Fate/Fake Knight (Fate double SI fic)

Chapter 1: Arrival


Fiorekis Claschestu, newest Head of the Archeology Department, gazed at the half-finished bottle of alchemically fortified whiskey on his desk as if it held the secrets of the universe. Unfortunately, the little ethereal flame dancing at its neck only had portents of doom for him.

Hundred and twenty-fourth. This week.

It was Tuesday.

The thought alone was so depressing he poured himself another glass and let its burn scour the damned thing from his head.

As usual with his attempts to improve things in the past two months, it failed stupendously.

This was what he got for hoping things would finally look up for him. Apparently his teenage years had taught him absolutely nothing, given all it’d taken was a single windfall to think that great and prestigious destiny of his had finally come through after a near decade of being a mediocre fraudster.

Instead, Lev Lainur for some godforsaken (nevermind that all magi after Solomon were despised by god as far as the church was concerned) reason had killed himself. Despite his Magic Crest. Somehow.

Honestly, at this point he could empathize. He’d be staring forlornly at a nice length of rope if it wasn’t for his own crest, he certainly felt like he was at the end of his.

Because that suicide had gotten him the Department Head seat, which at the time had semeed good. Great. Fantastic. Whatever positive adjective you wanted, he and his family had said it five times minimum.

Then the director had– what was it that El Melloi’s class liked to say? Awakened and chosen violence? That sounded about right, since the terrifying multi-millennia old disciple of Solomon had violently murdered any plans he may’ve had for a quiet settling in a month into his tenure.

Before that things had been… manageable. Rough and tumble, as one could expect of a sudden takeover for which no groundwork had been laid. Once or twice a week, there was a snit over this vault locking itself up or that expedition demanding some off-the-books ‘aids’ that they had most definitely not made up on the spot and had been in place with Lainur, we pinky swear Lord Claschestu. It was fine, he could handle that much, he damn well had the training for it.

He did not have the training to juggle these growing pains AND the Director deciding to carry out the largest project and renovation of the Clock Tower since the industrial revolution.

Because of course the man had been negotiating with Schweinorg over some high value data from alternate timelines, and of course both of the old monsters had a whole smorgasbord of ways to hide from augury.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, managed to spike his blood pressure like surprises without the slightest forewarning. It was the curse of all diviners, they were all too used to a life where everything came with a few days’ notice at the very least.

Oh, sure, it was a great and prestigious venture that would immortalize his name right next to venerable Clock Tower Lords such as Rufleus Nuada-Re Eulyphis of the Spiritual Evocation Department. It may very well change his faculty’s name from Astaire to Claschestu, in the same way Eulyphis was synonymous with its Lord’s department.

There was just one little thing everyone liked to wilfully forget when it came to portents and grand claims.

Great things take great effort.

Oh, it wasn’t the money, when the Director decided something would be done, resources were the furthest concern– even when they had to commission a hill’s worth of these photonic crystal things from Atlas and crack the Lore Department’s vaults wide open to make Lord Eulyphis’ wildest dreams come true. Never-you-mind the rumors of a trade deal with the Baldanders.

No, no, that was none of his concern.

What was his concern was the infighting. This was a prize like none other and everyone wanted their slice of the pie with the frosting done their way. He had only barely managed to cope at the beginning, when progress was steady and the Director’s quotas and goals kept matters from stagnating and festering.

That self-same steady progress which had thoroughly gone down the drain two months ago and proceeded to cavort in the sewers, because they had no fucking volunteers. None viable, anyways. Plenty of fools who’d jump at the chance of prestige, power and favors owed from people in as high a place as it got.

However, while they could throw any buffoon at cyberspace and who cares if they got eaten- Lord Eulyphis could exorcize the spiritual remains just fine no matter how deep in the guts of the infernal machine they were- the cards his department had helped develop were another matter entirely.

They may have outgrown the need for a Grail, but calling down a Heroic Spirit in any capacity was anything but cheap. Even just the blank cards, nothing but containers waiting to be filled, had several family heads shuddering at the cost in precious, sometimes nigh-irreplaceable components.

Investments they had no guarantee whatsoever of getting back if whatever cretins signed up for this particular errand went and died on them. Normally, this would be fine. Just peachy. Simply recruit the cream of the crop.

Fiorekis downed his drink and poured himself another one.

Except absolutely nobody competent enough to qualify wanted anything to do with artifacts meant to overwrite part of their soul and body with a Ghost Liner’s own. Especially one they had no guarantee on, seeing as whatever higher power had it out for their blood that month had seen to their utter failure to attune the etching-summon of the cards to anything but wielder compatibility. They couldn’t even pre-set them to a specific class, Root’s sake!

Suffice to say, there wasn’t a single magus alive that’d accept chancing the integrity of their mind and soul to what most considered a glorified familiar. Never-you-mind one they had no data on whatsoever until it was already too late to pull out or put any sort of countermeasure in place.

Fiorekis turned back to his halfway empty bottle and sighed, the drunken stupor numbing him to the horrible stench clinging to his breath. If this kept up, the only question would be what went first, the seat or his neck. The auguries were crystal clear on that, every last one of them portents of doom.

…Except.

But would he-

Well, worst came to worst, it would just spare him the agonizing wait.

Sure, it involved using a priceless wish-granting relic that had been accumulating power for nearly a thousand years, not unlike that shady ritual going on in japan. One of the key contributions of his department to the project, at that. Using it was certain to make him a whole lot of enemies… but if that was the case, then why did every single augury urge him to use it? Surely, it would just manipulate events to bring forward a small group of people that fulfilled the volunteer criteria, right? It shouldn’t take more than a sliver of its stockpile. Nothing could go wrong.

Glancing out the window, the London nightscape greeted him, his reflection superimposed on it.

One second. Two.

“You know what? Fuck it, I’m dead either way.” He decided, his declaration punctuated by the screech of wood on marble.

A minute later, he was through the door, coat on and bottle in hand. As the Head of Archeology, the only relic vaults he didn’t have access to were those claimed by the Lore Department, leaving him free to drunkenly fumble his way through the myriad Bounded Fields, sentinel familiars and curses without the slightest issue.

Ten minutes later, Fiorekis stood in front of the outwardly inconspicuous vault. Nothing like a rather well preserved bomb shelter from the second world war, to a mundane viewer. As for him… well, he was simply glad the sheer density of magecraft sat on his skin like the entire contents of the Barthomeloi armory aimed at him, instead of the passive augury boiling off his eyes.

Twenty minutes and no less than fifty-four close calls where only his crest saved him from losing his life and thrice as many where he would’ve lost a limb, all the protections laid open.

With a fortifying chug of his bottle, he took a step in the vault and-
____________________________________________________________________________

Your one-way ticket to the world of TYPE-MOON has arrived!
Allow Fate/Lunar Express to transport you to an MMO like none other.
Breathtakingly realistic graphics! Intense and involved plotlines and intrigue where your choices will change this living, breathing world!
Experience magic on a complexity and depth never seen before in a videogame!
Say goodbye to your families, because once you get sucked in there's no coming back!

That was what greeted Neil in his inbox, same as… most of his social circle, really. You’d think they had sent it to anyone who met a quota of supplementary lore material research, with how Discord was buzzing to the point that a fair few people were complaining about their phones vibrating off the table.

It sounded just this side of a scam, mind you, with the grand claims it was making. But, no, all official outlets were talking about it and it wasn’t april fools either. Besides, they had him hook line and sinker at ‘Fate MMO’.

So not two hours later, he had an account up and running and was staring down the character creator.

The ludicrously in-depth character creator. It took Black Desert Online and Cyberpunk 2077 and punted them clear out of the park.

Because clearly several someones had woken up and chosen violence to make this happen. Nevermind the sea of sliders that’d make White Castle blindingly jealous, that wasn’t surprising beyond how far it let you fine tune the Magic Crest (and the dozen or so doujin worthy screencaps he saved in his research folder were his own business and nobody else’s), or how the cel-shading looked nothing short of hand sculpted by Ufotable’s money-encrusted mitts.

No, all of that could be expected of a massive corporation like TYPE-MOON. What blew everything out of the water was how it then laughed and instead of a few classes with two or three sub-options a piece, it handed you a web of options larger than the Path of Exile perk tree and told you to frankenstein up your very own magecraft.

God bless the searchbar and relevancy shortlists, otherwise he would’ve spent a whole lot more than four hours wading through it. He had no doubt in his mind that countless fanfic authors and lore addicts had fainted on the spot from all their blood vacating their brain in the virtuous mission of splitting the desk through sheer boner power.

Then it did it fucking again by giving just as much room customising your mystic code.

By the time his work was done, light was starting to peek through his blinders.

His character’s looks were, honestly, unremarkable by MMO standards beyond starting out particularly snazzy (fashionframe was the true endgame and he’d fistfight any naysayers), possibly getting some teasing about being too edgy with the black and red colour scheme. After all, it was standard procedure to make female avatars thicker than a bowl of oatmeal and corn syrup, so the only thing remotely notable where proportions were concerned was that he’d cranked the height up. Same went for the voice of liquid sex, this was a Fate game and not getting something Shuten grade would be blasphemy.

Beyond that, all it’d taken was a brief bout of shitposting with the venerable ChefRustyDick to find the greatest monster of an automatic shotgun with a baked in grenade launcher that the game would allow. A silly meme name and it was good.

His character’s name wasn’t much better, just a five minute google search to get a couple references to cobble together ‘Barbara von Helmont’ from.

‘I hope nobody looks at the color scheme and germanic surname and thinks I’m a wehraboo’ came the thought as he confirmed his choices.

No more thoughts came on account of getting flashbanged unconscious by his screen.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

On the other side of the Atlantic, another person had begun creating his character for this newfangled TYPE-MOON MMO. It FELT like a scam at first, with all the incredibly generic phrases about immersive graphics and all that. However, all of those doubts were dispelled after making an account and getting a look at the character creation screen. Frankly, it was a bit overwhelming in how many options were available. He began by clicking the random button a few times until he got a base body that was to his preferences: a girl on the shorter end with modest boobs and, for MMO standards, a very tame body type if a tad on the younger side. (Definitely legal, though. He didn’t play Genshin Impact)

With the base body settled on he decided to make the rest to be as eye-catching as possible, changing her hair and eyes to a lavender color, let loose with a small braid going down the side. Browsing through the astonishingly large amount of clothing options he ended up giving her a dark purple suit coat with a dull orange tie and leather gloves…and a skirt of course.

Once the appearance was settled on, he looked at the magic tree and it was overwhelming. After a lot of fiddling, he optimized his character to focus on hypnosis, self-suggestion and cursecraft with a splash of reinforcement. Lore-wise she could technically mind control herself and make her delusions real while in game terms the build focused a lot on self buffs and enemy debuffs.

Then came the time to make the Magic Crest. Given that the focus of the character had all to do with the mind, the crest started as a band around the head, starting at the forehead with a gem-like shape where the stereotypical third eye would be. He was about to press accept until he remembered the words of a wise man regarding MMO creation: ”Make the character you want to be to immerse yourself in the story…or make one you want to fuck the most.” And with that in mind, he expanded the Magic Crest from the back of her head, making a channel over the spine before it eventually spread sideways above her butt, making its way around her body until it met in the front and making something like the meme womb tattoos. Not like it would show up over her clothes while casting spells anyways.

With that in mind, he pressed accept, ready to take a screenshot to share for shits and giggles.

Unfortunately, he was the one to get the flash.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

A pair of heeled boots stepped out from a train car, the lavender-haired girl they were attached to looking vacantly into the distance. She blinked twice, shaking herself out of whatever stupor she found herself in and her face contorted in confusion.

“Where the hell am I?” She muttered to herself and gasped as if shocked by the sound of her voice. She immediately looked down and found herself wearing a suit coat that seemed awfully familiar -ah, right, the character he just made had a suit that was exactly like this one. She looked down at her gloved hand, and squeezed it experimentally before she pulled some of her hair into view, getting an eyeful of lavender. Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, she let out a soft and drawn out “Fuuuuck”, staying in place as she began to try to process whatever had just happened.

Computer > Blank >Train station, in the body of the character he had just made, “What kind of joke is this, am I in an isekai?”

As soon as she said that, something soft pressed against the back of her head.

“Well, this is new.” Rumbled the voice of liquid sex directly above her, which did interesting things to the two somethings serving as an impromptu headrest for the tiny girl enjoying herself a minor existential crisis.

The girl in question felt a pleasant tingle go down her spine as she heard the voice and had to suppress a full-on shudder. This woman appeared behind her, from the same train that she just stepped out of, so it may be possible that she was the same as her. “Did you also wake up in a body that isn’t your own by any chance?”

“Hah!” That throaty chuckle alone looked at the smaller girl’s attempt at composure and mocked it. The woman’s breasts (un)fortunately pulled away from the back of her head as she walked around the little lady to face her properly. “I designed it and I am wearing it now, so it is definitely my own. But there was definitely a change in chassis when I came to, yes.”

The lavender haired girl’s went up and down the other’s body, “I mean, I made mine too.” She replied, remembering the little detail of the magic crest, but pushing it to the back of her mind for the moment, “Let me guess, Lunar Express?” The girl’s eyes kept wandering to the face-level pair of boobs.

In her defense, they were a wonderful pair and right there, taunting her peripheral vision whenever she tried to focus on the woman’s startlingly yellow eyes. How her vest and shirt could hold back such a mammary calamity was a mystery.

“Definitely a one-way ticket to TM’s world, huh?” The woman replied with a wry huff, hooking her thumbs into her trouser’s pockets (and bringing attention to the entire bakery someone had installed down there) as she leaned back with a sigh, scanning the strangely empty platform. At some point the train behind her had disappeared, too. Typical. “Your name register as what you jotted down, too?”

She hadn’t thought about that, “Huh, Amanita Vi Mentis. Huh.” She was dumbfounded that it registered as her name in her mind, she shook the slight feeling of discomfort off. “So does this make Nasu some kind of prophet when it comes to alternate timelines?”

“Barbara von Helmont. And probably. Thought it’d only be Hide Your Jimbles who’d predict something with his crackhead games, but here’s the roaring twenties gleefully proving us wrong.” Suddenly, she started, scanning the station like a woman possessed until her eyes landed on an electronic display happily announcing the date. “Phew. Not great, but I’ll take it.”

Amanita, meanwhile, was very focused on the bouncing boobs and just about to ask if she was even wearing a bra with all that jiggling when her gaze followed Barbara’s, “October 10th, 2011.” She let out a sigh of relief, “Not bad, and at the very least we don’t have to deal with Fuyuki. The technology is going to suck compared to what we’re used to though.” Looking at Barb move around had begun to make her feel weird under the belly. Was she horny or was she just hungry? Damn you female bodies.

“Even if London is a close second.” Barbara said with another of those throaty chuckles of hers that should be illegal for the sake of public safety, rifling around the million and one pockets peppered through her jacket, vest and trousers for a wallet. She was ever so glad she’d rejected the plebian notion that women didn’t get pockets.

“Aha” She said in triumph, proving herself a cruel, cruel woman for thoughtlessly torturing people with that voice, “There we go. I somehow doubt that the bodies came with anything in the stomach, so let’s go look for a place to eat now rather than when it catches up with us. Bri’ish cuisine means it’ll take us hours to find something palatable and affordable.”

Amanita sighed, “I’ll be fine with a sandwich, something simple while we figure things out. But since I’ve never been to London, you can lead the way.” Amanita managed to pry her eyes off the bountiful chest, and…oh right, the thing in her hand. “I did spawn with this briefcase.” She held it up for inspection. It was lined with brown leather and it had no discernible brand, “I get the feeling that whatever is inside of this is pretty important.”

“Should I be flattered that you didn’t notice it until now, then?” Barbara replied with a smile that left no doubt that despite her size, she was a little shit through and through. The fact she leaned down for the delivery didn’t help, either.

“If I still had a dick, I’d have a boner right now.” She bluntly said, “So yes, you should feel flattered. Now let's get going, I want to know what’s inside of this.”

“Hah! That’s what…” Barbara paused mid-gloating and preening, the dial up noise practically audible from her skull as a realisation hit, “Ah, fuck, I’m going to wish for death the moment we’re in public and everyone’s staring.”

One on one teasing and joking was easy, but she loathed crowds and their attention with a passion. Why, oh why, did she let her dick guide her design?

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


The train had left the pair on a road called Slur Street of all things, it seemed like a regular neighborhood and thus had at least a few coffee shops to settle down in. One was chosen randomly (once the obvious tourist traps and shitholes were filtered out), and the moment the two took a seat on a corner table with some food from the counter to avoid having a waiter dropping in on them, Amanita cracked open the briefcase. It was filled with entirely mundane things: pens, clips, papers, signed documents. After inspecting the signed, handwritten, documents Amanita let out a loud groan. She began to recite the contents of the document.

“By the authority of the Clock Tower, Amanita Vi Mentis is compelled to report to the head of the Department of Archeology, Fiorekis Claschestu, at her earliest convenience.” She paused and brought out another one, “And there’s one for you as well.” She handed it to Barbara, there wasn’t much useful information past that besides an address and office number. No information, not even WHY they were being summoned. “This is a gigantic pain in the ass.”

“Well, if the premise of the game to whose EULA we sold our souls is anything to go by, we’re supposed to be Enforcers. So hopefully he just wants this or that heretical magus or gribble dead so they can retrieve some relic or other. Either that or a security detail for an expedition.” Barbara said with a roll of her shoulders, which as usual did interesting things to her chest. Distraction, thy name is von Helmont.

Amanita crossed her legs, (huh, that's actually comfy), and leaned back on the chair’s backrest, crossing her arms over her chest as she thought out through the possibilities she kept drawing blanks. “I don’t know nearly enough about the Clock Tower as I should besides it being a den of vipers.” There were more documents in the briefcase but none of it seemed currently relevant so she stashed everything back into the box.

“I’m running off of fanfics and half-remembered wiki trawling, so I’m not much better off.” Barbara said with a self-deprecating chuckle. She was extra fucked because not only was the wiki notorious for its poor fact checking, they had no way to know how accurate the media in their worldline was to the reality over here.

