Even before I entered the building my apartment was in, I could see that someone had been in my room. Taking a break to feign interest in a tree, I asked Cleo, “can you do the second part of the scan I paid for from here?”

Instead of getting a reply in the form of words, they deposited a model of my room with a heatmap of everything that changed. Overall, very little was different. The viscous liquids in my shampoo, teriyaki sauce, peanut butter, and other similar products had mostly settled off the sides of their containers. The thickness of dust along the surfaces of places I tended to hang out in was higher by a pointlessly small amount. The door had been slightly jostled, but from the assessment, neither the lock nor the handle had been messed with. It was a similar story with the windows: minor changes that the wind or drafts could account for.

Which is why the easel and painting that would probably qualify as a statue from how many layers it had just sitting in a corner of my room was so strange.

When I got up to my room and laid eyes on it, I was very confused to see it was composed of entirely white paint. The top layer was perfectly homogeneous in its color and finish that rivaled precisely machined surfaces with how flat it was. It clearly wasn’t meant to be seen, and given that it had arrived in my room without an entrance being used, I could only guess that it had been crafted and placed there by an MG.

As for the reason, my perception could make out that there were air gaps in the lower layers, although the incredibly fine nature of each layer made separating them into understandable slices difficult.

The presentation of the painting made it obvious it was designed for me specifically, and the peculiar method of delivery made me feel it was probably safe to assume it was for only me. In a flash of paranoia, I couldn’t help but think whoever had left it here must have known I had access to the [Warehouse], since the cumbersome nature of painting-statue hybrids makes them annoyingly hard to hide without access to an inaccessible space. After calming down, I waved off the idea it was anything but a coincidence; many MGs would have a storage space large enough to hold it.

With that put off to be dealt with later, I flopped onto my bed and engaged in mindless media consumption for a few hours. The past few days had been rough and I just wanted some time to chill where I could pretend no one else existed.

Eventually, the background stress of unfinished agenda items overcame my desire to not think. I had dealt with too much self reflection and care advice recently, so I ignored everything remotely related in favor of researching more weaponry I could use next time it was needed. The issue with ‘chemicals’- even with bullshit levels of catalysis- is that they suck in directly hurting things.

Chemical attacks are limited by the amount of it you can get your target exposed to and very quickly reach effective saturation. Sticking a finger in one liter of acid doesn’t dissolve it much slower than one hundred- you can just dissolve more of the finger over time. If I was trying to kill mundane creatures, the general rules of how living things can be structured would allow specific agents to effectively target known physiological weaknesses, but demons didn’t follow consistent rules.

Demons didn’t need to live to reproduce, only function long enough to secure ULE or contribute to allowing others to do so.

Aerosolizing a nerve agent would work on some of them, but there were plenty that just didn’t exchange gasses, or did so in weird ways that would massively slow uptake. Injections faced a similar issue of not all demons having a circulatory system.

My best bet was focusing on chemicals that reacted to create secondary effects. I had burning streams down, but was lacking in the explosive, entrapping, and sensory-overloading departments. While copious amounts of nitroglycerine and thermite might not help keep damages to a minimum, having them around would make me happier. The next issue was that my polymer choice of current ethyl-cyanoacrylate was brittle and required constant attention and ULE to keep liquid- which was good for catching things, but not creating objects. Finally, from personal experience and a little bit of reading, many demons were specialized to have one or two really acute senses that could be abused.

An hour or more of research into things that would probably get me on a list, I also added monomer solutions of polybenzimidazole and polyamide-imide to my list of things to request. According to a few skimmed articles, they were very strong polymers in compression and tension, respectively. Like with my glue, I would be able to control where and when they polymerized- expect they should be much better as solid structures, especially if I was smart about what parts used which.

As a final note I also made a note to ask for magnesium powder mostly because it sounded fun.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

When I made it back to the request desk, the same guy as earlier in the day was there, except for the first time, there was someone else excitedly saying something to the clerk. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, so I hurried a little to try and listen in.

“-so can you get it?” The unknown person asked.

