Magical Girl Overtime [Second Arc Complete!]

December 2384

“Welcome, valued customer! How may Hayder-Katsuya serve you today?”

As Miori entered the gigantic pyramid-like structure, she was greeted by a perfectly dressed woman wearing a perfect smile and speaking with the exactly perfect tone of voice to make her feel welcome – or at least it would, if Miori’s intentions today weren’t hostile in nature.

“Welcome, valued customer! How may Hayder-Katsuya serve you today?” the woman repeated, robotically.

Miori got the strange feeling that this was either required of her by company policy, or maybe they had done some invasive procedures on this woman’s head, just like they did with the mind- and heartless soldiers in the sewers.

“I’m just looking,” she tried to brush her off and simply walked past the help desk. The woman looked after her with robotic motions while Miori approached the area that showcased the company’s military technology.

“Excuse me, valued customer, but the area beyond the showcase is for Class-A contractors only,” the clerk spoke, walking up behind Miori as she looked at a glass door with a keycard lock.

She heavily doubted that Katsuya was still in the know about the codes that were currently in use, so the only way forward was by force.

No use keeping my disguise.

Miori simply transformed, and her torn cloak billowed behind her as she stood in front of the locked door in the form of Ma Bellona. She heard a surprised shout from behind, which was strangely distorted, as the clerk’s augmentations tried to turn her genuine scream into a customer-friendly melodic voice.

Bellona looked over the shoulder and saw the woman backing away from her.

“You should end your shift early,” Bellona warned her, and the woman turned around to run – as fast as her high heels would take her, anyway.

“It’s the terrorist! Sound the alarm!” people shouted behind her as she summoned her trusty halberd to her side and used the axe head to cleave through the door. Glass shattered and flew in every direction before she simply climbed through the bent frame and advanced deeper into the corporate headquarters.

She walked past guns and personal armor on display, just as the hall got tinted in a red flashing light with a blaring alarm that almost hurt her ears. There were air-to-air missiles, longer than she was tall, and a large graphic showing off a private army. Multiple of the mech suits she fought so far were lined up, with soldiers wearing what looked almost like the power armor of the miniatures Rinko loved so much.

A photo of an aircraft carrier, of a spaceship launch, and of a space station were on display as well, and every piece of equipment had a price tag attached which was helpfully projected out of the photos as a hologram. Bellona didn’t know the value of this world’s currency, but even if those prices had been in Yen, they would have made her head spin.

“You’re in the Class-A lobby, yes?” Hayder contacted her, and Bellona put a hand on her ear.

“I am. The access was supposed to be here, yes?”

“Can’t miss it. They really love to spell it out where the magic happens, so it’s behind a big door labelled ‘R&D’. Hayder loved rolling new products out of that door to impress customers. There’s an elevator to the underground compound right behind, and chances are, they’ll shut the elevator down to prevent you from coming, but…”

“I can cut my own way,” Bellona confirmed and pressed on.

She quickly followed the corridor until she saw what looked like a conference room, completely encased in smart glass windows, with some of them already frosted, while others remained clear. And from there, a direct corridor to a heavy blast door, with ‘R&D’ written above it in bold letters cast from solid gold, and framed pictures of the company’s weapons on either wall.

“He’s already dead, but I really want to kick this guy’s ass again for being such a pompous prick,” Bellona commented dryly, hearing Katsuya chuckle on the other side of the connection.

She didn’t bother with doors; she jumped straight through the smart glass, shattering it and making it rain glass over the conference table and empty ice buckets, doubtlessly for champagne to celebrate successful arms deals.

She ran towards the heavy blast door, readying her halberd as she noticed movement. The many photographs of Hayder-Katsuya’s various weapons slid aside to reveal openings in the walls. Turrets were embedded in them, either autonomous or remote controlled, with long mounts extending from the inside of the holes to let the turrets swivel around freely and take aim at Bellona. She counted two miniguns, two laser cannons and two flame throwers, all in all.

