11i The Friend Of The Siren

The starbane veil cast over Camp Elysium Lux smothered the plot of land almost perfectly. A long time ago, when the camp facilities had been moving from the conceptual stage to the workable stage, a rudimentary barrier had been cast to smooth specific radio waves, thus removing unauthorised mobile data from the area. The limits of that barrier had been designed to stop at the edge of the property, and the starbane veil had matched those constraints to a T.

Work had long since begun to break the veil from outside, but as ever, it was slow going. It had nearly been two hours since the veil had been cast, and the remoteness of this location had meant no magical girls arrived until after twenty minutes had passed.

Said work involved casting two spells. The first involved applying constant pressure to the veil, thereby preventing automatic repairs, and the second targeted weak points in the barrier as they revealed themselves. Technically a third spell could be involved to damage those points, but some just moved their pressure spell over those weak points to save mana. The magical girl watching over the scene outside the veil was not taking part in either of these spells.

That responsibility was being handled by another magical girl who went by an epithet: The Screaming Siren. Despite her immaculate and recognizable costume, she bore the look of someone dragged out of bed right at the moment they had just fallen asleep, which was very often the case with these events. For the moment, The Screaming Siren was channelling her tired frustration into the deep maroon beams that bent and fluctuated out of one hand like a sound visualiser, though the magical girl above was too high in the air to hear anything from below.

Between The Screaming Siren and the starbane veil she was breaking was a large pale blue magic circle that was half phased into the ground. Every so often a smaller circle would highlight an area within the larger one, and The Screaming Siren would unleash a burst of deadly red magic in that direction.

So far, none of this had even resulted in a crack forming in the veil. That was normal, since starbane veils always took a long time to break.

The Screaming Siren had the means to contact the magical girl above if she needed or wanted to, so the floating woman had her attention directed elsewhere. She was focused instead on the now arriving convoy from the military.

Camp Elysium Lux’s remote location was working against them here. Normally, a veil would have multiple tanks mobilised around the breaching point, since tank shells were capable of damaging some elite forms of Starbane. The damage was incredibly minor compared to what a magical girl could output, but kills were made that way. Whoever was responsible was always praised by the magical guys and girls on site, and lauded as heroes by the public. That wasn’t going to happen here.

So far, all that could be spared were two regiments of troops and the convoys to transport them. It wasn’t that the tanks weren’t available, it was more because they were being kept in reserve just in case another starbane veil was cast over a more densely populated area. Multiple starbane veils being cast in one night wasn’t unheard of. It actually happened all the time, just with the caveat that there was usually more than a country of distance between them.

The logistics made a cold sort of sense. One hundred odd lives were nothing in the face of what a catastrophe in an unprepared city might look like. In any case, any amount of reinforcement was good.

With a twitch of a finger, the magical girl opened the way through the raging orange fences she had set up around the breaching point. When one cameraman from the media, which had somehow shown up first, tried to enter before the army trucks, the magical girl twitched another finger to have a new section of fence spring up in front of him. She sighed when she saw how he had apparently been expecting that, and was lithe enough to redirect himself appropriately. The fence ended up having a new spiral with a cameraman in the centre before all the trucks were through.

After contemplating the ethics of leaving that man in the spiral, the magical girl closed the hardlight fence behind the convoy and dissipated the new section with a sigh. Her gaze landed on where two girls were lingering near to The Screaming Siren, far enough away to not be at risk of walking in front of magic.

They were practising a synchronised dance while The Screaming Siren did the actual work. It made sense, given the limits of their bound mana, but it made the floating magical girl sigh a little deeper.

The two magical girls actually took after their more senior sister, and had used their wishes to become famous. Crimson Cry had wished for fame through music, and was well on her way to becoming a popstar more famous than The Screaming Siren, if only because most people didn’t have it in them to listen to metal. The girl’s familiar had started by giving her better control over her range and ability to hold notes. It was amazing how much better someone could sound when they could do just those two things.

The youngest magical girl, Sunshine Rise, was ironically incredibly down at the moment. It was why Crimson Cry was in charge of comforting and distracting her. The reason for that distress was no secret, Sunshine had a friend inside the veil and was understandably worried. She wasn’t the only one.