“If that’s the case…then we really don’t have a choice in the matter. We need to go there to, at the very least, figure out what’s going on. And you know, not getting blindsided by any punishment disobeying the summons may bring.” She took a bite out of her sandwich, “And besides, where else would we go? The fact that we appeared with this” She tapped the briefcase, “Makes me think it’s related to our current situation.”

“It is about as subtle as a hammer to the face, yeah. Hopefully we have some luggage waiting for us at the Clocktower. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not have to make it with nothing but the clothes on my back.” The fact she could now do a Bakugo impression didn’t mean she wanted to miss out on her magic shotgun, for one. For another, she didn’t want to experience the horrors of female underwear shopping. Especially with her figure.

Thank god her magecraft let her repair anything she got her hands on without any fuss. Bless the wonders of alchemy.

“So on to the Clock Tower we go.”

“Once we’re done eating. I’m not going in there without food in my stomach and caffeine in my veins.” Barbara retorted.

(Even after having seconds, Amanita’s feeling below her belly didn’t subside. Curse you jiggly boobs!)

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

As it turned out, the Clocktower and its various college towns were a nightmare maze in the distinctive way of twelve different madmen each assigned a different plot of land and steadily replaced every few centuries by new crazies, all of whom hated each other’s particular brand of insanity with a passion.

Hogwarts’ whimsical design had nothing on fifteen hundred years of magi prima donnas having shitfits.

Still, by some small miracle and a couple of kind souls, they managed to find the right receptionist half an hour shy of midday. Which given that they’d started looking at around nine in the morning said it all.

“My feet are killing me, I’m not used to these boots.” Amanita complained as she approached what was hopefully the right receptionist for the Head of Archeology, they’d already gone to two others in the department who couldn’t help them beyond pointing them at the next person. The lady in glasses looked up at the odd pair as they approached, she had had to turn a few people asking for the Lord away already. Not only people without an appointment, but also people that Lord Claschestu would have otherwise met… if he wasn’t dead to the world courtesy of that alchemically fortified whiskey of his. Amanita gently placed the briefcase on the desk and pulled out the summon papers for both her and Barbara. “We have received a summons directly from the Clock Tower to meet with Lord Fiorekis Claschestu.” And handed the papers to the old lady for inspection.

The old lady adjusted her thick glasses and looked over the papers once. Then she brought them closer to her face, reading them closely. “Oh dear.” She said and began quickly pressing an intercom button. Amanita looked on in confusion and looked back at Barbara.

“I guess they were marked for high priority?” The taller woman asked more than stated, shrugging helplessly.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Fiorekis Claschestu covered his face with his coat as the sunlight came in through the gap in the curtains at the perfect angle to scorch his eyes. The intercom was ringing over and over again. What had happened last night?
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________


“Have a seat, this may take some time.” The old lady gestured at both of them to sit on one of the few chairs and couches at the reception.

Amanita nodded and sat down, resting the briefcase flat on her lap. “I just hope this doesn’t take an hour. But at least it’s an hour not moving around in these boots”

Her wish was granted.

It wasn’t an hour.

Just fifty-nine minutes.

She didn’t even have a smartphone to fool around with, and even with that an hour wait was terribly long. As time went on her back sank deeper and deeper in the couch. She considered pulling out the Nokia brick from the briefcase but at best she’d play snake. She tried to go through the knowledge afforded to her by her crest but only found a variety of mind control techniques…both for herself and for others. Well, at the very least, she could live by scamming people.

Barbara clearly had more to dive into, having mentally checked out with her eyes glazed over and staring off into space near the start of the wait and showing no signs of being done anytime soon.

At nearly the one hour mark, Fiorekis was ready to see them and the old receptionist called them, “He is ready for you two, this way.” She led them through the labyrinthine hallways, Amanita noticed that several ended in identical dead-ends, and yet they were guided effortlessly through until they came up to a thick wooden door with inlaid gold decorations that certainly held some of defensive magecraft. Typical of magi to be both ostentatious and paranoid. The old lady gestured to them to go inside, “I’ll wait outside to guide you on the way out.”

The pair entered and were immediately greeted with an obviously rushed cleaning job. Folders jammed to near-bursting with documents side by side with empty ones, books stacked in no apparent order, the floor still faintly moist and the stench of gratuitous air freshener only barely masking the smell of stale liquor. However, behind the superficial mess, the books on the bookshelves that lined the walls were perfectly ordered, the file cabinets were pristine and the assorted relics on display hadn’t accumulated a speck of dust.

 

Fiorekis Claschestu
>Head of the Archeology Department. Has held his position for a bit under half a year, elected as Lev’s replacement in the wake of his death.
>Heir of the Claschestu family, who specialize in augury. His crest gives him what amounts to Eye of the Mind (False) via supernatural intuition of the near future, especially fine-tuned for danger. This is the source of a great deal of anxiety given how the Clocktower does.
>Capable of some pyrokinesis, useful for self-defence but mostly meant as a medium for more complex augury he can’t perform off of his crest alone.
>Got the Gifted Kid^TM special, where a quirk of genetics had his brain develop ahead of his peers and got him marked for heir training, together with how auguries said he was destined for great things. Then his age group caught up to him and he was left feeling like a mediocre fraud. Now that he finally has a prestigious position which gives him much-needed validation, is desperate to keep it.

 

Chapter 2: Meetings


Fiorekis Claschestu was sitting on the other side of the desk, doing his best to look dignified. Which considering the clammy paleness, bags under the eyes and soggy hair, it didn’t amount to much. He had to at least keep a veneer, however.

“Welcome to the Department of Archeology, ladies.” He began, quietly noting they were either the beneficiaries of some intensive body modifications or homunculi. The perfect symmetry without the slightest natural flaw gave away the artifice involved. It would likely make the common rabble quite pliable, but magi (at least those worthy of the title) were better than that. Anything short of the Creation Department’s best would never sway them. He did commend the craftsman of the larger of the two, however. That shade of pale gold would give many pause without drawing the attention of the Rail Zeppelin. To tell the truth, he only recognised the trickery because a quirk of genetics had given him similar eyes.

“Please, take a seat.” He said with as genial a smile as he could muster in these circumstances. Thank the Root for heir training, as horrid as it had been. It didn’t even budge when the counterfeit eyes flickered towards the desk, clearly taking note of how he hadn’t been able to provide refreshments for his very important guests. Nor did he visibly relax when even to his trained eyes, she seemed to take it in her stride instead of demonstrating the microscopic twitch distinctive of a magus writing down your name on their lengthy list of petty revenge.

Either the forgiving kind (fat chance of that) or the hour-long wait meant that he was already jotted down somewhere far worse and she had entirely expected this further offense. He just hoped he didn’t have to break his own back allaying that.

It was the other one, with the lavender hair, who took the initiative after that brief lull, “It is a pleasure, Lord Claschestu.” She brought a hand up to her chest and gently bowed in her seat. “We were not informed on the reason for our summons. So please excuse us for asking: Why are we here, exactly?”

She straightened up from her bow and looked at him in the eyes. Eyes which were very carefully hid his surprise as he swiftly corrected his assessment. Deferential and confused, not given much if any information, likely not even aware of the Prestissimo code on their paperwork.

These two had been quietly headhunted, then.

Which meant they were valuable but not politically powerful. He had some breathing room, then. The Director would be displeased if anything untoward happened to them, but he wouldn’t get the thumbscrews for the minor inconveniences and faux-passes he’d put them through.

Even without the terrifying old monster’s personal expediting code, this would’ve stank of his doing. For no other reason than his augury hadn’t given a single whisper of anyone significant heading his way today, appointment or not. It was the entire reason why he had been so free with… his drink… yesterday…

Oh no.

Oh sweet Akasha, please tell him he hadn’t-

Any further thought vacated his mind as he ran a routinary spell from his signet ring to the papers, the arcane cipher confirming he was the Head of Archaeology and skittering across the page to show…

A message in ancient scandinavian which amounted to, ‘Enjoy your wish, whoreson.’

It took a not inconsiderable portion of his diplomatic training to keep himself from incinerating the papers then and there.

He shook his head and rested the testament of his poor life choices on the table, “As you may be aware, all of the Clock Tower departments are undergoing one of the largest joint projects in its history.”

“Pretend we’ve been living under a rock for the last decade.” The taller of the two– one von Helmont according to the files– said evenly with a voice that further cemented his initial impression. Perhaps homunculi made as a pair, one understated and the other to draw the eye? It was congruent with them being so clueless and furthermore he could rather see the artifact spurring a Hermit to release a couple of his works on the Director’s request.

“Sensible. Rumors have a way to spread and shift like fire, do they not?” Fiorekis replied with an easy smile, letting on absolutely nothing of what went on in his mind. Let the potential Hermit-spawn keep their pretenses, he gained nothing by forcing them on the spot. “We are currently involved in the creation of a photonic crystal supercomputer, whose simulation-space will aid us in our understanding of World Textures, Spiritrons and Ghost Liners.”

“Hmm.” The lavender haired one, Vi Mentis, looked thoughtful, bringing her gloved hand to her chin, “That sounds…shockingly modern, not really the kind of thing one would expect the Clock Tower to partake in. Does it involve summoning Ghost Liners inside the simulation space?” She turned to look at Von Helmont, the two sharing a knowing look.

A one-two switch to keep interlocutors off-balance, perhaps? No matter, he could more than cope.

“While the Clock Tower magi do have a… reputation, when it comes to recent technology, as of five months ago the Director took the liberty of reminding us this institution was founded on the principle of embracing modernity.” The aristocratic faction hadn’t taken that well, but between the Director looming over them and Animusphere using the pragmatism of Proxy-Lords Belfeban and El-Melloi II to broker an understanding between the Aristocratic and Democratic factions, it had come to pass with minimal deaths. Even if there were still a number of growing pains as the more modern magi were forced to teach their elders how to navigate technology in these changing times as part of the cooperation efforts.

“It has been an experience, let’s say, but you can rest assured by now nobody will mistake a phone for Atlas artifice.” A small chuckle, there. Jokes like that were important in negotiations, to reassure people and make them lower their guards. “As for the summoning… after a fashion. We are doing nothing so crude as that sham ritual going on in Japan. But yes, the enclosed bubble of the simulation allows us to call upon Ghost Liners for a fraction of the cost, which is further helped by the Class Card system which my department, together with Lore, Spiritual Evocation and Summoning have pioneered.”

A pause, there. Give the other party all the pieces and let them assemble the picture themselves. Either they figured it out and patted themselves on the back, making them more pliable, or they didn’t and you obtained a stronger position by pointing out their mistake.

“I feel sorry for those poor modern magi.” Vi Mentis said with a sigh. “I, for one, am interested. But there’s a catch, right? You are threading onto completely new territory after all.”

Hm, curious, they weren’t keeping the switch. Perhaps they had determined Von Helmont’s carnal charms would have as little an effect as her counterfeit eyes when she’d leaned forward and his own hadn’t budged an inch. Again, no matter.

“Quite. Two months ago, we reached the point where ordinary test subjects were of no more use to our research. Instead, we require volunteers willing to bond with one of these-”

“Lord Magus, the Department of Lore got your message regarding the viable test subjects.” A dark skinned man, wearing a suit and sunglasses said as he barged into his office without so much as knocking. This was why Archeology loathed Lore, able to walk in like they owned the place and take away any of their finds, “Excuse my rudeness but the department head expressed that it was of the utmost importance to bring this to you.”

‘This’ being the class card suitcase, that damned artifact really wanted to break his composure and he wouldn’t give it the satisfaction. Therefore, he simply smiled genially, a wave of his hand executing a minor spell anyone of passing importance in the Clock Tower learned, a spectral hand taking the briefcase from the man’s hand and depositing it on Fiorekis’ desk. “Right in time, thank you. You may go now.”

The man didn’t have anything else to say and left promptly, small mercies.

The Vi Mentis girl had an amused grin on her face and was trying, badly mind you, to hide it. Von Helmont at least simply gave him a look of commiseration. He supposed that she’d had to deal with a number of people barging into her business to bother her with their simpering.

”Things just seem to fall into place lately. We’re unfortunate enough to know it isn’t always a good thing.” The conceited smile didn’t leave Vi Mentis’ face for a second.

“That’s simply the way of this world, I’m afraid.” Even if it was an uppity artifact bedeviling him instead of Alaya. Although anyone with half a brain was rather certain the Counter Force had contributed to the utter dearth of viable candidates.

“Back to business, then?” Von Helmont had the common human decency to extend that olive branch (which didn’t stop him from noting the possibility she was softhearted like her deliberate blind eye to how he’d greeted them implied). At least Vi Mentis’ gloating told him these two were very much aware something was manipulating events.

“Quite.” Fiorekis replied with a smile showing his genuine thankfulness and nothing else, “As I was saying, we are in need of volunteers to bind to these cards,” A sonorous opening of the briefcase, there, showing them the pair of golden cards suspended within the mystic code’s grasp, “so the next stage of research may begin in earnest.”

“If it is that simple, then why haven’t you found any test subjects yet?” Vi Mentis’ hands came together with interlocking fingers, resting her chin over them. “Something is causing people to not want to participate.” Despite the girl’s verbal reservations, her eyes were transfixed on one of the blank cards. It was nothing but a formality at this point, he recognised that look. She had already made up her mind and was merely waiting to hear the price.

“I said it, didn’t I? You would have to bind yourselves to these cards. Keying yourselves to them and drawing the power of a Heroic Spirit by allowing them to temporarily overlay your soul, body and mind. You would remain in control, of course, if the cards simply hijacked the host we would simply employ blank homunculi.” He explained, keeping a close eye on the growing greed (and recognition, strange) in the other woman’s eyes. It seemed that the artifact had truly delivered. “But most magi already baulk at the idea of a familiar being more powerful than them, this takes matters even further, leaving us with no magi of sufficient competence who will compromise.”

“Okay.” Amanita Vi Mentis said.

“Okay?” Fiorekis’ strained composure cracked at the simple answer the Vi Mentis girl gave, only just managing to contain an owlish blink.

“Yes, okay, I’m up for it. We’ve already come this far.” She turned to Von Helmont, “It’d be a waste if we didn’t at least try it, right Barbara?”

“Aye. Just one question, though.” The Von Helmont girl said, to which he motioned for her to go on, “These are blank cards and the summoning will be by compatibility, correct?”

“Yes. I am afraid…” He trailed off as the overstated probably-homunculus raised a hand, shaking her head softly.

“That’s exactly to my preference.” She said, but Fiorekis didn’t lower his guard for a second. Just like with Vi Mentis, he knew that look in her eye, “Now let’s talk employee benefits.”
_________________________________________________________________________

Amanita opened and closed her gloveless hands as she looked at them. Everything seemed to still be attached inside the simulation, she and Barbara had been placed in the courtyard of a castle done in pure white and festooned with blue, obviously designed to imitate Camelot. They were at one of the highest points, one side of the courtyard overlooking sprawling fortifications and beyond the outermost wall, a shimmering ocean with waves that rippled and turned in unnatural ways, almost like monstrous limbs and heads pushing and writhing against cloth. Amanita caught a glimpse of something in the far distance, but as soon as she spotted it, it was gone. As she peered down into the waters, she could barely make out some kind of structure stretching out from the castle’s foundations, but she couldn’t make out any details from so far away.

“Is the ocean supposed to move that way? It’s kind of unsettling.” She asked no one in particular as she waited on the instructions for the summoning ritual. She rubbed her arms, trying to warm them up as the inside of the simulation was just as chilly as the day outside, “Shouldn’t have ditched my coat and gloves though.”

“Here you go, then.” Barbara chimed up brightly from behind her, clapping her coat over the smaller girl’s shoulders.

“Thanks.” The coat was way too big for her but at least it helped with the chill. Though the sleeves were too long and it was large enough to almost be at skirt level. “Please don’t make me feel like a little kid with your clothes. You’re way too tall.”

“I see, I see, so you don’t want headrest or hat privileges, then~?” The towering woman teased, putting that voice of hers to work.

Amanita, looked conflicted for a moment, “I’ll keep those privileges, thank you very much.” She looked around and saw that nothing was happening. “What are the instructions for the ritual?” At that mention two plinths rose up from the ground, each one with a recess that held one of the blank cards. Indents which, when Amanita went and pulled out one of the cards, greeted them with the instructions. “Looks like we found it.”

“Thank Akasha for self-hypnosis, eh? Otherwise no way we’d get this right on the first try.” And Barbara did NOT want to know what’d happen if you flubbed the incantation in a ritual like this.

“I’d probably chuckle a bit, heh.” Amanita said while reading the chant, “The instructions say to hold the card against our heart when we’re chanting. You’re going to have trouble with that.” She took a deep breath with her eyes closed, and when she opened them once again, there was less of a shine in them. “Okay, I’ve dulled my emotions, want to do it at the same time?”

“Sure. If we’re lucky it may even give us two heroes used to working together.” Or they could get a pair who just really, really, really wanted to beat the shit out of each other again. “Just give me a second here.”

After all she had to undo her tie and pop several buttons to get the card where it needed to be.

“Alright then.” Amanita paused, “On three then.”

Barbara shook her shoulders loose and closed her eyes, focusing on what came naturally. Like muscle memory, a bottle of cava appeared in her mind, the cork popping off in a jet of froth.

Amanita took a deep breath and formed the mental image that activates her magic. A key slid into its keyhole and turned.

“Let gold and glass be the essence. Let crystal and light be the foundation.”

The ground in front of Barbara buckled, forming into a small hill as some great force pushed up, marble bricks falling away to reveal loamy soil.

“Let mankind be the clan I pay tribute to. Let rise a wall against the winds of change that shall fall.”

Red drops began falling from the cloudless sky around Amanita, quickly turning into a downpour and staining the pure white cobblestone of the castle a ghastly red.

“Let the four cardinal gates close. Let the three-forked road from the crown reaching unto the Kingdom rotate.”

The hill exploded in a shower of soil and slime, a giant blackened hand dripping sludge and sloughing off broken scales reaching for Barbara.

“This is my vow: If you would come to my side, the seat of my soul will become your temple.”

The downpour of blood intensified, the pooled blood began to swirl and churn, quickly creating a vortex of blood around Amanita, rising from the ground near her feet.

