15. Bout

“…Aw man,” Anath grimaces. “Do I have to? You’re no fun to fight.”

“You need to establish a better balance between enjoying a battle and actually winning it,” Nanaya chides. “Considering that you have yet to best me, perhaps having a partner will be of some assistance to you.”

Oh boy. Considering how I’ve seen Anath fight, I don’t know if I’ll be much help against someone she’s apparently never beaten. By my own assessment, I think one of my big weaknesses is offense. I’m good at dodging, I’m good at punching, and my shield is apparently a lot more impressive than the defenses of children, but those defenses are still enough that just hitting them with a fist isn’t likely to do very much. Yeah, I punched Anath pretty hard, but it didn’t do anything close to the amount of damage that spells seem to dish out. And I guess I can dish out spells, but they are costly. Usually a full percentage point or two. Combat already drains my resources by the second, so that’s a big ask.

Worse, it’s relatively easy to be sad when I’m forced to beat up Earth Guardians. I don’t think I’m going to get very sad trying to punch this bitch. Annoyance doesn’t burn quite as well. But hey, it’s not like I can say no.

“Let’s show her what for, Anath!” I declare, shadowboxing the air a little.

“Your form is terrible,” Nanaya says.

“Whaddya want from me? I’m a robot, not a martial artist. Oh! I wonder if you can upload kung fu into me like The Matrix.”

“Oh my gosh, yeah!” Anath lights up. “That would be so awesome!”

“I do not believe that is how it works,” Nanaya says flatly. “I will use this initial spar to determine what it is you still need to learn, and then I will teach you. Whether your new body will be an asset or a hindrance to this remains to be seen.”

“Hey, you know me baby. I’m all assets. Non-liquid, on your evil accounting sheet. Oooh, maybe I’m tax deductible.”

“I am going to attack now,” Nanaya glowers. “I think you will find such banter to be disadvantageous in combat.”

“Are you sure? Cuz like, Spider-Man has this thing where he relies on his spider sense so much in combat that he mostly dodges on reflex and can devote his brainpower to being really funny, and I sort of have a thing like that going on because—”

I’ve detected high-velocity mass on trajectory to connect with me. Which like, yeah, of course I have. Nanaya is leaping forward, the three arms on the right side of her body combined into a single fist aimed right at my head. The trajectories calculated, I lean very slightly out of the way.

“—my—”

The arm splits up shortly before reaching me, transitioning from a punch to a grapple as different hands reorient to different parts of my body. They’re all still fairly tightly grouped, though, so I bring one of my arms up to intercept all three of her grasping limbs, knocking them off-course just below the wrist.

“—brain—”

Her initial strike deflected, Nanaya pivots on her forward leg and twists her entire body into a kick. I can already tell that this will have too much force to properly deflect, so I leap into the air, up and over it.

“—can—”

Her kick swishes underneath me, my dodge having accounted even for the absurd range of her freakish toes. But before I can land, she aims another grapple at my ankle, and without a solid surface to alter my trajectory I have no way to reposition other than my thrusters. I start to deploy one… no, too slow. She grabs me.

“—speed—”

I should have deployed thrusters preemptively the moment I decided to jump in order to account for this weakness. I’ll remember that next time. For now, I’m being swung at Anath to presumably force her into the fight, but I weigh a lot and I can probably fuck up Nanaya’s balance during the swing. I scrunch up into a ball and grab Nanaya’s wrist moments before she tries to throw me.

“—up—”

Nanaya is barely fazed, grabbing back onto me the moment I try to reverse the grapple and directing my momentum towards the ground instead of Anath. I impact hard, and though it doesn’t do much damage I’m now on the ground directly below her. A followup kick is imminent. I try to push myself up out of the way but I can tell I’ll be too slow, so as I shove myself up into the air I prepare to catch her leg with both arms, cushioning the impact as much as I can.

“—and—”

It still hits pretty hard, but using the momentum of the strike I can finally allow myself to be knocked away so I have enough distance to get back upright. I watch Nanaya’s legs tense, her eyes zeroing in on me like a cat about to pounce, and I realize I didn’t account for the possibility that she could dash towards me faster than she knocked me away. But the moment of apparent instinct passes, and Nanaya relaxes again, allowing me to land safely on my feet.

“—I can just decide everything I want to say really fast right at the beginning and set it to play as an audio file,” I finish. “It doesn’t take my active attention. Also: holy shit you’re fast.”

“You really are a machine,” Nanaya hums. “Your reflexes and precision are exceptional, you simply do not know what to do with them. This is a very fixable problem.”

“Woah!” Anath says. “Nanaya, how come you never call me exceptional?”

“Your audacity is exceptional,” Nanaya says.

“Aw, heck yeah!” Anath grins. “That’s good, right?”

“It has its place,” Nanaya says. “Speaking of things that have their place—”

Hehe. That’s me.