“What can you tell me about whoever is in charge of the ones that just arrived?” Authority asked out loud.

[Both regiments are under the command of General Askin. With his absence, Sergeant Major Furlow, then Sergeant Bearhunter are in command,] her Familiar responded, its physical form somewhere down on the ground.

“Couldn’t you have that chain of command flipped, Stachu?” Authority asked. “Talking to someone called Bearhunter would cheer me up, but talking to a Furlow is just normal.”

[We will consider your morale more thoroughly when unrelated persons are delegating roles and responsibilities in the future,] Stachu responded, its tone calm and patient, as always..

“Thank you, it’s all I ask.” Authority looked down at the vaguely recognizable figures of authority that emerged from the mass of bodies that wasted no time unloading themselves from their trucks. Nothing much changed about the way the magical girl held herself, and it took a few moments for the hawks below to notice her moving. This particular method of flight was new, but Authority was already beginning to see the benefits.

A lack of her skirt wanting to hike up as she descended while still upright being chief among them.

As the magical girl drew closer she began to hear the music The Screaming Siren was visualising with her sustained beam. It was heavy metal, of course. Authority recognised it as an unreleased song that the other magical girl had played for her only a few days ago from the guitar melody. One or more of the media people outside were probably having a field day with this unexpected surprise.

However, the sound would be annoying, so Authority drew on the ground with her finger from up high. Three panes of green glass erected themselves from the lines she traced, and the sound coming from The Screaming Siren diminished significantly. When the quietened magical girl turned around and gave Authority the stink eye, she received a tongue stuck out in response.

The Screaming Siren rolled her eyes and turned back to her work with a deliberate pouting huff, leaving the blue and green magical girl in the sky to do all the official work again. It only took a moment to find the man in charge, he hadn’t moved far from where he’d first been seen.

Authority touched down in front of Sergeant Major Furlow and saluted. “Authority, reporting!”

The army man looked flat footed for a moment, and it tickled something distant in Authority’s memory. This looked like the first time someone of higher technical rank had descended on him like that, but he gathered his wits and saluted back. “Sergeant Major Furlow. I’m acting as base commander for the duration of this operation. Sergeant Bearhunter is my XO. He’s in charge of communications otherwise.”

“I’ll send a quick Introduction Simulacrum to go say hi, then!” Authority glowed with a soft green light as she spoke, and by the time she was finished, there was another identical Authority standing beside them. The new one quickly saluted.

“Authority reporting, Authority! Am I to go and introduce myself to Sergeant Major Bearhunter, ma’am?”

Authority glanced at her simulacrum. “As you were, Authority. Yes, you understand it right. Off you go, Authority.”

“Ma’am,” the simulacrum saluted again and hurried off. She skipped away, of course. Otherwise people would start assuming she was actually military.

Authority, the real one, looked back to Sergeant Major Furlow and found him watching the simulacrum skip off with an odd set to his face. “Is this your first rodeo, Sergeant Major?”

Furlow’s attention snapped back to the Authority he was speaking with. “No, ma’am. But it is the first one where I’ve taken point. There isn’t going to be much for me to do until an officer centre is set up. These boys and girls are well drilled, no sense nitpicking them now when they already know their jobs. I'll let their direct superiors handle that.”

Authority gave him a nod, allowing a smile to spread and show her agreement. All around them, the men and women making up the two regiments were moving like a well oiled machine. Or as well an oiled machine that two odd hundred people could be. At the very least there wasn’t much standing around happening. One would need to look at the two junior magical girls for that.

“Is this all of them?” Authority asked.

“No, there’s more on the way,” Furlow said. “But until we’ve got somewhere set up for everyone to be, it’s better to have us trickling in.”

“I better give someone the gate controls.” Authority flourished her hand, casting a handy bit of transmutation with five mana to create a handheld device with two labelled buttons. One was handily labelled “OPEN” while the other was labelled “CLOSE.” Authority had practise in making things foolproof, but she felt like a fool could still make a mess with this new device. However, they’d need to really try for that. “Do you have someone in mind who can bear this responsibility?” she asked as she held the device towards the Sergeant Major.