“Follow my voice through the gate of The Spirit Tomb. Follow the golden path that lies between and before us.”

The earth seized, severing the hand and leaving it to crash inches from Barbara’s feet, rotten flesh spraying every which way except hers.

“Answer, if you would be the shining key to this road.”

The vortex rose higher and higher, blood clinging to her boots as a black crown appeared above her and began to descend.

“This is my oath: To grasp you, I will gladly reach the highest peaks of Heaven, I will gladly plunge to the deepest reaches of Hell.”

Tattered skin and crumbling scale tented and ripped, silver light spilling out as a pure white spectral shape all but tackled Barbara, black and blue fog following its wake and curling protectively around the woman before it, too, sunk into her body without trace.

“From the Seventh Heaven, attended to by three great words of power, come forth from the ring of restraint and enter your new abode.”

The bloody black crown landed on her head and the blood gathering around her exploded outwards, ending the outpour leaving everything around her in an eerie silence, shortly before the crown dematerialized.
____________________________________________________________________________

Back in the control room, a magus muttered an utterly flat and lost, “What the fuck.”

“Akasha have mercy on our souls, these are our only test subjects.” Another said, voice just as dead.

Fiorekis empathized with both of these sentiments, deeply.
____________________________________________________________________________

As the ritual finished Amanita’s eye recovered the spark of life they had temporarily lost. “I can’t believe this summoning drenched me in blood. I’m gonna need a fucking shower after we get out of this place.” She shook her hands, and flicked them around trying to get the excess fluid away from her. Nevermind the squishy feeling coming from inside her boots, “I’m just glad these aren’t actually my clothes.” She quickly took Barbara’s coat off, which protected her from the worst of her summoning.

Amanita turned to Barbara, “And how come you came out spotless from that mess!?”

“I got a very friendly Heroic Spirit, I think. That felt like a warm hug.” The taller woman said with a small smile, having a very good idea as to who had chosen her. It had been a bit of a surprise, but certainly a welcome one.

“Yeah, sure.” Amanita sighed remembering the crown falling on her head, “I get the feeling my Heroic Spirit is going to be a handful.” She turned and saw the last instruction written in the plinth, “Huh, it says that we should put our hand over our heart and say ‘Include’. To bring out their Noble Phantasm…if it’s an object that is.”

“Include” Barbara said immediately, a golden rectangle glowing over her sternum before erupting in twin streamers of black sludge, leaping to her forearms and coalescing into a pair of strange cestus-tonfa-sword sheath hybrids done up in lilac and bronze. An experimental flick of her wrist had one rotate, bringing the fake blade to point outwards. A trickle of power and brilliant blue light raced along its edge, allowing it to effortlessly slice through a nearby brick, earning a low whistle from Barbara and a glow of pride from somewhere next to her heart.

“Include.” Amanita said after looking at Barbara’s show. Instead of an ostentatious display like her partner’s, a ball of crimson light came out of her chest and deforming itself to the shape of a bow with six spikes pointing forwards at regular intervals, almost reminiscent of a spine with how it flared along those spikes. The light exploded outwards, revealing a pitch black harp-bow floating in front of Amanita. Following Barbara’s example, she aimed at a column and experimentally strummed the bow, each string emanating a crimson light before six invisible ‘arrows’ flew towards it, carving a sextet of deceptively deep holes into the column, each the width of a finger.

“This is definitely Failnaught. I don’t know any other legendary bows that double as a harp.” She, of course, kept some information on the TRUE identity of her Heroic Spirit a complete secret. No need to scare the magi. “My guess is that I summoned Tristan.” She felt a tiny pang of amusement come from somewhere in her chest.

“Not so easy with my partner, but the shield should be a good lead.” Barbara said with a content hum as she practically evaporated a section of masonry with a single punch and flare of azure light. Ahh, sweet, sweet unga bunga. She’d have a fantastic time with her partner, she could already tell.

No sooner did Barbara finish speaking that a gate made out of the castle’s marble brick rose from the ground, its frame filled by a stained glass panel made to flow and ripple. It was helpfully labeled as ‘Exit’ at the top of the arch. Amanita stuck her hand into the portal and it vanished, she pulled it back and it came back.. “I guess that’s going to be all for today.”

“Ah, pity. But I guess they already have more data then they know what to do with just from this.” Barbara said with a sigh and roll of her shoulders, an experimental mental prod letting the Noble Phantasm fade into motes of blue light.

“I’m pretty sure data isn’t the only thing they got, five bucks says they got more questions than anything else from our slightly disturbing display.” Amanita chuckled, letting her black bow turn into wisps of red light which flew into her chest.

“At least they won’t be disturbed themselves, they’re magi. So it’ll be productive questions.” Barbara said with a wry huff.

Amanita shrugged, “That we will have to see.” And walked into the portal. She woke up inside the tool used to get into the virtual reality, a ‘coffin’. Which from the outside looked more like a cylindrical cryo chamber from a sci-fi movie…but you stood in it. Amanita looked down and checked herself…thankfully she wasn’t covered in blood anymore. With a hiss, the glass front opened slowly, sliding away and then upwards. She quickly stepped out and put on her own suit coat and gloves before doing anything else, still feeling the phantom chill from cyberspace.

Another hiss and a voice of liquid sex spoke up from behind her for the third time today, “Feeling better now?”

“Yeah, I just hope getting covered in blood isn’t a common occurrence.” She smelled her sleeve and her face scrunched in disgust, “I can still smell it.”

“Oh, come on, the smell of fresh blood isn’t so bad.” Barbara replied with a chuckle, completely aware she was a weirdo who loathed the smell of perfume but loved that of wood smoke.

“You haven’t been doused in it. It doesn’t take too long before it gets sticky.” Amanita complained back.

“That’s texture, not smell.” The taller woman replied, only not giving her a better texture to feel on account of the handful of magi pululating around the room. It was a messy, cramped place with monitoring equipment crammed on every surface and corner that’d fit it. Made well enough sense, since Fiorekis had said that each department had a terminal like this and they didn’t want to invest too much when they were dealing with short-term test subjects.

“Well, the smell reminds me of that.” She finished rolling her eyes.

“Oh, chin up, we’ll get to enjoy ourselves a presidential suite grade bath once this is over.” The wonders of employee benefits, they’d be living like kings with a full complement of pretty ladies playing maid to boot. No more having to worry about home upkeep, wooo!

“I’m looking forward to that, more now than ever.” Amanita said with a smile.

It was at that moment that Fiorekis approached them, clapping slowly as he did so. “Congratulations are in order, ladies. That was a magnificent start to the next stage in our research. The data will take a few days to analyze, so you are free to use that time to get yourselves settl-”

He was interrupted by a man suddenly appearing in between him and the pair. Amanita’s eyes widened, how did he- any further thought was cut off as her hindbrain wailed a dirge of ‘DANGER DANGER DANGER’.

Barbara was no better, suddenly standing ramrod straight and carrying the distinctive flush of fully activating all Magic Circuits short of the crest. She looked tense enough to fling a spell and bolt if someone so much as popped a party favor.

Fiorekis’ eyes were wide open in surprise and fear, only managing to stutter one, “D-director?”

“Fiorekis, a word.” With a snap of his fingers, as suddenly as he appeared, the world around the four of them vanished. Replaced by a black void where they could only see each other.

Barbara, of all things, minutely relaxed at the display of overwhelming, inhuman power. There was no fighting or fleeing this man, so why worry? If he wanted them dead they would’ve never even registered his appearance.

(Of course, there was the possibility he wanted to play with his food, but she was trying very hard not to dwell on that.)

Amanita’s legs gave out, only avoiding falling by her ludicrously wound up friend who caught her and very pointedly didn’t let go, clutching her like a lifeline. There was only so much a flimsy self-suggestion could do in the face of someone making every cell in her body scream and strain to get away.

Amanita knew she could make a self-suggestion strong enough to endure her current fear, but she just couldn’t muster up the will to even begin the process. The fact that Fiorekis has managed to stay on his feet spoke volumes of a Clock Tower Lord’s mettle.

“I do not appreciate my authority being undermined.” The Director began, each word like a tombstone on the shoulders of all present, “Would you know why there are three Prestissimo priority codes I don’t remember issuing all being reported by your office?”

Fiorekis teeth were clattering, “You see sir-” he began, only to be interrupted again.

“And do be kind enough to also explain why the transfer papers for Amanita Vi Mentis and Barbara Von Helmont had…” He paused for a second for emphasis, arching an eyebrow as he enunciated, “‘Enjoy your wish, whoreson’ yes, that would be the correct translation to English.”

Fiorekis paled to the point of near-translucency and then spoke like a man staring up at a guillotine, “Last night I got drunk in my office,” He visibly gulped down a justification there, knowing it wouldn’t be appreciated, “And in my stupor I thought it a good idea to access vault A-A5M7 and wish for suitable test subjects, thinking it would only draw a sliver of mana from its massive stockpile to expedite the process.” The man wobbled then, but to his credit got the next sentence out with a steady voice despite looking like he was dying from poison with every word, “Unfortunately I do not remember my wording for the wish.”

“I regret to inform you that it completely drained the artifact of any charge it may have had.” Fiorekis finally fell to his knees and bowed his head, awaiting his sentence for the squandering of such an asset. The Director turned to the shaking Amanita and Barbara, “Ladies, you two are from another worldline.” He didn’t ask, there was no denying the facts.

Regardless, the pair managed to nod.

He set his eyes down at the disgraced Lord, “Your punishment will be a light one. These two are now your responsibility. Their actions will reflect on you and you will make sure that their every need, both mundane and magical, within reason, is fulfilled.”

The fact that this was Fiorekis’ second chance and there wouldn’t be a third went unspoken but most definitely not unheard, if the Department Lord’s audible gulp and shaky nod were anything to go by.

The Director waved his hand at Fiorekis and the blonde vanished without a trace. Immediately oppressive presence the man all but disappeared, leaving him feeling almost normal. Almost. He waved his hand once more, making a small round table with three chairs appear before the pair. The Director took a seat, gesturing to Amanita and Barbara to follow suit.

Amanita took steadying breaths, her hands so weak she couldn’t even clench them to stop their trembling. Even now, she could hear her own heartbeat pounding in her ears as the organ did its level best to jackhammer through her ribcage. She tried to take a step forward but her legs still wouldn’t respond. It took a momentary surge of will to get her self-suggestion going. She took a few tentative steps and then collapsed on the chair.

Barbara, for her own part, had flickers of light playing along her spine as vital energy was consumed and invested to make her limbs loosen from how they’d locked up after she spent what few dregs of composure she had catching her friend. She didn’t have any more grace than Amanita in her crumbling on her seat.

“Now then, ladies. Let us talk about your home.” The Director said.

 

Chapter 3: October 11, 2011


Amanita found herself staring off into the distance, at nothing in particular. She blinked, rubbing at her eyes as she realized that she found herself in front of a house surrounded by a flower garden and, further into the distance, trees. She and Barbara were in a meeting with the Director and now they were suddenly right by this house. She was so lost in thought that she didn’t notice when a gloved finger poked her on the cheek.

“Lady Amanita, we tried to introduce ourselves to both you and Lady Barbara but neither of you two were responding.” The silver haired girl continued, “We are Lapis, Amber and Jade.” She introduced herself and the other two, pointing at each in turn for clarity’s sake even if their eyes rather gave away who was who, “We are servant homunculi built to make a magus’ life in their workshop as comfortable as possible. We are quite literally of one mind, so please do not be alarmed by our coordination.”

“We had a meeting with the Director.” Barbara spoke up for the two of them once her brain had finished rebooting, as though that explained everything. She rather thought it did for anyone who had ever interacted with the man.

“It must have been a pretty long meeting. The sun is setting already.” Amanita kept trying to recall the meeting, diving deep into her memories the best she could until… “Ah. I remember something. We willingly signed several geass contracts, didn’t we? The first one is about blocking our memories of the meeting.”

“Aye. I remember finding the Director a standup guy once he stopped feeling like the fucking spectre of death, and being all in on his plans and offers, but the memories to go with those feelings are just… gone.” Barbara replied. Then, just to inject a bit of levity on the jarring, confusing feeling from it all, she added, “Reduced to atoms.”

“Would you like us to draw baths for each of you?” Lapis asked, to which Amanita responded with an enthusiastic nod. Jade headed off into the manor not a moment afterwards.

Amanita turned to Barbara, “All I know is that I felt they were important.” She was playing with her braid nervously, “I hope we didn’t agree to anything we don’t remember. But then again, look at this place, isn’t it great? I think it might be worth it.”

“Worse things to sell our soul for than free run of a full-on manor with a trio of maids to boot.” Barbara agreed with a chuckle.
____________________________________________________________________________

Amanita left her bath with a goofy smile plastered on her face, shuffling her feet on the manor’s carpet into her room. Amber had insisted on going in and cleaning her but Amanita just had to refuse despite the homunculus’ assurances. Sometimes you need to do some things alone. She passed by Barbara in the hallway, who had the exact same goofy smile on her face. The two shared a knowing look.

“Looks like you’re done with your business as well.” The shorter one said with a smile.

“Self-care is important.” The larger of the two agreed with a matching grin, a small delighted shiver going through her at the memory.
___________________________________________________________________________

Morning came and went, the maids unconcerned as they’d been informed of how stressful a day their new mistresses had had. Nonetheless, after over twelve hours of sleep and the turn of midday, it became time to wake them.

The heavy protections placed on the bedrooms prevented so much as knocking, nevermind using the smell of food to wake them. Thankfully, they could be pinged to play a pre-set melody as a wakeup call.
____________________________________________________________________________

Amanita turned in bed, hugging a pillow wearing nothing but an oversized shirt and a pair of panties as the buzzing of the intercom tipped her over to full wakefulness from the pleasant doze she had drifted up to with the music. She rolled over on her stomach under the sheets, pressing her hips against the bed, and...there was nothing on her crotch. She groaned and rolled on her back. “Not a weird dream.” She muttered as she tried to fully open her eyes. The buzzing of the intercom continued playing from the wall terminal. Not willing to get out of the comfort of the extra fluffy bed, Amanita stretched out her leg and pressed the red button on the panel with her toe.

“Lady Amanita, do you require assistance getting dressed?” Came the voice of one of the maids through the intercom.

“Hmmm, that’d be nice.” She said, rolling in bed once again.

“I will be there right away, then.” The maid replied before the call clicked shut.
___________________________________________________________________________

The music came with perfect timing for Barbara, who had already mostly surfaced from sleep and was debating if her parched throat and complaining bladder were worth crawling out of the sea of soft warmth she was swaddled in.

That and the buzzing of the intercom tipped her over into flicking her Magic Crest to life, dull red glowing through the loose sweats she’d slept in, flaring out from her spine to cocoon her arms and plunge into her cleavage even as angular schema crawled up from her neck to frame her cheeks and graze her eyes. Calories from supper and energy from her oversleeping were gently skimmed from, burnt into raw vital energy which then raced down her spine and out from her heart to wash away all grogginess.

Forget Akasha, being able to wake up feeling fully rested and energetic was the real True Magic.

She had to thank that artifact, not only did it give her a body that was coherent in the morning, but the magic trickery to be downright bright eyed and bushy tailed like an abominable morning person.

“Heya~” She greeted cheerily into the intercom.

The classy, “Good morning, Lady Barbara.” Was about as she’d expected, although the offer to come dress her up was less so. Still, she was nothing if not lazy, so she happily agreed.

Then scrambled to the bathroom as her bladder reminded her it still existed.
__________________________________________________________________________

Amanita sat down at the table, face beet red as her mind kept looping to the experience of Amber dressing her. She really wasn’t used to having someone else’s hands on her mostly naked body, even if it was just to dress her. ‘Right, think about something else, like food!’

On the table was a smorgasbord of food, ranging from the usual English fare of sausages, hash browns, fried eggs, bacon, beans, and so on to bagels, croissants, french toast, monte-cristos and croque monsieurs. All set up in large serving plates so they could pick and choose.

“I don’t think my stomach is big enough for this.” Amanita said.

“More for me, then.” Barbara chimed up from behind her as was quickly becoming tradition, a subtle flush to her features the only evidence she’d had an interesting time of her own with Jade. Much like Amanita, she focused on the food to vanish the embarrassment and horny, the larger woman unabashedly licking her lips as she sized up the feast laid out before them. She’d always been a binge eater and getting an extra foot of height just meant more room in her gut.

It wasn’t like she could get food comas or feel painfully bloated anymore, not with her magecraft to overclock her body with.

Amanita took a modest amount of food from the plates, a croissant, some bacon, egg and some beans as she looked on in horror as Barbara piled up her plate like she was planning on a mountain climb. A mountain she was trying to build a miniature of, clearly.

“Even taking magecraft into account, isn’t this too much? Only so much you can stuff inside yourself.” Amanita said apprehensively, eyes not leaving Barbara’s plate.

“Oh ye of little faith. Observe.” The deranged woman said with a chortle.

“No, I don’t think I will.” The shorter girl looked off to the side, focusing on one of the maids as she began eating her croissant. After taking a bite (and swallowing, she wasn’t a barbarian) she said, “So, outside of our magecraft supplies, we only have enough clothes for five days, at best.” She turned to the maids, “Though that isn’t too much of an issue seeing who we have to do laundry.” She paused for a moment as she thought, “Though we may need to buy winter clothes soon, I can’t see myself wearing that skirt in the rain and snow.”

“Alas, you don’t have the ancestral magecraft of roasty toasty thighs.” Barbara said with a snort, briefly pausing in her machine-like demolishing of Mt. Cholesterol.

“I mean, I’m pretty sure that I can delude myself so hard that I don’t feel cold that I don’t actually lose body heat, but then I’d look like a weirdo with a short skirt in the snow.” The lavender slip of a girl countered.

“You can just throttle your body into cranking up the blood flow to the limbs. Like booze does, but without the associated uh ohs.” The larger woman supplied, gesturing idly with a piece of sausage before popping it in her mouth.

“Yeah, but where's the fun in that?” Amanita said with a roll of her eyes.

“Pft. True. Well, I’m going to want some thicker pants and jackets anyways, so I’m in.” Sure, she could just crank up her body temperature absurdly easily, but she simply didn’t like the feeling of wind on her bare skin. Made her ticklish.

