Chapter Text
I spin in the air, Minerva’s blast arcing over my back and Aurora’s bolt flying across my front. I’m in a bad spot, too deep in the liminal space, my only hope for refuge is a Dark World portal of questionable stability about ninety yards ahead. Aurora, Veritas, and Minerva are all here, trying to corral me into a position where they can pummel and restrain me. Not happening, sorry, order #1 means I can’t let y’all destroy me, or put me in a situation where I would be destroyed (like being peeled apart by extradimensional cats).
“Keep going team! We almost have it!” Minerva shouts, and unfortunately she’s mostly correct. I’m down to less than 30% power from all the teleports I’ve had to burn in order to slip from their clutches, and they still believe I have limited fuel.
I somersault through the air and a window to put me inside a building, but Veritas crashes right through the adjacent window before I have a change to teleport or even try to hide. The tiny knight has been on my six this entire battle. It’s been rough, but she’s more determined than ever to catch me, especially since I’ve rotated and thrown her at least three times in this fight alone.
“Don’t you dare-“ She starts, but I do dare.
“[F ʟ ᴀ s ʜ D ᴀ ɴ ᴄ ᴇ]” I incant, teleporting through the liminal house and back outside, 33 yards and closing, almost there, hopefully they don’t follow me in like last time(s).
23 yards, my shields absorb a direct hit from Minerva, I’m down to 24% power.
17 yards, I parry a pair of strikes from Aurora’s orbs, down to 21% power.
11 yards, I rotate Veritas, firing a Megabuster shot to try and keep her away, she blocks with her shield, and I’m down to 17%
4 yards, the three of them all lunge at me in a last ditch effort to take me down. My shields are reduced to 9%.
I skid to a halt inside the Dark World fragment, my systems have only negligible damage, magic sealing is intact, only superficial damage to my exterior plates. Now, where the flying fuck have I ended up? It reminds me of some kind of quarry, a deep, and wide hole in the ground with several sections dug out to create natural walkways. Remnants of construction equipment and mining vehicles would lend further credence to that theory. It’s pretty neat seeing some Antipathy vehicles, actually, I wonder if any of them are still working? I wonder if I could drive any of them?
The downside to the way this quarry is designed, is that I am sitting in the bottom of what might as well be an open field in a crater, nothing I could possibly hide behind, and the portal is severely unstable, if anything else moves through it, it’ll probably destabilize for a day or so, but the Earth Guardians outside should know this too, and are probably just going to try and wait me out-
“Remembrance Burst!” Veritas comes streaking through the portal, firing a blast directly at where I had been standing a tenth of a second earlier. Great, she’s here, I just need to throw her back through the portal before it collapses and strands us both here.
Oh, great, there’s Minerva and Aurora too, they seem to have all been so focused on capturing me that they didn’t process how volatile the portal was. I forgot that humans can’t think in bullet time. It’s fine, it’s fine, this is fine, I just need to teleport past them with the power I don’t have and into the portal that has just fucking destabilized.
Great. This is great. Shit. Time to evaluate my options.
Option 1: Escape. Not viable, I’m in too wide open of an area, my power is too low for any further damage or mobility spells, and Earth Guardians outpace me a hundred times over in wide open environments like this.
Option 2: Attack. Also not viable, I couldn’t beat them as a group even at full power, my odds of success against Veritas and Aurora are solid, but Minerva is just too good at being a child soldier and living superstorm that there’s nothing I can really do about that.
So, door number three it is. I’m ordered to maintain my existence as a soulless, unthinking, unfeeling machine at all costs except my own life. Thanks for that Mel, your explicit prioritization here is actually helpful. Hmm, what to say? Oh, I should probably move first, Veritas is dangerously close to skewering me with that lance.
“Truce!” I shout, throwing up my hands. “Parley! Don’t attack me please!”
I am immediately hit with a wave of confusion originating from all three of them. They aren’t putting down their weapons, but they’ve also stopped immediately blasting me.
