Magical Girl Mechanical Heart

The sheer dread of those words, of her mere presence, is enough to overflow the crystalline pathways designed to trap and direct my emotions to power my body. My plates open on their own, emergency-venting green mist that flows and swirls like a swarm of kicked-up dust, retreating down the alleyway directly away from Melpomene despite a slight breeze in the opposite direction. The mists dissipate before they can get too far, of course, easily diffused into Earth's relatively magic-deficient atmosphere, and my plates close back up when my body manages to devour the rest of the excess terror.

For the second time, my power reserves tick up past fifty percent.

"…So it's time, then," I say, my voice coming out as a whisper. "You've finally given up trying to pretend to be a good person."

"There are some things more important than you and me, Luna," Melpomene answers, confirming every last one of my fears. God, she's cracked. She's finally cracked and I'm fucked and there's nothing I can do!

The world moves as slowly as it ever has, not even the threat of lethal combat having overcharged my mind like this. I want to scream at her, I want to threaten her, I want to berate her and tear her down. I'd try to kill her if I could. But I know none of those things would help. I know I can't give her more reasons to ruin me.

"Wait," I beg. "Please. Please just… walk away and leave me alone. You don't have to do this, Melpomene."

This is the part where I realize I'm overreacting, right? She looks at me in surprise and tells me she's just here to give me an update to the goddamn grocery list. Surely. Surely it's not what I think it is.

"Your strategy was… a worthwhile opening move," Melpomene says. "But we all knew it was never going to be enough. The Preservers shut down our attempt completely. Humanity is growing complacent again. This is exactly how the tragedy repeats. We can't let that happen."

"Are you listening to me?" I ask. "Can you even hear me?"

"You saw that city!" Melpomene snaps. "You saw what the Preservers did! What the Antipathy had to do, to save themselves from a fate worse than death! That is what we are fighting against, Luna! Quit being so goddamn selfish!"

Aaaaaaaaaaaaah. It hurts. It hurts it hurts it hurts. I want to attack her so badly it hurts. I place one hand on my chest, as if applying pressure to unyielding steel will somehow quell the heart attack in my soul.

"This is urgent," Melpomene insists, her eyes burning a violet so radiant I couldn't possibly break away from her gaze. "We don't have time to waste anymore. Don't you see it? You have all the same information I do. I know what the Preservers are doing! What they're really doing! It's the simplest answer in the world! Think, Luna!"

And I do. I don't have a choice. My mind whirrs, rushing through everything we know about the Preservers and the Antipathy. I think back to the Preserver-run power company. To what we learned about them extracting joy from children and adults alike. And then, later, their plans to take every emotion, to use the very hatred of the oppressed as fuel for oppression. Pure evil on a societal scale, unimaginable in scope and consequence.

Yet I also think back to Thea and Uma'tama's embrace, the story the Preserver told from their own perspective about a grave mistake. About a society devoted to never repeating it. The two puzzle pieces just don't seem to fit. The idea of someone not being aware that the Antipathy were that angry before they reached the sort of critical mass needed to destroy their own universe is, frankly, laughable. No one could be that ignorant without being completely removed from the situation altogether, but the evidence we found implied the Preservers were working pretty directly with the power plant.

…But I don't need to square this particular circle, do I? I don't need to tell Melpomene what I actually think. She just wants me to come to the same conclusion she did. 'The simplest answer in the world' to what the Preservers want, and what they're doing. It feels like there are so many possible answers to that, yet… they all raise more questions. How and why. There's only one option to what the Preservers want that doesn't take any leaps in logic whatsoever.

"…They're getting what they always wanted in the first place," I conclude. "You think the Preservers are farming the Dark World for energy."

"It explains everything," she confirms, a manic fervor to her words. "When a Preserver closes a portal to the Dark World, they do it by gathering the residual mist and draining the fragment of strength. That's why the Dark World isn't healing, despite all the energy it's extracting from Earth. From the beginning, the Antipathy tried to destroy their world to deny it from the Preservers, making a world so toxic they couldn't so much as stick a paw in without being attacked. And yet, using us as intermediaries, they found a way to exploit the Antipathy regardless. They're doing it anyway!"

I… shit. Does this actually make sense? Is Melpomene right?