“Regardless, we need to go talk with Fiorekis to get some stuff figured out, how we are getting paid and all that stuff, we don’t even have bank accounts. Unless the Mages’ Association takes care of that.”

“In fact, Lady Amanita, they already have.” Jade left the room for a moment, returning with a tray with a pair of envelopes, each one engraved with a golden ‘PA’ on the corner, “Your signing in bonus has already been deposited.”

Oh. Ohhhh, right. When Barbara had tried to test the waters and gotten fucking two million pounds without the bat of an eye. Even when she further pressed it’d be per head.

“...We’re going to need an accountant, aren’t we?” Barbara said mutely, mind zipping back to their ‘modest’ monthly salary of eight hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Per head.

And that was specifically spending money because Fiorekis’ punishment meant that he was paying for their necessities out of his own pocket.

But hey, she’d get all the grilled eel and tenderloin she could ever ask for, so she sure as hell wasn’t complaining.

Amanita had a blank stare as she looked at the account balance, chuckling slowly and nervously as she felt its metaphorical weight on her shoulders. “Holy shit, I don’t even know how to even begin spending all of this money. That’s a lot of zeros.”

Amber chimed in, “My lady, the more exotic magecraft components can go for several million pounds. Furthermore, they wouldn’t be covered by the ‘within reason’ clause of your contracts.”

“Yeah, I know.” Amanita said, slumping down in her chair and waving the account balance around, “Mystic eye transplants start at 40 mil dollars after all. I’m almost scared to manage all of this money.”

“Then you will be happy to know that we have been trained in finance as well.” Amber said, “We were trained by the Claschestu family so something of this magnitude is no problem for us.”

“You’re the best and I’m getting all three of you something nice.” Barbara said with aplomb. She was already inclined to given how fantastic the food was, but this decisively tipped it over.

That got an owlish blink in stereo, the three of them momentarily taken aback. It took Barbara a second to recall magi were prideful idiots nine times out of ten.

“Speaking of food, we’re going to need to have a conversation about what we like so you girls don’t make everything on the menu.” She said, looking at the trio.

Now, that they could handle. Jade pulled out a small booklet and pen to take note of everything.
____________________________________________________________________________

The manor itself was big, but not to the point of being ostentatious. The maid-led tour of the house began after breakfast, starting with the ground floor. Amanita and Barbara were first shown the kitchen. Despite the appearance of the house, the kitchen was recently renovated and had granite countertops with enough space for all three maids to work at the same time. Afterwards,they were shown the walk-in pantry and freezer. The pantry had a simple preservation spell cast on it to help prevent spoiling while the freezer was powered entirely by a Bounded Field linked to an aspect of winter, maintaining a freezing temperature. When asked, the maid trio had shown Amanita and Barbara the servant quarters, where the maids had yet to completely settle in, and even in this state the room was spartan with no decorations whatsoever.

“If you need anything I’d like to give you three some personal spending money at the very least.” Amanita said when she saw the state of the rooms, to which the homunculi trio shook their heads in unison.

The living room had multiple comfortable couches, a coffee table and not even a single TV.

Amanita and Barbara were most familiar with the second floor. The maids led them to the only rooms they hadn’t been in: the guest bedrooms and the offices. The guest bedrooms each had two small beds and a bathroom smaller than on the main bedrooms. Each office had its own tiny library filled to the brim with magical theory books, a large hardwood desk and a large window that overlooked the manor gardens.

The attic, usually used for storage, had been emptied out. It had a few windows, which had been opened and the morning breeze passed through. Upon closer inspection the wooden floor had a metallic sheen to it, the space between planks completely filled. Nothing stored up in the attic would spill down to the house proper. The walls, ceiling and even windows had been similarly reinforced. It would be ideal for volatile chemicals. There was a small detached room in the corner with a modest telescope aimed at the sky, coupled with a small table and a few seats.

Which was why Barbara instantly called dibs on it as her workshop to be. Good ventilation and somewhere that would only blow off the roof instead of collapsing the house in a worst case scenario was ideal for her brand of alchemy.

The last part of the tour was the basement. As soon as they stepped down to the first basement level, the maids had shown them to the various ritual rooms and general magic materials storage. Of course, it was mostly empty, the only thing left were some leftover transportation magic circles.

The entrance to the second basement was an unmarked solid steel door that whined loudly when opened. As the group walked down the stairs they ended up at a well-lit, bare room with a pair of old tables. No outside noises made it down to the basement, but everyone’s steps echoed slightly against the stone walls.

“It’s almost perfect!” Amanita grinned, “It blocks out all external distractions and all I need is to buy some sound insulation to prevent any distracting echoes!” As she realized what she said she turned to Barbara, “Don’t you dare call me a basement dweller.”

“You already did it for me.” The taller woman replied with a shit-eating grin.

“Go fuck yourself.” Amanita rolled her eyes.

“Fuck me yourself, coward.” Barbara replied without thinking.

“If you keep going like that, I’ll take it as a challenge.”

The taller woman cleared her throat and looked elsewhere, a faint blush readily visible on her pale complexion. Someone had a weak defense.

The maid trio just looked at each other in slight confusion at the exchange.
____________________________________________________________________________

The tour of the manor proper done, the maids considered it only logical to go on to show their mistresses around the grounds. The flower garden, as expected, was still in the same place as when they’d arrived, all black and white and purple in patterns too complex to be anything but part of the defenses.

“Hmm.” Amanita looked at the arrangement of the garden, “An outwards-facing spiral, with the outside being determined the the thickness of each row segment.” She thought out loud, “Something that draws notice away, or could even be used to outright conceal.” She noted.

“Correct, Lady Amanita. We have been informed the primary purpose is to fool onlookers from above.” Which implied that there were other functions they hadn’t been told about.

“Plant colors or flower types may just empower the effect.” Amanita says, “But I’d have to do some research to know for sure.”

The group moved away from the garden and onto a small greenhouse. As the group walked in, they could see the empty lots on the ground. Lush, humid soil ready for planting whichever alchemical herbs they would need. There wasn’t too much space so they would have to do what they could with the space that they did have.

“I might legit need this to grow psychoactive ingredients for some of my spells.” Amanita pointed out, “Being in an alternate state of mind and all that.”

“The Claschestu family has a variety of contacts in both high and low places. We can make a request to get the materials you’d need.” Jade said calmly, “Though, we were told to remind you that any extraneous or extravagant requests will need to come from your own funds.”

“That’s fine. We got enough money.”

“Speaking of, any firing ranges around these parts run by people aware of the supernatural? I need somewhere to practice with Lockstock, nevermind test new munitions.” They couldn’t bring anything but the clothes on their back to the simulation, so that was out.

“We’re aware of one in the outskirts of the city but we would have to ask the Claschestu house for their contact details.” Jade said.
____________________________________________________________________________

Amanita grabbed onto her short spear, Nother, a short form of ‘Look at another person’. Was the name clever? Absolutely not, but it is what she had come up with. Barbara and the maids were looking at her as she twirled it around expertly. “So the pommel and in the core of this weapon there are large amounts of reinforced leaded glass, known for its great ability to reflect and refract light, to use as a focus so I can do this.” She channeled mana through her weapon and the four women’s eyes looked away from her, feeling a compulsion to avoid looking at either the weapon or Amanita. She grinned, “It creates an extremely powerful effect of ‘do not look here’ which is, overall, extremely useful.” She stopped channeling mana into the Nother and she saw their eyes fall onto her once again.

“That’s really annoying.” Barbara groused, rubbing her eyes. Damn thing felt like turning a corner and getting flashbanged by the sun’s ricochets on rear view mirrors. “Can you make it directional so I can fire over your shoulder?”

Amanita let out a nervous chuckle, “It’s not THAT convenient. It works on perception, so as long as you can see the weapon, your eyesight will be drawn away. I’m not sure how I’d even change it to be directional.”

“Ah, joy, so a fuckton of teamwork drilling for us, then.” The taller woman said with a sigh. It was a fantastic asset, but one that’d make them trip over each other if they didn’t train a fuck of a lot to coordinate when it got used.

“At least on my end I just need to make sure your inner ears are Reinforced and I’m good to blast away.” She added, hefting up her monster of a shotgun with one arm like it weighed nothing. The body may only be two days old, but it was built like she’d been lugging around Lockstock for all her life. She’d found some serious muscle under her suit when she’d bathed, although thankfully with a nice layer of fat wrapped around it. She’d much rather not look like a bulging mass of tumors, thank you.

“So I take it, what's special about your weapon is the ammo?” Amanita questioned, “Are you going to be using enchanted bullets? Alchemical explosives? Am I going to have to worry about a splash zone?”

“Not only that, after a fashion eventually, yes, only partly.” Barbara replied in order with a small chuckle. “The main thing is alchemical explosives as propellant and payloads, but Lockstock itself is tough enough to use as a battering ram and has got coilgun systems.”

“As for splash zone-” A pebble leapt onto the alchemist’s suddenly inked hand, twisting unnaturally in the air from where she kicked it up. Delicate arrays on the pads of her fingers and palm of her hand where she was touching it lit up a dull red, the pebble cracking and glowing as if it were a piece of magma crust.

She threw it down and to the side, only for a flash of light to have it jolt back skywards before it could touch the ground, a dimmer but persistent one having it trace out a winding arc before it exploded with about as much power and fanfare as a store-bought firecracker, completely reduced to fine dust and smoke. “I can finagle things, don’t worry.”

“So a support class with melee capabilities and an all out offensive ranged class.” Amanita sighed, “Hopefully we’ll be able to manage.”

“Well, not one hundred percent offensive.” Barbara added, skipping over to her (comparatively) tiny friend and prodding her in the cheek with a glowing finger, giving the lavender-haired girl the equivalent of a good cup of coffee and patching up a few scratches she’d gotten from the very much thorny roses and thistles. “About at the edge of what I can do, though. Topping off your tank or giving you a nice overclock? Can pull that off at a range, even if the efficiency is garbage. But heals are lay on hands only.”

She had some ideas for a healing or at least revitalizing grenade, but that was still very much work in progress. She would rather not send friendlies into shock. Or give them tumors.

“I can do something like that but no outright healing without large preparations given that my magecraft could be classified as ‘bringing delusions into reality’.” Amanita shrugs, “But it’s good to know we have some healing in our hands.”

“Aye. Although, word of warning, this is via transmutation. So unless I keep some raw meat around, any major damage will take cannibalising your muscle and fat.” Not that the slip of a girl had much of either, so if it came down to it, it would probably have to be, “Or mine. And I’d rather not liquidate my assets.”

Unfortunately, alchemy wasn’t so convenient; she couldn’t just snap her fingers and turn a lump of coal and some water into meat. There was a lot more to the human body than just carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.

…Maybe she could keep around some bricks of pemmican, though? Tallow and meat powder plus a water bottle should give her the minimum for a solid patch job.

“How would that even work in VR though?” Amanita wondered aloud, “We should probably ask Fiorekis about how bringing consumable spell components works.”

“Yyyeah, if that isn’t doable I’m kinda screwed. Sourcing energy from my body is meant to be only for small stuff. My magecraft is all about making and using fuel.” Barbara said with a deep grimace. She should be able to break things down in the simulation to get some alumentum going there, if nothing else.

“Well, now that our little tour is officially over, how about we go out and try and get ourselves some phones.” Amanita said, “We both know that the MA isn’t going to provide us with that.”

“Hah, true. Well, we already needed to buy some clothes, so may as well make a whole outing of it.” The alchemist said with a huff, before turning to the maids, “Any restaurants you three would recommend?”

“Lord Claschestu would often ask us to make reservations at the Lost Angler whenever he would go out for lunch. There is a shopping center nearby that would serve your purposes.” Jade said calmly, “We could make a reservation if you wish.”

Amanita smiled, “Thanks, that'd be perfect.”

“And we’d be happy to drive you there, you seem to have a heavy shopping trip planned.” Amber finished, “We can leave as soon as we change and you’re ready.”

Jade and Amber bowed and moved into the servant’s quarters, leaving Amanita and Barbara to their own devices while Lapis began to finish various tasks around the house. Amber and Jade walked out of their quarters dressed in matching outfits: navy blue knee-length skirts with a matching coat and a white shirt. After nodding, the maids led Amanita and Barbara to a door on the ground level that was omitted during the tour. From the layout of the house the door would lead to nothing but a solid interior wall. Yet, when the door opened, they walked out onto the sidewalk. As the two magi looked back, they would see an unassuming house.

Amber explained as Amber got the car out of the garage. “While the structure is mostly real, there is an illusion cast over it, making anyone that sees it think there are people living inside. It also encourages people to ignore it unless they have business at the address.

After piling into the car, they arrived at the shopping center after a few minutes. It was filled to the brim with shoppers, many of which had their eyes drawn to the giant woman among the group. The group focused on clothes shopping at first, focused on getting a good amount of casual clothes, exercise clothes, and ‘work clothes’; as Amanita and Barbara were expecting things to get torn up when Heroic Spirits were involved. When the group finally got to shopping for electronics, Jade and Amber got an extremely confused look on their faces as Amanita and Barbara worked out buying the newest available smartphones (after using some subtle Structural Analysis to sniff out any planned obsolescence, of course). The pair made sure to buy three extra ones for the maids just in case.

“Have you considered modeling as a side gig?” Amanita finally asked her taller companion once they finally reached the safety of their car, “Because I’m sure you broke a few necks during this shopping trip.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me. They’d have rushed me asking for pictures if we weren’t in a group.” Barbara complained with a deep grimace, shuddering at the thought of the faceless masses pawing at her asking for her number and pictures and whatever else. Humanity was best taken in extremely small doses and on a case by case basis.

“Thank you for keeping them off my back, by the way.” She added to the maids with a nod. Amanita had been a touch too busy silently laughing at her misery to help, and was entirely too tiny to really do much driving off unless she used her magecraft, unlike the very leggy maids.

“Sure, though there wasn’t much I could really do out in public using magecraft without risking getting found out.” Amanita shrugged, “And the last thing I want is having Policies on our ass on our first day.”

 

Chapter 4: October 12, 2011 [Part 1]


Fiorekis looked up from a stack of papers as thick as a dictionary when Barbara and Amanita walked into his office. He sighed deeply and squeezed the bridge of his nose before speaking, “It’s you two. I hope everything was to your liking?”

“‘S great, no complaints from me.” Barbara replied happily, hoping to lighten his stress just a touch.

“It’s wonderful.” Amanita said flatly, going into business mode, “Now, you said that you wanted to see us for some tests?”

The magus stood up from his chair, “Yes. Given your…” Fiorekis paused a moment for emphasis, “situation and by request from the Director we are to administer a series of examinations.”

“So, a physical?” Amanita asked.

“The director also noted your interest to take classes in the Department of Modern Magecraft. Given the nature of our project, I am not surprised. However, a placement test will be required to ensure you match our academic standards, special case or not..”

Amanita gulped nervously.

“As for the physical examinations. A standard analytic of your Magic Circuits and Element, with the add-on of a specialist’s expertise to appraise your Magic Crests.”

As she blushed, remembering the particular design of her crest, Amanita piped in, “I’ve been curious about that as well, when do we get started?”

“Right now.” He clicked on the intercom, “Gloria, could you come and guide Miss Mentis and Helmont to the examiners?”

“Yes sir, I’ll be right there.” Came the crackly voice from the old system.

“Now then, while you wait.” He opened a drawer in his desk, a pair of lists levitating out to the duo, “Here’s the subject list for your magecraft exams.”
____________________________________________________________________________

They were immediately ushered into a separate room where they were given a pair of exams on the fundamentals of Magecraft: basic theory, leyline studies, sympathetic and contagious magecraft. As the pair took the exams, they felt that they were relatively simple despite them not knowing the specifics of the fundamentals a few days ago. Amanita and Barbara independently reached the conclusion that they got knowledge implanted to their brains.

The physical examinations were mostly unobtrusive, but time consuming. Outside of asking for a couple of vials of blood, most of the examination was done via more mystical means: asking to pour magic energy into a glass ball, passing a wand over their bodies, so on and so forth. In the end, a quick report was made for the Lord of Archeology.

The magus charged to putting all the results together began telling the results to Fiorekis Claschestu and the pair of test subjects, “In short: their magic circuits are exceptional, yet don’t reach the level of the great families; their elemental affinity was determined to be that of an ‘Average One’; they are in tune with their magic crest to a level that wasn’t thought possible, almost as if they and their crest were one and the same; their bodies are made out of baseline human tissue and yet arranged with far more elegance than what would be found on a natural-born human; this, added to the affinity data from the day before yesterday and we could conclude that they are, quite literally, the ideal test subjects for the Class Card system.”

“That makes it sound like we’re freaks.” Amanita said dryly.

“In a way.” The magus began, “Your bodies are magnificently designed.”

“Thank you?” Amanita said doubtfully, taken aback at the weird and unexpected compliment.

“Appreciated.” Barbara, for her own part, didn’t have any doubt there. She was just happy her body was competently designed instead of being yet another victim to nature’s vagaries.

“We will have a full report for the Evoker Division’s commander by the end of the week, Lord Claschestu.” He said before leaving the room.

“Onwards to the results of your other exam today, then.” Fiorekis said once the door closed, “You passed with flying colors, as expected. Nine point seven and nine point eight. Therefore, your attendance in Modern Magecraft Theory lessons has been approved. That being said, we are in the middle of the semester, so remedial reading will be provided.”

Amana raised her hand up to shoulder level, “I’d also want to go into the Department of Curses and see where I stand.”

“If that is the case you will have to wait, we’re already cutting through enough red tape as it is.” Fiorekis said, tapping his finger on his desk, “While diversifying your skills and pursuing academia is commendable, you do have a job to attend to. One which you must train for too, at that.”
____________________________________________________________________________

Amanita and Barbara had been scheduled for another session in the simulation the next morning. It would be their first day officially on the job, as last time had been an ‘interview’ of sorts– which was a polite way to say they didn’t really count as employees until they managed to summon without dying or mutating horribly, typical magi policies. They’d expected Fiorekis to greet them as usual, but instead a few of the technicians from the previous day were waiting for them at the entrance to the building.

