassert control, or even to maintain order, in many regions that the Mages First factions had failed to claim. Into this power vacuum stepped a veritable zoo of small‐time power brokers, warlords, and governing councils, even as refugee populations began to move for more stable areas.

And while the MSY and unaligned world sorted themselves out, the Mages First power blocs were able to plan and build in relative isolation, burrowing at times into Freedom Alliance power structures. They had not achieved a unified anti‐MSY front, but many had local authority and resources, as well as their own agendas.

[…]

Perhaps the second most well‐known faction—at least, within those segments of the MSY dedicated to conducting the war—was Free World. Or, as they were more commonly known to their enemies, the South Asian remnant.

This fragment of the prewar‐Mages First alliance 〈had coalesced behind a certain Zhou Zhi Yi, an ideologue whose ideas had made her an influential power broker within the MSY for a time.² At the start of the schism, they〉① attempted to seize control of MSY operations in Southern China, Southeast Asia, and Pakistan, but their attempts outside Pakistan descended into a violent flurry of coups, counter‐coups, and assassinations. Under MSY counterpressure the group eventually withdrew into Pakistan and the mountainous Chinese border regions, consolidating their control there, and adopted their new name, typically blunt 〈in the style of their leader〉①.

This splinter group was notable for being one of the best organized of the MSY rivals, and though they seemed well‐contained geographically, canny resource management and technological sophistication ensured they would be a potent threat on the new MSY frontier. An extensive and exhausting cold and hot war followed in the region, in which 〈as typically described〉② Free World had the initial upper hand, unofficial truces prevailed for a time, and then the MSY's greater resources, warmaking experience, and appeal to the average magical girl began to tell.

〈Of course, this customary description, while technically correct, is a gross oversimplification. Free World's ability to resist direct MSY hard power stands out among the other factions—while most other rival magical girl organizations collapsed well before the Freedom Alliance states that hosted them, either under the Black Heart's knife or through the cruelty and incompetence of their own leadership, Free World only grew in strength as the wars churned on. The years of off‐and‐on truces they bought through savvy geopolitical maneuvering gave them time and space to recruit who they liked out of their flailing rivals, to take advantage of capable organizations like Desert Rose and Columbia that were under more military pressure, and to plot out plausible paths to global victory.〉②

〈Free World is mostly remembered today not for its own strength, but for two key contributions it made to the cause of the mundane Freedom Alliance. The first was with the outbreak of the Thousand Flowers Movement in China, as it has come to be known, during the Fourth World War. The ur‐example of wartime instability in a United Front country, a massive outbreak of revolt and unrest caught an overstretched government by surprise, leading to extended loss of control of large sectors of the country and requiring the recall of much of China's Expeditionary Force, disrupting the entire United Front war effort.〉②

〈In its growth, spread, and initial success, Free World's fingerprints were everywhere—not, as might be supposed, as the driving force, but as a supporting influence, amplifying messages, isolating government officials, and suppressing official responses. Free World had been quiet for a decade, lulling the MSY into complacency, and their penetration of China was far greater than MSY intelligence supposed, making good use of innovations in illegal non‐Volokhov‐friendly AI design.〉②

〈Yet in the end this opportunistic exercise of power did not yield the results that might have been desired. The Thousand Flowers Movement as a whole was at best a mixed outcome for the Freedom Alliance. It contributed to the United Front's defeat in the Fourth World War, but of course the Freedom Alliance barely survived that war itself and gained little from the temporary victory. Rather than turning China to their side and shattering the United Front's center as they had hoped, the returned Expeditionary Force completely reorganized the Chinese government and rebuilt its popular support, expunging all Freedom Alliance elements—for their part, Free World lost their foothold in the Yunnan mountains, withdrawing completely into Pakistan. When the next war inevitably came, China was once again the backbone of the United Front. It would never again lose that honor.〉②

[…]

〈It was only then, during the Kiyomemasu, that Zhou Zhi Yi and her ruling cabal were finally dethroned in Pakistan, retreating to their mountain strongholds in the Karakoram. As the Indus River Valley was liberated, the MSY and its United Front collaborators finally began to understand the magnitude of Free World's second great contribution to the Freedom Alliance: the FA Elites. Prodigious resources and personal attention had been paid into the design and development of the Elites, to general biotechnical experimentation on sentients, and in particular to many of the FA's studies of biological command systems—all laundered through other governments and organizations.〉② 〈And only after the fall of the mountain strongholds was it realized just how much of this investment had been driven by the stranger aspects of Zhou's personal ideology, which had only gotten more deranged and radical over the decades, reinforced by her more sycophantic followers.〉④

[…]

〈In the end, Free World was unusual in one last regard: very few of its magical girls were saved via befriending or Reformatting. Most fought to the death, with the notable exception of Zhou Zhi Yi herself, who eventually surrendered alone—only to be summarily executed by Chitose Yuma just months later, under the authority of EDC Decree 573, which she had herself proposed under the guise of EDC.Vigilance.Controller.〉③

---

¹ Of course, a radical new ruling power and ideology did establish control over Humanity at the end of the wars. Mages First, and the Freedom Alliance more generally, had been correct to conclude that the window for such ambitions was open. They were merely wrong about who, exactly, would seize the opportunity they had created.

〈² In fact, up until the very late date of 2159, Zhou Zhi Yi had largely aligned herself with Akemi Homura's coalition in the Rules Committee.〉①

— Julian Bradshaw, "The Dark Matter of History", internal MSY publication.

"Man, bird, beast, all a difference of degree, each chained to their respective individual conditions! What a cruel fate for unbound perspective to be bound in such a way! But remember how much these chains give meaning to perspective, how they give the mind a grindstone to work on. This is one of life's many dualities."

— Vladimir Volokhov, quoted in Collected Lectures on the Mind, original transcript lost.

According to Simona, one of the tells that Ancients had was their preference for conference rooms when discussing serious matters, at least in VR. Those younger might elect to choose somewhere relaxing, or outdoors under an exotic sun, or within an electronic abstraction. But Ancients—they seemed to think a conference table in a corporate meeting room was exactly what a tense situation called for.

It was a sort of cultural memory. Simona had claimed that she had learned all this from Valentin, and now suspected that Homura had been relating her own tactics for evading detection.

So, naturally, when Yuma called a meeting to discuss events on Persepolis, they ended up nowhere of the sort, with Asami finding herself materializing under the evening sun amidst a landscape of rolling hills. It was chilly, cooler than Governance calibrated its humans to prefer, and she found herself quickly drawn to a faint warmth to her right, which proved to be a firepit just around the bend, nestled in a small grove of trees, surrounded by some logs for seating.

She found Simona already there, next to Patricia and Sakura Kyouko. A bit further from the fire, Azrael sat on the ground, using a pair of yellowish wings to brace herself on the dirt.

Seated on the ground in Kyouko's lap, confusingly, was Machina, absent‐mindedly chewing on sticks of virtual licorice and other candy that Kyouko kept handing her.

The atmosphere in the VR sim was serene, belying the weight of the matter at hand. That, after all, had forced the attendance of not just Kyouko and Machina, but also Mami and Yuma, even if they hadn't arrived yet.

It had also forced the absence of Kuroi Nana and Meiqing, who were still busy cleaning up on Persepolis.

It seemed melodramatic to put it in plain terms: an MSY task force, a Governance‐sponsored task force, had been attacked by an enemy group of magical girls, embedded into drones no less. There was magic here the MSY didn't think was possible—or perhaps more accurately, had chosen not to treat as possible.

How far did this conspiracy extend exactly? What had they overlooked? Were there other attacks in the offing?

Asami sat down by the fire, rubbing her hands as she greeted the others and checked the parameters of the simulation. It was apparently a remote part of Hokkaido, never well populated, now nearly empty, and Yuma had chosen it. Was it supposed to make them all feel better?

At least she wasn't left waiting long. Right on the promised dot, they spotted the familiar forms of the Chair of the General Staff and Governance: Magical Girls making their way toward the fire. Though, she was surprised to realize she had gotten used to Yuma's young adult form so quickly.

Mami took a seat on a log but Yuma stayed upright, making a gesture with one arm.

"Alright, let's get this underway," Yuma said, without any additional preamble. "Before we get into the juicy topic of these drone‐based mages, which will undoubtedly absorb all discussion, let's take a moment to talk about the recent attack itself: What do you think were its real goals, how was it achieved, and do you think they were successful? And if so, how much does it matter?"

They were familiar with Yuma's approach by now. At this stage, the topic had been dissected by multiple working groups, AIs included, but Yuma still liked to ask. Nor would she prejudice discussion by giving her own opinion, not initially.

The answers that came up were not really novel. Everyone agreed that, this time, the main goals closely reflected what the telepaths reported had been extracted during the attack: details of Task Force Monteagle's operations and intel, both regarding the TCF conspiracy and Homura's operation, as well as the data retrieved from the alien command node on Persepolis.

It was hard to deny that purely in terms of data gathering, the enemy had been successful—the repository of intel stolen from Arya's memory was extensive. Basic compartmentalization had protected some of their secrets, particularly around who exactly was part of the Task Force, but much of the organization's knowledge and plans were now compromised—even if the information lost only tangentially touched a particular subject, they had to presume Laplace's Demon could make full use of it.

Simona managed to look stoic through it all, at least whenever Asami looked, but she knew the girl hated this. Yes, her heroics had helped save the day, but there had still been a breach. As one of Valentin's trained operatives, that ate at her. It was a dose of perfectionism that Asami found both annoying and oddly admirable.