“—talking during combat, if it is truly not distracting to you, can be a viable strategy to bait your opponent off guard or to affect their emotions. However, this is only beneficial if you are careful with how those emotions are affected. It does not benefit you to, for example, annoy a red mage.”

“Yeah, but who else am I gonna annoy?” I ask. “I’m not allowed to talk to Earth Guardians. Melpomene thinks it might get the Preservers too interested in me for my own safety.”

Probably a lie, and definitely a lie in the sense that it’s not her primary motivation, but the moment I mentioned one of my restrictions I felt the need to justify it as per my orders. It’s only for my own safety! Truly, I am not complaining about anything because I have nothing to complain about.

“Oh yeah, that makes sense,” Anath nods.

It does!? I pulled that right out of my shiny metal ass. I mean, I guess I have a really good poker face, but still! No, wait. Now that I think about it, the girls here are all probably a little bit… socially stunted? All of them have only had three other people to talk to for years now.

Oh no. Accidentally getting caught on my lies is going to be a lot harder than I thought. Thea is too innocent and Anath is too stupid!

“You will join as well now, Anath,” Nanaya instructs.

“Nnnnno! I don’t wanna!”

“Very well, then.”

Nanaya holds her palms face up, her arms outstretched, and red light starts to coalesce within her grasp. In one hand, it forms into the shape of… a violin? No, too big for that. A viola. In the other hand she summons the instrument’s bow. The incarnate weapons flash into full solidity, made not of wood but of some shiny, brilliantly pristine white material with lines of pulsing red dancing down their forms. The hair of the viola’s bow, as well as the strings of the instrument, are a glowing red energy rather than anything material. It’s a remarkably beautiful instrument, lovely and refined in a way that I never expected from Nanaya. I’ve never been great with the whole violin family, but I’d love to try playing it. I watch as she carefully brings the instrument up to her shoulder, nestling it under her chin as she prepares to begin a piece.

“Shit!” Anath yelps, leaping forward directly at Nanaya. In response, Nanaya immediately whips the viola out of playing position, swinging it like a club in a terrifying flash of red and white. The bout connects with Anath’s cheek dead-on, lifting her off the ground and sending her tumbling across the floor with what would be a caved-in skull for anyone who wasn’t half evil monster.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more horrifically offensive use of a viola in my entire life.

“Don’t let her play!” Anath shouts.

“But now I’m curious,” I insist. “Does an instrument abuser even know how?”

Nanaya’s beady red eyes lock onto me in an instant, a furious expression on her face. The arm holding her bow splits apart, one hand still holding on while another draws back on the hair for some fucking insane reason… and a glowing red arrow appears nocked between her fingers.

Oh my god.

“That’s NOT THAT KIND OF BOW!” I accuse, but I’m forced to dodge bolt after bolt of red magic viola abuse as I charge at her. She brings the body of the instrument back up to her shoulder as she does, spinning around and intercepting another charge from Anath with a kick.

“It is a weapon,” Nanaya says. “Like you. It exists to be used however it is needed.”

Seeing an opening, I deploy the thrusters on my back and launch towards her with a burst of speed, staying low enough to the ground to kick off of it if needed. Anath and I are attacking from opposite sides now, so as Nanaya recovers from her kick, she has her back exposed to me. …Not that I expect this to be enough. I burn the energy needed to keep time feeling as slow as possible, waiting for a single twitch from her body to indicate her response. It comes. She’s using the viola as a club again.

My sensors inform me that taking the attack head-on, even properly blocking it, is a terrible idea. It might be shaped like an instrument, but it’s still an incarnate weapon. Summoned by magic, maintained by magic, it will wreak havoc on my shields like a direct hit from a combat spell. So I duck, avoiding her wild backhand swing and aiming a punch directly into her gut. Again, she somehow reacts the moment I commit, taking the force of her body’s rotation and putting it into a rising knee to my face.

Thing is, I don’t really have to protect my face. It’s not only shielded, but my neck is one of the most flexible parts of my body, so a lot of the direct force of the impact can just be bled off by letting my head snap back. I definitely wouldn’t like it if the relatively fragile sensory equipment inside gets damaged, but again, that’s what the shielding is for, and even if that fails I can still fight without my entire head.

I take the blow on the chin and drive my fist into Nanaya’s stomach, hitting mostly crystal. If I was human, I would have ripped a huge hole in my own hand, but my metallic fingers hold and instead the force of my blow is concentrated into the base of where the crystal grows. Nanaya grunts in pain—the only music she’s performed so far, and all for the low low price of two percent power reserves. I’m happy to hurt my captor for two percent power reserves.

…Which I guess is technically a problem. I’m honestly kind of having fun here, getting to beat up Nanaya. I mean, this is the first time I’ve actually successfully hit her, but nothing she does in return can hurt me so I’m okay with it. Taking advantage of my unnatural durability seems like a good way to catch Nanaya off guard.

“Rᴇᴠᴇɴɢᴇ Bᴜʀsᴛ,” Nanaya growls through gritted teeth.