As soon as they approached, a lanky black-haired man nearly as tall as Barbara spoke up, “Miss Mentis, Von Helmont. Lord Claschestu won't be here for the Evoker Division’s maiden voyage, he’s in a viewing box with the other VIPs.” He paused, scratching the back of his head, “He also wanted us to inform you, and I quote, ‘Key personnel of the Okeanos Odyssean Organization and a number of Lords will be observing today. It is imperative you put on a worthy showing, for both our sakes’. A bit harsh, but this is an important moment.”

Message delivered, the pair were ushered in with a quick explanation of them being on a time-table and there being far more safety checks, as they would be doing some scouting and extermination. Extermination of what, they couldn’t get a word in edgewise, the techies too busy with their ant nest impression, simply handing them their ‘uniform’– which amounted to a pair of orange plugsuits shamelessly copied from Chaldeas with only a couple tweaks putting function over form. About the only decoration on them were the trio of interlinked rings on one shoulder and a pair of cards with black and white jester masks on the other. The pair quickly got ushered to a changing room as the technicians continued to do their thing

Amanita fidgeted as it felt snug over her body, it didn’t feel bad but definitely weird. Her friend was less pleased, looking vaguely constipated as she pinched and pulled some of the material over her diaphragm, “Ugh, this is like that one time I got stuffed in neoprene. At least they made sure it would slide in smoothly.”

“It’s weird to have something this form fitting, can’t really talk about being stuffed in neoprene but it doesn’t sound good. At least you can self suggest that feeling away, I’d prefer to get used to it naturally.” Amanita took a deep breath, “Anyways, ready to go?”

“Never liked tight clothes, so there’s no getting used to it naturally for me.” The taller woman said with an amused huff, a flicker of burning warmth across a few of her circuits and the part of her brain bitching and moaning about being constrained was shut up with aplomb. “Aight, all done. Lead the way.”

Amanita stepped out of the changing room with Barbara right behind her. “Alright, is anything else going to be different this time?” She gave the tall man a questioning look.

“Mission control will walk you through everything one step at a time. However, be ready for the coffins to fill with suspension fluid. You don’t have to try to breathe it in before you get sent into the virtual world, though it won’t harm you if you do.” He said flatly, not looking away from a screen readout.

“Joy, we get a tang bath without a complimentary mech ride.” Barbara replied with a chuckle even as she thanked her lucky stars for self-suggestion for the nth time. Having water go down the wrong pipe was always miserable.

“Be glad you aren’t breathing in purified alien blood then.” The technician quipped back, “But like I said, you don’t have to breathe it in.”

“Hah, didn’t expect someone around here to recognise that one.” The voluptuous woman said with a grin, before shaking her head and sighing, “Nothing to be done about coughing it out when we’re done with the sim, though.”

At that he just shrugged, “It’s unpleasant, but it can help save your life if you return with half of your internal organs turned to mush.”

“Lovely.” Amanita said, “I don’t want to know how you tested that." She quickly stepped into the coffin and waited for the entry process to start. Last time was quick, from her perspective there was a burst of static and she found herself in the Camelot lookalike. Amanita stood on the coffin, watching the liquid rise up, as soon as it reached her shoulder

“Huh, she really doesn’t want to know.” The technician said, “Might want to get in though, don’t want to keep the Lords waiting.”

“Meanwhile I don’t need to ask, I can just about imagine given how magi do.” Barbara huffed, unruffled by the idea of countless strangers having died in accidents and outright been killed to pave for the project. “But aye, let’s get this bread.”

Getting into the VR world was a quick and painless affair as Barbara suddenly found herself on a white-bricked courtyard. She saw that Amanita was leaning on a railing, looking off into the distant and grotesquely shifting sea. The shorter girl was about to say something before she got interrupted by the hologram of a redheaded man appearing between the two of them.

“Amanita Vi Mentis, Barbara Von Helmont, I am Bram Nuada-Re Sophia-Ri, your strategic commander starting today. I have heard some very interesting things about the two of you and I have high expectations for your performance.” He paused for a moment and coughed into his hand, “Ladies, I would like to welcome you to Tamloc, the anchor of the inverse tower, BABEL. We are going live in fifteen minutes, so if you have any questions, now’s the time.”

“I have a few.” Amanita was the first to talk, “We haven’t been told what we are supposed to be doing. I’m assuming it’s combat related since Heroic Spirits are involved, is that right? Also, outside of combat, what are our responsibilities?”

“Fuck’s sake Claschestu.” Bram muttered under his breath before addressing them, “The only region of cyberspace we have secured so far is the central ring of Tameloc, so your responsibilities will include scouting out the region, scanning structures so we can better prepare for securing them and eliminating any seaborn that inhabit those regions. You will work on securing more territory for our use.”

“What are seaborn, beyond presumably hostile?” Barbara asked, only barely keeping herself from raising her hand as if she were back in uni.

“Phantasmal species spawned by the Chimeric Sea. We don’t know the particulars of their nature or intentions, but they are keen on infesting this place like vermin and attacking humans entering ‘their’ territory.” The redhead replied, actually making finger quotes to go with that ‘their’. “Don’t worry, all we’ve observed so far barely even qualify as Demonic Beasts. You shouldn’t encounter anything stronger than a particularly powerful Wraith.”

“Knowing how these things go, they’re probably going to get worse the deeper we go.” Amanita commented.

“We don’t know that for sure, but there is a reason BABEL won’t be connected to the world wide web until we reach a target of three fully secured segmentums and six members in the Evoker Division with a minimum of three months of experience.” The nobleman replied, rolling his hand on its wrist.

“That clears pretty much almost all of my doubts.” Amanita said, “What is this test going to entail? It is important enough to have multiple Lords of the Clock Tower observe it.”

“Today’s test will involve the full activation of the Class Card system you’ve been modified with.” He rolled his eyes, as if this information should be glaringly obvious, “After you fully activate the cards you will give your Liner abilities a trial run by performing a combination of Survey and Debug tasks for the central ring. Namely, fully scouting it while eliminating all seaborn, deploying repair programs to mend any damage they may have caused and furthermore fortifying the connections to the meridian ring.”

“How do we deplo-'' Barbara began, only to be cut off.

“Only a minute left, get in position and ready to Install. Program deployment will be explained as you go.” Bram said, trusting that they at the very least knew how to use their tools.

What followed was a long silence as they saw Bram speak to some people without any sound coming from his mouth.

”Looks like the presentation is on a need-to-know basis.” Amanita noted.

At some point they were told to stand underneath an arch in the courtyard. After a few more moments in waiting, Bram’s voice from his hologram, “Install at your discretion.”

“Install.” As with the Include last time, a rectangle of golden light formed over Barbara’s sternum. Unlike last time, instead of just a couple of streamers of black sludge, it was like someone had hooked a fire hydrant to her, tar erupting from her like blood from a Bleach character. It should feel constricting, having several dozen ropes of the slop swaddling her, but with the presence humming happily in her chest it was comforting if anything.

At some unseen signal, the writhing mass swelled and strained like a bodybuilder on the stage, the hardened outer surface cracking like magma and letting through brilliant blue light. One last forceful motion, and the shell shattered entirely, breaking down into a shower of embers to reveal–

Armor entirely unlike what she’d expected. It certainly had her partner’s cobalt and bronze color scheme, the glowing blue filigree too, but it was all applied to the true Lancelot’s armor. The only real differences in design were the helm, which was a smooth screen giving her a honest-to-god head’s up display, and the strange holster thing mounted on the small of her back making the pair of pseudo-swords into something reminiscent of coattails. Barbara’s lavender-haired partner (as opposed to the one lodged in her ribcage, even if both were tiny) looked at the transformation and gave her a thumbs up.

Amanita had seen Prisma Illya, so she was pretty sure how the cards were supposed to work. The commands were the same so there shouldn’t be any problems. She put her hand over her heart and calmly said “Install.”

She drew out a golden card, which shattered to pieces and… fell limply on the floor, fading after a moment.

“Oh that bitch.” Amanita muttered angrily, trying to think of a way to get her Heroic Spirit to give her her power. Considering what she knew about her… Amanita muttered under her breath, promising to show the Heroic Spirit inside her chest someone utterly infatuated that would never have her feelings returned. Amanita felt a faint thrill of amusement tinted with resigned acceptance, which she decided to interpret as an ‘Ugh, fine.’

“Install.” She said once again, drawing out a golden card which again shattered to pieces. This time, the pieces orbited around her for a moment before igniting in vivid red light and lunging for her body. Each fragment broke into smaller shards as it reached her, forming an impenetrable shroud of red dust over her form. With a final blinding flash, Amanita was left standing in a red, black and white outfit, her uniform nowhere in sight. A scandalously short and ludicrously frilly skirt had formed around her hips, the front threatening to flash everyone at the slightest lift of a leg. Meanwhile the top was not only shoulderless but also backless, the odd collar just as disconnected as the sleeves.

What took the cake, though, were the high-heeled platform boots going all the way up to her thighs, only an inch shorter than her stockings. Mercifully, the leather of the fuck-me boots was broken in, even if that did nothing for how she nearly fell flat on her face at the sudden shift in balance.

Thankfully, foreign muscle memory kicked in not an instant later, leaving her feeling like she had strutted in these ridiculous boots all her life. ‘Ah yes, drawing knowledge and experience from a Heroic Spirit to be able to walk in these crazy shoes’ she thought. Beyond that vital leg up, though, her body felt lighter and her senses far sharper than before.

She gave her partner a subtle glare, then gestured at her feet as if to say ‘See the shit I’m gonna have to put up with?’.

She couldn’t exactly see anything of her friend’s face, but it wasn’t needed as the towering woman somehow managed to radiate smug as a space heater did warmth.

“The cards work exactly as expected, allowing a magus to call upon the powers of a Ghost Liner inside of this space.” He continued his presentation without sparing the two girls a thought as they adjusted to their new abilities. “We now have personnel for the Evoker Division and thus can finally proceed to the next phase: Securing and expanding BABEL.”
_______________________________________________________________________

Amanita and Barbara left the innermost section of Tameloc, the handful of towers and their junction point collectively called the peak, speeding past reams of machinery and hologram stuffed rooms they could only presume were important. Same as the golden light pouring from the top windows of the tallest tower.

They moved down into the castle proper, the hallways opening up to be as wide as a three lane road bedecked in blue and gold in the form of a plush carpet and banners trailing down from the cavernous arches of the ceiling. Together with the glossy marble it left Barbara distinctly disappointed they didn’t get to live here. Ah, well, it would essentially be their office, so close enough.

More importantly than any of that, they had plenty of room here to take some of their new tricks for a spin. Amanita had quickly figured out how to gracefully glide along the floor with a surprising amount of speed, then from there to wall-running like something straight out of Air Gear. Barbara would be jealous if she wasn’t busy twirling and flittering through the air like a coked-out pixie. It wasn’t her Heroic Spirit’s from zero to sonic boom in 0.3 seconds, but putting most bikes to utter shame was nothing to scoff at.

Their booling around and barely-contained hooligan hollering (the big wigs were watching, so the whooping had to remain firmly internal) unfortunately didn’t last all that long. The duo finally found their first obstacle in reaching the red x helpfully labeled as ‘Seaborne Nidus’ on the little minimap holograms Bram had provided them with. God bless self-suggestion, between him calling the internet ‘world wide web’ and this a ‘portable map’ it was hard to keep a straight face.

It looked like an anti-abortionist’s idea of a fetus bin poured over a double armful of old electronics (Barbara could see a fucking Walkman in there) and left to ripen nice and cozy in a septic tank. It crawled around like the misbegotten lovechild of a beached jellyfish and an octopus, its amoeba-like mass of tar protruding in malformed limbs to drag it forwards, leaving a snail trail of glitches that left the innocent carpet and marble brick looking like half-melted wax and a botched tie-dye job rolled into one.

Barbara didn’t need any more reason to kill the thing with extreme prejudice, but it apparently believed in Plus Ultra, seeing as it turned to face them and belted out the worst screech that had ever tortured the alchemist’s ears. It was a crying baby and a whining modem threatening to achieve liftoff combined into something that bypassed Barbara’s frontal cortex in favor of bodyslamming her hindbrain with every murderous impulse the perfunctory husk could produce.

As soon as Amanita heard it she felt her skin crawl starting at her ears, down her neck and through the rest of her body in a wave and shook it off with a shudder. The feeling went straight to her lizard brain with a simple, strong feeling: ‘This should not be, so kill it.’

As it screamed, dozens of spear-like tendrils shot out of its body every which way. They amazingly managed to hit every piece of decor while missing the duo by a mile, leaving shallow gouges in the brick even as the impact proved too much for the membrane to take. Thankfully, its accuracy was so godawful even the splatter didn’t touch them, even if it made an absolute mess of the area that was only going to get worse as the damn thing let loose another wave. Somehow, it was even more inaccurate this time.

All of its attacks were too poorly aimed to be a threat, leaving Amanita’s eyebrows to arch in confusion. When a miracle finally occurred and one of the tendrils was headed for her center of mass, she simply slid out of the way, summoned Failnaught and strummed. At her touch, each string shone a sinister crimson light and dutifully sent the invisible arrows straight at the slime.

Unfortunately, the slime was a slime, so aside from the Walkman floating near its front getting totalled with a pitiful electronic whine the pinprick holes running the thing through were simply refilled with gunk and that was that.

Amanita clicked her tongue and strummed her bow once more; instead of the clean, pinpoint arrows she had used up to this point, an invisible rending strike tore the slime into half a dozen pieces and sent them flying everywhere.

This section of the hallway was well and truly a complete write-off by now.

“Stubborn little fucker.” She grumbled, making her bow vanish into the ether.

As soon as Amanita let her guard down, the larger remaining patches of the slime lanced out with a tendril each, attempting to reform and spear anything caught in the middle.

Instead of the gut of the flatfooted Liner, though, what they found themselves converging on was the gauntleted fist of her friend, seething yellow light filtering through the joints as the only warning before the sludge went up like a thermite-stuffed frog in the microwave. Some of the magi may get grumpy about her ashing the slime and slagging the electronics, but Barbara was rather more concerned about the tiny woman she had scooped up on her other arm.

Amanita would be enjoying getting scooped up if there wasn’t a chestplate in the way. She stammered as she tried to find the words to thank Barbara for saving her from a gigantic fuckup. After several attempts of her trying to begin talking, she took a few deep breaths before she finally said, “Thanks, that almost got me. Might have been okay because of the fusion but you never know.”

Barbara for once in her life exercised some tact and pointedly didn’t say how while the little lady would all but certainly survive, she would’ve likely earned herself some cracked ribs and serious internal bruising at the very least. Possibly some punctured internal organs. The taller woman decided then and there to get some serious lessons on magic healing. Her magecraft let her cheat for the most part by using the body as a template to restore back, but that was worthless if she didn’t know how to diagnose and prioritize, nevermind keep her cool.

“You can make it up to me later, we have plenty of work left.” Barbara said instead with a huff as she gently lowered her friend to the ground, the care she puts in it giving away how rattled she is, given how she’s clearly forgotten that Amanita can float a few inches above the ground and thus the heels aren’t a concern.

Amanita let out a heavy sigh as she was put down, still unused at being as short as she was. “So I take it that we should clean this mess right?” She looked up at the ceiling, “Bram, could we get a cleaning program?” She asked.

“Tch. Don’t address me so casually. Impertinence aside, it is a restoration program, not a janitorial one.” An irritated voice came before a small blue cube appeared in front of Amanita. She took it into her hand and turned it slowly, inspecting it closely, its surface resembling lapis lazuli intricately carved with motifs of flowing water.

“Execute.” Amanita said, causing the cube’s carvings to glow a bright blue. She laid it on the floor, where it melted into a large puddle of a shimmering blue liquid which Barbara had to bite her lip behind her faceplate to avoid calling magic gatorade. Its surface rippled before it surged like a fountain, streamers flowing towards the damage. Filling in the gouges, washing away the distortions on brick and cloth, bubbling into a froth as it spent itself to eliminate the remains of the sludge. Soon, there was nothing left but a small blue puddle crawling off into the distance to mop up the seaborn’s snail trail, setting it on a different path than the route laid out on their minimaps.

“It will operate independently and clean as much as it can. You two, focus on getting to the nidus.” Amanita rolled her eyes at the pompous name for the seaborn nest. Magi.

 

Chapter 5: October 12, 2011 [Part 2]


The ‘nidus’ had been detected roughly a week ago. They had planned to address it with the russian classic of drowning it in expendables to answer in kind to the massive congregation of seaborn, then have the commander of the Evoker Division mop up. Or if the only official member of the Evokers aside from Amanita and Barbara had his way, handling the entire thing on his own with maybe a few elites from the Spiritron Division along for the ride.

It was moot either way, since with a pair of Liners finally onboard, they could simply throw them at the nest (Amanita refused to call it a nidus) and call it a true demonstration of what the Evoker Division would be capable of once more Liners were found.

There was nothing subtle about the nest’s presence, not with how the distortions steadily worsened the closer they got. At first it was a slight change in the hue of the carpet, then the textures started to bleed and mix into each other until there were bricks made out of carpet, carpet that had become solid granite as well as everything in between and chaotically mixed with no regard to what reality should be.

“This looks like a fucking mess.” Amanita said, looking at the distortions. Amanita could feel the strong annoyance and disdain emanating from the heroic spirit linked to her soul for some time and she just had to say something about it.

“Aye. Command, run by us again just how stiff a resistance we’re going to run into?” Barbara asked a touch worriedly. Something distorting the place this badly and from such a range… well, there was a reason her blade-cesti were in a constant loop of spooling to their full speed, only to stop cold with a new lump of red alumentum coal to slip into the disks at her hips. Those were purely from her Heroic Spirit’s real armor, instead of Lancelot’s, so who even knew what sort of magecraft had gone into them. She was just glad she didn’t need to carry all the alumentum on her hands.

“It’s a Nidus, so you can expect at least a dozen of the slugs you faced before, maybe even more.” He said, “If you manage to lose despite having the power of two heroic spirits on your side… well, I needn’t explain how that’d reflect on Fiorekis’ judgment.”