“I do.”

“Fantastic! Oh, I just realised something I forgot.” Authority snapped her fingers and waggled them at the little handheld device. The resulting green sparkles settled themselves into a third line of text at the top of the device, this time reading “Authority’s Foolproof Gate Controls.”

“The guy I have in mind isn’t a fool, so hopefully we won’t have to worry about the media getting in,” Sergeant Major Furlow commented, then tucked the gate controls into a pocket. “I’ll find him once we’re done. I can see you’ve already started setting up a breaching area.”

“Finished, actually,” Authority corrected as she turned to join Furlow in watching The Screaming Siren work. “That circle is a divination spell that highlights stressed points in the barrier as they appear. It’s also a good indication of where the breach will form. You should leave about twice the space that’s been blocked off by the muffling wall.”

“It’s rather wide, don’t you think?” The area highlighted by the spell was centred on the middle of the driveway into Camp Elysium Lux. If the road had been built with sidewalks, the spell would have comfortably covered those as well as reaching into any buildings that happened to be beside that.

“That’s the standard size I use for breaching veils,” Authority explained. “And the circle you see is not indicative of the eventual breach. It will be a crack at first, which we will work to widen. I like to hit a wider area than other girls because it makes the process go that much faster. The Screaming Siren has volunteered to maintain a position outside to make sure the veil doesn’t repair itself.”

“And those two are?” Furlow asked, looking at the other two magical girls. They were practising a move that involved crossing their arms over the front of their hips and little hops to one side. It was a stark contrast to everything else around the veil, and a far better look than what they’d been like before. Sunshine had needed to be held back from trying to physically breach the veil.

That was something which had never turned out well, historically.

“That’s Crimson Cry and Sunshine Rise. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of them, they just collaborated for a sold-out pop-up concert.”

“I think my little girl sent me a text about them, now that I think about it.” Furlow shook his head. “In any case, they’re yours. I’ll try and keep my people away from them.”

“Thank you,” Authority said genuinely. “They’re still teenagers. Sunshine in particular enjoys any distractions as they come.”

“That took us off track. You were explaining to me about the breach?”

“Yes, I recommend you use that indicated space to set up around. I can push back these fences if you need that, and I’ll leave an Adjutant Simulacrum with you in case I’m physically out of reach.”

As Authority spoke, another flash of green light indicated another spell and resulting simulacrum. This one was of a considerably smaller size, with feathered wings that flapped far too slowly to keep her up. She was an upgrade to older models, with little balls on the ends of her arms and legs, and her little hands were being used to hold a quill and hardcover book.

“She’s capable of leaving a message for me, and is a wiz at logistics. For simplicity’s sake, I recommend calling her Adjutant.”

Authority reached out with a finger and poked the ten centimetre tall simulacrum’s squishy cheek. “Isn’t she a cutie?” Then she laughed as her finger was pushed away by a tiny and easily surmountable force.

“Authority!” she hissed in protest, but the fleshy Authority was too busy laughing. The Adjutant Simulacrum busily straightened her magically immaculate dress, then turned to Sergeant Major Furlow and looked him over with an evaluating eye.

“Um,” it began, apparently having decided that Furlow would work best with a slightly shy adjutant. It completed the image by adjusting its glasses with the quill hand. “I’m going to be working with you. Please call me Adjutant. I’m… sorry about the real me. She’s a lot.”

As for the Sergeant Major, he looked at the adjutant fairy with a near perfect poker face. “You know, if I hadn’t been there with the french speakers on the east coast when you rescued an entire town single handedly, I’d think I was running with the circus right now.”

“Oh, that’s why you’re familiar!” Authority exclaimed, finally making the connection in her mind. They hadn’t spoken, but she’d seen his face before in the after action ceremony. Furlow had received a medal while Authority had clapped politely. Now, she lightly punched her temple and made a slightly silly face. “Sorry, that was… gosh, three years ago. Well before I eideticised my memory. I’m sort of recognising a lot of people these days.”