“You can talk!?” Both Veritas and Minerva ask simultaneously.
“Yes! I can talk! I’m a person! I’ve got a soul! Are you still going to try and capture me now?” I still feel confusion and uncertainty from the Blue and Green mages, but a wave of raw, unfiltered vindication drowns them both out.
“I knew it! I knew she was a person!” Aurora whoops, and yeah, I had a feeling she was figuring me out, the girl might be a better empath than Anath.
“But- how is it a person?” Minerva asks.
“Oi! I’m a she! Not an it, lightning rod! I’m a person because I was built like one! I think therefore I am, y’know? I have wants, desires, preferences, all that jazz! I like card games, anime, video games, and cooking!” I leave out music, because that would give me one too many commonalities with Human Luna that Eliza might actually get suspicious.
The girls look to Minerva for guidance, and the girl floats down to the ground, still with her staff drawn, glaring at me as she approaches. Reading all their emotions paints an interesting picture. Veritas is still eager to put my metal ass in the dirt, Aurora is eager to get to know me (or just to learn more?), and Minerva is cautiously optimistic, of all things.
“Okay… You’re a person, how did this happen? Are you some kind of Antipathy weapon designed to seem human, or are you like, a brain in a jar or something?” Oh my god that’s right she’s been watching more cartoons as Minerva, that’s so fucking funny.
“Closer to option B! Though if I was option A I would probably lie about it, but I will refute that by saying that the Antipathy had never known humanity was a thing. How would they know how humans are built? But, regardless of that, we have bigger problems.” I point behind them all.
“Portal’s gone, we’re stuck here.” Drake, where’s the door hole?
Aurora and Veritas turn around to see the collapsed rift, and Minerva keeps me in her line of sight while doing the same. All of them start building up more and more fear. Minerva’s breath catches, Veritas’ eyes start darting around the area, and Aurora…
“Oh no, oh no oh no oh no! Mama is going to be so worried, we-we have to get back!” Aurora starts panicking, already her incarnate form’s magic becoming slightly unstable.
“Hey hey! It’ll be fine! Probably, this fragment should re-converge in about-“ Okay let’s see, Thea and Melpomene fed me this equation directly so let’s see how long until… fuck. “-twenty-eight hours, alright that’s not desirable but we can make it out of this!” I attempt to preserve morale, poorly.
“TWENTY-EIGHT HOURS?! Not even Minerva can hold her incarnate form that long, we’re going to have to sleep eventually or eat or-!” Okay, I’m ending this doom-spiral right now kid, you’re a yellow mage, not a green mage.
“[Sᴋᴇᴛɪsᴏʜ]” I cast, and suddenly my arms are filled with snack foods and groceries. I only pulled out some of the stuff, bread, cheese, some apples, peanut butter, and the gatorade. The girls all react to my sudden casting by all spinning and aiming their various magic weapons at me.
“I have snacks, please don’t blast me.” I hold the bag of food towards them as a peace offering, they’re on edge, but I’ve accomplished my goal of distracting Aurora.
Veritas glares at me, not lowering her weapon even a little. “How do we know you haven’t poisoned them or something?”
“I was buying groceries before you all attacked me. I was going to take them back to the Castle so Nanaya can make paellas. I’m not going to poison my roommates and mechanic, I like most of them!” Not entirely untrue, I had bought groceries earlier in the day as Luna Clio Babbage, and was only out of my skinsuit to do some recon on this exact Dark World fragment.
“Most of them?” Minerva raises an eyebrow. Crap! Deflect, deflect!
“…I’m still mad at Anath for all the times she made me run snack errands at threat of sneaking out when she wasn’t supposed to, and for trashing that pet store, that was rude.” Minerva likely doesn’t know that I know that she is also Fulgora, so from her perspective, I might just be upset about Anath committing property damage to a place that she thinks that I think is completely unrelated to her. Wait, I have another way to appeal to her, duh!