“Don’t worry, chief. We won’t be making anyone look bad today.” Barbara replied, before mentally adding, ‘Even if it takes me powerwashing the entire nest with hot sticky love’

Soon enough the models themselves began to distort. Instead of clean beautiful and clean arches, the walls bent and twisted, statues deformed randomly, stretching and bending weakly. Eventually, the previously straight hallways began to twist and turn.

“If this was regular 3-D space the path we’re taking right now should cross with our previous path.” Amanita noted after the pair took four sharp left turns. The map still displayed their position as nearing the nest despite the distortions. Eventually, Amanita and Barbara began to hear loud squelching noises in the distance, which quickly began to grow louder as they closed the distance. After musing things through the shorter mage spoke up again, “If the nest is surrounded by a bunch of those things, I think I got something for it.”

“Some sort of bait?” Her friend guessed with a quizzical tilt of her helmeted head. You had to exaggerate your body language when you had a completely concealing faceplate, thankfully her Heroic Spirit was happy to share the muscle memory for it.

“Something like that. That slug must have seen us somehow despite not really having eyes. So I was thinking of having them hyperfocus on a flame, to the point where they won’t be able to see or sense anything else for as long as I maintain the spell. So yes, a decoy.”

“We don’t know what sense they used, so make it stinky and loud on top of bright and with a lot of magic energy.” Well, assuming Amanita could, Barbara didn’t exactly know how far the tiny woman’s mindfuckery went.

“I was also going to vary its temperature to make some patterns that could be sensed on their…skin? But as long as they can sense it somehow we should be good. Oh and don’t worry, unlike my Mystic code I can set it so that it doesn’t affect you.” Amanita said.

“I think the term would be membrane. And thanks, I’d rather not make a moth impression here.” The towering woman replied with a nod, “They’re probably dumb enough we can just steadily lure away a couple at a time to kill them piecemeal, then go in for the kill.”

Plus, she didn’t want to test this when they were staring down the entire mountain of slugs.

“Jeez fine, I’m pretty sure we could handle it regardless.” Amanita crossed her arms over her chest.

“We already met our quota of close calls for the day, let’s err on the side of caution.” Barbara replied with a huff, lightly rapping an armored knuckle on the diminutive woman’s head. Her Heroic Spirit was none-too-subtle with the relief at her caution, at least.

“Alright, we got a plan.” Amanita smiled before the pair finished walking the last stretch of hallway before, after peeking around a corner the two saw a black sphere made out of wriggling, snakelike tendrils occasionally slithering over and under each other. The source of the loud squelching sound was nothing other than the Nest and a cursory glance revealed that there were dozens of slugs loitering around it. A few had begun to wander away from the middle and towards random hallways.

“That’s worse than we expected.” Bram said unprompted, “There's more slugs than we thought.”

“If push comes to shove, I can just firebomb the whole thing, you rip up anything that’s left so they’re busy reforming, then we run away until I have enough alumentum to do it again. Rinse and repeat until there’s nothing left.” Barbara offered.

“I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that.” Amanita said before she took a deep breath and outstretched her hand. She began to shape the spell in her mind as she drew power and knowledge from her magic crest. Her crest appeared on her forehead, forming a crown circling her head and shining through her hair.

“Enchanting flame, go forth and cast my enemies’ mind into the void.”

A floating ball of fire appeared in front of her, it constantly shifted and flicked despite the lack of wind. Its color changed along its temperature, going from a warm orange to a bright blue and back. After a few moments, the patterns the flame shifted into became more complicated as it began to fold into itself and out, making mesmerizing knots. “There, I keyed both of us to be included in its effect. The more it's seen the more mana it's going to draw from me. It shouldn’t be that much.”

With the casting done, Amanita sent the floating flame around the corner and to try to get a few of the outlier slimes. She felt a slight drain on her mana as five slugs let out a screech before they immediately quieted down. With some care, she pulled the flame back, causing the affected slimes to follow. Right before they turned the corner Amanita pulled out her bow and said, “Get ready, I’m bringing a few over.”

Amanita held her fire until the affected ones were out of view from the Nest that she let out her first rending volley at the first one, tearing it apart.

“Keep going, I’ll stuff them with firebombs as they try to reform.” Barbara said as she did just that, a fist sized lump of red coal flying like a heat-seeking missile to lodge itself in the forming knot of tentacles, the poor thing burning out from the inside out seconds after fully reforming.

Amanita let out a long drawn out sigh, strumming her bow and tearing another one to pieces, “Doing it like this makes me feel like we’re getting rid of rats or roaches.” Another strum, “Did these guys REALLY struggle with these things before we got here? It’s kind of sad.” Another strum, another slime torn into pieces.

“Chaff nobody will miss doesn’t tend to be particularly capable.” Barbara said between throws even as she carefully adjusted the delay on the ignition for minimal mess and no chance of retaliation. “But yeah, just someone able to pop barriers and someone with a decent offensive spell should’ve been able to clean house here.”

“Did they hire dumbasses that just charged ahead? Whatever, I really don’t want to know.” She strummed one last time and got rid of the last slime, as she saw Barbara throw the explosive at it she asked, “You going to have enough for all of them?”

“I started with something like twenty lumps, don’t worry.” The towering woman reassured, “If it comes to it, we just wait a few minutes between pulls so I can restock them.”

It was easy enough that she was kinda tempted to just start building up more with her offhand, but the close call earlier left her too wary. No, better to give this her full and undivided attention, in case she needed to jump in again.

Amanita sent the flame forward once again and pulled another slime group, the process repeated eight more times (they had to take their words back a bit, there. If someone didn’t have a good way of luring out small groups, the slugs would have plenty enough saturation to overwhelm less prepared people), with a break in between for Barbara to resupply her stock of explosives. With the vast majority of slugs taken care of, Amanita sent her flame to sit atop the Nest, getting the attention of the ten or so remaining slugs.

“Right, time to really show off for the brass. Do you have any big tricks up those poofy sleeves, or should I just…” She threw a punch to the wall by the side, sounding like an air cannon.

“Blow everything up at the same time?” Amanita asked, flicking her hair “Just melt them, I’ve shown off enough for today.”

“More rip through them like a hot knife through butter, but yea.” Barbara replied with a nod.

“Go for it, I’ll support you in case one of ‘em tries hitting you in the back.”

The taller of the two didn’t need to be told twice, gleefully crushing a baker’s dozen coal lumps in her gauntlets, yellow light blazing through the mesh under the gaps in the plates of her armor.

The next eyeblink, only a blast of air was left where she’d stood. The woman a blue and yellow blur zipping through the crowd like a demented pingball, firey explosions punched into each monster so close together it blended into a continuous roar like an engine.

Of course, when Barbara said she was showing off, she meant it. Which was why instead of heading straight for the nest she darted away, coming to a rest with her legs bowed against the opposite wall.

The yellow was swallowed by blue and the blue blanketed everything, all the light touched momentarily stilled and quieted by the weight of a lake.

“Innocence Arondight” Barbara’s voice carried an echo, another’s voice overlaying it.

The light pulled back, wrapping tightly around the fake knight and leaving the space all the darker for it.

It didn’t last, not when she once more became a living comet, glittering white playing on her blue trail like sunlight on the water’s surface. Not when sweeping waves of the same light flared out in a ring as her form momentarily resolved itself against the corrupting mass, gauntleted arms sunk to the elbow and cracks of blue light spiderwebbing across the morass.

Then the hallway turned anything but dark.
______________________________________________________________________________

The first thing to break the silence of the aftermath as the smoke cleared was Amanita’s loud coughs and mutinous mutters of “It's in my mouth.”

Barbara couldn’t help it, she laughed, the sound coming right from her belly as she leaned back on the singed-black brick. That had taken more out of her than she cared to admit, having to bootstrap so much with her own magecraft to get the Noble Phantasm to really shine.

Amanita walked closer to Barbara and looked up at the armored woman. “It's a good thing I’m mostly fighting at range, I’d hate to be close to one of those explosions.”

“Well done. We will be sending you heavy duty restoration and defense programs.” Bram said through the comms, “This location is one of the few chokepoints of the castle proper.”

Right on cue, the big brother of the water cube from before came to say hi, reaching to Barbara’s shoulders and completely dwarfing Amanita. The lavender-haired girl placed her hand on it and activated it, an olympic pool’s worth of saturated blue flooding the hallway.

(And power-washing the pair, but at least it had the courtesy of not leaving them soaked)

Like before, where the water touched, the right colors and textures returned. Even the twists in the geometry were straightened out, the corner they were standing in snapping back to a straight path.

As the water receded, presumably to clean up the rest of the mess, Bram spoke up again, “Ladies, we have confirmed that the sector is secure. We’ll be installing defense programs at your location. We expect a large amount of Seaborn to be drawn to the death of the Nidus, you will have to hold the line until all the fortifications are in place”

“Time to play defense then.” Amanita turned to Barbara, “I hope you have your explosives ready.”

“Twenty in stock and counting.” The taller woman replied with a huff, straightening back up from her slump and setting her cesti to spinning as fast as they’d go. They couldn’t count on getting a good break once the waves started coming.

“If we’re defending, I SHOULD be able to keep them at bay.” She looked at the wide and long hallway with absolutely no cover, “It’s going to be a shooting gallery.”

“Well, I had my chance to shine, so want me to just focus on propping you up?” Barb offered with a tilt of her head. Turning her friend into an AA battery on high heels should be simple enough.

Amanita took a deep breath and closed her eyes, prana filling and Reinforcing them. When she opened them, ruby irises replaced lavender in an accidental activation of her mystic eyes. “They're turning a corner about a hundred meters away. It should be easy.” Instead of holding Failnaught like a proper bow she aimed it down in what she felt would be a more comfortable playing position. Amanita kept a firm grip on it, ready to strum the strings when the first of the monsters started barrelling down the hallway.

A streak of black shot from right to left, then another, and a third after that. Amanita’s eyes clocked them as some sort of malformed eels floating a couple of feet off the ground. She didn’t wait even a second, strumming her bow in a ripple of crimson light. The first eel was struck by a dozen rending vacuums which gleefully bit into its midsection.

The other two shot straight at her, closing in half the distance in a split second. Amanita’s bow rang out twice more, leaving the second eel’s head torn to ribbons, its body flopping to the side as it struck the ground. The third one was too close for comfort, but Amanita shot herself towards it as it opened its mouth, diving straight at it and strumming her bow twice before its jaw could slam shut. A large burst of crimson energy erupted in front of Amanita, slicing the eel in two, falling to either side as she dashed through.

Finally coming to a rest, she took a deep breath and let it out through her nose.

“Phew, I guess I’m getting the hang of things.” She said proudly.

“That you are.” Her friend huffed, relaxing minutely from where she’d been standing ready to dart in if that last stunt went wrong. “Command, would you like us to drag in the remains for study?”

“Negative, we’ve gotten enough samples of this type.” Bram replied as the program-fluid eagerly got to work on the corpses, reducing them to quickly dispersing foam. No sooner were they fully dissolved that a new enemy turned the corner.

Or, rather, it squeezed itself into it, the tips of its massive fins grazing against the walls with every undulating motion. An accomplishment, given how the hallway could’ve easily fitted a three lane road.

“A manta.” Bram chimed in with a note of interest in his voice, “We have only observed them from a distance. Liners, minimize damage to the corpse.”

Just as ordered, Amanita focused her shots, the effect like an invisible ax carving away at the misshapen lump that passed for the thing’s head. Five shots in, and it was clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that this wouldn’t be an instant kill, the skull (and it did have one! Even if it looked like an Ork Mek’s idea of one) was hanging limply from its neck in two pieces.

Nonetheless, she may as well keep going, just like with the eels it would likely die when it was downright bisected.

“Tch, figures.” Barbara grumbled as its purpose revealed itself with the splitting of its stomach leading to a waterfall of corruption gunk and slugs. She was fairly sure there were some with shells, from the shapes under the distorting slime. “I’ll handle the nuisances, you focus on the big guy.”

“Alright, just be careful.” Amanita kept firing her bow as fast as she could, the melody picking up the pace.

She wasn’t the best with electricity just yet, but not much was needed to turn the kludged together masses of sludge and electronics into sparking, flaming escargot. What was left of the restoration program happily took care of the rest at that point.

Which was good because it left a clean floor for the mostly-bisected manta to crash into, having doggedly advanced up until the midway point before keeling over and dying.

“That was easier than I thought. Basically a slow HP sponge.” Amanita said calmly.

“Good job, the defenses will come online shortly and it seems like there won’t be any more waves coming your way.” Right on cue, the defenses began to take form: A pair of double barreled autocannon turrets, pure white crystal the size of a man’s head crackling with lightning hovering above them.

“Your uniform Mystic Codes have a -” Bram continued, only to cut himself off as a loud thumping noise echoed from the distance, quickly growing louder– closer.

“What’s that?” Amanita strained her ears to try and parse the source’s direction, the sound bouncing through the halls making it an exercise in frustration.

“Trouble.” Barbara said as she pulled in a ready stance, one hand hovering over the pocket-plate at her hip and the other held up to leap into a skewering punch at a moment’s notice. Her friend clutched her bow at the ready, head on a swivel as she tried to predict where the seaborn would emerge from.

Not a second after the turrets had come fully online, the wall to the duo’s right became nothing but a shotgun blast of rubble as a gigantic form bulldozed through. A flare of ruddy red light and a thunderclap of pure force sent the ballistic debris back, the dust cloud vanishing as fast as it’d been formed to reveal a massive crustacean clad in black metal and gray plastic gleaming ominously. There were no weak points in its thick armor: No eyes, no mouth, not even proper joint segmentation or seams. Its entire carapace had by all appearances been haphazardly melted together and remained flexible enough to simply bend at the joints.

A fact it happily proved by heaving up its gigantic pincers to hammer the duo of fake knights like oversized nails.

The turrets began firing loudly, filling the hallway with thunderclaps of gunfire and lightning bolts. Amanita jumped away, striking her bow mid-air and sending a series of invisible arrows which bloomed into crimson light as they struck the carapace… only to leave it slightly tarnished and completely free to smash into the turrets.

“That’s a tough fucking crab.” Amanita yelled out in frustration, continuing to fire her bow in an endless barrage, attempting to hit the inside of any and all joints she could get a bead on. Every shot hit its target…only for them to once again have no effect.

Amanita clicked her tongue, “Keep it busy, I’m going to look for a weakpoint!”

“Aye a-” Barbara cut herself off as she had to jerk upwards quick as a viper to avoid both a hammerblow of the monster’s pincers and an attempt to bisect her. She doubted her blades would do anything but bounce off, so instead she smashed an explosive punch into the flat plane that would’ve been the creature’s face.

There was a twinge of pleasure at the faint impression she left there, but the real goal had been to get the big lug focused dead on her so Amanita could do her work.

Given how not a second later she was in a boxing match with the glorified fish cake, she certainly succeeded there. After that it was laughably easy, the bulky monstrosity too unwieldy to pose anything resembling a threat when you could flit around like a demented hummingbird and get right up in its face.

She barely even bothered hitting it, just keeping it busy trying to swat the very annoying armored fly out of its face.

Amanita did some flitting around of her own, gliding and jumping to hit the crab from every angle, only to find even point blank shots doing fuck-all. Mid-click of the tongue, her brain helpfully reminded her that those ridiculous high heels of hers were also weapons.

She lifted up her foot, circuits and crest flaring bright pink as they enhanced it for an axe-kick that buckled the crab’s own leg and left a visible dent.

“Hard hits! One after the other! Same spot!” Amanita yelled even as the murderous seafood regained its balance.

“HAH! You got it!” Barbara crowed as red light poured from underneath her armor to the point of shading the plates purple. It wasn’t the monstrous strength and speed she’d used to splatter the entirety of the nest, but the purplish streak practically sawing into the monster as it flickered in and out with a constant CLANGCLANGCLANG of metal on metal did its job just fine. It was almost like watching a timelapse, the way a messy indent stuttered into existence on the monster’s faceplate.

Amanita, of course, wasn’t idle. Every time Barbara flitted back to dodge the pincers and build momentum, arrows streaked in to give the growing wound no quarter.

What started as an inch deep impression soon doubled and tripled, turning into a crater fitting Barbara’s fists to the wrist. The more they piled on, the worse it became for the abused plating, the explosive force of the arrows finding the indent a frag grenade waiting to happen.

Finally, in what felt like weeks but couldn’t have been more than a minute or two, the plating finally split and cracked.

Barbara was all too happy to plug in the hole, jamming in her blade until she bottomed out and shooting her entire energetic load into a shockwave that left the monster vibrating like a bowl of jello spiked into the freeway as its soft insides were scrambled. The poor thing fell limply as soon as the knight pulled out her blade, thick seaborn goop drooling out.

“Hahahaha, I love my job!” The towering woman cackled, only just barely keeping enough composure to not break into dance. Magical ultraviolence was one hell of a drug.

Amanita, for her own part, simply sighed and slumped in relief when Bram finally chimed in with an, “We’re sending a team to secure the area. You two are free to leave.”

 

Amanita had split up from Barbara to sort out the textbooks both of them would need for their Modern Magecrafts while her partner saw about registering both of them for the classes in the first place. Amanita looked around in wonder at the carved stone all around her. The students flowed past her, ignoring her as just another face in the crowd– for the most part. A few gave her odd looks when she stopped to look at one of the cleaning golems sweeping the floor. She didn’t mind, even chuckling as she imagined how many more looks Barbara would be drawing given how big she was. In several senses.

She was snapped out of her thoughts by the golem stopping its task and heading elsewhere.

“Ah, right. Books.” Amanita muttered to herself as she finished the last stretch of her trip, “Central library, fourth floor.”

She stepped inside, heading to the bookshelf that was labeled as ‘Course Texts’.

It was at the end of the library by some windows and a few desks peppered with students. Ignoring them, Amanita pulled out a piece of paper out of her coat and got to work scanning the bookshelf, soon finding two hardcovers that could’ve been mistaken for dictionaries.

She was about ready to leave the aisle when a pink-haired girl squeezed in a pastel lolita dress and a star-shaped eyepatch of all things turned the corner with a cheerful “Helloooo~★”

Amanita could hear actual sparkles, there. She wanted nothing more than to flee the cringe girl, but alas, social interaction had begun. “A little bird told me that we would have new students join the class but I didn’t expect to meet one of them here.”

