47. Dialogues

“You sure they’ll be passing through here?” Chloe asks for the umpteenth time. I nod again, pointing to the convergence tracker on my phone and the dark clouds roiling to our left. We’re pretty much right at the edge of the evacuation zone, but today’s convergence isn’t likely to be very big. The Earth Guardians should be popping back out any minute now, gleaming and triumphant. By all accounts, it probably shouldn’t have taken them even this long, but I bet they’re taking today pretty slow. After all, it’s the first day that Veritas and Aurora are back to work.

It’s something I have mixed feelings about. On one hand, it’s awful, because it means I’ll probably have to fight children again. On the other hand, it means Eliza and her furry friend aren’t the only two people handling incursions for the entire county. She’s been doing everything in her power to run herself ragged, as usual. Chloe lives with the girl, and she’s barely seen her outside of classes.

“Well they could exit from like, a different direction, or something? And we’d completely miss them,” Chloe points out. And that’s true, but that’s why I chose this spot. There’s no reason they’d exit the convergence on the far side of it—that just leads out of the city. So they’re going to be popping out vaguely in this direction, and we have more than enough vision from where we’re sitting to spot it even if it’s off-course.

It’s late September now, a week after the big fight and my first social media post about the Dark World. I’ve done daily updates since then, small chunks of information designed to catch attention, but there hasn’t been a ton of response yet. This is expected, though. It’ll probably take a while. Melpomene is paranoid that the Preservers are manipulating the internet to prevent the information from getting out, but I think that if they were good enough at understanding humans to manipulate public knowledge via the flow of information on the internet, they wouldn’t have such dogshit PR in the first place.

“Calm down,” I sign. “Worst case, we wait a bit and call them.”

“Don’t their phones like… stop existing when they’re in supergirl form?”

“Castalia carries hers in her pocket. It’s fine,” I insist.

And I definitely wouldn’t hesitate to call her, because there definitely hasn’t been a ton of awkward unspoken tension between us all week after she definitely didn’t catch me lying to her, poorly. It’s fine, though. It’s fine! There are so many leaps of logic between ‘has a bad opinion of my ex who lives in another dimension’ and ‘is a robot slave created by a dead civilization in order to torture souls for revenge’ that I don’t have to act on my mistake as long as we both keep pretending it didn’t happen. All I have to do is maintain this terrifying holding pattern. Forever.

And hey, Castalia is acting like it didn’t happen, so why shouldn’t I? She hasn’t pressed me on it again, just treating me the same as she always does, but… still. I don’t like it. There’s nothing I can do about it, but I don’t like it.

She even went on this mission with the kids, which isn’t very ‘retired’ behavior. I’m worried about her, but what am I going to do? There are so many things to worry about right now. We haven’t seen any response from the Preservers yet, but it’s only a matter of time until people figure out I’m not just pulling information out of my butt.

[MeanBeanMachine]: Hey I got my flight info. Can you pick me up at 6pm on the 27th?

Oh my god? Oh my god oh my god oh my god!?

[LunaLightOTK]: Yo!? Bean real!?

[MeanBeanMachine]: Bean real!!! I am going to hug you.

[LunaLightOTK]: This is the best timeline.

[MeanBeanMachine]: It’s also very short notice, so it’s super cool if you’re not free.

[LunaLightOTK]: Bean, you know I’ll make time for you. Even if DIA is like two fucking hours away.

[MeanBeanMachine]: Oh shit, sorry. I’d offer to pay for gas, but I’m not sure I can actually do that.

[LunaLightOTK]: Wait, what do you mean?

[MeanBeanMachine]: Well, I mean that I may have sort of possibly lost my job. And I was already kind of living paycheck-to-paycheck, so I’m prooobably going to lose my apartment. And you know what’s cheaper than one month’s rent? A plane trip across the country! For some fucking reason.

[LunaLightOTK]: Woah, woah, woah! You never told me you’d be needing a place to stay long-term!