"Why bother?" I ask. "Why let the Dark World siphon energy from Earth, then siphon that energy from the Dark World? Why not just cut out the middleman?"

"So that humanity doesn't know about it!" Melpomene answers. "Rather than showing up as conquerors and breeding resentment, they get to present themselves as saviors while they harvest us dry! And all the while, they establish a paramilitary organization of indoctrinated children to protect their own interests, getting away with it all simply because humanity never had any other choice!"

God, she might be right. Does it even matter, though? She's going to ruin me over it either way.

"If we never had a choice," I say, "what do you expect me to do about it?"

"Simple," Melpomene grins. "The Preservers murdered the Antipathy, and now they're raping the corpse. This was always going to come down to a war. We were fools to try and prepare for anything else. And you, my dear, have quite the close connection to some of their best weapons, don't you?"

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!

"No," I hiss. "Melpomene, no! Going after the Earth Guardians will never work! There are five of us! Five! The Earth Guardians have that many members in this city alone, and they're a global organization! There are hundreds of them in America! Hundreds of thousands worldwide!"

"And I'm stronger than all of them," Melpomene asserts confidently. "But you're right. We do need to even the odds. Which is why we need to do more than just defeat the local guardians. We need their stones."

Oh. Oh god.

"…You told me that I can't ever reveal that I have a transformation stone," I remind her. "You said the Preservers would crack down on it harder than anything else. If we start stealing transformation stones, the Preservers are going to react how the USA would act if someone stole a nuke!"

"And do what?" Melpomene smirks. "Send more Earth Guardians after us? We have an entire universe the Preservers can't even touch, and all the resources therein. They can't attack Earth directly to get at us, they have to attack the Dark World, and they have to send transformation stone-empowered warriors to do it! Every failed skirmish will be an opportunity to add more members to our cause."

"Melpomene, I get that you don't know how to do basic fucking math, but ten people are not any more likely to survive a force of a hundred thousand than five people are," I say. "It doesn't matter how strong you are. Large teams of Earth Guardians can take down kaiju, and they can certainly take down you."

"Ah, but can they take down a kaiju and me?" Melpomene asks, her body practically vibrating with madness. "What about four?"

No. Not even she would… would she? I've been avoiding her for so long now, and she certainly hasn't been getting better.

"For the sake of its vengeance, the Dark World provides," Melpomene insists, producing the handheld device I recognize as the one Thea made to manually open and close portals. "We've been busy while you were away, Luna. We've been collecting."

"You'll kill thousands," I tell her.

"And how many Antipathy were killed to create the situation we're in today?" she asks. "How many humans have died from the callousness of the Preservers already? They barely even put effort into quelling convergences, and now we know why. Our survival is only important insofar as we're the batteries for their power grid."

…Was Uma'tama right about the Dark World corrupting the minds of the people within it? Or was Melpomene always going to crack like this? Does it even matter?

"Melpomene, this is never going to work," I beg her. "It's just going to kill people for nothing!"

"Then show me something that will work," she orders. "Find a solution that hurts no one. Fix our entire society without a single drop of blood! Just try it, Luna! And when you can't, shut the fuck up and submit yourself to me."

My mind grasps in every direction it can, desperately scrabbling for any way out.

"What about Thea?" I ask. "And the others! They can't be okay with this."

"Anath will follow," Melpomene says confidently. "Especially once she starts getting more opportunities to fight. As for Thea, you should at least understand that the threat of forcibly induced convergences is not an opening move on our part. They are a prepared response to escalation. Thea will understand that we have no choice, when the time comes."

"And Nanaya!?" I demand. "There's no way you snuck all this past her. She'd see through you immediately. She basically already knows what's up with you and me!"

"Yes," Melpomene smirks. "She does know. And you may have noticed she hasn't done a damn thing about it."

My response fizzles before I can even finish thinking of one. I… that's…

"Whose idea did you think all this was?" Melpomene laughs. "Nanaya has more experience than any of us in fighting an overwhelmingly superior force and coming out on top. The mere threat of dropping convergences in the middle of unevacuated populated areas should spook the Preservers into not going full-force. Human lives are precious infrastructure to them, after all. Mass death might cut into their fucking monthly quotas!"