Furlow nodded and got that faraway look of someone looking into a memory. “You released… I think a dozen blue lights into the veil there. They all shot off, and then it felt like the area was being carpet bombed.”

Authority nodded with a smile. “That was the first time I used Strike Fighters, from my apprentice level simulacrum grimoire.” A single Strike Fighter Simulacrum briefly appeared and saluted before Authority reclaimed the mana. It was child sized, and looked the exact same as Authority did apart from that, the aviator helmet, and the scarf.

“They worked well, but I got told off for doing too much property damage,” Authority continued, then shrugged. “But at the same time I was praised for helping to widen the breach, since it let them get the tanks through. It left me a little confused.”

“No tanks on the docket this time, unfortunately,” Furlow said, confirming what Authority had thought would be the case. “This camp is just too remote. You magical girls should be enough to clear the threat, and one hundred kids unfortunately isn’t enough for more forces to be dedicated to this. Our base being on the opposite side of the city doesn’t help.”

“What do you have if you aren’t using tanks?” Authority asked, and Furlow turned to gesture at some piles that had been unloaded from the trucks.

“Some makeshift cover, freshly transmuted by one magical girl or another, and we have half a dozen tubes for rockets,” he said. Adjutant snapped open her book and began taking minutes. It was mostly for effect, but it made Furlow straighten his back and talk a little more seriously. “We otherwise have enough rifles to arm every person here, and should be able to deploy them all in rotation looking at the size of the killbox we’re going to be setting up. We’ve got eight mounted guns to set up, so I’m thinking that will be what we build around. A staggered defence will likely be the best approach, I know those things are unrelenting.”

“Maybe you could do me a favour and distract Sunshine by asking her to build a good foundation for your men,” Authority suggested. “Her transmutation magic is cheap, and it’ll take her mind off of things. You’ll likely get to play with some elevation as well.”

Stolen story; please report.

“With your permission,” Furlow nodded. “How should we approach them?”

“Send your best straight man,” Authority said after thinking a little. “She and Crimson like to tease, and a challenging opponent would take up a lot of their focus, as it were. Ah, and Privacy.” A pale blue circle appeared underneath Authority and the Sergeant Major. The sound of busywork around them faded to silence. “Sunshine has a friend inside the veil.”

Sergeant Major Furlow frowned. “Will she be able to hold it together?”

“For now, yes. Crimson Cry is a good stabilising point for her, so let her come along if she wants to. As time goes on, though…”

“Understood. I’ll delegate that to Lieutenant Ko. He’s a good balance of stoicism and sensibility, and has supervised kill boxes before,” Furlow said, catching on quickly.

“I can have a note sent as soon as this is done,” the Authority Adjutant said, taking Furlow briefly off guard. He gave her a nod, and the little fairy hummed happily as she scribed something unintelligible in her book.

Authority dismissed the Privacy spell and lifted herself into the air. “I’ll let my people know the score then. Oh, and you should hold a vote on whether or not you want The Screaming Siren to play her music loud or quiet. I’ll take down or keep up the muffling wall based on that.”

Furlow gave a very slight smirk before starting to turn away. “I can tell you right now, that fence is coming down. We’ll hold another meeting in thirty or so minutes, once the command tent is set up. Until then.”

“Until then, Sergeant Major!” Authority responded cheerfully, snapping another sloppy salute before turning away. She zipped off in the direction of Crimson Cry and Sunshine Rise, but slowed to take a good look at the two as she hovered in their direction. In the short time Authority had spent talking to Sergeant Major Furlow, the two had stopped practising their dance, and were now sitting beside one another on a freshly transmuted bench with their respective Familiars in arms reach.

Crimson Cry was absently petting her red splattered Familiar while it lay between them, while Sunshine was hugging her own yellow and green one to her chest. Authority was well familiar with what those two were feeling.

Waiting was always the hardest part.

But they needed to acquaint themselves with that part of the lifestyle, and Authority wanted to have a quick chat with her friend. So the blue and green magical girl diverted towards the Screaming Siren and let the girls be bored for an extra few minutes. The transparent green pane blocking off the sound seamlessly retracted to allow Authority through before closing behind her, and her ears were suddenly pounded with heavy metal.