The miniguns were the greatest problem. Bellona’s shields were powerful but not infinitely so, and a hail of bullets against the magical energies would erode them quickly, leaving her open to the other turrets. As the miniguns’ barrels started spinning and the flamethrowers started with an initial, weak squirt of burning fluid, Bellona quickly jumped up, dodging the first salvo and burst of bullets and flames.

She embedded her halberd’s blade deep into the marble of the hallway’s ceiling, hanging there as she sent out her gladii. They first cut the miniguns off their mounts, though they missed the ammo feed of one of them and it fell to the ground, quickly spraying death in every direction.

Bellona found herself utilizing her barriers after all as the bouncing and dancing weapon almost struck her. Luckily enough, one of the stray bullets hit one of the laser turrets in the focusing lens, disabling it with a small puff of smoke as it tried to fire.

The other one locked in on her, and a continuous, blindingly bright beam clashed with her barrier, making even the magical protection projected by a goddess look like it might give out if this continued.

Two fireballs rocked the hallway, confirming that her gladii had taken out the flamethrowers and caused their fuel tanks to rupture, which finally knocked the final laser cannon off-balance as well.

Bellona quickly jumped back down into the hallway and summoned a katana into her hands, with which she cut the laser cannon off its mount and the cables that fed it.

The luxurious hall was scorched and covered in bullet holes, with the photos of the products being reduced to ash. Bellona couldn’t even take her time marveling at the destruction as people in blue uniforms stormed into the conference room, brandishing rifles with tracking ammunition just like their brainwashed comrades in the sewers did.

“I don’t have time for you,” Bellona spoke before they opened fire, then she sprinted down the corridor towards the heavy blast door, changing her katana into a heavy axe.

Bullets shattered as they hit her magical barriers, and she encased the axe’s blade in her destructive energies before swinging the weapon against the gate with full force. Steel, which would usually be able to resist intruders for hours or days, was smashed in an instant, and Bellona jumped through the opening, to the confused shouts of her pursuers.

The elevator wasn’t on this level, that much she could tell from the lack of a floor as Bellona fell down an elevator shaft which vanished in the darkness below. She sent her flying gladii ahead, illuminating the path until the missing elevator came in sight and she landed on top of it, her tattered cape billowing behind her as she dented the metal of the elevator’s ceiling with her fist and knee.

She raised the heavy war axe again and cut through the elevator’s metal ceiling, dropping onto the marbled floor below. The inside of the elevator was as pompous as the corridor above, with white marble pillars in all four of its corners, and gold trim around every decorative piece of masonry. The panel only had two buttons, so Bellona intuited that she was on the correct floor and stepped outside.

She entered some kind of research facility. Metal corridors were lined with glass windows, revealing the various rooms behind them. Some were proper workshops, with parts scattered on benches and half-assembled rifles, drones and robots were on display. Her noisy entry made sure that she had the full attention of the workers who were busy until her arrival. Most simply ran, while some others foolishly thought it was enough to activate the frosted mode on their workshops’ smart windows.

Bellona ignored them, sprinting through the corridor as alarms blared around her and the sterile corridor was tinted in a red light.

She was able to advance only a few meters until security personnel, or the lobotomized remnants of humans filling that role, stepped into her way. A dozen rifles were pointed her way by mindless drones, while she could already hear the loud shouting of the other security forces echoing through the elevator shaft.

“You got their attention, now. The entire building looks like someone kicked a hornet’s nest. Best keep moving and don’t stop until you’ve found your people!” Katsuya advised her, and Bellona scoffed, summoning her halberd into her hand and raising it into a combat stance.

“I’m sorry for what happened to all of you. But this is the only help I can give you right now,” she spoke quietly. The guns of the mechanized soldiers roared, and the whirs of smart ammunition filled the corridor as she advanced. Bullets struck her barrier, with some arcing around the top, to try and hit her in the head, though they were intercepted by her floating gladii, which threw themselves in harm’s way.