But it was here that they reached more interesting topics. Certainly, it had to be assumed that a subgoal of the TCF conspiracy was not to have their methods revealed, by killing the witnesses if necessary. Leaving aside the unlikely possibility that it was all a red herring, it seemed they had put their necks on the line to attack Simona's team.

Quite literally, it seemed, given that at least some of the drones had soul gems on board—though they hadn't been able to determine if it was all of them. Moreover, post‐combat analysis suggested the strong possibility that the drones were not capable of telepathy. Patricia's ability to block electronic communication had seriously damaged their ability to coordinate, a weakness that could be exploited in the future.

Did telepathy require organics? Or were the drones simply too underpowered somehow?

They couldn't even rule out the possibility of contracted AIs, though it seemed unlikely. The Incubators had claimed before that the TCF made Human AIs too sane to be worth contracting, a statement that no one really understood—were adolescent girls the most insane, then? That didn't seem right, but the Incubators now responded to all questions on the topic with a general policy of no comment, to avoid leaking anything by what they chose to omit.

The most popular theory was that Incubator recruitment practices were actually constrained by some ancient wish, and they just didn't want to admit it.

"Of course, a lot depends on how much this drone mage thing really explains, and how central it is to their operations," Mami said, inserting her first comment into the discussion. "Is it an occasional trick, or do they do it all the time? With the benefit of hindsight, it is quite easy to see how it might have factored into past incidents."

"The first thing that came to my mind was the drone attack on Sakura Kyouko on X‐25," Asami said. "The one with the laser that gave Ryouko a new body."

Perhaps that had been a bit brusque of her, but Asami wanted to make sure everyone remembered.

"Perhaps," Mami acknowledged, looking meaningfully at Kyouko. "Though I don't think Kyouko would have missed it if that drone were magic. A mundane drone suborned by the TCF breach would be more practical—less likely to be detected by an Ancient. Rather, we think the use case for magic drones may have been breaching the TCF across various mundane drones and AIs in the first place. It would explain how magical girls had infiltrated so many critical systems without being detected, especially the ones lacking human access points."

"With the ability to blend in with the robotic crowd, so to speak, the potential for magic mischief is almost unlimited," Yuma commented. "Speaking as someone who helped hide magical girls from Governance for two centuries."

Mami let out a sigh, leaning onto one arm.

In her place, Machina's head popped up, and she spoke, in an eerily similar voice that clearly startled several of those present.

"There are a number of past mysteries we're considering now in a new light, particularly suspicious incidents we never fully understood. Such as the detection and pursuit of Rommel's, er, Field Marshal Erwynmark's escape pod during the Battle of Orpheus. The pod's stealth capabilities were perhaps sabotaged via TCF breach, and Arminius's role as Erwynmark's flagship given away similarly, but how had the TCF conspiracy prowled undetected through a capital ship with plenty of magical girls? Perhaps they used its own drone arterials against it."

"Do you think this has anything to do with why Homura chose to go off‐grid?" Azrael asked, glancing among Machina, Yuma, and Mami. "If she was worried about these drones, it might be safer to work alone."

Yuma started to walk in a circle around the fire, turning her head from side to side, as if she was reciting something quite familiar.

"I imagine that was part of it, but it can't be so simple," Yuma said. "If Homura knew twenty years ago everything we know now, she could have nipped so much in the bud by just telling us to act. She either didn't know very much and was forced to spend all that time investigating, or she has her own, separate agenda."

The point was clearly said, and there was another question looming that Yuma hadn't brought up—even if Homura hadn't known enough to act against the TCF conspiracy twenty years ago, there was certainly someone who had, someone more incorporeal.

But that question veered on theology, and before Asami could decide whether she should ask anyway—everyone here knew the Goddess was real—Azrael chimed in again.

"We've already decided to treat Homura as a friendly agent. We know her people were on Persepolis too, but we weren't able to work together with them to confront these magical drones. Frankly, now that we know the TCF conspiracy has a real ability to project force, we ought to try to establish contact. I know some attempts have already been made, but perhaps something more serious is in order."

Yuma paused in her steps, then cast her gaze meaningfully at Mami, who looked in turn at Kyouko, perhaps exchanging an unseen chain of messages.

Yuma looked at Azrael, staying in place. Their relative heights meant she had to look down.

"The truth is, we've already discussed as much, and it would be easy for one of us to show up on a planet where we suspect her agents' presence and make a scene. But, on the one hand, that would make us an obvious target for our enemies, and on the other, if you were Homura, would you trust us with anything after we just lost a ton of confidential information? That risk was the price we paid when we decided to be a collaborative task force rather than a small group. Governance, the MSY, and now the Task Force—all compromised, all cut off from Homura's operations."

Asami cast the briefest of glances at Simona, whose eyes twitched with anger.

Azrael was unfazed.

"But consider, after the recent breach, the TCF conspiracy now knows that we're not coordinating with Homura, something they may have been unsure about. That makes this the perfect time to try; if we make contact without being caught we'll be at a double advantage. And the more we act and change the situation, the more decisions we force them to make on outdated knowledge. Since they seem to have been reliant on this Laplace's Demon before, they may be prone to mistakes, especially if we get inside their decision loop."

"If Homura wanted to talk to us, she'd talk to us," Kyouko said, sounding unconvinced. "Is it really a good idea to force her to talk to us?"

"It might be," Mami said. "You remember what I told you about my second vision? The Goddess told me: 'She will need your support, and when she does, you will find her.'"

"I'm pretty sure She meant that Homura would let you find her," Kyouko said. "And I'm kind of the expert on this."

"It was my vision, Kyouko‐chan."

"I think it was deliberately ambiguous," Machina commented, looking up at Kyouko.

"Hmm," Yuma said.

She had started pacing around the fire again, but stopped here, making a strange face. Asami got the impression that for once in their conversations, her opinion had been shifted slightly. Perhaps this meeting wasn't as pro forma as she had thought. In retrospect, it was meaningful that everyone present believed the Goddess was real.

"I'd like to change the topic to something else," Kyouko said, handing Machina another bar of chocolate. "Namely, have we ever encountered a magical girl who could let multiple other magical girls use their magic from a drone? That seems like the kind of thing that's up your alley, Patricia."

Patricia answered immediately.

"I've been looking into drone magic since we received the security footage left by Akemi‐san in Argentina. There are a few living girls who might be able to do something like this with effort, or if they've done undocumented power training. Inhabiting a drone is normally a bad idea, frankly—a drone is much more vulnerable than a magical girl. I wouldn't want to inhabit my drones. Anyway, as you'd expect, girls with powers like mine are being carefully tracked right now. Everyone's activity during the attack on Persepolis is accounted for, and although there are limits to how far that can go, I know most of them and I can't imagine they're responsible. I didn't recognize the magic, either."

Yuma paused for a moment to let Patricia's words sink in, then interjected:

"Of course, that's everyone living and accounted for. The list gets longer if you include those only presumed dead. Even from before the Task Force's formation, we've been reexamining every historical case we can, going all the way back to the founding of the MSY—everyone who might still be alive and be involved in the TCF conspiracy. With the Task Force's AI resources we've actually managed to verify a few long‐suspected deaths, but unfortunately, not much else."

"Of the remaining presumed dead, there are three who have the necessary drone powers as a primary powerset. But, in none of their cases is the lack of a confirmed death particularly suspicious. In one case, we simply didn't have jurisdiction at the time, and the other two are unresolvable due to Unification Wars chaos. It's much more likely our culprit is someone unknown to the MSY, from a rogue colony, now that the recent attack ruled out active MSY members."

"But it is possible then?" Kyouko asked, sitting up straight. "That maybe it's someone from the past?"

Yuma didn't answer right away, shaking her head slowly.

"Maybe," Yuma said. "It's a possibility we've taken seriously, and I'm still thinking through it. But frankly, we did a good job cleaning up after wars' end. Not easy to hide from me, Homura, and all the MSY's clairvoyants, especially when you eventually have to go demon hunting. We never found anyone after 2252."

It was obvious there was much she couldn't say, and not much more to be said here, at least not yet.

Mami cleared her throat and turned her head, looking Yuma in the eye, though she had to lean upward to do it—Yuma was a tall teenager.

"Yuma," Mami began. "I know your natural inclination is towards secrecy and caution, but you're not really trusting your personnel here. There's someone specific we're thinking about. I think we can let go of some ancient secrets to discuss things in a bit more detail?"

Asami was surprised when Yuma reacted only mildly, making a face as if she had bit something sour. Perhaps the Task Force wouldn't reflexively retreat into secrecy after all.

"I suppose you have a point. Maybe someone will see something here that I don't, and most of these details aren't really worth keeping secret anymore, at least not within this group."

"You know as well as I who I'm thinking about, Patricia," Yuma said, before turning towards the rest of the group. "Martha Augustina, Freedom Alliance magical girl of unknown origin, and we're not even sure if the name is only an alias. First encountered as part of Zhou Zhi Yi's entourage as part of a Project Leviathan intelligence sweep in 2172, though further details were very, very scarce. Deep penetration missions in the 2190s were able to determine that Martha had a strong ability to manipulate drones and electronics—including, according to several reports, the ability to become one or more drones herself. Reports, I would add, that usually came from postmortems of failed operations. After 2205, the trail goes completely cold—she was never encountered again, and what records we were able to extract from Zhou Zhi Yi's organization suggest even they lost track of her that year—Zhou herself believed she had died supervising FA Elite deployments on the front lines of South America. We never found any reason to think she was mistaken."

