Chapter 10 Melodia

The week after fighting the doll and starting my magic lessons felt like the fastest week of my life. Between Anna’s glares at school and my focus on my magical studies after school, it felt like I didn’t have enough hours in the day to get everything done. But it had all been worth it on Friday, when I had finally been able to cast my first spell. I hadn’t felt anything different at first, but then Pickati had been kind enough to cancel out my gravity and let me float around the abandoned building a bit.

Despite all the twists and flips I did, I never even felt a little dizzy. I had even tried standing on the ceiling and felt completely normal. I had felt like I was atop the world.

A feeling which lasted until we made it home and Pickati told me he would be giving me three spells to choose between. I had picked the one which looked like it would be the most useful in a fight…

And it looked like it was also going to be the hardest one to learn.

“This is not how I expected to spend my Saturday morning,” I half joked as I looked at the spell I was writing in the spell book in front of me. The spell written down was called ‘area gravity modification’ a spell meant to do what its name suggested. Good luck not falling on your face when the gravity under your feet suddenly gets super strong.

I had already picked up most of the spell. Gravity I already had down, the area part could be as simple as turning a spot in front of me into a concept, and for the circle part I just needed to pick a size. It took me a little while to memorize exactly how big a foot-sized circle was, but it wasn’t so hard after a little practice. No, the part I was stuck on was the very last step. How was I supposed to turn the idea of multiplication into a physical thing I could picture in my head? I had already tried raw numbers, but they didn’t work.

I was pretty much done with trying to figure it out on my own. I was going to give it one more time. Maybe if I imagined it as a rock turning into two rocks…

I went through the process, trying the new image. I layered the concept and looked over to Pickati to see if I had done it or not. And instead of paying attention to me, he was staring out the window with a slight frown…

My short lived annoyance melted away as I realized what was probably setting him off.

“Another doll?” It had been a full week since the last one, and Pickati had even warned me our training session might get interrupted.

“Yes, and one spawning too far away for us to reach it in time. We’ll have to head out now and hope Anna can hold it off until we get there,” I got out of my chair, moving in such a way to hide the frown on my face. Pickati still had no idea about the situation between Anna and me. For all he knew, the two of us got along at school and just didn’t see each other much outside of it.

I felt bad lying, but I had already lied to so many people, what was one more. I pushed my guilt down and grabbed the map of the town again and laid it out of him to look at. He scanned the paper for a while before pointing somewhere.

“Oh,” I winced at the location. It was a bridge all the way on the other side of South Palm. It would take me at least an hour and a half to walk the whole thing… or maybe twenty minutes in bus. “We have to go now,” I grabbed the little wallet I kept my meager allowance in as Pickati flew into my bag. It would have more than enough to pay the two dollar bus fare.

One frantic attempt of getting onto a bus right before it left and twenty minutes later, I was rushing off the bus and looking around for any doll related trouble. The last stop off the bus before the bridge was near an empty lot right next to the strait separating South Palm and a beach resort disguised as the island city of Sunny Shore.

I could get a good look at the bridge from here, and there was no sudden monster attack happening on it, so it must have been underneath. I rushed past the empty lot and entered the area next to the strait under the bridge, transforming once I was out of sight.

I got there just in time to see a dragon-like doll get its head blown off by a blast of wind. I stopped in place as I spotted a new girl standing next to Anna. Well, new to this whole doll fighting thing. She looked kind of familiar for some reason. Had I seen her before? I took a second to search my memories but I still couldn’t think of anyone in particular.

In the end I took a guess there was a fifty percent chance I had at least one class with her.

…It’s hard to remember people’s faces when you’re too scared to look them in the eye.

“We did it!” The new girl cheered along with Anna, the two of them jumping at the same time before giving each other high-fives.

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While I could best be described as purple, and Anna as pink, then this new girl screamed green. She had on a long green cloak then went from her neck to around her knees. Under it I could see she was wearing a green body suit, like the kind a gymnast would wear. And on her right shoulder was a shoulder pad with a black four pointed star.

“Yeah we did!” Anna added before looking over and noticing me. She turned around and put her hands on her hips with a big smirk on her face. “Well look who it is.”

The new girl turned around to look at me. She had no glare and I didn’t feel any pressure coming from her. Maybe there was still a chance I could work with them. Was today the day I finally broke through?

“Now who’s too weak to fight on their own?” And just like that, any chance I had vanished like a mirage. You know, because it was never really there to begin with.

“Wait, she really said something like that?” The new girl looked shocked as I felt the world around me crumble again. “Whenever I saw her in class, I thought she was this cool silent type, not a jerk,” oh great I was right about her being in one of my classes. At least I had that going for me.