[MeanBeanMachine]: That’s true! I didn’t. And if that’s a problem, that’s okay. It was definitely never my intention to have to live with you long-term, and I can always find a hostel or something if needed. But I’ve been looking for an excuse to move to a different state for a while now, and Colorado is one of the better options.

[LunaLightOTK]: Wow. Okay, well, I’ll help how I can. Castalia has already given you the go-ahead for staying with us, but I’ll need to let her know that it’s a bit of an indeterminate-date thing. Do you need any help finding a job?

[MeanBeanMachine]: I should be okay. It’s not like I need major qualifications to work at a fast-food restaurant. And once I have an income, I’ll find random roommates on Craigslist or something and be out of your hair. That way you can go back to all your secret evil undercover ops shit without me snooping around.

[LunaLightOTK]: No! Bad Bean! No snooping around!

[MeanBeanMachine]: Yeah, yeah. Look, I’ll probably be too busy to collapse your entire operation like a house of cards, so don’t worry about it. Detective Bean is off the case.

[LunaLightOTK]: Good.

[MeanBeanMachine]: And forcing a detective off a case has famously never made them even more adamant about following it.

[LunaLightOTK]: Bean!

“Oh!” Chloe shouts, pointing out into the distance. “There they are!”

I glance up, composing an angry message to Bean in the back of my mind as I spot the full set of local Earth Guardians emerging from the boundaries of the liminal zone. To my surprise, they’re all flying, even Aurora and Veritas. Have they figured out how, or is Castalia just levitating them? Oh gosh, is it like when you help kids learn to swim by holding them as they try floating for the first time? That’s adorable!

Chloe stands up and starts waving with both arms, which Eliza—in her Minerva form—quickly notices. Her eyebrows raise in surprise. Soon, the whole team is flying over to say hello. All according to thoktaf. (Translator’s note: ‘thoktaf’ means ‘plan.’)

“Luna? Chloe? What are you two doing so close to the convergence?” Tiny Eliza asks, the group stopping to hover slightly above our table.

“Waiting for you, dummy!” Chloe answers. “We wanted to celebrate the first mission back for the girls!”

And we definitely didn’t just do this to make sure with our own two eyes that the ten-year-olds are okay and unharmed. They certainly seem to be, with no unconscious twitches or winces that might indicate a lingering pain they’re trying to hide. Although… Aurora’s incarnate form does have a large, nasty-looking scar on her forehead that covers pretty much the whole area that Nanaya caved in. Which, given how incarnate forms work, probably means that she’s a little traumatized? Maybe not necessarily traumatized, but one way or another she can’t get the wounds out of her own self-perception. So that’s not super cool, but it is entirely expected. She nearly died, after all.

“Would you like to join us for lunch?” the text-to-speech program on my phone asks for me.

“Who are these people?” Amaterasu asks.

“Oh, uh, these are my… friends?” Eliza says. “This is Chloe, and that’s Luna.”

I sign quickly to Chloe so she can translate for me.

“Uh… Luna says that she is ‘offended by the question mark she heard in your voice’ and will ‘enact terrible vengeance on you’ if you don’t let her buy food for your team.”

“Okay, okay, geez,” Minerva says placatingly. “How does lunch sound to everyone? I guess my friends want to meet you.”

“Sounds fun!” Aurora says.

“…I guess so,” Veritas grumbles. “But you have to stay our size!”

“Ooh, yeah!” Aurora agrees. “You have to stay our size!”

Aww, that’s kinda cute. They don’t wanna be left out at the big girl table. I can respect that.

“Sure, that’s fine,” Minerva agrees easily. “I’m probably going to change into some other clothes, though. Are you two okay with detransforming around these two?”

“It’s fine if they’re your friends, I think,” Aurora says.

Veritas shrugs, and Amaterasu just lands on the ground and wordlessly reverts to her human form in a flash of light. She’s noticeably shorter now, with cropped black hair and, of course, no wolf ears or tail. Based on her expression, though, I just know she’d be flicking one or the other in irritation if she did.

