7. Real Body

…The fuck you mean destroy us both!? What the hell did I do!?

Fulgora freezes in apparent horror as power blooms inside the crystal on Anath’s choker, her clothes disintegrating and her body bursting into that familiar light as she activates what is unmistakably a magical girl transformation. Anath isn’t just getting a new outfit, though: her whole body shifts and twists in the light, growing ever more monstrous as she gathers ever more power.

Her ears aren’t just getting longer; they’re moving up to the top of her head, shifting into something foxlike and triangular. Her tail, too, starts to split, twisting into two, four, eight more copies of itself, writhing in a fan pattern out of the base of her spine like a peacock’s feathers. Her legs, which had already been digitigrade before the transformation, elongate to further emphasize the second knee, forcing her to lean forward like a feral raptor to stay balanced. The crystals jutting from her body grow larger as well, especially the blades on her forearms, which go from sharp armguards to massive swords.

Before, Anath looked like a fuzzy, spiky girl with a few extra bits. Now, Anath looks only like an animal. A werewolf from an old horror movie, devoid of any features that might spark empathy in a human rather than fear.

And yet, the energy radiating off of her is joy.

“Rʜᴀᴘsᴏᴅɪᴄ Bᴇᴀsᴛ Cᴏɴsᴜᴍᴍᴀᴛᴇ Aɴᴀᴛʜ!” she howls, the light of her transformation shattering off her skin and fur, the shockwave pushing us back. I realize that, like Fulgora, I was just as frozen by the transformation, but not because the transformation somehow stopped me from acting. I guess it’s just a hell of a lot faster than it felt like because my mind is working in an accelerated state.

“You… you weren’t even transformed!?” Fulgora gapes, her body coiling into a defensive fighting stance. “That was your real body!?”

“I’d argue that this is my real body,” Anath says, her voice deeper and slightly slurred from her new face. All the damage she suffered fighting Fulgora before her transformation is nowhere to be seen now. “But yeah. Gifts from the Dark World.”

“Is the Dark World turning people into monsters!?” Fulgora demands to know, which…

…No, it isn’t. I figured as much the first time I had the thought but I can probably just confirm it. Some mental math agrees that it wouldn’t make sense; monsters can’t just be transformed humans. Based on what the news manages to catch alone, most magical girls kill what, a dozen monsters a week on average? And there are at least four magical girls in this city, five if you count the ‘retired’ Castalia. If that many people were disappearing on a regular basis, there’s no way in hell anybody could cover it up. Our city already has kind of a high crime rate, and annually there are… what, a few hundred violent crimes? As opposed to a few thousand monsters pouring out of the dark world, and that’s just the ones we publicly know about in this city. No, they have to come from somewhere else.

But despite this, Anath just laughs.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” she smirks, and then she lunges.

Holy shit. She’s way faster than she was before, and Fulgora barely manages to get her staff up in time to block a cut from Anath’s blades that looked like it was aimed to slice her in two. My body stutters as I try to step in and help Fulgora before remembering that I can’t fight Anath. I don’t have any orders to do so, and a weapon doesn’t wield itself against its own master’s allies.

Fulgora shoves Anath away, but Anath twists in midair to strike the magical girl with the various sharp crystals jutting from her tails, forcing Fulgora to dodge. I watch as the two of them move through the air, following the paths my mind has already calculated them to travel through based on their momentum, but Anath’s arc breaks from my expectations, as if gravity stopped affecting her and an invisible force started accelerating her towards Fulgora. In moments Anath is back in her face, swinging wild, relentless attacks without regard for her own safety.

Can Anath fly in this form? She didn’t move in the same way that flying magical girl with the lightning gun did, and she seems to be sticking to the ground. Maybe she’s just more comfortable fighting this way?