“Yeah, I tried to make friends with her, but she thinks she’s too good for the rest of us,” Anna why? What did I do to deserve this? “So what now, you finally ready to get off your high horse?”

I shuffled back, not wanting this attention, when I got saved by the least likely person.

“So I got three of you brats to deal with now,” all three of us looked up at the metal bridge going under the real one. It was meant to be used by maintenance workers, but the man wearing furs and blue ink was no worker.

“Break!” Anna shouted while pointing upwards at him.

“Who?” The new girl kept going back and forth, looking up at Break before switching to Anna and going back again.

“He’s one of the doll commanders,” she quickly explained to the new girl as I eyed the ladder leading up to the walkway. “And he doesn’t even hide it or anything.”

“So he’s a bad guy?” Break broke out into a barking laugh as the new girl said that. Meanwhile I was making my way to the ladder, for once grateful for my power to sink into the background.

“Bad guy? I’m not a bad guy. I’m just a guy doing what he loves to do,” okay good, Break was completely distracted. I slipped through the locked cage meant to keep people from the ladder and started climbing. “And I love doing it so much, I even named myself after it.”

“So what, you just go around breaking stuff because it’s fun? Anna was right, you are a bad guy!” Personally I thought he had crossed the line into ‘bad guy’ when he started making monsters to attack the town, but that was my personal opinion. But it was keeping his eyes and attention on the two of them and not on me so I couldn’t complain.

“Why are you even doing this?” She demanded as I made it near the top. “If the spirit of destruction gets free, don’t you get destroyed too?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” he let out another one of his annoying laughs, “either way I get to see some cool stuff before I go. And that’s worth it if you ask…”

And that was as far as he got before I started running at him. My feet pounded the metal grating, making enough noise to get everyone’s attention. Time to put what little practice I had in hand to hand fighting to the test.

Break’s eyes widened as I came to a stop right in front of him. I swung a fist tight into his stomach, digging into his skin and pushing him back. He stumbled back and reached for the spot I hit. Looked like my guess had been right.

When you build a machine, you build it to do what it’s meant for. If it’s meant to fight and get hurt, you’re going to have to build it tough. If its job is to build more machines and then command them… well you don’t need to be as tough for that, now do you?

“That actually hurt a little…” I ran up to him and planted my foot into the grating before twisting my whole body into a single kick. Break shut his mouth as my foot smashed into his arm. I moved back ready to keep going when I noticed my foot wasn’t moving. I looked down at my foot and saw Break holding onto my leg with his other hand.

I tugged at my leg but break managed to keep an iron grip.

I couldn’t move, at all.

I couldn’t move…

I couldn’t move!

“You really need to stop interrupting…” If he wasn’t going to let me go, I would make him let me go. I pointed at his face and yelled.

“Gravity Crush!”

The second I said the first letter Break did not, in fact, let me go. Instead he spun around and threw me off the bridge. I looked up as I fell, my finger still pointing in his general direction. By the time the spell was cast I was too far away for it to work right. The little black ball faded away before it could eat anything around it.

I landed with a grunt, a cloud of dust flying up around me. I groaned and forced my eyes open to see Anna and the new girl standing over me.

“Well that was close,” I tilted my head back up as the other girls did the same. Break was leaning over the railing, not looking worse for wear. “Not sure if that would have killed me or not, but I’m not ready to find out just yet. I haven’t had enough fun yet.”

He burst into the same barking laugh I was getting real tired of. He gripped the railing and leaned even more over the edge. I could see the wild grin on his face.

“See, this is why you’re my favorite Ribbon,” was he talking about me? “The other girls stand around and yell at me but you actually try to turn me into a corpse.”

I blinked as it hit me. I had actually… tried to kill him hadn’t I? How was I supposed to feel about that? The dolls were just monsters… right?

“I’d love to stay and fight, but I got other things to do,” he announced as a vortex of sludge appeared in the air in front of him. He vaulted over the fence and jumped straight into it.

And just like that, he was gone. Looked like I would have to worry about it some other time.

“Wow, you don’t mess around, do you?” The new girl asked as I got to my feet. My whole body felt a little numb from the fall, but it probably should have hurt a lot more. Yay superpowers I guess. “You alright? Say something.”

Oh right, the new girl was still here.

“Don’t bother, she never talks to anyone,” Anna chimed in before I could say anything. She started walking back up to the road as she undid her transformation. “Come on Rashell, we have to go celebrate a job well done.”

Oh, so Rashell was her name. She looked between the two of us and for a second I thought she was going to stay behind to talk to me, but after a second she undid her transformation and followed Anna out of here.

I undid my own transformation before sitting down and waiting for Pickati to show up. All by myself, just like I always was.