It was an impressive and somewhat mechanical exposition of deeply classified material, accompanied by a series of declassification notifications sent to their implants, including the quite exotic MSY‐only—not duplicated in Governance. Asami hadn't even heard of Zhou Zhi Yi before; she remembered Zhou Meiqing had mentioned that part of her matriarchy had helped engineer the FA Elites, but she hadn't known that her family's former Matriarch had been one of them, and had later been executed by Yuma herself for her crimes.

A moment later, Yuma sighed, looking like she wanted to sit.

"Of course, we spent quite a lot of time trying to clean this one up. We looked everywhere, and the best we ever got was two former FA soldiers willing to testify that they had seen someone matching her description enter a bunker that was destroyed not long after. I've never been fully satisfied."

She looked over the group.

"I understand that this all sounds very dramatic and a part of you wants to think this must be the answer," Yuma said. "The extraordinary, mysterious answer is often alluring, but you have to remember all the improbabilities stacked against the theory implied here. Augustina would have had to evade death, evade us, long enough to set up a deep‐rooted conspiracy. What was she doing for two and a half centuries? Spend too long staring at an improbability, and you might just leave yourself open to being killed by Not‐Augustina."

She paused for a moment.

"But I guess there really was no reason to keep it secret," she said, smiling faintly. "It's all old stuff. But I guess I'm just used to holding onto knowledge."

It didn't seem anyone had much else to say to that, and after a moment Kyouko commented.

"I remember that bitch. Ambushed Lumera Team and got three of them, though not without payback. Always a shame we never saw a body."

With that surprisingly violent comment, she found another piece of food to give Machina.

"Well, if you're interested, I was seriously reconsidering the proposal that we attempt to contact Homura," Yuma said, putting her hands behind her head and starting to pace the circle again. "I know you think we should let Homura act, Kyouko‐nee‐chan, but I think this is reasonable. The team here was organized for the purpose of finding her, after all."

"I still think that," Kyouko said. "I'm not sure we should do something just for the sake of doing something. If she wanted to reach out to us, I'm sure she could. We have to believe she's doing the right thing."

She left the key argument out, that Homura was probably acting on divine instruction, but they all knew what she was getting at.

"I'm not so sure anymore," Yuma said. "We can't just bank on supposed divine guidance, nee‐chan; our own judgment can be part of the plan. Just because Homura hears a voice from her Ribbon doesn't mean we're not supposed to do anything, and my understanding is that your Goddess expects us to use our own will and judgment. We do still need concrete reasons to act, yes, but I believe we have them. Before we restored the TCF, and before Persepolis, there was a reason for Homura and us not to connect. I don't think that's true anymore."

Asami was surprised to hear Yuma of all people making a quasi‐religious argument, and from the looks of the others' faces she wasn't alone.

"I think she has a point, Kyouko," Mami said.

"Then why hasn't Homura reached out already?" Kyouko asked. "If now is the time, surely she can just contact us?"

"I don't know," Mami admitted. "But I know what I was told, and I think it's surprising for you to put so much faith in Homura's judgment. Weren't you the one whose church wanted to find her again? Because she might be lost?"

"That was before I learned about the TCF breach, and what Homura had been doing to try to keep it all contained. She clearly had some reasons, so she clearly isn't that far gone. I don't just make up things to believe in."

She crossed her arms, and for a moment Asami thought things were at an impasse.

"Look, it's not that I think Homura hears the Goddess and so we can just let her do everything," Kyouko said, dropping her arms. "Nothing like that. It's standard theology and good practice to live your own life and use your best judgment regardless of anything. I've said as much. Whatever future we get is still going to be based on what we choose to do. And I think, in this context, the question is whether or not we trust Homura to know what she's doing."

She put one hand to her head.

"I have my own opinion on this, obviously, but at the end of the day the Theological Council agrees with you. They've been pushing for some kind of action, too. I'm going to get solidly outvoted there, as well as here. So… I've lived long enough to learn that maybe I should trust your judgment. But that does mean I have one request."

Asami couldn't tell how bothered Kyouko really was. It had been an astonishingly fast back down, but if her own cult didn't agree with her…

Kyouko waited until she was sure they had understood, then continued:

"Let me and the Church handle the contact and making her talk to us. This is a big deal to us, and if she does come out, I want to be the one to talk to her. We can take care of it, I promise."

Mami and Yuma looked at each other.

"As long as I approve the plan," Yuma said.

"Sure," Kyouko said, with just a hint of sourness. "Not like I'm going to send her choir girls or anything. The truth is, we've thought for some time about how to smoke her out, and the answer is: we do something big and disruptive that she has to see coming from her Ribbon. Like, say, prepare a church announcement that she's still alive, explaining what she's been up to. Not because we're actually going to do it, but to force her to stop us."

"You want us to bank on her ability to see the future?" Yuma said, her tone of voice making Asami unclear on whether she was impressed or galled.

"Or, more practically, bank on her having a mole in the Church," Kyouko said, spreading her hands out in a "what can you do?" kind of gesture. "We're virtually certain she does, all things considered. Either way should work."

"If you're gonna bluff, you have to mean it," Yuma said. "Otherwise her Ribbon might just tell her that you're not really going to do it. You have to commit."

"We've thought of that, Yuma‐chan. There are plenty within the Church who want to make an announcement even if Homura tells us not to. I had to talk them out of that. Trust me, we've thought about it. For too long. I'll still send you the files, though."

She sounded a bit exasperated.

After a few seconds, Mami and Yuma looked at each other, and then Yuma nodded.

"Alright, nee‐chan. We'll take a look to be sure, but if it checks out… I hope you know what you're doing."

"Even if she doesn't, her instincts are still good," Machina said, putting a finger to her chin. "I think it will work out."

Kyouko snorted.

"Well, instincts or not, we've got to work on upgraded security measures," Mami said. "We'll almost certainly be attacked again. I've been looking it over…"

Ryouko heard the companion‐penguins before she saw them, both audibly, in the form of clamorous squawking, and telepathically, few of the birds seeming interested in staying off of telepathic broadband.

She sighed, picking at her alien‐provided wetsuit with one hand.

This was her own fault. She had casually promised Feathered‐Defender that she would go swimming and fishing with him, and the bird had gotten so excited she simply couldn't take it back.

So here she was, standing on the dock next to Mountain‐wandering's boat. At least it was a neat little slice of alien culture and technology, with small hints everywhere that she was with aliens, from the gray water‐repelling metamaterial dock to the strangely textured wetsuit to the bizarre variety of seating in the boat. On the other hand, boating, swimming, and fishing were all very human activities, so in some sense, it wasn't that alien at all.

She almost tuned out what the birds were saying, but the content drew her attention—Feathered‐Defender was excitedly talking about the alien they were about to meet, the one who thought like them and was smart, and had another alien like that inside of her.

She had forgotten how unique that would make her.

Seconds later she was mobbed by ten excited birds, crowding around her to get a closer look. They were full of questions and, she was forced to admit, possessed of a distinct not‐entirely‐pleasant animal odor.

Mountain‐wandering addressed the congregation from the ship behind her, with a texture of thought Ryouko had come to think of as sonorous.

·Companions, it is not polite to bombard her with thoughts like this|∪+·She cannot process numerous thoughts as adeptly as a Thinker|∪+·It may cause physical discomfort

Well‐behaved, the penguins stepped back and quieted down, though still chattering softly among themselves, mostly in astonishment that it was all true. Ryouko, who hadn't been that bothered, answered a few questions gamely, and Feathered‐Defender came over to nuzzle her sleeve. She had realized that penguins were nearly all convinced that Thinker conversational style and lack of emotional affect was the defining feature of high intelligence. Her very existence caused many of them to question their preconceptions, as much as they were able to.

Mountain‐wandering signaled that the boat was ready, triggering another wave of excitement as the birds hurried across the ramp, Ryouko trailing behind. Mountain‐wandering's personal boat was a sleek white vessel, long and sharp and just wide enough to comfortably fit the Thinker and his equipment. Even at rest, the winds across the water made it seem like the boat was straining to escape out into the alpine lake. He had built it himself, apparently.

The Thinkers were very close to the oceans and seafood as a whole, despite the fact that their Baseline form was more land than ocean animal. While they could easily swim and harvest in shallow water or aquaculture farms, deep seas and lakes still eluded them—directly, at least. Here was where the companion‐penguins came in, working together with boats, nets, and the occasional underwater Thinker to scoop up great shoals of fish, necessary to feed burgeoning populations restricted to relatively small bits of land. Indeed, it was thought that this kind of cooperative hunting had touched off the domestication of companion‐penguins.

While net‐based fishing was the primary form of food collection, several other forms of recreational fishing had developed, though not all were common to every Tentacle. The most popular form, universal among all Tentacles still willing to hunt fish, was more for the Penguins than the Thinkers: one simply cast off in a boat with a large number of penguins, and at the designated time let them jump off the side and go about their business, bringing back whatever extra fish they didn't eat. Herding the fish into a net was optional.

And that, unhappily, was what Ryouko had agreed to participate in. Like all magical girl soldiers, she had done her share of underwater training—not a lot, but enough to make her a very competent swimmer by human standards. Perhaps not by penguin standards.