“Gʀᴀsᴘ ᴏғ ᴛʜᴇ Cʟᴀᴡ!” Anath shouts, grabbing onto Fulgora’s staff as she brings it up to block another strike. Magic circles bloom around Fulgora and she grunts in pain, the ground beneath her cracking as an invisible force seems to start crushing her on all sides.

Is that it? Just force? Is Anath’s magic to straight up apply force to things? That feels… direct. And somewhat underutilized.

“Your turn!” Anath growls, whipping her head around to face me. Oh shit, right. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can defend myself. Avoidance it is, then. I dodge to the side as Anath leaps my way, keeping a much wider margin of error between the two of us than I used with Veritas. Anath presses her assault, but that’s more or less what I expected her to do so I’m already moving to circle around Fulgora to try and keep Anath’s focus on her instead of me.

“Fight back, you piece of shit!” Anath roars at me, and time seems to stop, brand new sets of calculations swimming through my mind like minnows.

Oh.

Oh.

Well. Melpomene likes you, Anath. She’d want you to be happy.

And you fucking asked for this.

I’m already jumping backwards to make distance, so I don’t have any points of contact with the ground to change my direction. Like Anath, though, I don’t need any. I deploy all of my rearward-facing thrusters and ignite them simultaneously, reversing my direction with a level of whiplash that would have shattered my spine and pulped my organs if I still had any of those things. I never knew how to throw a decent punch as a human, but my body doesn’t need martial arts training to understand how to maximize the damage of a collision. And sure, there are more powerful strikes than punches. Lots of them, really. But I was just ordered to fight someone that I don’t have any qualms about beating the shit out of, and I just really want to punch her in the goddamn face.

The instant change in tactics catches Anath off guard, and I get to watch in delightful slow motion as her eyes widen and my knuckles crunch into her cheekbone. I send her flying down the street, bouncing off the asphalt three times before she finally reorients herself. I take the opportunity to vent some of the superheated magical energy that leaked out of my systems during my hardware acceleration, causing a burst of blue steam to hiss out from between my armor plates before I put my thrusters away.

Fulgora, meanwhile, frees herself from the vise grip of Anath’s spell, immediately moving to make distance from me, a calculatingly wary look on her face. But despite the strength of my surprise attack, Anath lifts herself back onto her feet, spitting a sharp, bloody tooth onto the sidewalk.

“That’s better,” she grins at us, getting down on all fours and arching her back like a cat about to pounce. “Pᴀssɪᴏɴ Sᴛᴇᴘ!”

“Sᴛᴏʀᴍ Bᴀʀʀɪᴇʀ!” Fulgora shouts, thrusting out her hand and summoning a cloudy, shimmering shield in front of her. Anath smashes into it so quickly I’m not even sure I could have reacted, her crystalline claws digging into the magical force field and cracking it.

“Come on, Fulgora!” Anath cackles. “Where’s your lightning!? You used to be better than this! Stronger!”

I rush towards the two of them, but Anath headbutts Fulgora’s shield and shatters it. Fulgora recoils as if in pain and Anath takes the opportunity to kick her hard in the side of her gut, launching the magical girl towards me like a soccer ball. I can dodge Fulgora to press my attack, but I catch her anyway, jumping back as I do so in order to lessen the force of our impact.

Fulgora, of course, immediately tries to break out of my arms, kicking off of me to launch herself up into the air as I let go. There’s a panic in her eyes as she focuses on Anath, adjusting the grip on her staff.

“Bad move!” Anath declares gleefully, leaping directly at Fulgora’s position fast enough to make a collision basically inevitable. Even worse, Fulgora’s now holding the staff in a wide grip with both hands, pointing it directly at Anath as if she expects her to impale herself on it. But her staff doesn’t have a blade to impale someone with, and her grip has the other end so close to her eye that an impact would probably… wait. No. She’s not holding it like a staff or a spear.

She’s holding it like a rifle.

“Fᴜʟᴍɪɴᴀɴᴛ Tʜᴜɴᴅᴇʀ!”