“I’ve told the Sergeant Major in charge to hold a vote,” Authority announced, not bothering to speak up. Both she and The Screaming Siren had long ago modified their ears to identify speaking sounds when loud music should have drowned them out. It came with the territory when one befriended a magical metal head.

“Oh yeah!? What for!?” The Screaming Siren yelled over her own music as it shifted into a lengthy guitar solo, wilfully forgetting that she didn’t need to do that. She had a patterned bandana acting as a hairband for her long brunette hair that matched the maroon and nearly white blue of her magical getup. A more dedicated frumpy maroon sleeve decorated one arm while a fishnet sleeve detailed the other.

The Screaming Siren’s contract crystals gave the impression of spikes on a shoulder pauldron, but with the pauldron part missing over one shoulder, the one with the frumpy sleeve. Her dress had similarly themed ornaments, and had an asymmetrical cut to the same effect. Simply put, she was every part the metal goddess her name made her out to be.

“To see if the soldiers think your crappy music is worth listening to!” Authority yelled, joining in on the bit. “Furlow thinks they’re going to want your music at full blast for some reason!”

“Then they have bad taste! This song sucks!” The Screaming Siren adjusted something, and the music blasted louder. “And first name basis!? Already!?”

“Turns out we stood in the same room for a few hours three years ago! We’re practically married already!”

“It’s a shotgun wedding, isn’t it!?”

“Yes! He’s pregnant!”

The Screaming Siren cackled, breaking first and missing the timing on a weak point on the veil in front of them. Authority smiled as she picked up the slack, gesturing with purpose a moment before several hundred indigo lights formed over her shoulder.

Each light was smaller than a speck of glitter, but they shone bright and hypnotic as they drew together to a single point before spiralling towards the centre of the blue circle in a fraction of a second. The impact sent a wave of air back past them as the magic judged the weak point to have been exploited, making the blue target circle go away at the same time.

“That was Stardust Strike,” The Screaming Siren observed once her laughter was back under control, speaking at a normal volume again. The blasting music seemed to fade into the background as the two friends started really talking. “Expensive for wall busting, don’t you think?”

“I’ll get the mana back before the first cracks form, don’t you worry,” Authority responded.

“I mean, yeah, but you normally don’t go for that. You think something’s up.”

Authority thinned her lips. She didn’t cast privacy again, because the music was already giving them a far more subtle form of that spell. “I’m not certain. But the smaller veils are usually objective focused, and this one has less than two hundred people underneath. I’m not thinking up anything that Starbane might want to do in there,” Authority said, gesturing at the veil. “There is my simulacrum crystal in there, that’s actually how I learned this was happening. But it’s nothing more than a tasty treat to the smallest of elites.”

“What about the other enchanted stuff?” The Screaming Siren asked. Her normal speaking voice rasped oddly, and the woman's tiredness was exaggerating that. Authority wouldn’t have guessed she was a good singer from just the way she spoke.

“The communications lounge is protected, and worthless to even avatar forms. The gymnasium is the bunker, so that’s protected too. I actually updated it just a month ago, it won’t fail. The data blackout barrier is just barely inside of the veil, so the veil is like an extra blanket draped on top.”

The Screaming Siren hummed as she absently directed a focused assault on a new weak point highlighted on the veil. “So you got the memories of one of your simulacrums inside the veil, and that’s how you know, right?”

“A fragment of a simulacrum, but that’s still right.”

“Have you sifted through them yet? Found any clues there? Because I agree, it’s very much just a nature reserve in there. Apart from the camping stuff, obviously.”

“I was doing that up above,” Authority said, looking up at where she used to be. “If I found anything in the memories, I was going to send a more immediate request for help. Unfortunately, I only got one perspective because the rest are being used to keep the kids calm in the gymnasium, and the perspective that I got just showed me teen drama.”

Authority turned a disappointed glance towards the two magical girls sitting on the brand new bench. They weren’t watching, so neither caught the look. “A lot of them were complaining how half the campers ditched in favour of a pop up concert.”