It's only for the smallest moment, but my perfect memory catches it and saves it in crystal. Black mist pours into the air, leaking from her crystalline horns as she spits her hate into the world.

"You're… you aren't well," I tell her. "Just wait a second. Please. If what you're saying is true, this isn't urgent, right? The Preservers want the current status quo. We're not in any immediate danger. We have more time!"

"Time to do what!?" Melpomene howls, the air growing so thick with magic it feels like moving underwater. "It's because the Preservers want the current status quo that we can't just keep tolerating it! Are you content to just coast along while monsters drain the world dry and use our emotions for their own ends!?"

"My monster doesn't really give me a choice," I bite back at her.

For a moment, I think she's going to lash out. She always lashes out, doesn't she? She breaks things, destroys things, takes all kinds of petty revenge for every little slight I inflict on her. But this time, she does something far worse. This time, she smiles.

"You're right," she agrees. "I don't. Bring me Castalia's transformation stone, Luna. I've been watching you two. I know she trusts you enough to give you a chance."

"Are you serious?" I ask desperately. "She'll die without it, Mel!"

"Good."

I stay silent. What could I possibly say? I'm not talking to a person anymore. I'm talking to an insane beast.

"She deserves it," Melpomene continues, "for trampling on Thalia's death the way she has."

"Oh my god," I hiss. I'd be hyperventilating if I still had lungs. "Oh my god. How can you understand absolutely fucking nothing about her if you've apparently been stalking us since this all began? How long have you been doing this? How often? Are you… is that why you tried to recruit me!? Because you've been stalking Castalia this entire time, and I ended up in so many of her classes? How do you even have a spell that can hide its own magical signature? How has no one noticed you!?"

"I don't keep claiming to be the most powerful magic user in the world just to boast," Melpomene says. "And I don't have any more time to waste on you. Get me the stone. The Fulgora girl's too, if you can manage it."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to NovelFire for the genuine story.

"You seem to have altogether way too much time to waste on me, actually!" I panic. God, what has she seen? How long has she spent following me? "Is any of this even tactical, or are you just using me to hurt your ex!?"

"Oh, it is very tactical," Melpomene assures me madly. "With Castalia out of the picture, there won't be an Earth Guardian in the entire state who can so much as slow me down. By the time the Preservers respond, we will have a foothold that they can't brush aside or disregard. The Dark Rebellion and the Dark Rebellion alone will protect our territory from monsters, and the world will learn that we don't need the Preservers and their twisted idea of 'support.' Neither we nor the Antipathy are theirs to control! Our lives do not belong to them simply because they made us fear the dark!"

"Don't make me do this," I beg. "Don't make me kill her."

"…I wouldn't be so confident Castalia will die, if I were you," Melpomene says. "But if she does, then so be it. Get me that stone."

And so the orders themselves are etched in stone, my soul bound by ever-tightening thorns. I'd gotten so used to the agony, but a squeeze is all I needed to be reminded of what I am. The Cage of Returning Pain. Know the suffering from which we named ourselves Antipathy.

From the very start, this weapon was built to force people to kill their own loved ones. It was meant to trap a Preserver's soul and use it to fight the Preservers. That was the degree to which the Antipathy hated. That is the sort of monster Melpomene fights to avenge now.

And the cage is working. I understand its creators better than almost anyone. It might not be the deep roots of all-consuming hatred that drove the Antipathy, but I know that if I could I would destroy anything I had to in order to kill Melpomene right now, if only out of sheer desperation.

"Your disguise is now only useful to me insofar as it helps you take what I need from you," Melpomene continues, killing me ever further. "The time for passive reconnaissance has ended. The time for war has begun."

The air only gets thicker. Oh, god. Someone save me. Someone strike me dead before it's too late!

"You're doing this on purpose," I breathe. "There are so many other ways you could do this, but you're hurting me on purpose."

"I've grown to care less for you, in our time apart," Melpomene says. "Convenient, then, that your utility as a source of strength can be increased at the same time as your utility as a weapon. Now quit wasting my time, Luna. You have until the end of the week to get me her stone, one way or another."

The end of the week!?

"Is that Saturday or Sunday?" I'm forced to clarify.

"Saturday," Melpomene sneers. "Surely you won't need more than four days for such a simple task. Now go get it done."