A crack of magical lightning hits Anath dead-on, knocking her back down into the asphalt as it surges through her body. Anath screams, her body writhing on the ground from the aftershocks as Fulgora ceases to obey the laws of gravity, hovering up in the air and pointing her staff towards the sky. Staring down at Anath’s disabled form, she fires a shot straight up in the air, then another, then another, then another, the mana density of the surrounding area suddenly rising like crazy.

“Aʙʀᴇᴀᴄᴛɪᴏɴ: Hᴇᴀᴠᴇɴ’s Rᴇᴊᴇᴄᴛɪᴏɴ.”

Oh, shit. I dash towards Anath, my orders now requiring me to protect her from what is almost certainly a finishing blow. I lean over to scoop her up off the ground as I get close, and then my processes accelerate as I see her claws swiping up to take my head off, rage on her face.

Collision unavoidable. Shielding.

Anath’s furious uppercut launches me into the air, cutting a full three percent off my power reserves as I get flung head-over-heels in the opposite direction moments before a bolt of lightning as wide as a lane on the highway crashes down, engulfing Anath completely and overloading half my sensor array for a few milliseconds. I have time to confirm her charred body is still raggedly breathing shortly before my body crashes into the ground, jolting my vision and forcing me to scramble back to my feet.

Fulgora lands, not looking to be in particularly good shape herself. Anath’s transformation removed the wounds on her own body, but Fulgora’s injuries have only accumulated. Her shoulder still bleeds from where Anath bit it, and blood pours from her face where Anath’s claws raked through them. She’s breathing heavily and blinking with confused, glassy eyes, possibly struggling to think through the blood loss. But as she stares at Anath lying motionless on the floor, her jaw clenches and anger returns to her face. She walks forward, lifts her boot up, and stomps it down hard on Anath’s body, causing a crack of broken bones to ring out through the air.

“Just.”

Stomp.

“Fucking.”

Stomp.

“Leave!”

Stomp.

“Me!”

Stomp.

“Alone!”

O-oh. Right, I should be stopping this, shouldn’t I? Why am I just—

I’ve placed myself in power-saving mode. A near-complete lack of sadness and fear during this fight has caused me to primarily burn disgust (which itself was only available due to the emotions the blood and gore would have otherwise elicited in me without the burn) and surprise (which, for obvious reasons, was only available in brief moments). Neither was abundant enough to sustain power expenditure; my primary emotions during this fight were joy and desire, which only burned at five and fifteen percent efficiency, respectively.

In essence, Anath is not a child, she’s an asshole I wanted to punch really bad. Therefore, the fight didn’t make me sad, and I’m down to 20% power. And like, y’know, that’s when my phone goes into power save mode so who am I to question the expert?

—standing here, I don’t need time acceleration holding my hand in order to obey my master’s will. I run forward to try and save Anath before Fulgora caves her skull in, but the next time her boot falls it doesn’t hit with a hard crack. There’s only a very soft sound as Anath’s hand whips up and catches Fulgora’s foot.

The magical girl’s eyes go wide as Anath’s eyes open, flicking up towards Fulgora’s face. And though it’s a little hard to tell through all the blood, bruises, and swelling, I’m pretty sure she’s still smiling.

“No,” Anath says, yanking Fulgora off-balance as she rises upward with a fist, landing a strike to the gut that caves in her stomach and has her spewing vomit all over Anath’s back. Fulgora tries to stagger away, but Anath follows up with a roundhouse kick to her shoulder, sending Fulgora careening across the ground, her staff falling from her hands and disintegrating into motes of magical energy.

“I could never leave you alone,” Anath insists, a wild look in her eyes as she stalks towards Fulgora. “Never. You don’t know it yet, but you need this. You need it! Don’t you want to be happy again, Fulgora!?”

Fulgora’s body shakes as she desperately tries to stand, but before she can get to her feet she doubles over, vomiting up blood. Still, her only response to Anath is a furious glower, the firmest rejection her body can currently muster.