The companion‐penguins hustled into their special berth on the bow of the ship, their telepathic buzz now a mix of penguin gossip and speculation about Ryouko and Clarisse. Feathered‐Defender, slightly agitated, was repeatedly explaining that Clarisse was not Ryouko's mate, nor a parasite either.

Clarisse found that funnier than Ryouko did. Unfortunately the birds were not cognitively capable of empathize‐opening, so such misunderstandings could not be easily dispelled.

Ryouko stepped on board the boat, nodding a greeting at Survival‐Optimizer, who loomed impassively at its stern. He had taken it upon himself to act as a monitoring representative for /Ahimsa‐Extending, here to ensure that fish kills were within agreed‐upon bounds and no excessively brutal practices were used. To him and /Ahimsa‐Extending, this whole affair was distasteful, and worth paying to mitigate.

There was one last passenger they were waiting for, who might or might not show, and who Ryouko was particularly interested to see.

They would wait ten more minutes for the ice‐bear to show up, no more.

It seemed ridiculous to expect a nominally wild animal to be even as punctual as that, but two hundred seconds later, a low‐frequency rumble rattled the boat, quieting the companions into a poignant silence.

The animal indeed looked a lot like a bear, but more angular and sleek, and the way it walked reminded Ryouko more of a wolf, with a bit more spring in its legs and a long tail for balance. But between its hunched back, short ears and large paws, the bear resemblance predominated, particularly when it rose up on its hind legs, sniffing the air.

In that posture, it was clear that it was nearly as massive as Survival‐Optimizer. It stood there for a moment, then looked directly at Ryouko. They locked eyes, and Ryouko thought back to Mountain‐wandering's promises that the ice‐bears were quite intelligent, and that they had an understanding with the ice‐bears, under which no one had been attacked in centuries. It did look intelligent, but it was also clearly wild, and was intimidating in a way the similarly‐sized Survival‐Optimizer simply wasn't.

A moment later the creature moved forward, loping down the dock to the middle of the boat, where Mountain‐wandering was already waiting to welcome it.

The bear stood up again and growled in his face, and he imitated the noise. There was a moment of staring, then the bear grunted and returned to all fours, following the ramp on board. The penguins began to chatter again, nervously.

It was not unprecedented to manage cordial relations with nearly‐sapient wild animals—the giant eagles of Optatum came to mind, or even the Asiatic elephant—but this was on another level. As part of the deal with Mountain‐wandering, the ice‐bear would go fishing with them.

With a lurch, the boat was underway, the bear sniffing the air behind Ryouko, the penguins beginning to squawk again in front of her.

They pushed rapidly across the alpine lake with a muffled whir, the peaks they had left behind reaching up toward the sky, reflected on the smooth water in front of her. To Ryouko, whose memories of childhood visits to the Hida Mountains were quite faded, it was a grand sight.

She tilted her head back and forth, recording everything she could. Someday, she could show this to Asami, and to others. She had to believe that.

She was aroused from her reverie by a tap on her wrist, Feathered‐Defender grabbing her attention.

You really have never gone fishing before? Feathered‐Defender thought, stepping over to stand in front of her. The telepathic clamor thinned noticeably as the penguins waited for her reply, still curious.

Ryouko considered the question. What Feathered‐Defender meant by fishing was very different than the usual human definition, so the straightforward answer was no. But she had been hook‐and‐line fishing before, once, when she was seven. That had been with her paternal grandfather, Shizuki Koto.

She hadn't been much for it, squirming incessantly during the long waits staring at the water, though the stockpile of sweet mochi at their side had certainly helped her patience. At least the actual event of successfully landing a fish was interesting in its own right, since she found herself looking into the eyes of a strange creature, wondering what it was like in its mind.

Not by swimming, she thought. We have a way of luring fish in with food as bait, getting them to bite on some kind of hook. Requires a lot of waiting around, on land or in a boat.

Is there something smart about that? Feathered‐Defender thought. Hard to imagine why you would not just go into the water and get the fish you want.

Well, we're focused on land, Ryouko thought. Many of us go years without swimming at all. To be honest, I don't particularly like swimming myself, even if I'm well capable of it.

The penguins discussed the matter amongst themselves for a full three minutes, flippers quivering. They were clearly a bit confounded—why would she don a body capable of swimming, and then not use it? The penguins had seemingly chosen Feathered‐Defender as their representative, but she fielded some side questions, including one where she was forced to admit she knew very little about fish behavior, and wouldn't know a good spot to set bait.

You should get a different body, suited to your preferences, one of the penguins thought, finally. Mountain‐wandering told me that a mismatch between body and preferences drives Thinkers insane. Are you insane?

Don't insult her! Feathered‐Defender thought, lunging at the offender with a squawk.

Ryouko watched the fight break out, bemused and wondering if she should intervene, but Mountain‐wandering spared her by triggering a horn above her head. It sounded like one of the extinct whales they showed in movies sometimes.

The birds stood immediately to attention, and when the boat pulled to a stall a few seconds later they began diving off the sides. Ryouko hesitated, however, and Feathered‐Defender stayed with her, until a few seconds later the ice‐bear moved over as well, pressing in to sniff at her shoulders. It took some presence of mind to remember that as a magical girl it was no threat to her.

Feathered‐Defender urged her onward, nudging her with a flipper, and she sighed, drawing herself up into a diving stance even as the bear watched her cautiously. She lowered her goggles.

The shock of the water hitting her emptied her mind of thoughts, and for a few fractions of a second it was just her, the icy chill of the lake, and the calls of the flock of penguins swirling in the distance, coordinating their assault. Through the soft light she could see them darting to and fro near what she abruptly realized was an alarmed school of fish, already congealing itself into a great ball.

The birds knew what they were doing, even if she didn't, and they were now working on base instinct, with nary a telepathic call between them. Without the guidance of a tactical net or even some simple commentary, she was lost, and could only stare.

It's okay, Feathered‐defender thought, appearing at her side. First time, like chick. You watch.

Then it zoomed off, and while she was still chewing over the unflattering comparison, she realized the ice‐bear had dived in next to her, and seemed to be doing the same thing: just watching.

She surfaced, taking a breath of air, glancing around her. Native waterfowl were starting to gather nearby, circling above with shrill calls and distinct, V‐shaped head markings.

She dived back down and saw that the swirls of fish had started to churn forward, fleeing the penguins, directly at her. Just as she began to flinch, moving to jet away on a burst of magic, a pair of penguins blasted past her, catching her in their wake and turning the fish toward the boat—and waiting net.

She watched as the whole school of fish trapped itself in the mesh, which sealed shut behind them right after they passed.

Ryouko surfaced again a moment later, watching as Mountain‐wandering began to raise the net out of the water, the many fish within writhing and jumping.

Feathered‐Defender pinged for her attention and she turned her head, watching him jump out of the water, crest feathers raised—

—that was how she came to be looking near the mountain when it happened.

It was a secondary subroutine that first registered the anomaly in her peripheral vision. Milliseconds later, it was flagged as significant, racing up the priority queue. A fraction of a second later, Clarisse's attention was pulled over, and it was she who dragged Ryouko's own focus over.

The snowy mountain—the peak she had climbed down, the one with the laboratory built into the summit—was moving?

It was an avalanche of monumental scale, pouring down the side of the mountain—no, not just an avalanche, there was too much rock and debris visible—

Then she heard the roar, a grumbling explosive noise like artillery in the distance, and just as terrifying. Then, even the most oblivious penguins stopped their frolicking to watch and stare, some of them surfacing to take in the disastrous sight. Mountain‐wandering, too, stared silently, arm tentacles frozen in the middle of gesturing at Survival‐Optimizer.

But unlike the others, Ryouko realized she didn't have to just watch.

She sent a short message to Feathered‐Defender and the two Thinkers, closed her eyes to transform, and was away.

There would be time later to look for survivors in the snow, time to check what had happened to the mountaintop lab, but for now it was those at the foot of the mountain she concerned herself with. Her clairvoyance was limited, mostly providing a bare preview of her landing locations, but she had time to search: it would take a long time, dozens and dozens of seconds, for the snow and debris to travel so far, neglecting the large rocks that had been flung forward by the initial lurch.

The moments blew past in flashes, a glimpse of the corner of a building, the interior of someone's room, an arm‐tentacle here, a wide eyeball there, huddling under a table. She grabbed all she could, depositing them far away as fast as she could, pushing the limits of her blink rate.

It seemed to her that she wasn't moving fast enough, that she was having to wait too long between teleports. She felt weak, out of practice. She couldn't save everyone.

Why couldn't she? How had things turned out like this?

Then she found the blue child from earlier, peering up at the mountain, face glimmering. Nearby, the other child lay crushed in a pool of ichor, the victim of a falling rock which had hurtled ahead of the rest. Ryouko found herself swallowing in dismay even as she reached for the child. Why was she so slow?

The blue child thought:

∈!·I am performing an emergency upload, so I am—|∈!·You are not—

Then Ryouko was, again, kilometers away, near where she had deposited some of the others, who were still gathered around her in various surprised poses. She stopped, leaning on a tree. She needed to rest, and tried not to think about the ichor on her hands, since she had elected to bring the dead child too.

Why can't I do this?

!·Stop|!·Stop|!·Stop|!·Stop|!·Stop|!·Stop|!·Stop|!·Stop|!·Stop|!·Stop|!·Stop|!·Stop|!·Stop|!·Stop|!·Stop

The message burned itself into her mind from a dozen Thinkers at once, and several machines too, at a commanding volume she didn't know they could achieve.

