Chapter Forty
Bentley created some energy bars for Li Mei, who unwrapped them and started wolfing them down. “Thanks, Luciole. I used everything in the tank to take out these Macks. Ever fought a whole swarm by yourself?”
I shook my head. “I did a lot of solo fighting, but never anything like this. Honestly, your Mana Surge is much stronger than mine for soloing.”
We sat on the pier silently for a minute, staring at the Whiffen Spit. The two Type Twenty-Ones were dug in deep. However, on looking more closely, the line of Twenty-Eights guarding the peninsula’s narrow choke point looked much more ragged than it had before the Thirty-Two emerged and started tearing up Sooke. Maybe the anti-tank rifle was helping.
“So, you two didn’t run into Overclock?” Li Mei said around a bite of protein bar.
“No. We thought you’d be with her,” Sam said, frowning.
“Nope. We were running from the machines, and then all of a sudden, the Macks swarmed us. I got pushed back to the Prestige, and the Thirty-Two followed me for a while, so I kept running and fighting. She went south toward the ocean. That was the last I saw of her. I tried to get Charlie to contact James, but he didn’t know where she was either.”
The silence grew awkward. I didn’t want to think about Overclock by herself. She’d handled herself in West End without an Operator and still had her hammer. There was a chance she’d just lost her Operator chip. If we could find her, we could…
“We’ll find her,” Li Mei said, staring at my face. I must’ve looked pretty terrified because she almost patted me on the back. “We need her for the mission.”
“Bentley, if we can’t find Overclock, what do we do about the mission?” I asked.
“Pulling up your Mission Menu now,” Bentley said. “It’s good to be back. SHOCKS dropped an emergency transponder here for the Strike Team to use. It’ll stay running for a couple of hours, so we shouldn’t lose contact if another Thirty-Two shows up.”
Mission Menu
Mission
Difficulty
Status
Rewards
Security Patrol
Challenging
In Progress
2 Exp., 1 point in Vit.
Assault Whiffen Spit
Overwhelming
In Progress
2 Exp., 1 Sigil
Critical! Rescue the Magical Girl
Unknown
In Progress
1 Exp., 1 Sigil
“SHOCKS has been theorizing on this Magical Girl,” he continued. “There is absolutely no record of a rogue Magical Girl. SHOCKS failed to recover a few girls after the Battle of Vancouver a few years ago, including Zero Suit. You may not be dealing with a rogue Magical Girl anymore. It might be something else.
“If that’s the case, the mission has changed. You have to recover the Magical Girl. The Assault Whiffen Spit mission isn’t important compared to getting her out.”
“So, we’re all in on rescuing the Magical Girl, then?” I took a deep breath and asked a critical question. “If we get the rogue Magical Girl to a shelter, will a Strike Team deal with the two Twenty-Ones?”
“Uh…yes. There’s no free Strike Team for a few hours, though. Your Type Thirty-Two wasn’t the only Class Four on the attack today. If you can soften up the Twenty-Ones or take even one down, that’ll buy them time. But that’s not your priority.”
Level Up! Congratulations!
You have reached Level Ten! Consult your operator for help assigning points to your statistics and Class selection.
Basics
Name: Pendleton, Alice (Luciole)
Level: 10
Class:
Color: Red
Mana: 70/90
HP: 48/65
Statistics
Str: 4
Agi: 7
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Vit: 10
Will: 18
Soul: 15
Points: 3
Sigils: 0 (1 used)
Rank: _
Skills
Perk: Fogform
Mana Surge: Feu-Follet
Spells: Blazing Light (2/2), Moonray (2/2), Class Spell (Open Slot), Class Spell (Open Slot)
Operator: Bentley (Tags)
I opened my mouth to place points, but Bentley interrupted. “Class first, then points. That way, you can make choices based on which class you choose. Here’s the menu.”
“Hey, I leveled as well,” Li Mei said from behind me. She started talking to Charlie, and I zoned out and focused on my choices.
Class
Role
Spells and Descriptions
Raging Spark
Close-Range Damage Caster
Scatter the Sparks: Each fire spell creates a second, smaller fire at the caster’s discretion.
Flame Rush: A flaming copy of the caster charges the target
Guiding Light
Leadership Caster (shift to Orange)
Tunnel Vision: Light guides allies’ and caster’s attacks against a specific target, causing them to never miss while active.
Shapes in the Mist: Obscure Mack IFF systems.
Lightning Bug
Long-Range Damage Caster
Will-o-the-Wisp: A randomly traveling light that increases the caster’s spell damage on targets it crosses and inflicts burning damage.