“You don’t have to come,” Minerva assures her.

“…It will be nice to have a meal outside the base,” Amaterasu shrugs.

“Introduce us to everyone, Minerva!” Chloe says.

“Oh, right,” Minerva says. “Um, so this is… actually, what names do you all want to go by?”

“Aurora or Isabela is fine,” Aurora says, returning to her human form.

Which… huh! Isabela. That’s a pretty name. She doesn’t look all that different from her incarnate form, outside of having a different face and no forehead scar.

“I’m just Veritas,” Veritas says, also returning to human form. “I don’t really need the other name anymore.”

God, that is a sentence that hurts to hear from someone so small. She’s a bit more different from her incarnate form than Aurora, mostly in that her human form has long, curly hair while her incarnate form’s hair is short and straight. But I’ve seen both of the kids transform a few times now, so none of this is a big surprise.

“Su-san,” Amaterasu says. “Not ‘Susan.'”

“Su-san, Veritas, and Isabela, got it,” Chloe nods, and I definitely note the intentionality with which she chose Isabela over Aurora. Judging by the slight tightening of muscle around Aurora’s eyes, I think she noticed, too. Perceptive, for a kid.

“You all want pizza, tacos, or burgers?” I ask with my phone, curating our choices mainly for the ten-year-olds in the audience.

“Pizza!” Aurora cheers.

“Why do you talk with your phone?” Veritas asks.

“She’s mute, Veritas,” Minerva answers. “She can’t talk with her mouth.”

“Oh,” Veritas says.

“Not deaf?” Aurora asks.

“Nope,” Minerva confirms.

“Huh.”

Having my fake disability interrogated by children is a bit surreal, but hey, at least we have a solid vote for pizza. I get things back on track and confirm that yes, everyone can agree on that, so we head for Chloe’s favorite pizza place. The magical girls chatter amongst themselves about magical things while Chloe and I awkwardly listen in.

“Maybe it’s just because it’s been a month, but I felt stronger than I was before. Do you think I was stronger than before, Minerva?” Aurora asks.

“You could be,” Minerva nods. “Strength is generally a function of total power capacity and spell efficiency, and it’s not impossible to have a breakthrough with either even without active practice. Less likely, of course, but it was a whole month.”

“Not less likely,” Castalia says. “Spell efficiency is just practice. But… I think resting can improve capacity directly?”

“Wait, what?” Minerva says, and I can’t help but perk up a little, too.

“I’m… not good at explaining,” Castalia says hesitantly. “You need… more colors? And that’s hard to do. Because we have one color.”

Amaterasu watches intently, frowning slightly as she and the rest of the girls try to parse that. Castalia picks up on their confusion and valiantly tries again.

“If your soul is… a balloon,” she says, “and you fill the balloon, you need… you can’t fill it with one color, or it won’t grow right.”

“…What?” Veritas says.

“You’re saying we need to use multiple different emotions at once?” Aurora asks.

“No,” Castalia says, shaking her head.

“Using multiple emotions is inefficient for battle, isn’t it?” Amaterasu asks.

“It is,” Castalia confirms. “Use the emotions that match your stone.”

“Okay, I’m lost again,” Aurora sighs.

Weirdly, I think I’m not. But should I… ugh. Fuck it. I start typing rapidly on my phone as Castalia flounders for words.

“If I get you right, then maybe instead of thinking of emotions as having colors, think of them as pushing in different directions?” my phone says.

“…Hmm,” Castalia says, considering that as she floats by.

“Wait, did you understand that?” Minerva asks. “How?”

“I’m just interpreting the attempt at an analogy in the way I think makes the most sense,” I type. “If your soul is a balloon and you want to make it bigger, you can’t just grab one end and stretch it. You have to inflate it and let the air push the inside from every single direction at once.”