It was Survival‐Optimizer—still back at the lake—who elaborated:

μ∀·We understand your desire to help, but we have off‐site backups, and you do not|ν∀·You need the reality‐distortion foci provided by Divine‐Seeking to survive, and are using up your limited supply

The thoughts came far faster than she was used to but she found that she could still understand.

μ?·Surely the experience of death is to be avoided| she thought, clenching and unclenching one hand. She was all too aware of the clock still ticking, now almost running out, and she was thinking of the others, the children she hadn't saved. It had never quite been possible, and yet—

μ·It is, but the risk you are taking is too high|ν·Do not forget our own preferences—if you consider them, you will understand

Ryouko's empathy‐organ returned the calculations: yes, body‐death was a painful, unpleasant experience to be avoided, but nothing compared to the risk of real death for her, even if she felt it was minute. And then there was the supply of grief cubes…

She looked again at the corpse she had brought back with her, and the other child, staring at her with enormous eyes. She had time now to take it in, the ichor, the glassy eyes, the viridescent bulb of a head. It was jarring to reflect on how she had once thought of Thinker corpses as just debris in her way, and dangerous exploding debris, at that.

She pushed those thoughts away and tried to relax, take her mind away from it all, even as she could still feel the rumbles of the mountain. She just couldn't.

She tried to move, and felt slow, strange, detached. Clarisse had toggled a bit of emotional suppression.

I'm not going to go back, Ryouko thought. I'm fine. I'm not trying to save anyone else.

Not that, Clarisse thought. You were about to punch something, really hard. Think about how the civilians here would see you.

That was right, she thought, with a kind of unnatural clarity.

Also, your soul gem is quite depleted, please attend to that.

She did, and as she held the grief cubes over her gem, she reflected that she hadn't realized how motivated she was by the need to do something. Doing nothing just felt wrong. No matter how much sense it might make.

She couldn't even bring herself to detransform.

And now that we're done with that, Clarisse thought. We should address your performance just now. You felt slow. Some of that was your unhappiness, but you really were slow, and you were draining your soul gem more heavily than normal. It was amplifying your emotional state.

Ryouko stood there for a moment, uncomfortably aware that Clarisse had left the light emotional suppression on, and that she could push through it at any time.

Do you mean I really am out of practice? she asked, even though she knew that was unlikely to be true.

I don't know, Clarisse thought. It's been a while since we've had any chance to study your combat performance. Of course, with a limited supply of grief cubes, extraneous power usage is a bad idea. I don't know what it means either.

The revelation struck her a bit numb, in a way that made her glad for the suppression.

Something to do with my empathy‐organ? Or being in Andromeda? she thought. Even if so, there's nothing I can do about it.

She told herself that, but she couldn't help but think about the civilians she had left behind on the mountain—she hadn't been able to find Perspective‐pursuer, for one. It was irrational, but it made her angry that some unexplained phenomenon meant leaving them behind.

👁?·What happened, some sort of laboratory accident she asked finally, directing the question at Survival‐Optimizer, somewhere in the distance, possibly still on the boat.

Even Governance had managed to get avalanches under control, as long as the area was even marginally populated, and what she had seen had been distinctly unnatural, now that Clarisse had been able to do some post‐hoc analysis.

μ·That is another reason why you should cease your reality‐warping|ν·The situation·∂

It was rare for Survival‐Optimizer to hesitate in his speech, and she had only experienced it a single‐digit number of times. The ν‐thread's message was not terminated, just pending, and he had marked it as awaiting computation.

|∂·is volatile—I will be there shortly by air vehicle, accompanying a local security paragon who is deconfusing the initial reports

Then the rumbling finally began to lessen, and in the distance she could hear a swarm of small aircraft approaching—drones, she realized, parsing their alien transponders.

She watched as some of them began to land with supplies, but plenty of others stayed in the air, some scanning her with a variety of sensors. It had been a long time since she had experienced planetary combat, but she could still identify a combat drone by its weapon attachments.

Part of her noted the distinct differences of design from the models of /Thinker‐Defending.

Survival‐Optimizer thought:

μ·Do not be alarmed, they are for your protection as much as anything else|ν·A security escort will be here shortly to bring you to a secure location|ξ·There was a pulse of reality‐warping energy, followed by a massive explosion|ξ+·I have been assured that no experiments on reality‐warping were being conducted|ο·Efforts are underway to find the box provided by Divine‐seeking that contains your power sources, which were nearby|ο+?·Could your power sources be the source of the explosion

Survival‐Optimizer didn't imply anything, but Ryouko knew what she needed to say, even as she stumbled around the idea of what had happened.

|ν?·Am I being taken captive|ξ!·I had nothing to do with this|ξ?·Does /Somatic‐diversity think I am involved||ο·My power sources do not explode like this

A well of outrage sprung within her, even as she knew, rationally, that the idea was reasonable. She had just strained herself trying to save them!

A different part of her was abruptly, sharply concerned for the grief cubes. She had indeed left most of them back in the facility, bringing only as many with her as MSY doctrine dictated, a week's worth. They should have been well‐nigh indestructible, so it hadn't even occurred to her to worry about them yet. And this right as she needed more of them!

But they should be fine, she reminded herself. Even if the enchanted box Homura had provided had been breached, the cubes would have been merely scattered. In the absolute worst case, a few demons might have spawned, but empty grief cubes would generate little threat.

She hoped so, anyway.

At length, Survival‐Optimizer responded.

|ν·No, nor will you be—none of our previous arrangements have changed|ξ·We must do what we can to reassure our allies|ξ·It is not yet clear what /Somatic‐diversity's reaction will be, but you remain under my protection|ξ·It is good that you were traveling with me and Mountain‐wandering away from the lab ≈ a supposed pathogen not concomitant with the disease|

By now the civilian Thinkers around her had begun to acclimate to their new situation, taking advantage of the medical supplies they had received—though few had any serious wounds, since Ryouko had pulled them out of the disaster wholesale. If any of them were now wary of her, they failed to show it.

She heard the Thinker transport before she saw it, the growing dull roar of its engines drawing their attention as it rotated into a landing on the small clearing in the snowbound brush that the earlier drones had already begun to flatten into a landing pad. With a lurch, the back fell open, and a trio of combat aliens jumped out. Again, the armor sported a handful of visible differences from the /Thinker‐preserving variant—more color and decorative elements—though it was difficult to say what precisely that meant.

As they moved to hustle her onto the transport, she kept her eye on the others on board, a combat‐sized security officer in civilian dress and, as promised, the even larger Survival‐Optimizer. Even as they began to speak, she couldn't help but instinctively check her escape vectors—and Clarisse was already working on contingency plans for an escape of some kind, even if there was little they could do but hide in the mountains and hope /Ahimsa‐extending eventually rescued her.

But in the end she stepped aboard, reassured by the security officer's cordial greeting and empathize‐open exchange.

Five aliens had been assigned as her escorts, the four she had already met and a fifth in a tiny closed alcove on the side of the vessel, a dedicated autocannon gunner. She gave a greeting and looked up what the gunner looked like, regretting it immediately. The tiny, large‐headed form reminded her more than a little of some of the FA Elites she had seen in movies.

As they lifted into the air, Mountain‐wandering had a message for her.

μ∪·Our local preliminary belief is that you were not involved‒73% in this incident, and if you were, that it was not deliberate‒71%|μ∪·Even supposing you had subverted empathize‐opening, our behavioral models of you struggle to reconcile the choice of this particular attack|ν·External analysis, which weights local compromise by reality‐distortion more highly, finds it plausible‒17% that you destroyed our lab to suppress proof of that compromise, but this will be corrected downward once we demonstrate local reality‐integrity|ξ·We are near‐certain‒100% that no member of /Somatic‐diversity was performing forbidden experimentation with reality‐distortion|ο👁?·Can you please provide probablity distributions over the potential causes of the incident

The Thinker elaborated on the "potential causes" with a separate machine transmission. The most likely scenarios involved an attack or sabotage by /Thinker‐preserving, a possible reality‐warping "echo" effect from Ryouko's previous power usage, the possibility that Ryouko was understating or underestimating the danger of her "power sources" in new circumstances, and, yes, the chance that Ryouko and Clarisse were enemy agents who had been lying about everything, perhaps even to their conscious selves. The Thinker simulations were still running breakneck, but it was already clear that the immediate decisions would depend on a judgment call by /Somatic‐diversity, contingent on their inclination towards trust or paranoia—and moreover contingent on how they felt other Tentacles would react to their behavior, especially when it came to meeting at Consensus. For now, as Mountain‐wandering said, they were inclined to trust her.

Only now was Ryouko able to begin assessing the event herself. The Thinker records described a pulse of reality‐warping energy, followed by a conventional explosion. She could mostly rule out the idea of an "echo" effect—one that no human magical girl had ever observed—and transmitted as much to /Somatic‐diversity. And while she had seen more than most about what could be done with grief cubes, there was no way it should have generated an explosion.

It wasn't unheard of for a demon spawn to disguise itself as an explosion to mundanes, but she had seen the explosion too. Besides, if it were a demon spawn, she would have been able to sense miasma at the village.

Ultimately, she found that the only explanations she could believe were an attack or sabotage, perhaps intended to discredit rather than kill her—it had not been a secret that she was away from the lab today. /Thinker‐preserving was the obvious culprit either way, certainly in terms of motive, but the means were a mystery.

A thought occurred to her, a risky thought.

Should I offer to go look myself? she asked Clarisse. I could help with the reality‐warping investigation, or at the very least help find the grief cubes. Would they trust me?