“And I’m still upset with Nanaya for how she uh, almost killed two of you. I kinda guilt-tripped her into letting me pay your hospital bills.” I continue, and Aurora perks up.
“That was you!? Mama said she thought the hospital just decided not to charge us because I'm an Earth Guardian.”
“Yup, that was me, sorry again about the head trauma and normal trauma she gave you.”
Aurora looks at my selection of food offerings suspiciously. “…What kind of paella uses apples and peanut butter?”
“I was buying other things too, sometimes Nana makes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I have the rice and chorizo and stuff still cozy in my pocket dimension that I put things in, that’s what that spell is.” I cast it again, hiding the food away where it can’t get corrupted by miasma if that is even a thing.
“If you are willing to share that food with us… thank you, but it doesn’t solve our biggest problem, which is that the mists will be corrupting us when we are out of our incarnate forms, but I suppose that would be what your masters want, right?” Minerva accuses and… Shit, she’s not completely wrong.
Melpomene would be delighted for the three to four active Earth Guardians in the area to be all corrupted and transformed, wouldn’t she? She was practically salivating over the idea back when Minerva stormed the Castle then sheepishly floated away. Is there nothing I can do? Even if there was, could I even bring myself to do it? Would I be forced to let these children leave themselves unprotected from the miasma just because Melpomene would get a kick out of it?
No. No, there has to be a way I can help them, Thea would be miserable if this happened, and Melpomene would in turn be upset that Thea was upset. It would also likely force the Preservers to bring in even more supporting Earth Guardians from other regions, which would make our jobs harder, and therefore would make Melpomene more upset. It would be a short-term dose of satisfaction for her, which would fuck up our plans long-term. Not to mention the fact that Minerva and her girls might just say ‘fuck it, we’re being corrupted anyway!’ and storming the Castle.
Okay, I can attempt to help them, but how? I’ve seen the Miasma repelling machines that Thea’s built for the Dark Rebellion, I’ve even helped her perform maintenance on them, if I just pull up those memory files… There, I can build one of those! I just need some raw materials and magic. The latter of which can be provided by the three Guardians, and the former of which can be found in the ruins just outside this quarry, hopefully. Now I just need to convince them to help me build the thing.
“Melpomene might think it would be poetic, but I think it would be cruel, so if you want, I can try and recreate the machine Thea uses to protect the Castle from Miasma so you girls can safely exit incarnate form without risk of mutation. There’s some Antipathy ruins just outside this crater, we can find the materials I’ll need there as well as a place to use as a shelter.” Please, please please please please please say yes Eliza! I know you have every reason not to trust me but please. I don’t want to be the reason a little girl goes home with extra arms or legs or eyes or a tail or whatever the miasma decides to do to Aurora. Veritas has clearly gone through a lot, and deserves mutation no more than Aurora does, and fuck, Eliza has too many issues she needs to deal with as is.
Minerva stares at me for a good fifteen and a half seconds. Her eyes flick to Veritas, then Aurora, the former of whom still looks like she wants to just skewer me and deal with the consequences, while the latter is looking straight at her with a pleading look in her eye. Waves of eastern and western magic roil inside of the not-ten-year-old, before she and her headmate seem to come to a consensus, and sigh.
“Fine, we don’t really have much of a choice. But if you try anything, robot, I will blast you to smithereens.” The fact that she remains cute even when she’s trying to be intimidating with stuff she heard on TV charges my batteries with joy more-so than the fear her threat elicits.
“I believe you, y’all got me down to less than ten percent power, a couple more Fulminant whatevers would’ve taken me out. C’mon, let’s not waste time. I can’t fly so unless one of you wants to carry my metal ass out of this hole, I’ve got stairs to climb.”
Unsurprisingly, they do not want to carry me, which is fair and understandable, I wouldn’t want to carry me either, but alas, I must carry this team, metaphorically, once more.