“I remember doing that,” The Screaming Siren said, smiling. “The ditching part. That was back when I was just a drummer.”

“And no doubt you’ve since been responsible for many more underage kids sneaking out to attend your many concerts drunk.”

“Of course. The taboo is what makes it fun.”

The music played uninterrupted for several seconds. Authority caught herself starting to move to the melody. “Okay, that’s enough delay.”

She didn’t explain to The Screaming Siren, and just walked out through the sound fence towards the other two magical girls on the scene. Neither had moved much since Authority had finished talking to Sergeant Major Furlow. They had a privacy circle set up, blocking out all the noise from outside. It was how they had practised dancing to a tune when The Screaming Siren was trying to deafen everyone nearby.

It made Authority hesitate before opening her mouth, her head needed a moment to decompress from the heavy metal. She soon put on a smile and clapped her hands to announce herself. “Hey you two, how are you holding up?” Authority asked, letting her concern show.

“I’m thinking about taking a nap,” Crimson Cry said cheerfully, half turning to face her.

“I’m still worried,” Sunshine admitted. Her Familiar wriggled in her grasp, turning to face its belly towards Authority without leaving Sunshine’s arms. The oddly white creature didn’t add anything to the discussion, however. The Familiars were oddly staunch about their insistence to only speak with their contracted partner.

Authority smiled sadly at the younger of the two. It was more of an experience difference, rather than an age gap. Crimson Cry had been active for two years already, while Sunshine Rise was barely half a year into things. Her bound mana count was still under one thousand, the last that Authority had heard.

Sunshine Rise’s magical clothes mostly featured a yellow dress that ended with long cut points that flowed when she moved. Under that was a thin bodysuit that reached the ends of each limb, while the front of her head was a helmet that evoked the superhero costumes from the movies of yesteryear. The only part of herself that Sunshine left exposed in her getup was her blonde hair, which hung down past her waist in a long and straight waterfall that remained magically styled.

Crimson Cry on the other hand wore her magical girl clothes with an ease that Authority still hadn’t found in herself. She was one of the rare girls that didn’t wear a dress as the main feature, instead wearing a tailored suit with pants that had also had much of the potential cloth cut away. Her secondary colour affinity also featured far more than it did in most magical costumes, with the vest over the dress shirt being red, while the piece underneath was the brighter crimson of her primary. The most minute decoration in Crimson’s appearance came from the crystals that rotated in a faux halo that was offset by a twenty degree angle.

Compared to them, Authority felt like her own getup left her a little underdressed. All the same, she liked the simplicity of her own dress. It cut to the point, much like she often did.

“Well, I’m here to provide a distraction, so I hope you’ll be receptive,” Authority said. “Lieutenant Ko will come by shortly to ask for your help setting up the killbox around the breach. I’ve recommended you Sunshine, since you’ve taken to transmutation quite well.”

Sunshine didn’t respond right away. The yellow crystals that gave her helmet two pairs of horns appeared to pulse before she spoke.

“Dawn says you recommended me because those spells are cheapest for me,” Sunshine said. Dawn being her brighter than usual familiar. Yellow was just hard on the eyes when it glowed like that.

“She’s right,” Authority allowed. She had fallen back on the things her familiar said many times as well. Because of that, she also knew the answers to all of their tricks. “And she’ll agree with me that you could use the practice. Try some spells you aren’t already expert with, and you’ll soon gain access to the apprentice level successor tome.”

Sunshine stayed still, then hugged her Familiar closer. “You’re right…”

“And Crimson?” Authority continued, looking at the lounging girl.

“Yes mom?”

“You’re on morale duty, and with that tone, clean up as well. I don’t want to find your room messy again. And yes, I will be scrying it tomorrow.”

Crimson Cry rolled her eyes, but it was in good nature. “I’ll do my best. Soon I’ll have to resort to a long hug, though. I’m running out of things to say, and I’m honestly getting worried myself.”

“We are on schedule to breach the barrier before elite forms begin appearing,” Authority assured them. “Everyone inside will get out safe. The evacuation will only take fifteen or so minutes.”