Very high risk, Clarisse thought. And what if it's a trap, for you?

She hesitated, tapping into the transport's telepathic interface so she could see what was happening outside.

The avalanche had left the air filled with a powder haze. Behind that, an ugly swathe of brown and black streaked down across the mountain into the valley, like someone had poured paint down the mountain face. It felt wrong, a scar across the white snow and amber foliage.

I think I have to take that risk.

Ryouko was surprised by how easy it was to convince Survival‐Optimizer and Mountain‐wandering to have her help investigate. Rescue work and excavation near the disaster site were ongoing, and they wanted her to find and extract her missing grief cubes.

The Thinkers were nervous about having them around, and Ryouko was nervous not having them in hand, so it suited both parties.

Just as importantly, the two Thinkers agreed that a successful investigation of the explosion would be essential if they hoped to defend against the accusations /Thinker‐preserving would spread throughout Consensus. Bringing Ryouko on‐site risked further accusations of tampering on her part, but that was still better than showing up with no explanation at all.

For now, they agreed, she could help find the grief cube container, and they could work from there.

Others were less simple to convince, particularly the new security paragon on site. This was a wiry neuroform named, incongruously, AEg1vA3⊃Continent‐shaking. The female Thinker was skeptical of Ryouko's claims that she might materially aid the investigation, and much preferred to stick to standard investigative procedure. That opinion tracked almost directly from the Thinker's risk‐averse pref‐spec, and it took a good deal of persuasion from Mountain‐wandering, involving a copious amount of memory‐sharing, for the security paragon to grudgingly allow Ryouko access to the site, tailed by a copious amount of security.

An hour later, Ryouko was back on the transport, with Continent‐shaking and Mountain‐wandering dispersed into two other vehicles at Continent‐shaking's insistence, to better mitigate losses in case of an attack.

The summit of the mountain was a hive of activity, numerous flying drones swarming around teams of Thinkers and larger, spider‐bodied vehicles. Many perched precariously to the side of impossible slopes, and it took Ryouko a few seconds to realize that the spider‐like vehicles were large excavation lasers, boring additional entry ports into the devastated lab. A map telepathically beamed into Ryouko's mind revealed the current situation—while the superstructure of the facility was intact, attached as most parts were to the literal body of the mountain, the internal explosion had wrecked the substantial majority of the facility, shredding equipment, collapsing walls, and bringing down corridors in showers of rubble. Internal forcefields, designed to withstand small‐scale lab accidents, had done little to contain the damage and in some places had even channeled the energy in unfortunate directions.

As a consequence, the majority of the facility's staff were currently buried in rubble, either crushed under debris or trapped in various rooms. The damage was particularly extensive around the epicenter of the explosion, near the bottom of the facility where Ryouko had stayed and where the grief cubes had been stored. There, a significant portion of the lab facilities had sagged and dropped downward, creating a giant pile of debris. This was where the grief cubes might be, and where there was active investigative digging.

The Thinker approach to all this struck Ryouko as rather cavalier, until it was explained to her that thanks to backups, saving lives did not take absolute priority over investigation—in fact, Continent‐shaking had issued a decree‐request specifically indicating that root cause investigation was to take at least 80% priority. The emphasis was on getting in quickly and seeing what there was to find, even at the risk of some additional collapse. For those who were trapped, the aim was establishing communication to determine the likelihood of rescue and severity of injury. If rescue before death was improbable, voluntary shutdown was encouraged. Otherwise, individuals would stay in fugue and wait, just like humans would—though they would generally leave an arm or two awake for communication purposes.

Ryouko had, unfortunately, been forced to promise not to try to go save any of them. Her reality‐warping would "contaminate" the scene.

All that gave Ryouko another thing to feel uncomfortable about, as they turned in towards a provisional vertipad that had been levitated over the edge of the main site.

The two Thinker paragons were already waiting, but Ryouko was requested to stay on board her transport for now, as her security personnel stepped off and conducted a sweep.

Second thoughts gnawed at her as she stepped onto the mountain. She had little training in conducting this kind of investigation, after all, and was banking entirely on her innate skills and the documentation she had reviewed with Clarisse on the flight over.

Continent‐shaking guided her forward to the edge of the platform, where peering over the edge gave a view into one of the holes newly excavated into the roof of the facility, past rock and composite, through layer after layer of semi‐ruined platforms and flooring, almost all the way down to the pile of debris at the very bottom. Once, Ryouko would have found it vertiginous.

She watched the example of the others stepping onto a series of hovering plates attached to the edge of the vertipad. At first glance looking like simple square etchings, they detached one by one as the others stepped on board, railings extending and forming within seconds, similar to the modular furniture she was familiar with. Then they floated down towards the hole.

As she stepped onto one herself, under the watchful eyes of the security officers now hovering nearby, she recognized that the hovering plates were the distant cousins of the military platforms alien shock troops sometimes rode on, and suppressed a jolt of adrenaline. She had a pseudo‐memory of bad experiences from her training simulations.

Then she descended too, and she kept her eye on the space below, watching the broken layers of facility peel past her, their destination growing ever larger. Try as she might, she couldn't feel any grief cubes or anomalous magic, not yet.

As they got closer, the damage became ever more obvious. Dislocated platforms and shattered lab equipment became twisted metal beams and unidentifiable rubble, and clusters of serenely seated technicians waiting for a ride up gave way to hunched‐over bodies and the occasional limb. The open air around them grew larger and larger, and this time it was no aesthetic effect—it was tracking where the structure had given way entirely, falling to the floor below.

Then, as they finally grew close, she felt something.

Several somethings, in fact. It took her a moment to untangle: there was the relieving signal of a large cluster of grief cubes, about as large as she remembered it should be, as obvious as a beacon now that she had noticed it.

She released a breath she hadn't known she had been holding, and then her thoughts trailed off as she spotted the thin metal rods, planted into the ground in a perimeter meters away from the giant debris, regularly spaced, like so many garden stakes. She had seen similar reality‐distortion sensors before in the lab, though she had not been able to inspect them closely.

She indicated to the aliens around her that she had located the grief cubes, and about a dozen salvage drones appeared around the corner ten seconds later, making a clacking noise as they stepped between severed self‐sealing tubes, broken power conduits, and support beams still shivering slightly. At the touch of the drones the debris stopped their futile self‐repair, and then the drones got to work, scraping and scrabbling through.

Then she asked to approach the sensors. Clarisse had reminded her that it was her duty to study key alien technology such as this, and she was separately curious. They could detect reality‐distortion, but not grief cubes? Then again, grief and miasma had always been hard to notice for mundanes…

Continent‐shaking gave her approval, but as Ryouko approached the rods, placing her hand on one, the Thinker commented:

ν·You are creating noise in the data|μ·These are compact‐fluctuation‐sensors, whose outputs are processed remotely—they detect deviations from physical law|μ+·Tiny fluctuations at the subfield level were first detected by /Comprehending in the presence of companion‐penguins—originally thought to be measurement error, they were found to be an occasional product of companion‐penguins and other partially uplifted motile organisms, strongly correlated with emotional extremis

She continued:

|μ+·Consensus agreed to ban the pursuit of reality‐warping technology after several decades, and to provide all Tentacles with these detection devices for passive observation|μ·/Thinker‐preserving and other Tentacles proposed mandatory full uplifts to eliminate all reality‐distortions, but this would have violated the organisms' preferences

Separately, Mountain‐wandering indicated that this information was allowed to her now as a show of good faith, and in the hopes that it might aid in the investigation.

That discussion gave her plenty to think about. The phenomenon was a subfield fluctuation near animals that could only be detected by special sensors? Were the penguins magic? She hardly thought so, and the only magic she had ever seen was far too obvious to need a high‐tech sensor.

This seemed like the kind of thing to ask the Incubators about, if she got the chance. Of course, they were probably watching right now…

A signal from one of the drones drew their attention, and some scurrying became obvious at the side of the debris pile, near a large damaged‐looking orb that she realized was the remains of the multispectral puzzle orb she had studied earlier, detailing the exploits of Mountain‐wandering. Parts of its surface still shone with encoded information.

Seconds later, one of the alien drones made its way around the side of the orb, holding aloft the instantly recognizable Homura‐given sphere of grief cubes.

Ryouko tried not to look too eager and she moved forward to receive it.

She opened it to quickly verify that everything was there, but even as she touched the top of the sphere, a shiver passed through her. Magic, and it wasn't from her or the person who made the enchanted container.

Normally, magic dissipated quickly, but of course permanently enchanted objects were the exception, being imbued with magic. Here, it seemed the original magic had weakened, like with magitech armor that had taken a hit, and foreign magic had seeped in.

She felt the hackles on her neck rise up, and sent the Thinkers her findings even as she advanced on the debris pile. Now that she knew the magic signature of the bomber, she might be able to find more evidence, or better yet, the bomber themselves.

If she could catch the real culprit, if she could prove /Thinker‐preserving responsible for the slaughter of innocent Thinkers, her diplomatic victory would be assured. She just had to follow her grief cubes' trail.

Who knew what she might find?

As it turned out, nothing at all. She combed the area around the epicenter several times, trying to find something, anything, and simply hadn't. In retrospect, it all felt rather silly.

But that result left her in a bad place, politically speaking.