Anath growls and leaps forward, swinging her claws at Fulgora’s head, but once again I feel my mind accelerate in spite of my low power as I spot a completely unexpected movement at the top of my vision cone. What!? How did something get this close without my other sensors detecting it? I almost charge in to attack, but once I see the source of the movement I stop and just let whatever is about to happen, happen.

A cloaked figure drops like a stone to land directly in front of Anath, legs flexing to absorb the impact with the ground near-silently. An arm whips out from underneath its clothes and catches Anath’s swing, red eyes gleaming furiously from behind a collar high enough to cover most of her face.

“N-Nanaya!?” Anath yelps.

“Anath,” Nanaya growls. “What are you doing on Earth?”

“I, uh…” Anath stammers, glancing around in every direction other than Nanaya’s glare. “Well I just thought, um, y’know, I should… I’m testing the, uh…”

Fulgora, collapsed directly behind where Nanaya landed, is frozen like a rabbit with a wolf walking by while this conversation happens without her. A second monster is standing directly in front of her while she barely survived the first. Of course, it’s hard to say how monstrous Nanaya looks underneath her cloak, and she’s not even acknowledging Fulgora’s existence, let alone trying to attack. But still… the hand holding Anath in place has a thumb on both sides of the palm. Six fingers? No. Eight? Nine?

“Anath,” Nanaya says again. “Are you having a manic episode?”

“Thea says I technically don’t have manic episodes because they don’t last long enough to—”

“Anath,” Nanaya interrupts her. “Are you having a hypomanic episode?”

“U-um,” Anath shifts. “Yeah, I um. Yeah, probably.”

“And what are you supposed to do when you’re having an episode?”

“S-stay with someone for my safety,” Anath squeaks, her blood dripping quietly onto the road. “B-but I couldn’t sleep and you were asleep and—”

“Anath,” Nanaya cuts her off again. “If you are struggling while everyone is asleep, please wake me up. I would be happy to stay awake with you.”

Anath shifts some more, staring at her feet.

“…But then you would have told me not to go,” Anath admits guiltily.

Nanaya glares at her for a bit before she finally lets go of Anath’s wrist with a sigh. Holding her hand out towards Anath, a series of magic circles bloom to life around her arm as Nanaya frowns.

“You have more broken ribs than intact ones,” she says flatly. “Your left arm is completely shattered. You have multiple skull fractures. Most of your organs have some sort of severe trauma or another, nearly all of your skin is covered in burns, and multiple major blood vessels in your body have exploded from what I’m fairly sure is the result of very briefly becoming a series of high voltage electrical wires. You should not be breathing, let alone standing, and yet somehow I have the sneaking suspicion that you’re going to tell me ‘it’s not that bad.'”

“Wh—it’s not!” Anath insists. “I feel fine.”

“Anath, if I don’t heal you, you are going to fucking die.”

“…But you always heal me.”

Nanaya sighs, reaching her lanky arm out to wrap around Anath and lift her over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Anath yelps in a mix of surprise and pain, her token resistance ending almost immediately as it seems to make her remember that she is in pain. Then, for the first time, Nanaya looks over her shoulder and down at Fulgora, her red eyes glowing the tiniest amount in the morning light.

“…I suggest you stand down,” she says evenly.

Fulgora swallows, and then in a quick flash of light she is replaced with what looks like a completely different girl, though their general shape and figure are pretty similar. Rather than full combat gear, she’s wearing jeans, tennis shoes, and a high school varsity jacket—one that’s bulky enough to conceal the non-magical handgun she had on her person as Fulgora. The jacket reads ‘Campbell’ on the back, and the general ‘high school senior’ vibes she gives off from wearing it definitely match my best guess at her age. She’s wearing her brown hair in a short ponytail, the general shape of her face reminding me an awful lot of Jim, the poor pet shop guy. Geez, hopefully he got away. I wonder if he and Fulgora are related?