“I know, it’s just…” Sunshine sighed.

“Words won’t make the worry go away,” Authority finished knowingly. “That’s part of why I recommended you to help the army. A distraction will do you well. But maybe if we had some more assured words. Stachu-” Authority turned to where her familiar was sitting on the ground beside her, its twin blue tails fighting for the better position resting against its front legs, but drilling the moment eyes were on her. “What’s your take on the purpose of this veil?”

[At present, we have no intelligence indicating this veil is in the service of any special objective. The only anomaly we have noticed is the lacking number of human bodies within the constraints of the veil. Perhaps they are attempting to find locations to burrow and establish a beachhead.]

“This isn’t a natural cave region,” Authority pointed out. “The caves that are there are a result of some magical girls testing offensive spells. We’d be able to scry any underground beachheads easily as well.”

[We lack access to knowledge which would allow us to refine our hypotheses, and recommend a continuation of operations as normal.]

Authority looked at the two girls on the bench. “I’ll bet your Familiars told you the same thing mine did with different words.”

“Lazy thinks they’re trying to collect biomass,” Crimson Cry said, pushing her familiar with one hand and making the white and red thing flop over. “But he admitted that the genetic diversity in this region would already be catalogued by the starbanes.”

“Dawn didn’t have anything to-” Sunshine stopped and looked down at her familiar after it flickered in place mid sentence. Before it had been right side up, but now was upside down and its smoothly undulating tail was now pressing against the surface of Sunshine’s mask.

Lazy was still lounging, but had flickered at the same time. Now he was in defiance of gravity’s natural order, and lounged on the side of the bench rather than on top of it. Even Stachu had been affected. It was still as motionless as ever, but had moved from Authority’s left to her right.

“Uh…” Crimson Cry started, but trailed off.

“Stachu, what was that?” Authority asked. She knew that the various forms of the Familiar had their peculiarities, but had never seen anything like that. Nothing so synchronised.

[I am querying,] it told her. [A complex exchange has been completed. Please hurry the rate at which you break this veil.]

“Crimson, help Siren,” Authority said, and it came out like an order. Crimson Cry muttered an affirmative and hurried over to the green sound fence. “Stachu, don’t keep me waiting.”

[Many details are obscured or have not been shared, but we know this,] Stachu began to explain. [A wish was recently granted. In granting this wish, The Familiars designated Dawn, Lazy, and Stachu were tasked with preparing a reception circle for a teleportation spell. We did so flawlessly, but the passenger did not arrive.]

“That…” Authority didn’t know what to say. Teleportation wasn’t really her field, but the Familiar didn’t cast spells incorrectly. Especially not for a wish.

[The following has been confirmed. The departure circle was located within the bounds of the veil at this location.]

“Meaning that the wish was made inside the veil, and something blocked the teleport,” Authority concluded.

[Precisely.]

“Someone made a wish inside the veil,” Authority continued, feeling a cold pit forming inside. “There’s a magical girl in there.”

[We have not confirmed the gender of the magician.]

“Um, Dawn said that one of my friends was a good candidate for becoming a magical girl,” Sunshine spoke up. “Does that mean it's her that’s fighting?”

Authority took a moment to consider what to say.

[There are three candidates that were being seriously considered for the offer of a contract taking part in the camp,] Stachu told Authority. [A dossier is bei- a dossier is available for your perusal.]

“It’s a one in three chance,” Authority told Sunshine Rise. “And if it is her, it means she’s safer than she otherwise would be. She’d be taking spells from grimoires and harvesting mana. Either way, she’s safe.”

Sunshine’s posture closed up, and she hugged her Familiar closer.

“Please keep an open mind with Ko,” Authority requested. “Think of building fortifications like you’re helping your friend, because that’s technically true, if indirect.”

“Okay,” Sunshine murmured after a few seconds. She was a teenager, so that was the best Authority was going to get.

Authority gave her a smile that was hopefully reassuring, then looked up and shot into the sky. She didn’t want to continue the conversation next to the unstable girl. Before she continued, Authority tapped her ear to connect with The Screaming Siren.

