Chapter Text
I take a look at the screen. It seems to be shaky and not the highest quality, likely from a camera drone livestreaming, but the contents were clear. Melpomene, Nanaya, Amalthea, Anath, and the weird robot thing were all clearly visible and attacking the local Earth Guardians, all of whom also seemed to be present. The sheer destruction being wrought here was immense. The dorm building I was living in just two hours ago was already in ruins and many of the neighboring structures seemed to be doing no better.
Was this what Luna was so scared of? Did she know the Dark Rebellion were going to attack here? Shit, that’s probably why she sent me away! She didn’t want me to get caught up in the crossfire here. Because it’s not like this was going to be a clean brawl. I can already see one emergency responder lying motionless on the ground. Buildings collapsing also don’t tend to be bloodless affairs. People are dying here. Luna knew about this. She knew about this and was powerless to stop it.
But where is she? In a fight that seems to include every magical girl seen in the area, my friend is suspiciously absent. Sure it’s possible that just because she can use magic well enough to mimic speaking, that doesn’t mean she’s useful in combat, but it also doesn’t NOT mean that. She knows magic of some kind, and we as humans have yet to see an instance of someone capable of using magic who is incapable of using it in combat.
Maybe she got captured by the guardians earlier, if she was forced to do something to sabotage them. Heck maybe her job was done and she also took the opportunity to get out of town while she could. No, she probably would have come with me if she did that. I mean, of course she would have wanted to come with her best friend, right?
No, now is not the time for distracting myself with self-deprecation. I need to see what happens.
Castalia and Melpomene are duking it out. It seems Luna was not exaggerating when we discussed Castalia’s power, this woman is insanely destructive when she wants to be. Somehow though, her opponent seems to be even more so. Melpomene’s transformation seems to have given her an extra set of arms and replaced her legs with a snake’s tail, but the even greater transformation is her personality. Gone is the awkward passionate woman we saw in the interview and investigation videos. Now… now she’s absolutely frothing with hatred. Hatred towards the woman who was her oldest friend. With the purple lightning going everywhere, her visage sends shivers down my spine. She’s terrifying.
Castalia and Melpomene seem mainly focused on each other, but for the rest of the combatants it seems to be in a chaotic and violent melee. I watch the bestial Anath hunt down the two younger guardians, while Amalthea, Nanaya, and the robot brawl with Amaterasu and Minerva. I don’t even know what’s happening anymore. It’s a mess of incantations, spells, and explosions. But then, in an instant Amaterasu teleports across the battlefield and scores what seems to be a decisive strike on the robot, cleaving open its arm. It seems like a general victory for the team of not insane people, but then a massive amount of teal gas comes spewing out of the robot from its damaged arm knocking out Amaterasu.
I may not have much experience with magic, but I’ve picked up some of the basics from being around Luna and friends for a few days. Namely, what each of the magic colors represent, and that teal magic is really fucking bad.
They’re powering the robot with despair magic? That’s… odd. None of the members of the DR are teal, and none of them seemed particularly out of it during the interviews. Amalthea has the closest natural color and she still seemed not in that kind of state. So where are they getting all this hopelessness from to power the robot?
…no.
No please no.
Oh God that’s horrifying.
Please don’t tell me that they are using my best friend as an emotional battery for a combat robot!
That’s… comedically cruel. It’s like something out of a cartoon. Hell it’s something that would fit right in with the image of the preservers the Dark Rebellion seems to believe in. They were showing these mass powerplants to harvest emotions for the preservers and talking about how this is awful but now the DR is using that exact same thing on my innocent friend?
I’d call it preposterous if it wasn’t so obviously the right answer here. Plus it’s not like being comedically cruel matters to these people apparently since they decided to randomly cause a battle on a college campus.
Soon after the teal gas venting I see Minerva line up to take a shot on that robot. Good. I hope she rips it apart and reduces any components it could use to hurt anyone to ash. But as the spell is about to be unleashed, something unexpected happens.