Amanita severely doubted this was a chance meeting, “I didn’t think we would be this popular.” She said in a calm and measured tone, “We really haven’t done anything.”

“Oh please,” The pink haired girl said with a chuckle as she stepped into Amanita’s personal space and leaned forward, “Amanita Vi Mentis, people take notice when the Director acts. And when people take notice they talk.”

‘She knows.’ Amanita thought, letting out a loud sigh as she dropped all pretenses of not knowing who she was.

“So, what do you want, Yvette?” Amanita said as she put the pair of books on the window frame to leave her hands free to rest on her hips, “Are you here to declare to me that you’re going to be Lord El Melloi’s lover and to not get in the way or that you’re going to be the lead wife in a harem?” Amanita rolled her eyes, “You don’t have to worry about that. I’m not interested in him.”

“Aw, you’re no fun. You weren’t supposed to react like that.” Yvette said with a pout and honest-to-god puffed cheeks, “How do you even know that if you just got here anyways?”

Amanita simply put one finger on her lips and sing-songed, “That’s a secret~.”

“No fair.” Yvette complained once again, earning her a mischievous grin from Amanita which had her stepping back. Not fast enough to keep the purple haired woman from grasping her hand, “What are you…?”

Amanita kept smiling, “I’m not interested in him but now that I take a good look at you, you’re pretty cute.”

Yvette was completely unamused, “You know, playing gay chicken is way out of style nowadays, right?”

Amanita’s smug grin did nothing but grow as she watched desperation start to dawn on the pink haired girl’s face.

“There are no chickens here.” She said as she interlaced her fingers with Yvette’s.

“Fine! Okay! Okay!” Yvette pulled back, slipping her hands out of Amanita’s gentle grip, “You made your point. Jeez!” She shook her hands, “What do you want?”

“How about I give you tips on how to better pander to his tastes and, in exchange, you let me know about any rumors going around of me and Barbara.” Amanita would have been disappointed if she didn’t see the glint of recognition in Yvette’s face.

“If I hang around you my purity is in danger.” Yvette said dramatically, and a bit too loud for a library, “Oh woe is me, I am forced to agree. I never thought I’d–”

Amanita crossed her arms and rolled her eyes, “Please, you’re trying to lose it, aggressively so I may add.” Amanita raised her voice to normal volume, which got an aggressive “Shhhhh!” from one of the nearby tables. She hurriedly grabbed the class textbooks and checked them out at the entrance.

Yvette was still tagging along, “Sooo, I guess I’ll see you in class. I’ll make you hold up to your promise.”

“Yeah, yeah. Here’s a freebie: He prefers more mature women so your current approach is doomed to fail. Ditch the style.”

“But I look super cute in it!” Yvette complained.

“You are and that’s precisely the problem. Look, we’ll talk later, I’m busy settling in.” Amanita made to leave.

“Fine, I’ll hold you to your promise.” She said with a pout. After they split up, Amanita tried to find out where Barbara ended up.

Hopefully the giant of a woman didn’t end up having people ask her to step on them. That visit to the mall had been both funny and weird.
______________________________________________________________________________

The apprentice looked up at her master with eyes narrowed in suspicion. In her experience, there was always a scheme at hand whenever he broke routine, such as suddenly deciding to go for lunch to a random shop. As random as things ever were around a master divinator.

What had her more consternated than anything else was the spring in her master’s step. Sure, he was- as the irrational hellions of El Melloi II put it- ‘like that’ but for him to let through even a smidgeon of it in public?

That bore asking. Although only once they were safely ensconced in the heavily warded backseat of his car, of course. She wasn’t a small child who needed to be put under geas to know when to talk.

“Where are we going?” She asked him with crossed arms once she was seated opposite of him with the doors locked and the wards humming along.

“Up until last night I was away from London, so I wasn’t able to give our new Liners a proper welcome. I heard they’re quite something else.” He answered in a deep baritone before chuckling. She just knew that he’d had another piece of horrid wordplay pop into his mind, “Though that scheming old man never did say anything specific.”

“Given they agreed to have a familiar grafted to their soul, yes, I’d concur: They’re something else.” She led on, before letting her real thoughts known, “I have never heard of brainless homunculi, after all. Do you suppose they have ganglia instead, like bugs?”

Her master didn’t say anything as asinine and patronizing as ‘Be nice’ but she could tell he was thinking it! His sigh gave it away! “It’s a bit more complicated than that. Either way, they seem to have taken quite well to the ritual, given that they took care of a fully realized Nidus by themselves.”

“Doesn’t that take either you or nearly two dozen test subjects to do?” Not that it was impressive, anything that could die to human wave tactics wasn’t worth their time of day. Or, well, certainly not her master’s. Why he insisted on sparing those people from having some use to their miserable lives, she’d never understand.

(Nor did she really wish to question it, if the man came to his senses her worthless life would be the first thing cut loose.)

“Only me in this case. Two new species of seaborne were drawn in by the Nidus’ death. They dispatched them in short order, of course, but that’s not what piques my interest.” He replied leadingly.

Much to her shame, she couldn’t take more than a few seconds before cracking and motioning for him to go on. At least he hadn’t forced her to verbalize the question like a smarmy schoolteacher.

“I can only guess.” Her master had the temerity of answering with a too-cheerful smile, even chuckling at the face she made. Taking pity on her, he added, “The old man only said that I should catch lunch with them sometime.”

“Only you would call the Director of the Clocktower an ‘old man’.” She groused even as she admired the sheer power packed in such a small gesture. It was a constant reminder for everyone that her master was on thoroughly cordial terms with the terrifying leader of their entire organization.

Still, for the Director to have ordered (there was no such a thing as a suggestion with the man) her master to meet with these two… “Hmph, they better stand up to expectation, then.”

That seemed to be that on the topic, their conversation shifting to smaller talk of her progress in magecraft (too little, too slow, even if her master would never say so), goings on in her family (frosty, as always) and how her caretaker was doing (the only good point of the entire talk).

Soon enough her master’s car pulled to a stop near a small cafe of the Modern Magecraft district. Two glaringly obvious magi were seated in one of the terrace tables, what with one being deranged enough to have a Magic Crest out in the open. How it was staying as innocuous black ink, she didn’t know, but she knew a Crest when she looked at one and those markings weren’t just a skin-deep mystic code. The fact she was entirely comfortable in a tank top in the middle of October only added to this– the heat of idling circuits would certainly ward off the chill.

It was certainly a statement, though. She doubted anyone in the know other than a particularly suicidal Enforcer would sidle up to them with trouble in mind, not when hideously complex alchemical arrays completely caked the woman from fingertips to neck. As for mundanes, well, the woman was large and muscular enough that with the ‘tattoos’ everyone would rightly assume her a career thug.

Her brain only finally refocused on the duo proper instead of on the absolute flouting of magi decorum an embarrassingly long five seconds later. It helpfully informed her of why she had instantly parsed them as magi– their looks were unnatural. Not overtly so, certainly not enough to have mundanes notice the underlying nature of their beauty, but magi unable to pick up on the subtlest cues would turn to corpses in short order. The taller of the two– and she would tower over even her master should she stand– having a Magic Crest in plain view simply informed her that they were magi instead of homunculi.

Beyond all that… they were frankly unremarkable. Just an oversized punk and a tiny wannabe fashionista, given their respective ensembles.

Her master, as per usual, didn’t seem the slightest bit perturbed by anything about these clowns as they got off the car and made their way over to their table. Little wonder, given how much of one he himself was under his facade.

The fun-sized fool was leaning forward to bite into her sandwich when she spotted the two of them approaching, eyes widening in surprise and recognition before she dropped her food on her plate. The other’s eyebrows hitched before her entire expression shuttered close, mind visibly scrambling under the surface. Both eminently sensible in this at least, it wasn’t every day someone of her master’s standing would deign to approach their ilk during his free time.

They’d have to get used to it. Busy as her master was, he made it his business to mingle with everyone. Whatever ridiculous logic the man had behind that, it certainly worked wonders in defusing the neverending magi spats his position made him responsible for.

“Greetings” He began in his deep timbre, laying on a privacy field at the same time with nothing but a twitch of his finger, “I’m Kirschtaria Wodime, Head of the Evoker Division.” Her eyes narrowed as they subtly reeled in shock at that– did, did they not know who their direct superior was? “And this is my apprentice, Olga Marie Animusphere.”

It was only because of how closely Olga was scrutinizing them that she noticed the flash of pity the moment her master directed their attention to her with that introduction. She had expected surprise, perhaps contempt or wariness, but pity? There was no conceivable way outsiders like them could know about the situation between Wodime, her father, and herself. Not with how short a time they’d been in the Clocktower and how the rumor mill had tossed her on the wayside like yesterday’s garbage months ago. They were certainly special alright, a special kind of suspicious.

“What brings the two of you here?” Vi Mentis asked after she and Helmont finished their own introductions. “We could have met at work.”

“We could have.” Her ridiculous master replied agreeably, a genuine smile plain on his face. “But we’ve been looking for candidates for so long that I simply couldn’t contain myself. Especially when the Director mentioned that I’d find you interesting.”

No surprise there, Wodime may be breathtakingly talented and well-connected, but he was as far from a proper magus as one could be without becoming a disgrace. A definitive stop to the use of expendables in BABEL must be a weight off his shoulders.

Helmont’s expression may be entirely closed off, but there was no missing the tensing of her body. All that exposed skin played against the thug. “We certainly merited an NDA geis with complementary memory wiping.”

“That sounds like him.” Wodime agrees easily, entirely too used to the terrifying man’s policies, “I can certainly sympathize. Whatever I discovered, the geas keeps me from piecing together again.”

Vi Mentis let out a deep sigh, “At least we came out of that conversation with a-”

Any further speech was cut off by the distinct wheeze of a geis seizing and silencing a throat.

“Figures we can’t even vocalize it.” Helmont cut in with a voice between rueful and wry, “I suppose one doesn’t become the ur-senior citizen without a healthy heaping of paranoia.”

“I mean, whatever it is, we agreed to all of these restrictions willingly. So at the very least we know it's something that we would approve of.” Vi Mentis shrugged, “And he at least seems to approve of us, otherwise we wouldn’t even remember that we talked with him.” She paused for a moment, “I think?” She added with uncertainty.

“Let’s not go into the rabbit hole of figuring out how that terrifying old monster thinks. As far as I’m concerned, I had a meeting with him and came out satisfied about whatever the hell I signed, so I’ll trust everything’s alright instead of losing sleep over it.” Helmont groused. Olga was sorely tempted to call her willingness to lie down and let things be disgraceful behaviour for a magus, but she couldn’t exactly bring herself to where the Director was concerned. Sometimes a magus had to pick their battles and work around things, instead of transitioning from walking with death to jumping to its arms.

Her master, for his own part, was positively beaming at their byplay, “We’ll get along swimmingly, I believe.”

Olga conscientiously ignored the little lilt in his voice that gave away her master had some horrible wordplay in his brain. To think once upon a time she’d believed his ‘deep contemplations’ were something admirable.

“So, what’s up with you two?” Vi Mentis rudely pointed her finger at the two of them, how dare she!? “How did Olga end up as your apprentice?”

“Private affairs, none of your concern.” Olga cut in sharply. It was incredibly impertinent of her to speak for her master like this, but the man was getting entirely too chummy with these two and she wouldn’t be taking any chances with him saying something unnecessary. Besides, she’d get away with it, these two in front of her wouldn’t know the first thing about etiquette, while her master was too much of a bleeding heart to do more than tease her behind closed doors.

Vi Mentis looked thoughtful for a moment, or what passed for it in the vapid little fashionista, clearly reaching for whatever conclusion suited the cotton and hot air between her ears. At least Helmont had the common decency to keep her expression schooled, although from the tinge of disinterest in her eyes she may be one of the vanishingly rare people who miraculously didn’t get a sick thrill out of digging into her past.

She was broken out of her musings by her Master plucking a familiar set of marbles from one of his pockets. Each represented a different celestial object in the solar system and arranged as they were being, created a Bounded Field that was nothing short of a microcosm. Only a Clocktower Lord would be able to pierce through this level of barrier without giving themselves away.

It was time for the true crux of this conversation to begin.

Although instead of paying her Master the full and undivided attention he was owed, the tramp and the punk were more busy jolting at the effects of the spell taking hold. The blurring of their surroundings and the abrupt loss of all sound beyond the table was jarring to the novices, she supposed. They certainly lacked the expertise to appreciate the sheer artistry of the Bounded Field.

“Now, I wish to know how you think. Please, walk me through your thought process during the mission.” Wodime began, handily knocking them off their nonsense and to task providing him with information.

The purple tramp didn’t even have the courtesy to stop eating as she got questioned, although she blessedly wasn’t enough of a barbarian to reply with her mouth full. The dumb muscle took that as an excuse to take the lead, her only grace being admitting openly to being an incompetent (if in not so many words) who had clutched on common sense and hunches she theorized came from her Heroic Spirit, who would obviously know better.

She’d call her a charlatan trying to make blind luck come across as insight, but this level of interaction with the Ghost Liner’s psyche was well within expectations.

Besides that, the only thing she’d grant the woman was being in tune enough with her lizard brain to have a degree of prudence in battle– and nowhere else, given how she comported herself. Exposed magic crests.

“Come on, take a seat.” Vi Mentis had taken the chance during a lull in the conversation and gestured Olga towards the empty chair.

“Thanks, but I’ll stand.” Unlike Wodime, her pride won’t allow her to meet these two women whose family names didn’t exist in the Clock Tower until a few days ago as equals. She was the daughter of a Lord! Even if…no, she wasn’t going to let these two show her up.

Vi Mentis gave her a confused look, but the conversation regarding their fight continued. Olga had trouble believing that they just winged it. Surely they must have come up with a proper plan, right? As she listened on, she realized that, outside of the initial (relatively) meticulous disarming of the Nidus, that they basically decided to start showing off. What were they? Children? The subsequent battle was uninteresting, more of one of them wanting to show off until–

“Am I hearing this right?” Olga couldn’t help but to butt in, “Hold on, the conclusion you came up with to defeat the crab was to hit it really hard? You didn’t even find a weak point?”

“Nope! Couldn’t find any!” Someone was excited to talk about it.

“Not for a lack of trying, mind you.” Helmont rumbled, although at least she had the common decency to not pout. Olga wouldn’t have put it past these womanchildren.

“But we only really had to hit it really really hard… together,” Vi Mentis said, pointing with her index finger at Olga, as if she were a teacher correcting a pupil. The idea of her teaching anything was laughable.

Disregarding that, there was a glaring hole in their explanations. “Wait. You said it was your first time fighting together and using your Ghost Liner’s abilities. How did you coordinate your attacks?”

The two just looked at each other, shrugged and answered at the same time

““Teamwork makes the dream work.””

That was it, these two were illogical children and she’d rather rip out her scalp than deal with their stupidity. And why was her Master smiling at that? With a groan of frustration she pulled out the chair and sat on it, arms crossed and eyes focused on Helmont to ignore the purple floozy’s infuriating smugness.

She wasn’t accepting the previous offer, she simply could not take more of this nonsense standing.

“More seriously, though, it was those hunches and impressions we mentioned the spirits feeding us.” Helmont had the common decency to explain, “My guess is that they either have shared history together or both are used to fighting in unorthodox teams.”

“Regardless, we got a few questions of our own.” Vi Mentis said, smugness traded away in favor of tenseness. ‘Good job broadcasting your feelings, maybe you should take notes from the mistress of subtlety in the tanktop.’

“Then I will answer to the best of my abilities.” Her Master said, completely unconcerned.

“We learned that other previous test subjects were used in human wave tactics against the seaborne. Was it you that ordered that?” Vi Mentis asked straight out. Helmont deigned cocking an eyebrow, given the set of her eyes she’d heard enough about her Master to severely doubt he’d ever do such a thing.

“I did not. I take care of the Nidi whenever I have the chance. Unfortunately, I have to deal with a number of affairs outside London on a regular basis.” He got a pained look in his face, “In those cases, the highest authority present does as they see fit.” Olga grimaced at that, she knew all too well how it felt to have one's decisions and wishes ignored, courtesy of her father and peers.

Vi Mentis’ eyes moved between Olga and her master, the purple discs seemingly gleaning some insight because her next words were spot on, “It was Lord Animusphere, wasn't it?” She blurted out without any sense of decorum or consideration. Sure, she was right, but that only made it even more infuriating.

“I don’t think you should be casually throwing accusations like that around.” Olga said coldly. It was one thing to speak ill of one of the Lords, she did it all the time with her Master, but badmouthing her father in front of her was an entirely different matter.

For her part, Vi Mentis was looking properly flustered, like she should be. Olga was about to lay it on her when she heard her Master’s voice, “Come on Olga, it is no secret Lord Animusphere set that protocol and enforces it to the letter.” He was covering for her? A homunculus? She bore her eyes into him only to crash headfirst into his nearly unbreakable facade, leaving her no recourse but to sit back down and skulk.

“Sorry, I’m just not used to…well, mage society in general. We’ve been kind of cut off from it.” Vi Mentis said apologetically as Helmont breathed a deep sigh.

“Nobody’s been enjoying the culture clash, that’s for sure.” The punk grumbled.

Right, homunculi, she shouldn’t expect much of one that wasn’t trained for politics. Having an understandable cause never did and never would be a free pass, however, “Make sure to not make that mistake again.” Olga told sternfully at the shorter homunculus, which rewarded her with a frustrated sigh.

“To put your concerns to rest: The two of you are considered extremely valuable assets, therefore you won’t be thrown away without major extenuating circumstances. Furthermore, anything that carries a significant risk to your lives must be directly approved by me. Yesterday’s event was an exception brought about by all the Lords coming together in their urging to see results.” Olga barely listened to her Master’s explanation, far more concerned with the fact the man was smiling. He never did that in public! “Any other questions?”

“How long until you can summon a spirit of your own?” The punk asked without hesitation, something calculating peeking through her facade, “You like taking matters in your own hands, so I can’t imagine you aren’t working to wiggle out of whatever restrictions prevented you from volunteering in the first place.”