“I’m sending a Fast Simulacrum to find Roaming Polaris,” Authority said, casting the spell and pointing it off in the way of the meandering star. The Authority nodded at her creator before snapping her absurdly thick goggles into place, grasping the makeshift handles of her glider, and vanishing from sight with an echoing crack. “And I’m leaving my Charismatic Self to make a call for aid.” A third full sized Authority appeared in the air, nodded and pulled Authority’s laptop from storage with a flourish.

“What happened to up the threat?” The Screaming Siren asked, genuinely curious.

“There’s a new magical girl in the veil,” Authority explained. Her friend swore. “Make some distance from the veil. I’m going to knock.”

“Understood,” the magical girl said. “Hey, Crimson! Back off a little!”

Authority looked down at the blue numbers at the bottom middle of her vision before moving a little higher into position. As she’d told Siren, her mana had pulsed almost to capacity since casting the smaller breaching spell, even with the simulacrums she’d been freely casting. She angled her left hand to face the circle against the black barrier before casting her first spell.

“Knock,” she cast.

A dark blue ripple expanded from the detection circle and dissipated in an instant while the resulting shockwave made the army trucks rock. Half a dozen blue circles started highlighting revealed weaknesses in the complex makeup of the starbane veil. Such a feat took its toll in mana.

B: 29652/30720

“Breaching Bolt,” Authority cast, preparing a red circle around her left hand that her right reached forward to drag back a line that functioned as a drawstring. She didn’t stop there. “Demolition. Sharpen. Multiply. Target. Linger. Explode.” Each spell added a new colour to the magic circle as it expanded to fit each additional spell. Authority held for a moment, then added the final enchantment. “Repeat.”

By then it was nearly impossible to restrain the increasingly violent red light in Authority’s grasp. She breathed in and aimed it like a bow to reduce the drain that the targeting enchantment would take, then loosed the spell.

One long bolt of magic split into several, and each struck the very centre of a matching blue targeting circle. Unlike the previous spells, which were all rebuffed, these magical arrows penetrated and lingered. A moment later a red light pulsed again, as the spell repeated its casting with the exact same parameters. The arrows already in the wall exploded immediately before the secondary wave arrived, which sunk even deeper into the veil because of it. Another moment passed, and they exploded too.

Authority breathed out, and checked her mana. There was a haze of magic that obscured the results of her efforts for the time being.

B: 21354/30720

“How did I do?” she asked The Screaming Siren.

“Big crack, just like you wanted,” Authority’s friend reported. There were a few long seconds of dead air. “But, uh… small problem.”

“What is it?”

“I just watched a second veil form inside the first. We’ve got two layers to get through.”

It took several seconds for the gravity of what was said to process for Authority. “That… That’s never happened before.”

“It’s happened now,” The Screaming Siren said grimly. “Rockstar just filled me in, confirmed it. He thinks there’s a Familiar inside that Starbane wants to eat. An objective, just like you were saying.”

Authority spent several seconds just breathing. A pulse of magic returned a hundred and some mana to her bound pool, and a glowing blue paper bird flew up from the army men below. The latter of those things was the memories of the Introduction Simulacrum returning to Authority to be sorted, and she absently extended a hand for it to come and roost on.

The moment before it landed, a pulse of blue came from the direction of the veil, making the magical construct flicker before making contact with Authority’s glove. When its memories came through, Authority remembered more than just meeting a man named Bearhunter.

First, there was a lot of teen drama. Kids that responded best to an abrasive authority figure, prodded purposefully to come out of their shell. There were days of that, and then the veil. Authority let herself get swept away by the influx of memories, and let them all flow through her.

She remembered flying through a starbane infested forest, where she watched another fragment of the simulacrum be caught by a scoutscale, then crushed in an instant. She remembered a genuine fear of death that she hadn’t felt in so long, and the cold joy of watching vengeance be served by an unwitting girl. She clearly recalled guiding two terrified girls to where safety should have been, only to find none. She remembered what came after, too. The exhaustion. The mistake. The wish.

“Siren,” Authority said, making an easy decision. “I’m going to knock a second time.”