Her halberd cut through the first two in a single, horizontal strike, and the return swing impaled one on its spike. One of the soldiers attempted to step around her barrier, and with a thought, one of the gladii shot forward, impaling the poor wretch against the nearest wall. The rest of her gladii shot continuous laser beams down the corridor, sweeping it once and with that motion, there was an eerie silence, only interrupted by some scientists’ screams as they witnessed the carnage.

It is not very Magical Girl-like… but it would be crueler to let them live like this.

Bellona offered the remains of the surgically enslaved soldiers a quiet prayer as she pressed on.

The deeper she got into the strange facility, the stranger the technology being worked on became. In one room, what she assumed to be an elaborate robotic arm turned out to be merely a finger that must have belonged to a much larger construction. In another, she saw attempts at creating humanoid, autonomous robots. The half-finished machines were hanging from cargo belts on the wall, their lifeless sensor eyes staring at the ground.

“Hayder had been chasing the ideal of ‘true artificial intelligence’ for as long as I can remember. It was one of the first things he ever talked to me about when I was little,” Katsuya remarked over the earpiece and Bellona stopped for a moment, facing the robots inside the workshop.

“It didn’t work out?”

“Of course not. Every time Hayder’s engineers constructed and tested humanoid robots, something was off. Their speech subroutines went off into weird nonsense, or they couldn’t tell friend from foe in simulated combat situations. I’m certain that full artificial consciousness is possible, but a ghoul like Hayder couldn’t even grasp how humans worked, so how would he be able to replicate it in machines?”

Bellona kept going, passing by multiple workshops, though all of them had their windows set to private by now. Terrified workers hid inside, hoping that the frosted glass alone would protect them from the woman who was widely reported to be a violent terrorist. She paid them no mind and kept advancing, until she reached another blast door.

Mind Transfer, the sign next to it read.

“Huh. It wasn’t always called that,” Katsuya commented over comms.

“No time to ponder the meaning of that right now. Where should I go?”

“Through that door. Whatever’s behind there, there’s a service lift to the underground facility. Well, it’s more like a giant assembly hall, where they create their big weapons of war. If there’s any place where they’d build some kind of machine that takes humans as fodder, it’s down there.”

“Reassuring,” Bellona remarked quietly, raising the large axe above her head and bringing it down on the blast door. The force of the impact split it wide open, bending hot steel inwards as the destructive energies of the goddess of battle met with mere metal.

Bellona quickly stepped through the opening, finding herself in something akin to a surgery room. A doctor stood in a corner, quickly running away after he saw the source of the strange noise, towards a corridor at the far end. He slammed his keycard against a scanner and looked behind him in a panic as the metal doors slowly slid open.

At that moment, two armed men stepped into view from behind a medical curtain surrounding an operating table. There was a body on it, but Bellona’s focus was on the two foes who aimed their weapons at her; they weren’t augmented like the others.

“I’m giving you one chance: run away,” Bellona spoke, and the two exchanged a confused look before they chose the wrong option and opened fire.

Bellona grimaced and summoned a katana into her hands. She could have used her barriers, but she decided that she wanted to scare these men into submission instead. The arcing smart bullets flew her way and she swiftly moved her sword from side to side, slicing through them one by one, making them uselessly hit medical equipment behind her. Glass shattered and plastics were cracked as the destroyed projectiles hit anything but their target.

Bellona swiftly used her opponents’ confusion to her advantage and pressed on, dashing between them and slashing through their guns one after the other. She sheathed the katana with a flourish, and just as the tsuba clicked against the sheath, they fell apart, leaving the guards utterly befuddled before they ran. Bellona couldn’t quite hold back a grin.

If Seika saw that she wouldn’t stop gushing about it for days… let’s keep it a secret from her for now.

She turned towards the operating table and pulled the curtain back out of curiosity – and right there was the ruined wreck that used to be Christian Hayder’s body.