Well. ‘Fulgora’ likely isn’t her name when she looks like this.

Nanaya turns to me next, and while she didn’t exactly start a conversation with Fulgora my orders are even more taciturn.

“Come.”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

She leaps up onto the roof of a nearby building and I follow her, sparing one last look at the human who transforms into Fulgora. Interestingly, the injuries she sustained aren’t visible on her body anymore. She staggers to her feet looking like she’s in a lot of pain, but she’s not bleeding anywhere I can see and the fact that she can get to her feet at all clearly indicates a substantial improvement in health. We stare at each other until the moment I jump up onto the building with Nanaya, breaking of sight beyond the lip of the roof. As I leave, though, I hear Jim’s voice call out with concern.

“Eliza! Are you okay!?”

Eliza Campbell, then. Potentially good to know, though I guess I’m not really sure what for. It’s not like I can talk to her.

“Owww,” Anath groans as we leap from rooftop to rooftop, heading back towards where Anath and I exited the liminal space. “Nana, that hurts…”

“Then shift out of your combat form before you die, moron,” Nanaya answers flatly.

“Nanaaaa, all of my forms are combat forms!”

“For the love of… Anath, did you fight untransformed? Did you get this injured in your real body?”

“All my bodies are r—”

Nanaya sharply shrugs the shoulder Anath is balanced on, eliciting a yelp of pain to cut her off.

“…Um. Well. I might have gotten injured,” Anath hedges, coughing up a few specks of blood. “N-not as much though! Just a little.”

“Then shift and let me take a look at you!” Nanaya demands. “Honestly, how are you even still maintaining the integrity of your transformation?”

“I just told y—ow!” Anath yelps as Nanaya drops her onto the roof. “Okay, okay!”

The burst of light that heralds the end of Anath’s extra-monstrous form lasts a good bit longer than the flash that ended Eliza’s transformation, but otherwise the magic seems pretty much the same.

“God damnit, Anath,” Nanaya hisses, though it’s quieter and devoid of the usual vitriol. Instead it’s… worried. “God damnit. You’re bleeding out.”

“Wha? No I’m not,” Anath insists groggily. “If I was bleeding my fur would be all sticky and wet and stuff. Oh wait you mean like. On the inside. Yeagh I’m a lil sloshy.”

“Damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it,” Nanaya growls, magic circles flaring around her body and pouring energy into Anath. “I need to heal you. I’m putting you under so you don’t tear yourself apart anymore.”

“Are you cubdles to slebp?” Anath slurs incoherently, briefly trying to lift an arm towards Nanaya before she finishes drifting off into unconsciousness. With her spell still active, Nanaya’s eyes flick towards me.

“You. Thing,” she snaps. “You can fight? You follow orders?”

I nod. That’s about the sum of me now, yeah.

“You will allow no one to approach,” Nanaya commands. “No one. Anath and I are not to be disturbed until I get her stable.”

Oh. Shit. Okay. I mean, we’re just on the roof of some random business maybe a few blocks away from an explosion-filled magical girl fight, but I’m sure we’ll be left alone for this whole emergency medical procedure. …God, I hope I don’t have to hurt any more kids. Maybe we won’t be here long?

“If you make us miss the only way back home, Anath, I am going to kill you,” Nanaya hisses under her breath. “You’re going to trap us on Earth for a week at this rate.”

Oh. Well.

At least my power reserves are filling back up again.

– – –

“Eliza! Are you okay!?”

My heavy breaths stabbing phantom pains through my lungs, I turn towards my brother’s voice, spotting him running my way. My heart freezes in fear for a moment, but… no. Not a scratch on him. Thank god.

As soon as he gets close enough, I punch him in the shoulder.

“Ow!” he says. “What the heck!?”

“Don’t shout my name, idiot,” I tell him. “I still have like… half a secret identity.”

“Oh, r-right. Sorry,” he says.