It got worse when /Somatic‐diversity's conventional investigation failed to turn up a result that exonerated her. In fact, just the opposite: forensics indicated that the explosion had begun in her own room, near her grief cubes. Surveillance data provided no alternative explanation: the initial reality‐warping part of the bomb ruined any data from then on, and there was nothing of note beforehand, other than a cleaning drone having entered and exited her room some time before, on schedule.

Continent‐shaking did point out that the lab had not been designed to detect the usage of Thinker stealth. It was possible that a stealthed agent had planted the bomb and then either escaped or, more likely, let the bomb dispose of themselves. But she lacked any evidence for the theory—few would find it convincing, not when reality‐warping was definitely involved.

Ryouko knew that neither she nor her grief cubes were responsible—the traces of foreign magic on the container proved that to her—but she couldn't prove it to the Thinkers. The Thinkers' magic detectors were not so advanced that they could differentiate her reality‐distortions from someone else's.

They would be able to catch any future magic‐assisted bomb or hostile magical girl, though. She'd probably be seeing a lot more of the detectors from now on—not only to protect her from /Thinker‐preserving, but to reassure other Tentacles about the threat she posed as well.

For now, she had been politely requested to stay in her quarters, then transferred to a transport bound for the far side of the planet. There, an embodying facility was equipped to take the data on Clarisse that had been gathered and continue the work of installing an empathy‐organ in her, a process that would be finished "expeditiously", before shuffling Ryouko off‐planet.

Ryouko didn't terribly mind moving on to a new destination, but the diplomatic implications were, in a phrase, not good.

I hate it! We've been completely outmaneuvered, Ryouko fumed.

It's only a partial setback, Clarisse soothed. Not all Tentacles will really think you were responsible. Especially not the ones we have any chance of swaying.

But it will affect their calculations, Ryouko complained. Everyone has admitted as such, and really why wouldn't it? Besides that, even if you did believe it wasn't my fault, it makes me a security risk. /Ahimsa‐extending has already admitted to /Eternal‐dwellings backing out.

Only one Tentacle, on the margins. And look, we've been over this in and out. Maybe grousing to me makes you feel better, but it doesn't change the situation. At the end of the day, the fault lies with /Somatic‐diversity for their lax security. Even /Somatic‐diversity admits as much. Better security would have meant this never happens, or even better, catching the culprit red‐handed. Instead, we're left guessing.

The situation wasn't as bad as Ryouko made it sound. It contributed immensely to her frustration that her own attempts to poke around the investigation site had contributed nothing. /Somatic‐diversity didn't seem to seriously think she had bombed them in a manner that was clearly counterproductive for her stated mission, but they also weren't 100% confident in her, which rankled, especially when she was constantly being updated telepathically on those less‐than‐100% estimates.

Ryouko kept quiet, but they both knew what she was thinking. These Thinkers had spent so long in peace and prosperity that they simply weren't prepared for rogue actors, not anymore. Perhaps other Tentacles were different, but /Somatic‐diversity engaged little with the art of espionage, and self‐admittedly were far behind the cutting‐edge of their race. Perhaps more importantly, their society simply didn't prioritize protection against threats that, until now, hadn't existed.

Ironically, the seemingly‐pacifist /Ahimsa‐extending was much more secure, both more paranoid about the many lives in their care and constantly interested in sticking their tentacles into other Tentacles' business to try and modify their behavior.

Ryouko thought back to her encounter with Continent‐shaking. She had been paranoid, by‐the‐book, and detail‐oriented, all qualities that seemed useful in a security official. But one Thinker a secure system did not make.

We should speak to /Ahimsa‐extending about forwarding security suggestions to our future destinations. It might seem presumptuous, but we can't afford another incident like this—us or them.

Not to mention the matter of personal safety. She didn't consider herself easily scared, but by going after her grief cubes they had gone after her, in a way she hadn't anticipated.

I've already spoken to Survival‐Optimizer, Clarisse thought. They've adopted the suggestion. And they'll be sending a security team.

That was the first Ryouko had heard of that, but the files Clarisse flashed through her mind made everything clear enough. It was a full suite of specialists, including some borrowed from allied, more security‐minded Tentacles. And, yes, a small group of personal bodyguards, reminding her for the first time in a while of the pair of girls she had left behind at Adept Blue. She missed Eri and Elanis, in a weird kind of way. Now that she was gone, would they still be assigned together? Or had they been separated too?

Ryouko shook her head in dismay at the situation, leaning on the windowsill of the transport. Like the humans, the Thinkers seemed content to use traditional transparent materials for windows on their civilian, planetary transports. Here, there was a breathtaking view of an alien world from low orbit for her to appreciate, if she were in any mood to.

I'm all for being wistful and missing the Milky Way, Clarisse thought, but besides the politics and Consensus, you haven't put enough thought into the technical details of what happened. What with the 'reality‐warping' and all.

It took Ryouko a moment to take in Clarisse's point, and realize she was right. In the whirlwind of all that had happened, rescuing Thinkers, worrying about what had happened to her powers, worrying about her supply of grief cubes, she hadn't spent more than a short time thinking about what had happened. All logic pointed to /Thinker‐preserving, but then what?

If the magic bomb was truly from a Human faction, it at least kept things simple. She already knew the TCF conspiracy was working with /Thinker‐preserving, and it was easy to imagine they might provide a little help, with an enchanted bomb of some kind, delivered by stealthed Thinker agent. The story was tidy, and it was even the most likely answer.

There were other, more worrying possibilities. For example, perhaps /Thinker‐preserving was working with enemy magical girls they had brought from the Milky Way. That would answer a lot of questions, but didn't explain why such a magical girl hadn't simply stolen Ryouko's grief cubes. Perhaps they wanted to undermine her diplomatic mission more than they wanted to kill her? Her assassination would, after all, make a strong case for malfeasance by /Thinker‐preserving.

Another possibility: had /Thinker‐preserving figured out how to manipulate grief cubes, to release some of their energy? Or worse, do a little bit of magic of their own? But what did that mean? The Incubators could manipulate grief cubes, but if anything else were possible with just technology, surely the Incubators wouldn't need Humanity?

I'm glad you're thinking along the same lines I am, Clarisse thought. We have to be prepared for the worst, like somehow they keep sending magic‐tinted bombs at us. If we can't prove it's not us, eventually we'll lose all credibility. Not to mention the risk that they might actually kill you or remove your grief cubes.

Should we ask the Incubators about this situation? They might have some insight, and we can probably drill them about some of the stranger possibilities.

Yes, but not until we have more information and a better grasp of what questions to even ask. Without that, we're just going to get misled. What are the chances, after all, that all of this happening in Andromeda was beyond their notice? Not very high, in my opinion.

The two of them shared a moment of silence. It wasn't hard to remember that they might not ever return to the Milky Way—that this might have all been a one‐way mission from the start.

Ryouko found herself once again missing the clarity of battle. Cephalopods there had been much easier to understand, fitting into well‐understood combat planning models. This was different, ineffable, worrying—like dealing with all the conspiracies back home. Of course that poison would follow her here, too.

With a subtle tap in the back of her mind, the transport let her know that they were approaching their destination. Indeed, her internal accelerometer indicated that they were beginning to descend from suborbit. She needed to calm herself down, before she blew up on some /Somatic‐diversity technician and gave the aliens yet another reason to be wary of her.

You should write another letter for Asami, Clarisse thought. That will help.

Vlad was having a rather interesting day.

As AI director of Adept Blue, it had been natural for him to slot into the director's role for Project Armstrong, Governance's long‐range wormhole project. As such, his responsibilities had expanded, and his computing hardware accordingly, such that he was now several times his original computing capacity. Much of it was tasked to matters that had little to do with his original specialty as a research AI—managing base logistics, personnel, security and the like. Such things often didn't require the attention of his primary sentience, but he had been finding the attention he did have to spare all too tedious.

One silver lining of the terrorist attacks perpetrated by the TCF conspiracy was it had led to the instantiation of a new AI for Project Armstrong, dedicated to site security. They already had protection from the Armed Forces—the project had no doubt become a priority raiding target for the Cephalopods after the destruction of their pulsar mines—but this new AI would focus on monitoring for any internal threats, as well as manage relations with the Armed Forces. It was a welcome change… but who had decided that the personality should be bubbly?

"You're too gruuuumpy Vladdy," one update had said. "Don't you know that too much focus on the work leads to biased cognition? It's important to cultivate a variety of interests for the long‐term, in case you get reassigned!"

Yes, that was a weeks‐old neophyte of an AI reading orientation files back to him.

Well, at least Marie was a hit with the magical girls at base, avatar chattering constantly with the others in the rec area in a way that, frankly, Vlad didn't always have the patience for. As long as they didn't try to pull him into any baking events or, worse, Cult recruitment parties. He had a bad feeling that Marie, with her youthful naïveté, would be easy prey for them. Was already easy prey for them, perhaps. If he had to hear one more time about how Governance: Magical Girls had been given a 'vision' that predicted the outcomes of quantum physics experiments…

Still, he was grateful for the additional time provided to pay personal attention to the research. Losing Shizuki Ryouko to the pulsar had been painful, even cripplingly so, but not necessarily fatal. Already, there were theories to test and other candidates to try out—with Nakihara's help, once she returned, he was hopeful they could make a small wormhole, enough for a short‐range raid, or at least make meaningful progress on one.

Shizuki had also not died without imparting one last gift. Not just the remnants of an alien blink interdictor device, but also part of the technical manual, so to speak, somehow derived from the strange brain organ his own creator had given her. It wasn't enough to piece together very much, not on its own, but it was enough for them to start making what felt like real headway on understanding alien communication, when combined with some of the other initiatives coming from the General Staff.