She turns and walks away, vanishing between steps and taking the overwhelming pressure of hate and disgust with her. Assuming she's even gone, but… it doesn't matter. I have my orders. I have to enact them. I have to. I have to take everything from her. I have to take her body. I have to take her life. I have to take all the trust she's offered me and shatter it between my hands. This is it. This is the end of it all. Everything I have is over. The best thing that could happen to me now is that I die. I'd rather her kill me than let me succeed.

Southeast emotional intensity at 349% of threshold. Crystal realignment is available.

Oh? Hahaha. Southeast. That's teal, isn't it? That's hopelessness. And it's the highest burn level I've seen since getting this damn body. Which is fitting, isn't it? Hopelessness and I have always been close friends. Bean helped pull me out of my suicidal funk a couple years ago, but it's always lingered somewhere in the back of my mind. Getting a robot brain helped me chase the rest of it out pretty well, but it's only fitting that it returns now in full force. This isn't even my usual 'boo hoo my life is so sad' shit. I literally need to die, or else I risk killing Castalia, and it's pretty fucking obvious which one of us deserves to live more.

But that's a problem, isn't it? Because I cannot allow myself to die.

I can't. I can't. That rule remains ironclad. Master needs her little weapon intact. I can't die. I can'tdie. I have to take all these feelings and shove them aside yet again. Becoming a teal mage would dramatically boost my power generation in the short term, but in the long term it will cause me to break down. To take risks. To fail. And I cannot fail her. My body lets me do almost anything except fail her.

I can't let Castalia kill me. I can't even hope for it to happen. Which means I have a different emotion that I'll need to power her death with. My next best option, at 213% of threshold, is south. Sadness.

I'll kill her with the energy I get from mourning her.

I initiate the crystal reconfiguration, yellow slowly starting to leak back into blue. Normally, when this kind of thing happens, I start to get pretty giddy. I'm burning all my sadness, after all, every last drop to make this change happen. Any happiness within me becomes that much sharper, pressing immediately to the front of my mind with artificially-enhanced fervor. And yet, though I wait for the rush, it never happens.

I just feel completely empty. For a few minutes, I barely even manage to form a single thought. And then it's over, and despair floods me again as my newly-blue crystals glow with strength.

My power reserves have increased to 53%.

There's nothing left for me to do here, and nothing left for me to accomplish looking like this. With an act of will, my disguise forms itself around my body once more, the 'human' Luna once again returning to the world. This pack of beautiful lies, refined and perfected for this very moment where I can use every friendship and joy I've built to ruin everything I care about.

I stagger out of the alleyway, the subroutines I use to keep my disguise intact demanding my entire body physically shake from the stress I feel. I have to take Castalia's stone by Saturday. Four days. That's all I have until everything ends.

A flash of westward magic brushes up against the edge of my sensors, heading in my direction. Rage? It's not like Nanaya's cold strength, more an undirected bubble of simmering power. Fulgora, then. She's heading this way. I suppose she must have felt Melpomene's overwhelming strength and decided like the idiot she is to approach it.

I'll have to take her stone too, if I'm given a chance. If she's already transformed, the only practical way to do that is probably to lure her into the Dark World and kill her. Is that viable…? If she's as strong as Nanaya, I probably can't beat her.

Then again, in all my fights, I've never once gone all-out. I've never once actually tried to kill a person. I've always, always, always held back as much as I could physically get away with. I don't have a lot of experience. To this day I'm still learning new and better ways to use my body and my magic. I don't actually have any idea what I'm capable of.

Not to mention, I've survived this far without using a transformation stone. And dead women? They can't tell the Preservers about shit. So all I can do is hope that Eliza never gives me a chance. To pray she keeps her guard up. That she keeps suspecting me. I don't want to fight her. I don't want to hurt her. Out of everyone in the entire world, there's only one person I want to hurt.

I can't help but stare up at the sky as Fulgora comes into view, and she seems to notice me just as fast. She speeds up, dangerously approaching the sound barrier as she zips past in a flash, stopping… over the alleyway Melpomene and I spoke in. Yeah, she sensed it, I guess. After a brief look around, she turns and rushes back toward me.

"Luna?" she demands, though her voice isn't as angry as I was expecting. "Luna, what happened? Are you alright?"