Anath tackles the robot out of the way, taking a nasty wound from Minerva’s lightning spell in the process. Then the furry monstrosity tries to say something to the robot. I can’t hear the words she’s saying over the absolute cacophony of combat, but the simple action is odd. It’s a robot, why would this child-fighting monster try to take a blow for it and then speak to it? Is there some kind of hidden weapon they need the robot for? I shudder to thank at how many more cruelties this machine was capable of inflicting.
The oddities continue to pile up afterwards as the robot proceeds to grab its rescuer and use her as an unwilling projectile on Amaterasu. What is going on here? Is the programming faulty, did whoever made that thing just forget that the robot shouldn’t attack its own side? So it’s not only a horrific war crime of an invention but it also doesn’t even work properly!
The fight continues. Castalia burns Melpomene with a laser. Melpomene knicks her with her lance. Amalthea buffs the robot. Minerva manages to smack the robot into the path of one of Nanaya’s attacks. It’s chaotic and hard to follow as one would expect with ten different combatants on the field. But eventually someone manages to seize the upper hand.
…the upper lightning hand holding Castalia in place.
Melpomene in her monstrous form looms over the ordinary looking girl as silence falls over the chaos of the battlefield. Minerva tries to free her superior but is quickly batted aside. With the futility of interruptions established, the other combatants merely stand and watch in bated breath to see what happens.
I find myself shaking. This can’t be the end. It’s Castalia. Castalia! She’s the strongest earth guardian. She can’t just lose to her psycho ex-teammate. I can hear nervous murmurs from the rest of the crowd that has gathered to watch this tragedy.
With the absence of combat going on I find I can actually hear what the two are speaking, and I find that I hate this woman more than I ever thought I could. She’s doing all this. All this chaos, destruction, death, and downright torture, because she thinks it’s what her old partner would have wanted?! She’s so completely off her rocker it would be funny if she didn’t have the most powerful person in the world at her mercy!
And then… then… she takes Castalia's stone, this magical artifact of overwhelming power, and crushes it into dust. It emits a small supernova of power in the process, but Melpomene seemingly doesn’t even care. She just crushed the life of her old friend who she didn’t think was sad enough about their old partner dying.
Without her stone the strongest woman in the world erupts into light once more, transforming back to her human form. Castalia’s human form is one of the great mysteries of magical theory. The girl spends ALL of her time transformed, so this naturally poses a question of why. I was a dozen feet away from the answer when I lived in her dorm, yet I refused to invade her privacy on what was clearly a deeply personal topic. Nevertheless, it seems I will get the answer on this.
I gasp as the light fades from Castalia’s body, and reveals that the strongest woman in the world could pass for the weakest one if you didn’t know. Her body is withered and weak, and likely would even have issues standing up. It’s a haunting sight. One that I’m going to remember for the rest of my days.
And one I won’t get to witness for long as Melpomene drops her.
The greatest hope of humanity is falling towards the ground at a pace that will likely kill her. This woman who was a walking bundle of joy who let me into her life despite no period connection, is about to die. My knees which have managed to hold steady throughout this horror story break down and I find myself on the ground, still unable to rip my eyes away from the screen
Please!
Someone!
Anyone!
Help her!
Minerva starts to move, but she’s slow. She won’t be enough, not by herself.
But then someTHING else answers my prayer.
The weird robot breaks out of its statue-like stillness to rocket down towards Castalia’s falling body. With the help of Minerva, the piece of metal I hate most in the world gently catches the falling hero. Looking nothing like the death machine it had been since the fight began.
Why is it doing that? Is it broken? Did someone fry the circuits? Because after it threw Anath and saved Castalia it looks like it doesn’t… even… want to be fighting?
Oh.
Oh no.
Oh …shit.
This.. this is horrifying.
They aren’t just fueling the robot with Luna’s emotions. She’s being forced to pilot it. She’s being forced to go into the murder death machine and fight all of her friends to the death.
That’s the single most terrifying fate I can ever think of.