“…If a desire goes unfulfilled for too long, it may get stronger,” Amaterasu says, “but it just as easily may fade. Even if it never goes away, you… learn to live with it. Let it become… normal. But fear, anger, or joy can keep a desire alive.”

I nod and point at her.

“That is true,” Castalia agrees. “But not quite right. Maybe it is different for a yellow mage, but… there must be joy in sadness. There must be joy in fear. You lost, Aurora. You rested, knowing you lost. But did you stop finding reasons to be happy?”

“Oh,” Aurora says. “No, I guess not.”

“That is strength,” Castalia nods.

Aurora turns a little pink at the words of affirmation from the strongest, while the other magical girls look thoughtful, doing their best to try and decipher how anything Castalia just said is different from what they all already do. But like, with dramatically less healthy emotions.

“Does anyone else think it’s weird that there are so many negative emotions and just a few positive ones?” I type out, my phone asking the question in an amusingly artificial tone.

“Yeah, I do!” Aurora chirps. “There’s one, maybe two good ones, and six or seven bad ones! That’s not fair.”

“What? There are three good ones,” Amaterasu says. “Desire, joy, and pride.”

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“Isn’t pride a sin?” Aurora asks.

“Only according to people who get mad when you have fun,” I quickly type out, which gets an amused snort out of Chloe.

“Oh, like my mom,” Aurora says, wrinkling her nose. “Okay. But desire is only sometimes good. Sometimes, people want to do bad things, or they want something they can’t have, right?”

“So it’s two and a half good ones,” Veritas says, sounding secretly smug that she used an entire fraction correctly. “Still not a lot.”

The others think on that while I quickly type out a longer message.

“I used to think it was for social reasons,” I say. “Like, if someone is angry with you, you’re in a completely different situation than if someone is afraid of you. They’re the emotions most recognizable by other people, so they’re the ones that get named. Whereas if someone is happy, they’re just happy. There’s not much difference looking in from the outside. But apparently, magic is a universal constant, and therefore emotion is like, baked into the physics of the universe? So what the heck is up with that?”

Nobody seems to have an answer for me at first, but Amaterasu is the first to speak up, her eyes carefully on me.

“Seeking one kind of happiness is hard enough,” she says. “Maybe we’re lucky we don’t have to chase after five or six.”

Oh. Huh.

“You might be onto something with that,” Chloe laughs, though it’s the laugh she uses when she wants to lighten the mood rather than because she thinks something is actually funny. I’m not sure how effective the ruse is against six different empaths, but hey. At least Bean will be here soon to help round out the normal people for Chloe to hang out with.

We make it to the pizza place without anyone delving into more magical theory, chatting about school projects and one of the games Veritas likes to play when she’s alone (which is, I imagine, quite a lot of the time, but no one presses that point too hard). It’s nice getting to eat with everyone even if I can’t taste anything, and while we only keep the kids for about an hour before Aurora walks Veritas back to the Preserver base, we have a pretty good time.

It’s very cute watching mini-Eliza interact with the kids. She’s still very obviously Eliza, despite looking completely different, and she doesn’t act all that much like a ten-year-old, but she still enjoys the company of her team, treating them like equals no matter how childlike they happen to be acting. When everyone finishes lunch, I carefully watch where all the Earth Guardians go as they split up, citing some errands I have to run before heading toward the liminal zone.

I’ve needed to visit the Dark World a lot more often lately, to gather material for the website and social media accounts I’m using. Plus, I have some groceries I bought this morning that I need to drop off. Sneaking in isn’t hard when I already know anyone who might be interested in watching me is off doing something in a completely different direction, so I slip into the castle without issue.

“Hey, Anath,” I greet her as I walk into the main room. “You ready?”

“Oh! Luna!” Anath perks up, pausing whatever game she was playing. It looks like… wait, I know that music. Kirby!? “Yeah I’m good to go whenever! It’s about time the world learned of my greatness.”