His skull was entirely obliterated, with everything above the jaw missing. Whatever was left of his brain was gathered as a little pile above his head, with various electrodes sticking in it, and in the half-empty skull, connecting to the brain stem and the spine, with cables running all over the place to various machines that stood next to the table, which in turn were connected to the ceiling by innumerable cables.

A twitch went through the body from time to time, though Bellona could tell those were just involuntary spasms, resulting from whatever these probes were doing to his nervous system. She wasn’t about to find out what, so she stepped next to the operating table and drew her katana, slashing through the cables, and then through the machines, just to be sure.

“How barbaric,” Katsuya commented through her earpiece.

“It was the best way to make sure,” Bellona responded.

“Not you. This… all this… it’s…”

“It’s memory digitization, isn’t it?” a new voice in the call asked. It was Annie.

“How did you get into-?”

“Same way I blocked the tracking of Miori’s earpiece. Listen, I’m rallying the orcs, and while everyone is trying to get into HK’s headquarters to confront Bellona, we might be able to do something.”

“You’re trying to overthrow the corpos by force?!” Katsuya shouted, then he cursed as people doubtlessly heard his outburst. Bellona could hear him walk somewhere else as fast as he could.

“We have a probable cause now. Hayder is dead. Katsuya’s heir was found. By rights you should take over the corporation and set things right. But, either way, what’s the deal with the memory transfer?”

“Hayder failed making a proper AI, so he went on to the next best thing: turning human consciousness into a stream of data. I think his aging body had him obsessed with eternal life, so he preferred that approach in the end.”

“I doubt they were able to scrape anything out of this mess,” Bellona commented dryly, but then she saw a light next to her and readied her weapon. What appeared next to her was some kind of projection – a hologram, like the advertisements in the street, but it only showed a single man. He was about sixty years younger, but there was no doubt in Bellona’s mind that it was Christian Hayder himself by the way he carried himself.

“Oh, I am… complete, I assure you.”

Annie was busy sneaking through the sewers, the same way Miori and Katsuya went before. She grimaced as the foul smell of the water below violated her nostrils. At least her comrades weren’t as affected as she was.

Orcs, goblins, and displaced humans; all of them were armed, with crudely built or looted firearms, and all of them were ready to launch an assault on Hayder-Katsuya’s headquarters. Annie felt a little bad that she would be of little use after talking them into it, with her arm still in a sling.

At least she could watch Bellona’s every move on her left eye, though she must have been making weird faces, trying to keep walking while also paying attention to her implant.

Right now, though, she almost fell over in shock as she saw the figure standing in front of Bellona. It was Christian Hayder, in hologram form.

Her vision grew blurry and her heart hammered in her chest as she saw Zach’s sacrifice being trampled on by this creature’s survival. She clenched her fists, and her anger must have been showing on her face, as Garnuk walked up next to her and put a hand on her shoulder, looking concerned.

“What wrong, friend?”

Annie quickly shook her head. She couldn’t tell them. Not now, when they were about to commit to the assault.

“The arm is just hurting a little. Let’s keep moving.”

***

“You!” Bellona barked, pointing her blade at the specter in front of her. The young Hayder regarded her with narrowed eyes, before he simply walked towards her until the blade phased through his chest.

“You cannot hurt me, terrorist. I am data. I am a god of the new, digital world! And if only you hadn’t smashed our machines, I’d be wandering all the different worlds out there, making them mine!”

“Oh, is that what the game was for? Just for your own amusement?”

The holographic man scoffed, turning around and walking towards his own dead body, pointing at it.

“This was always the end goal. We humans are but mere specks of dust in the grand cosmos. Our bodies are weak and only temporary. We wither and die, without being able to even see or comprehend a fraction of what we lived in. Not any longer!”

The spectral Hayder let out a laugh and turned towards Bellona.

“Oh, we’ll rebuild, and then I’ll wander and see it all, just you wait!”

Bellona gritted her teeth. She kicked the operating table and toppled it, with Hayder’s remains falling on the ground with a disgusting sound of spilling brain matter.