Why, the audacity of this–

Wodime looked up at the sky in contemplation, was he actually going to answer that? Just when Olga thought he was going to outright ignore the question he answered, “As soon as the improvements for the next batch of cards are done and they are actually produced. Quite frankly, you ladies have given us a ridiculous amount of data regarding the process. I should formally congratulate Lord Claschestu for finding such perfect test subjects.” He was quiet for a moment before calmly saying, “As for the timing, I am told they will be ready by new years barring any delays, mid-February if there are.”

“There's always delays.” Vi Mentis commented bitterly.

“Even magic can’t fix human nature.” Helmont said ruefully.

Ending the conversation on that note, her Master and herself said their goodbyes and scooted themselves into the warm confines of their old-fashioned car and left.

______________________________________________________________________________

Master and student, now safely ensconced in a warded room, finally spoke freely.

“What’s up with you?” Olga chastised, “You’re usually able to keep your facade intact. Don’t tell me the prodigy” She spat out that word with disdain. Not too long ago she wouldn’t have dreamed of being so crass with her Master, but if the man was so insistent on hearing her true thoughts he could have them, “Of the clocktower fell for a pair of dodgy homunculi?”

Wodime, beamed her a smile, “Don’t you see? They walked out of the meeting with the old man content. Not scared or bitter, but agreeable.”

“And?”

“That’s how I felt, too.” He was beaming, leaving Olga to heave a deep sigh. Truly, she would never understand how prodigies like him thought.

 

Chapter 7: October 14-October 28 Timeskip


With a couple of slow weeks where the only excitement was monotonous patrols on Tamloc, the homunculus duo was left with nothing to do but pursue their magecraft. For Barbara that meant engaging in the ancient magus tradition of mutilating poor, innocent creatures for the sake of research.

She needed to learn the intricacies of manipulating vitality and from there how to heal and bolster organisms. That, of course, meant something needed to get hurt. From torn off limbs to cancerous growths, her test subjects went through hell all in the name of allowing the alchemist to support her teammates.

Not that anyone minded having lobster on the daily, even if it was a bit misshapen sometimes.

Amanita had said no pets, so the only recourse was to go for food instead.
______________________________________________________________________________

Amanita, for her part, was focusing on improving herself through her magecraft. The Claschestu contacts were a godsend, particularly on the black market and the Department of Botany. Thanks to her (rather insistent) efforts, she had managed to get a small but constant supply of psychoactive materials. After all, the consumption of mind-altering substances was an essential element for most of her self-alteration rituals. Not that they were her current focus.

Amanita knew herself better than anyone, and she knew her own worst tendencies. What had happened with Olga and Wodime was a symptom of that and she really didn’t want to stick her foot in her mouth and piss off a powerful magus. Mostly because that’d mean getting assassinated. As the thought crossed her mind, she realized something, simply her and Barbara’s appearances may tick some magi off.

Amanita sighed, looking at her own reflection in the mirror and turning another page on a small pocket notebook, and she began to write down:

Change 12: Self-Preservation Mode
Activation Condition: Overwhelming fear and/or despair
Emergency Reversal password: agdf2gl8uier6b
Deactivation Password: ‘Strawberry Milkshake’
Effects: Shuts down the feelings by 99%, Prioritize defense of self and others.

Change 13: Sage Mode
Activation Phrase: “Granny Undies” (May be activated by others)
Effects: Kills all libido until I next wake up.

She filled the rest of the pages with arcane diagrams that more accurately explain the change of mental state of each of the conditions. She looked back at the rest of the changes she had made to herself. The first ten pages were simple things like “You like exercising daily” and “Eating healthy comes easy to you” and other aspects of herself that would make maintaining her body way easier. Though, she really wished she’d remember the changes after her eyes left the description in her notebook. Taking a deep breath, she turned to the mirror and began to activate her mystic eyes of enchantment. Her purple eyes changed to a deep crimson as she began to begin the repetitive process of modifying her own mind.
______________________________________________________________________________

Amanita was laying down on the couch with her legs hanging off the armrest, looking through the schedule on her cellphone. Harp lessons, martial arts, physical training. After a few moments in thought, she turned to Barbara, “Hey, should we do some tac-ops training and firearms training?”

“I can teach you the latter if you want. I think the maids said something about firing ranges we could rent?” Barbara said from the whole-ass sofa she was taking up in a boneless sprawl, “Dunno what tac-ops even is, tho.”

Amanita looked past her phone and towards her housemate, “Tactical operations, sort of like SWAT training and that kind of thing. Would help our teamwork, though it's already pretty good.”

“Ah, so shit like callouts and gestures plus breaching protocol.” The larger woman said with a rumble of understanding, “Where would we even sign up for that, though? Magi aren’t exactly team players and Enforcers are more like bounty hunters than proper regimented squads, I think.”

“Hmm? We just take the regular nonmagical training and adapt what we learn there to us. Worst case scenario we bring in Wodime. If we can’t figure it out, he will… though that might be better left for later.” The purple-haired girl replied.

“Yea, save that for after I have you comfortable with some guns, if we are going mundane with this we can’t explain you using a spear.” Barb said with a bob of her head, “It’ll prolly take a week or two to get you up to speed on firearm safety then run you through a few to see what works for you, unless you want to focus down on it hard.”

Amanita frowned and placed firearm training in her to do list, “Probably gonna go with a bit of everything with a focus on handguns and rifles.” She paused for a moment as she thought of something, “A sniper rifle would be pretty useful for any mage that doesn’t have automatic defenses.”

“You’ll need some stealth training or magic to make it work, though.” Her friend pointed out with a lazy wave of her hand, “At least you can turn off your sense of boredom, so sitting in place for half a day waiting for a good shot’s easy.”

“If only I could figure out partitioning and thought acceleration like the Atlas alchemists do. I got an idea on how it’d work but I’m not fiddling in my head to figure that out.” She shrugged, “Anyways, I’m just going to put a tentative date for tac ops training for mid December.”

“Sounds good. Want to do anything special on Christmas or just take a page out of the weeb book and do nothing but chill at home with a big bucket of KFC?” The alchemist asked after a moment, suddenly reminded that the holiday did, in fact, exist. She’d also forgotten about Halloween until just now. She’d definitely be asking the maids for a small mountain of roasted chestnuts. Probably pass them her panellets recipe while at it, get a full castanyada spread.

“Lets just make a reservation at a super fancy restaurant. It’ll be nice and easy.” Amanita said simply.

“If you want to see me squeezed in a fancy dress you just need to ask.” Barbara replied wryly, “But I won’t say no as long as it is somewhere quiet and the food is actually worth the pricetag.”

She had absolutely no patience for bite-sized ‘artistic’ pieces that cost more than her weight in actual food.

“Some of the food at those places can blow your mind.” Amanita casually said, “But anyways, there’s some rumblings that the class wants to make a halloween party. I’ve got a good idea for a costume, though it's gonna be cold.”

“I’m always here if you need to get hot under the collar~” The voluptuous woman said, putting in some work on that voice of liquid sex and even deigning to shift her posture from ‘messy gremlin sprawl’ to ‘limited gacha skin’.

Amanita’s eyes were glued on Barbara as she switched pose, needing a few moments to steel herself and pull her gaze away. “Maybe later.” She said, ignoring the now familiar feeling of arousal. She didn’t want to fall into depravity just yet.

“Suit yourself.” And just like that the sexpot was back to being an oversized cat, “No idea for me, maybe Yukari cosplay to be a little shit? Plus, I’ve got the tits to pull it off.”

“You should go as a FGO character, for shits and giggles.” Amanita said casually, “Raikou would fit you well.”

“Don’t want to associate myself with the mommy fetish Berserker, even if her getup is the stuff of doujinshis.” Barbara countered, “Maybe the fat titty smut author?”

“That’s barely a costume.” Amanita countered back, “But suit yourself, at least you won’t be cold. Really though, London weather can just go fuck itself.”

“What’s your costume anyways?” Barbara asked.

“Hmm, a pumpkin witch I guess.” Amanita answered, “A sexy one, I found a seamstress and put in a commission.” Having a shitton of expendable income was great.

The taller woman gave a long, silent look at the pint sized girl’s hair. She came to a solid practical: “I’ll go as Koakuma, then.”
______________________________________________________________________________

Amanita tapped her pen against her desk impatiently as she watched Waver, formally known as Lord El Melloi II, berate one Flat Escardos for the umpteenth time. It’d been amusing at first, but by now it was nothing but an annoying, persistent interruption. She had completely forgotten that while the Clock Tower was technically a university, in practice the students were younger. At least the ones in the El Melloi Classroom were, anyway. Blessedly, it was only Flat and Svyn that caused trouble, mostly Flat.

The material wasn’t particularly complicated, the topic was mostly on how magecraft interacted with technology, especially computers. It had a lot to do on how magecraft uses metaphors and representations for its rituals, while computers used representations for most of what users see. What you saw on the monitor was a representation of a particular arrangement of electrons deep in the machine which limited what could be done with them. It had given her ideas on how to do some…things.

She really felt for Waver though, having to deal with a little shit disrupting class really grates on one’s nerves. Looking over at the other students, most were simply slacking off as the berating continued, although Luvia was tapping her finger against her desk.

Effortlessly crushing the part of her that wanted to just fish out her phone and mess around, she sighed and looked on, resting her cheek on her palm with half-lidded eyes. “Professor, if you're that annoyed at him I could make him believe that his throat is too sore to speak.”

Lord El Melloi II let out a loud sigh as he loosened his vice grip on the student’s face, “He would figure out a way to get into trouble anyways.” His annoyed gaze zeroed in on both Amanita and Barbara, but before either of them could figure out if he meant anything by it, he walked back to the podium and shuffled his notes around.

“Aww come on Amy, I wouldn’t be able to answer any questions if you did that.” The blonde kid looked at her with puppy dog eyes.

Amanita rolled her own, “Those won’t work on me and don’t call me Amy.” She could swear it was the third time she’d had this exact same exchange with him this week.

He simply laughed and jumped over the desk and onto his seat at the front as if nothing had happened. Class certainly continued as such. Not that Amanita could throw any stones, used as she’d become to it.

Idly scanning the classroom, she noted that the students she didn’t recognise from the anime were the same ones who were struggling to parse anything touching on the working of computers. Probably dropouts, then.

Also, Yvette still hadn’t taken Amanita’s advice about dressing more maturely. Whatever, her loss.
______________________________________________________________________________

The first thing the homunculus duo noticed as they entered Fiorekis’ office was him drinking orange soda of all things. So long as he didn’t give them the hangover surprise again, he could be chugging diesel for all Barbara cared.

The Lord of Archeology looked up from the pile of papers he was signing: Authorizations to get into a vault, department purchases for rare ritual ingredients, ritual room expenses and a dozen other miscellanea.

There were a pair of large embroidered envelopes with their full names written in gold leaf sitting conspicuously in front of their chairs.

“So, who’s getting married?” Barbara asked with a raised eyebrow. Someone had to break the ice.

“Technically, you two.” Fiorekis said without missing a beat, eyes back on his paperwork.

“You’re joking.” Amanita said with narrowed eyes and crossed arms as she sat.

There was a long pause before Fiorekis let out a sigh, “Of course I am. But that doesn’t mean that this isn’t serious. To be brief: The Claschestu branch families are upset and demand an explanation as to why I chose a pair of nobodies as my wards instead of any of their ranks.”

“Troublesome.” Barbara grunted.

“Quite. I did not want to let them meet you because, frankly, you two would humiliate yourselves and me in turn.” He said blandly, sparing them a glance fit to suck the color out of a rainbow.

“But you’ve been left with no other choice.” Amanita brought a palm to her face, “We’re fucked, aren’t we?”

“All you need to do is impress them and they will quiet down.” Fiorekis continued, “For both our sakes’, brush up on your etiquette. The maids should be more than capable of instructing you.”

“No way out of this, huh?” Barbara sighed, shoulders slumping.

“If you’re confident in fending off enough assassination attempts they give up, by all means.” Fiorekis drawled dryly.

Amanita’s groan said everything in that regard.

“I recommend you show off your Crests as much as possible.” The seer said, getting back on track as if there had been no interruptions at all.

It was a good thing there were no dogs anywhere in the department given the pitch at which Amanita whined when she recalled the extent of her Crest. “How much time do we have?”

“29th of November. That’s the furthest I could push it back by making it a grand event.” The blonde said like a man staring down the gallows.

“...Hey, Amanita, can you set up anything if we get access to the loc before the event?” Barbara asked, a touch of hope entering her voice. Her magecraft wouldn’t be of any real use here, but Ms Mindfuck may have something up her sleeve.

Amanita balled up her hand into a loose fist and tapped her lips with it as she thought about her options, perusing the library of knowledge that was her Crest. “I could make a spell storage type bounded field. It would need to be subtle so instead of having a variety of spells to call on demand…hmmm.” She began talking, eyes glazed over as her gaze focused on what appeared to be a pen scattered on Fiorekis’ desk, “I have some candidates but I’m not sure if they’re compatible. I could try to stealthily cast the spells without it but it would be unviable.” Her gaze turned back to Barbara, “I think I can work something out.”

“See to it that you aren’t caught.” Was all Fiorekis had to say in the matter. Magi.
______________________________________________________________________________

Back in the basement, the pair saw their coffins had a new addition in the form of high-tech chests reaching up to Barbara’s knees. Practically sprawled over one of them to reach the back, a mop of purple hair wiggled to a cheerful tune as she finished connecting the device to its matching pod. That done, she stood up, wiping sweat from her brow with her sleeve.

“Oh! It’s the girls of honor.” The girl said, grinning ear to ear, “And you brought your mystic codes and a spare set of clothing. Perfect!” She clapped her hands together, only to freeze up all of a sudden, “Oh, where’s my manners!” The woman bowed with a hand flat against her chest, “I’m Sion Eltam Sorakis, Atlas Liaison. A pleasure.”

It felt weird, seeing a genuine smile on the face of a magus. They hadn’t seen anything of the sort since their meeting with Wodime, and even his smile was steeped in etiquette lessons.

Shaking the depressing thought off, the pair introduced themselves with bows of their own.

“So, what’ve you gotten for us there?” Barbara asked curiously.

“I’m glad you asked! These are Information Conversion Units, anything that’s placed inside can be taken to Okeanos and back freely.” A short pause and a sheepish look, “Don’t ask me how they work, the last five people gave up before I was even halfway through.”

“Mystery boxes yaaay.” Barbara deadpanned before snorting.

“The best kind of boxes.” Amanita joked with a smile.

Sion laughed, “Oh, I’m going to love running into you two in the future. Anyways, just put the things you want to bring with you in one of these babies.” She leaned down and tapped at the top of one of the machines with the palm of her hand, “And they’ll be with you when you get in.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it! Just drop your stuff in there and get in your coffin.” Sion seemed really proud of herself at that, “Now, I gotta get going, I hear today is an important day.”

With that, she left with a wave. After that it was the same old, same old beyond plopping in their luggage on the ICUs. A practiced exhale as the goop came up to their faces and they opened their eyes in the white walls of Tameloc… and found themselves standing next to a pair of gray cubes. A single tap and they faded into golden light, leaving their equipment on a neat pile in the floor.

“Handy.” Barbara said as she strapped in a bevy of belts before shrugging on her jacket. She wasn’t about to get changed in front of mission control, which meant the plugsuit stayed on. At the same time, it felt weird to put on much clothing on top of the suit, so just her jacket and some extra storage space would do.

The hope was that the contents would transfer to the hip storage of her armor when she activated her card.

That done she slung over Lockstock and she was good to go.

Amanita, for her part, picked up the outfit she had dubbed her work outfit, smiling as she put on the purple suit jacket and skirt. The same clothes she had during the first day here. It felt so right to use this for work that she had gotten a few copies custom-made just in case. After examining her short spear, she put it into a holster on her back.

“Here's to hoping this is going to be an uneventful mission.” Amanita groaned.

“You just jinxed us, want to bet on how wrong it’ll go?” Barbara said with a toothy smile. Bloodthirsty bitch.

"A giant attack like the one when we destroyed the first nes- Nidus. Duh." She corrected herself with a groan. "Probably going to hit us from below to be extra spicy."

“Eh, I’m thinking more a big bastard jumping over the walls. What’re the stakes?” The giant of a woman asked as she checked over her grenades.

"Hundred pounds." Amanita gave her spear another look over before sheathing it again.
______________________________________________________________________________

Amanita grumbled as she finished up a small group of Sea Snails that had gotten curious. By her count they had killed about fifty so far as the Magi continued building the final batch of permanent defenses.

“This is boring. Aren’t these disasters supposed to come right when we lower our guards?” Barbara whined. The novelty of getting to actually use her shotgun had worn off by the twentieth snail.

"Obviously, we didn't let our guard down so it didn't happen." These fights were the worst: Just enough to keep her attention, not enough to be engaging, "I expected something. There's more enemies than in the patrols."

“But they’re pissing away any damage they could do by coming at us piecemeal.” The alchemist said with a shake of her head.

"So we go back to my theory of something coordinating them." She looked straight at Barbara, "Well, whatever that is, it's not paying attention nor care about our defenses." A short pause, "Which is kind of worrying now that I've said it."

“Just about. Let’s hope that if it exists, it is just busy with something else in the sea.” The taller woman said.

“Think the crab that was leading them was like some kind of field commander? It seemed like he was some kind of wave boss.”

“It wasn’t particularly smart, maybe more like a Tyranid relay unit or however they’re called?” Barbara mused. “Hm, kinda looking forward to something raid boss grade, once the Evoker division is really up and running.”

"Hive Lord? Zoanathrope?" Amanita recited half-remembered unit names, "Don't know shit about Tyranids besides them being space bugs. Whatever, what do you think the next seaborn is gonna look like?"

“Bobbit worm, maybe.” Barbara said with a shrug. “Assuming all the big gribbles are plated up, at least.”

“I'm thinking a shark.” Amanita said without a doubt in her mind, “Or megalodon.”

“So shark or big shark.” The alchemist said with a snort.

“They're cool.” Amanita shrugged.
______________________________________________________________________________

“Why do they keep their comms open all the time?”

“To torture us with the banality of their conversations?”

“Joke’s on you. I’m getting in on that betting pool.”