Arcing Rays: Lightning bounces between the last five marked targets, damaging them and disrupting electronics.
Phoenix
Long Range Healing Caster (shift to Pink)
From the Ashes: Nanite (health and mana) regeneration increased in proximity to ash or burnt items.
Fiery Gaze: Flame beams from the caster’s eyes burn as long as the caster’s mana holds (15-mana burn max)
“Alright,” I said. Realistically, none of these would help me find Overclock. But they all had other advantages. With a little more work, Raging Spark might turn me into a caster that could pump out damage like Li Mei. I liked that idea, but Flame Rush felt like it’d be more melee-centric, and I’d just proven that I didn’t do well in close-range. So I put that one on the back burner.
I didn’t want to change colors, either. Sam was filling the Pink role in our team, even if her shield was more about preventing damage than healing it. Once she got some spells, she’d more than take care of it, and I’d never heard of a double pink team. And Guiding Light just didn’t feel right. I wasn’t a leader. Or at least, I thought, as I looked at my teammates, I didn’t want to be.
In any case, I didn’t need to be an Orange to lead.
And Lightning Bug felt on theme.
I took a deep breath. “Bentley, select Lightning Bug, please. And give me two points in Will and one in Vitality.”
‘You got it, Luciole. Here’s your stats.”
Basics
Name: Pendleton, Alice (Luciole)
Level: 10
Class: Lightning Bug
Color: Red
Mana: 80/100
HP: 53/70
Statistics
Str: 4
Agi: 7
Vit: 12
Will: 20
Soul: 15
Points: 0
Sigils: 0 (1 used)
Rank: 84/123
Skills
Perk: Fogform
Mana Surge: Feu-Follet
Spells: Blazing Light (2/2+1), Moonray (1/2+1), Will-o-the-Wisp (5/5), Arcing Rays (3/3)
Operator: Bentley (Tags)
I smiled, even through my worry about Overclock. With the new class spells, I was starting to look like a proper caster. If I were lucky or smart, I wouldn’t even have to use my crossbow anymore. And it looked like having a casting-focused class gave me more casts of my spells, too.
“Bentley, you can close the menu,” I said. Then I waved the team over. We huddled up at the end of the dock with the wreckage of a dozen Type Ones around us. “Okay, Girls. Here’s the plan. We find Overclock and carry on with the mission. Questions?”
Sam raised her hand. “Yeah. Where do we even look?”
The anti-tank gun fired. I breathed a sigh of relief. At least that crazy old man had survived the Thirty-Two’s attack. “Overclock’s a smart girl. She’d know we’d try to regroup and head for Whiffen Spit since that was the mission. So we’ll do exactly what she expects. We’ll head for the Spit, and we’ll start our attack. She’ll meet us there. She has to.”
Li Mei and Sam stared at me briefly, eyes narrowed and brows furrowed. “She’s your friend,” Li Mei slowly said.
“Yeah. We went through a lot together. And that’s why I know she’ll be where we need her to be.”
“You’re lying,” Sam said. She pointed a finger at me. “You don’t know she’ll be there. You can’t know that.”
I sighed. “You’re right. I don’t. I hope she’s alive. I hope she’s still fighting with that giant fucking hammer. And I hope she’s smart enough to meet us at Whiffen Spit. But I don’t know. Would you rather hear that? That I have no idea what I’m doing? Because that’s true, and I’m sure Overclock felt the same way back at West End, but we got through that, and we’ll get through this too. Now, let’s get going, Girls.”
I started walking back down the pier. I didn’t care if they wanted to follow me. They had no business being here, and at some point, I was going to figure out why SHOCKS had no choice but to put brand-new Magical Girls in situations like this. Or like West End. Or, I’d started to suspect, dozens of other places. Everyone talked about the Battle of Vancouver like it was some failure on HANAF’s part, but what it if hadn’t been? What if it’d been SHOCKS that failed there?
I was going to find out. But first, I’d find my teammate and get the Magical Girl back from the Macks. Even if HANAF or SHOCKS was stupid, or even trying to get Magical Girls killed for some reason, the Macks were the enemy.
I didn’t look back, but I felt Li Mei and Sam start following me. We ran off the dock and sprinted south toward the Spit.
Scattered, half-rotten logs covered the spit’s inland side—remnants from when the river beyond it had perhaps flowed harder. Waves crashed softly into the tongue of land from the seaside, covering it all in a light mist with each breaking whitecap. And in the narrow band of trees, the trail wound past, I could see a squad of Type Twenty-Eights, their weevil-shaped bodies and guns facing us.
What I couldn’t see was Overclock.