“Your technology was turned into a game! Who knows how many people in the worlds out there were killed by your ‘players’! You’ve been turning them into unwitting drones that aimlessly slaughtered real, flesh-and blood people!”

The holographic Hayder stepped closer again, with furious indignation written across his face.

“Do you have any idea how expensive this technology is? To traverse dimensional barriers! It’s nothing less than another world wonder! If we must let the plebeians have some fun with it to finance it, then so be it! Once it’s perfected, they’ll thank me! All lives are utterly expendable if it serves their betters!”

Bellona’s vision was tinted red by now. If the man in front of her were tangible, she’d have strangled him or worse, but like this she could only let him laugh in her face about the casualties he caused.

Instead of letting him do that, she continued, walking towards the door through which the doctor had vanished earlier. The hologram watched her, simply switching positions to always be next to her, while Bellona grew more and more frustrated.

“I doubt that’s truly his mind in the machine,” Katsuya spoke over the earpiece, and Bellona listened.

“He never perfected the technology, as far as I know. This is a crude copy running over a standard AI, imitating him. Hayder is dead, and he’ll stay dead once you wreck the machinery that houses this abominable imitation.”

Bellona walked past a few doors marked as top secret with keycard readers for locks, though she wasn’t interested in any of the dirty secrets of this corporation, save the one she came here for. She found the service elevator at the end of the hallway, all while Hayder’s hologram flickered in and out of existence to keep pace, looking over her with clear disdain.

The elevator was also keycard locked – luckily for her, the giant axe she summoned into her hands was a universal key. The metal of the elevator door gave in, once more just in time for the arrival of the security forces running down the hallways she just came through. They immediately opened fire as they saw Bellona, who wasted no time jumping down the elevator shaft. On the way down she cut the wire with one of her floating gladii, making sure that her pursuers would keep lagging behind.

She heard a loud metallic crash below after cutting the elevator loose, and called her gladii back, making them float behind her to brake her fall like propulsion engines as she saw an open door, just above the now crashed elevator.

As she landed on the floor below, she had a quick look around. She was in a large hall, impossibly large for its underground location. She could see a strange, gigantic statue in the distance – a woman’s head, wearing a Roman-style helmet sat atop a fitting torso. The entire construct was made of steel, and from the railings in front of the statue she could only imagine that there was even more of it further below.

More importantly, the statue’s chest cavity was opened, revealing multiple tubes housing people inside – the very people she was looking for.

“There we go. Just a little further,” she spoke quietly to herself, with the hologram of Hayder following her. She stopped in her tracks, however, as she examined her close surroundings.

There were bodies on the ground. Scientists, guards, all Hayder-Katsuya employees. Nearby were cages, which were violently torn open from the inside.

“Ah! The goddesses’ holy animals sensed the approaching hostility and freed themselves from their cages!” thee hologram proclaimed, throwing its arms wide as if to praise whatever deity it was talking about.

“This is the second time you mentioned the goddess… first that these people were an offering to them, and now you’re talking about animals,” Bellona noted cautiously.

“Why, of course!” the hologram spoke, showing Bellona a toothy grin.

“Watch out, they’re behind you!” Annie warned her, and Bellona immediately swung around, readying her halberd. The hall was empty behind her.

“…there’s nothing there, Annie! How would you even know that…?” Bellona started but stopped herself. She got a very bad feeling about this – even more so as Annie answered her with a confused tone through her earpiece, not like the voice before which sounded like it was directly behind her.

“What are you on about? I’ve been keeping radio silence. We started our assault on the corporate headquarters. We’re falling the security forces that are pursuing you in the back!”

Bellona gritted her teeth and slowly turned around, looking into the slavering, open maw of an ugly creature that both looked like a dog and a man. There were a dozen crocotta surrounding her, while laughing with the voices of everyone she knew: Seika, Minerva, Ayame, Arisu and more, all while Hayder laughed hysterically.

“She is the one who gave me the means to cross dimensions! The means to enable my spirit to become a god of the digital realm! The goddess, Fraus!”