And going off the first reported sightings of the robot, this has been happening for months. Ever since Luna’s disappearance last spring.
How often do they let her out?
…does she even get let out?
The Luna I met couldn’t open her mouth in front of anyone else. She had to use magic of some kind to speak and Chloe suspects she has an eating disorder because of how little she eats. What if that’s not because she has a mutated mouth? What if she doesn’t have a mouth at all?
I want to scream, but I also don’t want to. Because my best friend can’t even do that.
Looking back at the stream I can see my friend’s slaver order her to stop helping Castalia. A command she seemingly must obey despite whatever allowed her to take such actions before.
Despite this tiny glimpse of hope. It seems nothing has changed. Melpomene is going to murder Castalia and keep my best friend as her personal slave. Castalia seems to have other ideas though, and speaks five words that change everything.
"I Kɴᴏᴡ Wʜᴏ I Aᴍ."
I’ve never heard those words before (at least not through the wall and door) but I know what they mean. That’s a transformation phrase. She’s transforming again. Even after her transformation stone was physically destroyed in front of her.
That shouldn’t be possible.
Everything we know says it shouldn’t be.
Castalia, of course, transforms anyways because she does not care about what regular people think is impossible.
"Lᴏᴠɪɴɢ Dᴇsᴛʀᴏʏᴇʀ Dᴇᴠᴏᴛᴇᴅ Cᴀsᴛᴀʟɪᴀ," are the words she utters from her mouth, and everything changes. The Dark Rebellion begins falling back and Melpomene is seemingly unable to cope with her ex-partner refusing to die. She even pulls out her catharsis which summons monsters (how blatant could she get that she’s a horrible person), but it doesn’t matter at this point. The momentum has clearly been lost, and the group is retreating.
All of them.
Including Luna.
I finally understand, and now she’s going to disappear again. I abandoned her again, when she needed me most, and there’s nothing I can do anymore.
Is this going to be the last time I ever see her? Will she come out as a horrific monstrosity? Can anyone even help her now?
Then just before they enter the portal. Melpomene stops and shouts at Luna. "Artifact! Kill them all. Hold absolutely nothing back."
For the third time today I am at a loss. Melpomene just callously order what she has to know is a human being to go on a suicide mission to try to kill people she cares about. Because she knows Luna couldn’t win this fight against all four of them. Even with Minerva pursuing Melpomene into the dark world, Castalia alone could win this fight in an instant if she wanted to. Melpomene’s orders here… this is just casually murdering someone by proxy. I… didn’t think I could hate someone this much. I don’t want to hate someone like this… but somehow everything this woman does seems to be defined by casual cruelty and pettiness. She’s somehow the worst person I’ve ever seen but also… pathetic in a way.
Following the order, for once Luna does not immediately engage in action in that cold metallic body. She just stands there… staring ominously. Like a statue. The guardians just stand by, not really sure what to do in this situation. Then all of a sudden you can hear a crack as she straightens up and looks straight at Castalia in her cold unblinking eyes. Three simple words emanate from her that will haunt me for the rest of my life.
"Pʟᴇᴀsᴇ, Hᴇʟᴘ Mᴇ."
Teal Light engulfs my friend’s robotic body as she begins to change. Incarnate forms are supposed to represent someone’s true self. What they believe themselves to be in their heart. The trend is not broken here, merely showing the opposite side of the coin.
The robotic body my friend has been trapped in shifts to become moderately more human, gaining a face and hair, on the other hand massive chains engulf her entire body, making it so she cannot even move naturally. 6 flying blades surround her, but even they are chained to her body.
In the depths of her heart. My friend knows she is truly bound, and that it is woven into the core of her being. I can’t even cry at this point, so much of it must have worn me out. My entire body is numb at this point and I can barely even muster a reaction.
"Lᴀᴍᴇɴᴛɪɴɢ Wᴇᴀᴘᴏɴ Cʜᴀɪɴᴇᴅ Mᴜʀᴀᴍᴀsᴀ."