Huh? Am I alright? I… oh. Oh, haha. Even if I can't use it as a primary power source, I'm still leaking hopelessness and terror like a goddamn sieve. Damn plates needing to be open for my costume. Though considering how much I'm shaking, maybe it wouldn't take an empath to learn how freaked out I am right now.

"I just felt a huge spike of fear from over here," Eliza says. "Spooked me right out of bed. Did something happen? Did you run into a monster?"

No, no no no. She doesn't suspect me. Why? Is it because I'm just too pathetic to be considered villainous right now? Is my own helplessness going to shield me from the only thing that could protect me?

Also… wait. Fear? She felt fear? Not disgust? Is that why the magical density was high enough to pop? Was Melpomene holding it all in with whatever spell she uses to hide herself? She must have expanded it to include me, too. But… shouldn't that have held in my fear, then?

…No. There's nothing I wanted more in that situation than to be anywhere else. I wanted to turn and run and never look back. Green magic is unparalleled at escape. My power followed my will even when my body couldn't.

I'll have to watch out for that. I can't let something that could potentially help free me from Melpomene happen again.

"Luna? Hey. Hey, I'm here to help," Fulgora insists. "I know we argued and shit, but I'm a lot more worried than I am mad, okay? Can… can you not type right now? Do you need a phone?"

I shake my head, fake breaths coming shallow and fast.

"Uh. Okay. Are we in danger?" she asks.

Yes. Yes we are. We are. You need to go. You need to run.

I shake my head.

"…Alright," she says, frowning a little. "Were you in danger?"

I nod. I have to justify my own emotions somehow. There was danger. It's gone now. I'm not over it yet. That's all this is. I'll be fine later. No need to worry. I'll be fine.

"Okay. I'm taking you home," Fulgora insists. "Can I pick you up?"

I shake my head. I'm too heavy. She'll notice I'm too heavy. I squat down, putting my hands on either side of my head. Can't let her try to lift me. Can't.

It hurts.

"Are you going to tell me what happened?" she asks.

I shake my head. God, my chest. It hurts.

"Of course you aren't," she grumbles. "You… ugh. Shit. Come on."

She wants to be mad at me. She deserves to be mad at me. But as my data readings helpfully inform me, I'm having a complete fucking mental breakdown of a panic attack, and even the worst empath would struggle to muster up the will to press someone too hard in that situation. She gently but firmly grabs one of my hands, peeling it away from my face and leading me back to my feet. Together, we start walking back from the dorms, Fulgora's head on a swivel for whatever danger put me in this state. I have no idea what she expects to find. It's probably best if it stays that way.

The walk back home happens in mostly-numb silence, my emotions ruthlessly shoved into the engine of crystal that keeps me alive. Partway through the walk, I vaguely notice Fulgora summon her phone and start sending a text. I'm forced to intercept it, reading a private conversation just in case it's the sort of talk that will make me do something drastic. I almost hope it is.

You still awake? Fulgora texts to Chloe.

Yes! Everything okay? she responds.

Not really. Found the weird magic thing, and it was Luna. She's freaking out and I don't know what to do.

Wait, so she's magical? Chloe asks. And freaking out how?

I don't know if she is magical. She's not casting spells or anything, but she has the raw power for it if she knew how. Mostly she's just terrified of something and refusing to tell me anything about it. She won't communicate at all. I'm barely managing to get her back to the dorm.

Oh shit, okay. She's having a panic attack I guess? If it's been a bit then try talking to her again. Give her something else to focus on than whatever she's spiraling about.

Um, alright, Fulgora sends. I'll try.

Fulgora awkwardly clears her throat, a crude attempt to get my attention when she already encompasses all of it. But she doesn't know that. She doesn't know anything, yet. She will. Someday soon, she will. But for now, I'm safe.

"I, uh… I'm glad I get to return the favor," she tries.

Huh?

"From the time you walked me home," she clarifies. "I wasn't doing well, and you helped me out. You were, uh, right. You've been good to me. Chloe helped remind me."

No, no, no. Please stay mad. The betrayal is only going to hurt you more if you forgive me beforehand.

"You're pretty obviously suspicious, but like. I don't know. If you need help with something, you can tell us."

I can't. I literally can't.