A red sphere of power erupts from Nanaya’s body, knocking me away and catching Anath as she tries to attack from behind like I did. We’re both flung back against the outside walls of the room, smashing into them but not hard enough to crack the strange stone that the castle is made of. That… was weird. With the degree of time acceleration I had going on, I should have had plenty of time to react before Nanaya finished speaking the first syllable. Sometimes I manage to cut people off during their casts, but sometimes I don’t.

“Does casting magic fuck with time?” I ask.

“Rᴀɴᴄᴏʀᴏᴜs Dɪʀɢᴇ.”

“What, is this not a safe space to ask questions, orrrrrfffffshkt—”

My speech fizzles and glitches out as Nanaya brings her instrument into a perfect playing position so quickly that it seems as if she could have done it at any time. She draws the bow across the strings, and from the very first note the spell overwhelms me. I should have known better than to brag about not feeling pain.

The agony is overwhelming, stabbing into my soul with a disturbingly personal sort of fury, as if I had committed some unforgivable sin and every iota of my suffering is entirely deserved. No matter how much I am tortured, I feel as though I should be the one apologizing for making it all necessary. But on instinct, or perhaps some pre-programmed routine, I retract my thrusters and slam my external plating shut, cutting the feeling off immediately.

“Ow,” I crackle, my awareness flickering with a quick reset to purge any lingering influence. The spell batters against my shields, slowly draining my reserves as the song tries to worm its way back inside me. But just as my plates block my own emotions from getting out, it seems they deny any foreign emotions from getting in.

A scream reminds me that I’m still in a fight, Anath clamping her hands around her ears as she thrashes on the ground. I should probably stop letting Nanaya do that. Rushing towards her as quickly as I can without deploying my thrusters, I focus on her legs, anticipating a kick. If she tries to hit me with her viola again, that’ll probably prevent her from playing it and that’s my main objective right now. But of course, her insane arms split apart in front of me, freeing four additional limbs for me to worry about. They’re freakishly spindly when separated, but I don’t think it’s safe to assume they’re weak.

I double down on my low focus anyway, going for a leg sweep to try and force her to jump. She does so, leaping backwards to try and stay safe, but I spring into a full-body shoulder tackle to catch her landing. It’s not a big hit, but it’s enough to make her misplay a note, a screech of the viola marking the end of her spell.

“…Interesting,” Nanaya hums, and I let her talk because I’m not a fucking barbarian. “I wasn’t expecting that level of resistance. I suppose I will have to train your emotional resilience another way.”

Anath whines from the ground, shuddering from the song.

“Do you take constructive criticism on your teaching methods?” I ask.

“Only from those who may have something of value to say,” Nanaya answers.

“Sheesh. Can’t do anything by yourself, huh?”

“…It may be good that you cannot speak outside these walls,” Nanaya growls. “You would have a dangerous weakness to Red mages.”

“Look, I have two months of stored up words to say and an entire life of unhealthy coping mechanisms causing my manual emotion control to drive me to mania. Which remains awesome. So much better than depression.”

“I know, right!?” Anath agrees from the floor. “I don’t care how stupid I get, I just wanna not be freaking depressed!”

“Which is why, in the absence of medication, we must rely on training and focused effort to improve your decision-making capacity and emotional stability,” Nanaya says flatly. “But you, Luna, do not have a major cyclothymic disorder. You should not be artificially inducing yourself with one. Although… when you say ‘manual emotion control,’ what do you mean exactly?”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“I mean, it’s what it says on the tin,” I answer dutifully. “Emotions are quantifiable. I can choose how much of all of them I’m expending at any given time. I need some amount of constant burn to accommodate for upkeep costs, since I’m basically always running low on power, but I get to choose how much of what and I’m optimized for sadness anyway.”

“You choose exact values?” Nanaya presses. “Numerically?”

“Yeah, that’s what I said,” I confirm.

“Mmm. How much power do you currently have stored?”

“My power reserves are currently at twenty-three percent,” I report.

“Twenty-three percent of what?” Nanaya asks.

“Of my total power reserves,” I answer. “I… don’t actually know how much that is, percent total power reserves is just my current baseline magical energy unit. Which is actually kind of weird, now that I think about it. I have a ton of sensors for detecting stuff like the density and momentum of magical energy, you’d think that my brain would have some sort of standard Antipathy magical energy unit. But instead I just have Pyulors.”

“…What are Pyulors?”

“It’s currently four hundred and ten point five degrees Pyulor,” I answer dutifully. “Which is fifty-nine point two degrees Fahrenheit, or fifteen point one degrees Celcius if you’re unamerican. Which, like, based.”

Nanaya blinks.

“Based on what?”

“Oh my god she said it!” I cheer, pumping my arms into the air. “She said the thing!”

“…I don’t get it,” Anath says.

“Holy crap that’s right, none of you have the internet,” I realize. “None of you know memes.”