A weapon, that is what she calls herself. She doesn’t even consider herself her own person at this point. Other guardians are named after gods and heroes. Luna is named after a weapon, Muramasa. It is the name chosen for her by the stone. I refuse to acknowledge that. Luna is Luna. She chose that name for herself, and I refuse to disrespect that.
Gasps emanate from the crowd around me who was not witness to the inside information I was. Because it’s obvious now, the seemingly soulless robot was a person the entire time, and desperately did not want to be here. Yet still, there’s nothing they can do either. A cavalcade of horrors has unfolded before us on this television, and there is nothing anyone can do except watch.
Luna strikes without warning, shooting beams out of her 6 blades to barrage all of the guardians at once. It is an incredibly intricate weapon that no human would have the mental capacity to use, but as we know, Luna isn’t human anymore.
Her deadly assault quickly manages to cause grievous injury to Amaterasu, and Castalia forces the three other remaining guardians to leave. Probably for the best, I don’t know just how much Luna interacted with these other three guardians, but I know she would hate hurting them. Yet that is what she has been forced to do, and then the horror from that blow is used to fuel the next.
The fight continues now exclusively between the two kindest people I’ve ever met, neither of whom wants this to be happening. Yet happen this fight shall. It quickly becomes difficult to follow. Luna’s multiple weapons and Castalia’s raw power means that so much is going on at any given moment, yet individual moments still manage to stick out.
"Aʙʀᴇᴀᴄᴛɪᴏɴ: I'ᴍ Sᴏʀʀʏ," Luna states in a flat tone. As if it were an every day occurrence and not the existential horror she is forced to use to attack her idol with.
I’m sorry Luna.
I’m sorry I couldn’t help you.
I’m sorry I wasn’t good enough.
The fight continues, I don’t even know what the good outcome is here. There’s not a battle in the center of the mind going on here, I know better than to hope that. Luna wins, and Castia dies, or Castalia wins, and Luna dies. Is it selfish of me to say that I don’t know which one I would hate more?
Luna, on the other hand, has a clear opinion on the topic.
"Cᴀᴛʜᴀʀsɪs: A Pʀᴀʏᴇʀ Tᴏ Tʜᴇ Eɴᴅ," she incants.
The lasers from her weapons begin inscribing a casting upon the ground, and soon a giant beam erupts from it. Castalia responds with a Catharsis that might as well be her own rebuttal to Melpomene’s idiocy. The resulting clash causes so much light to be emitted that the stream just goes completely white.
It remains as such for some time. I don’t know what is happening, and I suspect there are only two people in the world who do at this moment. I was not good enough to be one of them. All I can do is hurry up and wait. Wait to see which of my friends is dead.
Eventually light begins to return to the edges of the screen, even if I can’t initially see it through my tears.
The vision returning to the drone’s footage eventually confirms that, mercifully, there are two combatants still remaining upright in this clash. Yet that mercy cannot last forever. I know there’s only one way this ends.
Castalia’s face twitches. A shred of the boundless emotion she wields manages to make itself visible on her face for only a moment. I cannot read emotions like the guardians can, but I know whatever passed was something significant. A greater experience than I'd ever seen from her before.
“Okay,” her normally passive lips push out.
Wait what?! What’s she responding to here? What question was asked?
"Cᴀᴛʜᴀʀsɪs: Sᴜᴘᴇʀɴᴏᴠᴀ Bʀᴇᴀᴋᴇʀ!" Castalia incants.
Once again Castalia defies all expectations of what is possible here, and the outcome of this is made clear.
Luna doesn’t even try to make any kind of evasive maneuvers before it happens, she knows what is coming. I unfortunately suspect she is looking forward to it.
The stream goes white once again. Only this time, it does not return to the scene eventually. Merely a static “signal not found” image that says all there is to know. Castalia won here, and there’s no way Luna survived that.
My best friend of I-don’t-even-know-how-many-years is dead.
She died helpless, alone, and hoping for the end.
I couldn’t do anything to save her.
I abandoned her.