"Chloe thinks you're in the mob, and I guess we aren't really supposed to beat up criminals like we're superheroes or whatever, but… Castalia totally would, you know. If someone is threatening you or something, she'd fly out and blow up their house if you asked her to. My hands are… a little more tied, but I agree with the sentiment."

Anything you tried to help me with, I'd have to fight you over. And I don't want to fight you. You might be an annoying mess sometimes, but you're still my friend. Every problem you have is from devoting yourself too much to others, from throwing yourself away for the sake of more power. Power that you never use for your own gain. How many people can say that? You have no idea how good of a person you are. The best I can manage is barely trying to make up for everything I'm forced to do to you.

And it's going to get worse. It's going to get so much worse. Melpomene will no longer be satisfied with me running from whatever Earth Guardians I encounter. She wants them beaten and mugged. She wants the Preservers to retaliate, to escalate, to make this a war just so she can point at the situation she caused and call it proof that she was right all along.

I hate her. I hate her I hate her I hate her I hate her!

"…Luna?" Fulgora asks. Shit, she can feel everything, right. Well, there's only so much she can learn from a burst of unbridled anger and disgust. Still, I need to get control of myself. The more people worry about me, the more danger they'll be in. Chloe's right, I need something else to focus on if I want to get my emotions under control. And if I need to focus on something, it may as well be something helpful to my master.

In moments, I'm on the internet and managing our various social media accounts and bot networks designed to promote them. I start pushing the narrative that the Preservers are intentionally distracting from the main issues of their crimes against the Antipathy, trying to placate our governments into silence while our governments simply let them. It's a classic rhetoric, but the conspiracy theorists forming the bulk of our particularly zealous following eat it up like bears with honey. It probably helps that, unlike with most of the stuff they believe in, it's actually true.

My master isn't satisfied with just a bunch of wackos as followers, of course. I need to be convincing enough that the stink doesn't die down just because of the Preservers promising better living conditions for the Earth Guardians. I need to rally people to directly call for the end of the Preserver monopoly on magical technology and understanding.

Everything is going to hell anyway. May as well pull all of society in. If there's going to be a war, Melpomene will want it to be a big one.

Still, it's a distracting enough task to help. My 'bot networks' can be a lot more sophisticated than normal bots, since I can go in and make entire coherent accounts out of almost as many as I want. There's only so much I can do in the middle of the night, of course, so I make sure to take the controversy as globally as I can, making big posts in as many countries on the other side of the world as I can. By the time we're back to my dorm, I've learned eight new languages. At least their written forms, anyway. Assembling a proper vocal suite for something like Finnish would take way longer than just downloading a dictionary and comparing it to enough written works in the language to get a full picture of the proper grammar.

God, I am so very, very capable. Ninety-nine percent of the time I'm only taking advantage of the barest fraction of my true capabilities, running my brain at basic human speed with only the minimum of active subroutines needed to accomplish my goals of blending in. I like pretending to just be a competent human, after all. Most of my life was me trying to pretend to be a competent human. The main difference now is that I'm actually good at it.

My true potential, though? It's something far beyond human. I'm still learning how to be me, how to take advantage of my robotic side to its fullest extent. There are so many blessings to go along with this curse, but most of the time I don't even want most of them. I don't want to be a supercomputer that thinks so fast none of my friends could hope to catch up, at least not a hundred percent of the time. I like being Luna.

But in four days, Luna dies. And once again, I will only be a weapon.

I head inside my dorm, Fulgora seeming to want to come in with me before I shut the door in her face anyway. I send her a simple text that says 'thank you' and nothing else as I head for my room.

"Hey," Bean says, getting up from the couch. "I wanted to say sor—"

I enter my room, shutting the door on their face too. I don't want to talk to them right now. Or to… type at them. I don't want to keep up that lie. I don't have the energy for it.

My phone buzzes with a message, and I assume at first it's a response from Eliza, or maybe a second apology attempt from Bean, but my perfect memory recognizes the number as neither of those. It's Nanaya, actually. Huh. I knew she had a phone, but I've never seen her use it before. Still, I don't have much time to ponder the novelty of the message, because its contents are too busy pushing me back into a panic.

We're setting an ambush at the convergence tomorrow night, she says. Be there.

Oh, okay. Not even four days then. Should have seen that coming, really.