So he was told, at least. That wasn't really his field.

He was currently focused on data from the jumpstrike mission itself, all the telemetry and sensor data from instruments he had insisted go along for the ride. What the aliens were doing there was beyond anything they had ever dreamed of, and he had gathered Governance's best minds in the field to study it. Just within weeks, they had already cobbled together a method for improving the range of small IIC nodes. It was something.

Some on the team groused that they were merely cribbing from the notes of more advanced aliens. It was true, but stupid pride was, well, stupid. They were doing good work. He was doing good work.

Or, he was, until a few days ago, when he was surprised to find a security update from Marie smashing all the way to the top of his cognitive queue, such that he was reading it almost before he knew what he was doing. Apparently, the Task Force dedicated to taking down the TCF conspiracy had suffered a serious leak, and they were concerned that it might be possible to triangulate Project Armstrong's location. After all, Task Force agents had been traveling to and from Project Armstrong constantly since the terrorist attacks to reverify that he and the other AIs on board hadn't been newly magically compromised.

They had already prepared for the possibility of a raid, of course, but now his days were full of planning for how to subject various parts of the station to evasive maneuvers, and how to use some parts as defensive baffles for other parts. This was not generally the kind of thing sensitive scientific equipment was good at undergoing.

And now, he had just learned, today was fated to be even worse.

The sphere of emergency tripwire devices their Navy complement had deployed, at a radius of ten thousand AU and increasing, had just been triggered. Dozens of alien bombers were approaching at assault speed, arrival in under ten minutes. They weren't even bothering with stealth, which would likely have been ineffectual anyway against the clairvoyants he had on board.

He assigned a cognitive subtask to investigate with Marie how exactly their randomized trajectory might have been breached, then shoved it to the end of his priority list, behind such things as site defense and warning base personnel.

Their defenses were already scrambling, ships and drones maneuvering and dumping countermeasures, forcefields activating, even as his full Magi Cæli component scrambled out into space. The tripwires had bought them precious time, but an alien bomber raid was just not easy for a scientific space station to absorb, regardless of the circumstances.

That was Marie and the military's business, freeing him to focus on the base itself. Still, it strained his resources—even as his primary attention focused on protecting the military‐scientific mission, shutting down and isolating key and volatile equipment, the enormous wormhole ring folding aside and deploying baffles, he was obliged to hand over key processing power to Marie and the other military AIs for their use. It was sensible, but hardly made things easier.

They had drilled all this, but there simply wasn't time for more.

Their escort was able to get a partial flight of anti‐missiles into the air even as the bombers made their first launches, and the ripples of their distant duel reached his FTL instruments only barely before the missiles themselves.

Some of them were driven off course by a massive wave of smart dust and sensor decoys, some of them were neutralized by freshly‐installed point‐defense systems or absorbed by sacrificial baffles, but for the rest…

His sensory integration modules cursed in consternation and confusion. Something was off with the calculations, and suddenly there were gravimetric anomalies across the board, much of it on the remaining scientific equipment he had left online—the less valuable equipment, that he felt he could risk sacrificing in a cheeky attempt to study alien combat technology. Now he felt only fear: was this a new alien missile class or countermeasure? Or simply something only more sensitive instruments could detect?

The answer seemed to hardly matter in the moment; he could only grit the teeth he did not have as he made a last series of microadjustments in reaction to the new data. There was simply no time.

His systems registered the first impacts. As intended, the first to be destroyed were outlying labs and more marginal experimental setups, not the most valuable sensors or core wormhole ring.

Even as he went into damage control, he could only silently exhort his escorts to do the utmost, not allowing himself to curse Task Force Monteagle for their recklessness and lack of security.

In another fractional second, he lost part of a shelter for some of the logistics staff, the module taking a glancing blow even after a local Magi Cæli sacrificed a body—thankfully, only a body—on a last‐second deflection. State‐of‐the‐art materials and impact redistribution fields shuddered to prevent a hurricane of shrapnel and spalling, but there was no denying the sheer kinetic energy of the hit, and it simply wasn't worth focusing on any but the merely wounded.

He knew in his heart of course that all modules were placed and maneuvered in order of cold‐blooded importance, and that these people were simply lower on the list than scientific staff or even some categories of equipment. It had all made sense in planning, neatly curated by both his and Marie's algorithms, but he could not fully ignore the human cost. No TCF AI really could.

But something was wrong.

Relievingly wrong?

It had taken a bit of time to sort out the confusing mess of sensor data, even with all their computing running full blast, and nearly all of his own attention on damage control and mitigation. The additional flood of anomalous sensor data had seemed like a series of blips in the middle of a sea of explosions, and only now did he, they, realize that a torrent of additional drones had appeared in the middle of the missile wave right in front of their own defenses, perfectly positioned to assist in deflecting and destroying them. The normally quite clever alien missiles had been thrown completely awry.

But they really had appeared, in a manner that his sensor data was confirming to be consistent only with alien stealth.

It took a few moments longer to understand who was responsible, as the telemetry data finally came in to indicate that there had been a few new magical girls in the mix, unaccounted for by any of their personnel rosters.

The mages in question ignored the hasty calls to identify themselves, and instead began to fade out of their sensors. Vlad realized that the sensor anomalies he had been seeing were, perhaps, the results of turning laboratory‐grade instruments onto a novel stealth device for the first time.

Fascinating, and he would have thrown himself into the analysis, but there were still more pressing matters.

The alien bombers were presumably as aghast as they were, but there was no time for either side to wait: the bombers were already circling around for another pass, in spiraling trajectories arcing through a solar system's worth of space. Alien long‐range bombers could be maddeningly obstinate, taking the time to make second or even third passes at newfound defensive weaknesses, often created by the destruction wrought by the first pass.

It all depended on how valuable the target was, how much they were willing to sacrifice, and how much of their payload they had committed to the first strike, a proportion that varied constantly according to a destructively intricate dance of game theory that the alien planners played with their human AI counterparts.

Here, of course, the aliens would consider their target very valuable, notwithstanding how poorly the first pass had gone. The human defenses had shredded ten percent of their enemy's number—a touch higher than the usual attrition rate for an attack on a high‐value target, and the estimates Vlad was receiving indicated that they had spent 60±10 percent of their payloads on the first pass, probably the more important measure.

This time, with another few minutes to prepare themselves and little meaningful damage to their defensive systems, the humans put up a vastly larger wave of missile interceptors. With their mysterious benefactors' contribution, almost nothing got through. There were only another dozen human casualties.

Only.

They watched the alien bombers turn and streak away, disappointed.

Vlad did the AI equivalent of letting out a breath, which was to rededicate much of his processing to what had formerly been secondary priorities. The attack had been audacious, worrying but, in the final analysis, not actually all that threatening. Not so long as Akemi Homura was willing to keep appearing out of the mist to save them.

And it had been her. By now the task force had managed to profile a few members of her group, and two of them had turned up here, recognizable by magic type and color. Who else could it be?

Could they really keep relying on Homura's intervention? Some of the others were starting to think so. He knew Marie would think so. To her, Valentin née Akemi had created their entire lineage of AIs to protect them from the TCF breach, and was to be lauded for the act.

Vlad was less sure, a skepticism he was sure stemmed, ironically, from how much of Valentin's personality he shared. He couldn't understand what Homura's game was, or why she still wouldn't make contact. Could she be trusted? Was she even in a stable frame of mind?

But in a way, it seemed petty for him to be thinking such thoughts after what had just happened. She doubtless had saved them here, and potentially had been continually saving Humanity since the first time at New Athens. After all, if the TCF terrorists were willing to sell Project Armstrong out to the aliens, why hadn't they done the same at Orpheus, when the stakes were much greater? Perhaps Homura had something to do with it.

Valentin was the closest thing to a mother he would ever have. Perhaps it would do to trust her, this once.

Kyouko flung herself back into her bunk, regretting, not for the first time, her insistence on replicating in her church the austere circumstances of her youth. Couldn't she have at least used the ongoing reconstruction to sneak in a synthesizer?

As always, she chided herself. The whole point was to keep her grounded.

It was a bit hard to remember that when embroiled in the disputes of the Theological Council. She might have hoped that an assemblage of mostly Ancients would be relentlessly practical, but they could be as invested in esoterica as any organization with "Theology" in its name. In this case, it was over the validity of trying to discern the Goddess's plan when making decisions. Surely, given what She had said, She wanted them to take Her plans into account sometimes. But nonetheless, if one considered—

Kyouko put a pillow over her face. This sort of nonsense was why she liked having Maki around. She was no‐nonsense.

Unfortunately, she was also many light‐years away, as part of the defensive complement for Adept Blue. Kyouko hadn't prevented her from joining the Task Force, despite the fear she felt for Maki's life, a legacy of what had happened to Sayaka. Only after the asteroid ambush, as she felt the relief wash over her, did Kyouko begin to let go of that fear. Maki hadn't died—hadn't even lost her body like she had on Apollo.

And now she had survived a surprise attack on Adept Blue as well. Good things could happen after all.

Her chest throbbed. Why did anyone ever fall in love anyway? She found herself desperately wishing for a distraction.

She promptly got one in the form of something scurrying up her arm.

She suppressed a decidedly un‐Ancient‐like scream and bolted back up, nearly ramming her head into the top of her alcove.

A purple crystal salamander clung to her arm, peering into her eyes.