Looking like they were hiding a not-insignificant amount of annoyance under a mask of friendliness, the clerk said, “yes, we can probably acquire ‘some wire of every type of metal,’ it’s not the weirdest thing someone’s asked for. You’ll get a message when it’s ready for pickup.”

“Thank-”

“Ah, another one. What can I do for you?”

Giving them a sympathetic look, I pulled out a few request forms I had filled out on the way over. “Just these. Wait- I forgot the containers. Can I just leave these here and drop those off tomorrow?”

“It’ll be fine.”

From off to the side, the other MG narrowed their eyes at me and pointedly accused, “you’re screwing with me! [Prediction Projection] keeps reassessing what you’ll do!”

Incredulously, I turned to look at them and asked, “...and that makes you think I’m messing with you specifically?”

Sounding way to confident in themself, the flamboyantly dressed person smugly explained, “well, I know every magical girl and guy who works with SEYA, and none of them both have a perk that can confuse [Prediction Projection] and would keep it on all the time- so you must have turned it on specifically to annoy me!”

“Oh, you’ve had time to meet everyone? How long have you been here?”

Suddenly much more subdued, she… he? muttered, “well, I just got here four days ago… but I memorized the organization’s info page on the wiki!”

“Well, it must not be up to date,” I said dismissively before turning back to the clerk. “Sorry about not having everything with me. Is there an online form or email where I can send these in the future?”

“Yeah, let me write it-”

Now positioned in the doorway, the new MG interrupted and demanded, “turn off whatever you’re doing or you’re not leaving!”

Thoroughly out of energy to be nice, I flatly shot back, “what’s your fucking problem? Am I not fulfilling your illusions of grandeur?” In a flash of apathy, I did in fact turn off [Unremarkable], staring into them with what even I found to be a disturbing visage between the scared tear-trails and camera eyes.

As expected they recoiled, but instead of cooling off, they shouted, “demon!” and whipped out with one of their hands.

Instantly on alert, my perception of time slowed down to a fraction of normal as the dark sun in my inner world started to rise. Pinched between their thumb and first knuckle of their pointer finger was a long and incredibly thin wire, charged with ULE. Calculations ran and predicted I wouldn’t be able to move fast enough to avoid being hit, and even if I did, the length of the wire would definitely reach the guy behind me.

I fought to keep the cold at bay, but found myself flashing through offensive and defensive options- even forgoing sight and ULE perception to make use of the processing power freed up by doing so. Fully apathetic, my cold mind decided on the course of action with the wire millimeters from my neck.

As it just barely touched my skin, an appreciable chunk of my own ULE was dumped into the wire, but it was surprisingly easy to simply twist the existing energy to whatever form my mind desired. As the wire started to draw blood, my mind leveraged the digitally-entangled nature of my body to support my natural processes in degrading the foreign material by quarantining it from the rest of the system and working to delete it. To further help the reaction, kinetic energy from the strike was turned into ULE, which was in turn put into catalyzing and coordinating the degradation.

My efforts snapped the strange weapon in less time than it took to blink, with the now much more harmless trailing end moving to eventually wrap around my neck like an uncomfortable scarf.

Unnecessary energy would be wasted remaining at maximum thought acceleration, so my mind shifted closer to real time as signals from my brain started reaching muscles. A hand went to my lower back and grabbed my canister of 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile as I crouched and dashed forwards with a burst of ULE assistance.

Despite not being in costume, my mind decided exerting enough force to pull a muscle was acceptable to get closer faster. My opponent’s other hand was starting to move, but my tail was able to lash out and stab into their forearm before the wire in that hand could be whipped out. A burst of lachrymator was released into their face as my momentum let me tackle them out of the door they had been trying to block.

As we fell, the current canister was exchanged for the one containing cyanoacrylate while my other hand and tail pulled my soon to be cushions arms together. Unfortunately, the fall resulted in them smacking their head against the flooring of the hallway outside the office, but that didn’t stop me from restraining their limbs thoroughly.

Pain and exhaustion flooded back as I came back to myself- the now less mysterious but much more terrifying black sun setting. Breathing deeply, I staggered up and asked the cowering administrative worker, “any idea how this is handled?”