Haven Forums>MGs>Magical Girl Rankings>Rankings for April, 2048
JohnnyBrieGouda
[Havenian]
I don’t get it. The Macks are smart enough not to fall for stealth. Type Thirteens can see through camouflage, and Sixes don’t pick targets so much as crash into whatever’s in their path. It has no advantage, so how does Cobra Kyra do so well?
CaptainMichigan
[Statistician][Moderator][Havenian]
Okay, we see three things you need to know in the data to understand how she does so well in our rankings. First, she’s not very tough. I’ve seen May Lei and Pixie Punch take hits that’d flatten Kyra, and they keep ripping into the Macks. But she’s been involved in 62% of all Emergence events in the last 14 months. She rarely gets hurt because she’s not a bruiser. She’s a ninja, so she’s very, very active. Suppose I were putting her into Star Princess terms. In that case, she’s stacked Agility and Strength at the expense of everything else, including Vitality, but it works for her.
Second, her team is solid. ResCute has some incredible synergy that Cobra Kyra can rely on to do far more than she can solo. Even though she’s only with her team 46% of the time due to their need to recover from injuries, that’s almost half the time that she’s indisputably the strongest MG in Haven, outside of a few retired Girls that might give her a run. Her team is a massive force multiplier, especially whatever Overclock does.
Third, she scores incredibly low on media coverage. Like, less than one percent of all media coverage on MGs mentions her. It’s not that she’s not trying to get in the spotlight so much as that she’s actively avoiding it. Jasper is ResCute’s face and politician, and Sunburst is so cute the media can’t help but focus on her. That lets Kyra and Overclock just sort of walk away from the cameras. And when she’s not on camera, she’s hunting Macks, as evidenced by her involvement rate; only Palace Athene has a higher participation rate at 97%, and her power cheats.
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Chapter Eighteen
“So, Overclock, how are we going to get Sora to the shelter?” The hairs on the back of my neck were standing at attention. I looked out the door, trying to see if anything was out there, but it was dark. No yellow, no red. Just dark.
The stocky redhead pivoted, still subvocalizing with James - Jimmy now - and looked my friend over. The entire middle of her torso glowed pink from the WoundWrap, contrasting with the pale honey-colored skin around it. She looked up and subvocalized even more, her throat wiggling as she talked with Jimmy. After what seemed like an eternity, she spoke.
“I’m at 24 mana, but my Mana Surge is a great ‘oh shit’ button, so I can’t spend it. You’re pretty much dry, right?” I nodded at Overclock’s question. “Okay, so we’ll need to build something to move her on. Get a decently long shelf and some tape. Then we tape her to the shelf, so she doesn’t move and try moving through the school to the shelter. Worst case, we use the fire escape to sneak past the soccer field.”
I nodded, cracked open the door, and padded into the library.
Ms. Cook had covered the fluorescent lights with translucent blue plastic, which shifted slightly above me as I walked quickly down the bookshelves. The mystery section had a lot of paperbacks. Light books could mean long shelves. Taser bolts loaded in my Delphi, I moved toward the far end, past the oak check-out desk.
The first shelf in mysteries needed to be longer. So did the others. I stared at the tall bookshelves, trying to find a solution. Then, I saw it. The tall sides of the shelf! If I could break them off, they’d be perfect for keeping Sora still while we moved her.
Jogging over to the shelf, I shoved it with both hands. It teetered, and I pushed again, harder. A resounding crash cut the silence of the library as the shelf and the hundreds of mystery novels on it tipped and fell on top of an oak table. Books flew everywhere! Pages fluttered through the air! And, most importantly, the bookshelf twisted apart. Shelves littered the floor, only a few attached to the tall sides by screws and glue.
A yellow light flickered in the hall outside.
Moving quickly, I ducked and sprinted to the check-out desk. I scrambled over the top as the Type One moved through the broken library doors. I aimed my Delphi at it. The Mack moved through the room on six legs, stopped at the bookshelf, and swept the room with its eye. It started to skitter the way I’d come from. Toward the study rooms! I pulled the trigger, a taser bolt whooshed across the room, and the Type One’s skittering turned into a blue-lit twitching as sparks arced across its body!
I vaulted over the desk and drew my knife. A few stabs later, the black goop I was becoming so familiar with covered the floor, and the Type One’s light flicked off.
“James, what are the chances of…” Everything Overclock had said when she’d begged me to give his chip back to her hit me. I was alone and in danger for the first time since Overclock handed James off to me. I started shivering, taking deep breaths to try to calm myself down. My eyes jerked from one end of the library to the other. I took one more gulp of air and dashed back to the shelf.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
I kicked the first twisted shelf, but my boots bounced off with a disappointing thunking sound. Unwilling to give up, I grabbed the shelf and turned it back and forth while wood squeaked and squealed against wood. The shelf finally tore free with a final squeal as the screws pulled loose. The tape sat right behind the check-out desk, where Mrs. Cook used it to fix broken books. I grabbed it, lifted my shelf side, and fled to the study room where Overclock and Sora waited.
“It’s a lot harder to fight them without James,” I whined while Overclock and I gingerly moved Sora onto the board.
“Yeah, I know, kid. I was there a few minutes ago. You saw one, then?”
“Mhmmm. It was a Type One. I broke it before I ran back here.”
“Alright.” Overclock talked to James for a second as we taped Sora down. “Shit. James says that if Type Ones are in a cleared area that fast, the Twenty-One is starting its hunt. We can’t go back through there or stay here, the second floor will be crawling with Seventeens, and I doubt we could get your friend down those stairs anyways. James says help is on the way, but we have to stay alive. Where’s the fire escape?”
I grabbed the front of Sora’s jury-rigged stretcher and lifted it. My hands felt like they were on fire for a second before the feeling faded. “It’s through the library, in the back by the bathrooms. Can you take the leg end?”
She set her hammer next to Sora, grappled with the backpack until it was on, and lifted the stretcher with one hand. “Sure. Let’s move. Quick but quiet.”
The library would have made Ms. Cook happy; it was silent. Overclock and I, however, were much less so. She swore every time I stopped suddenly for a strange sound and crushed her fingers between the board and her body.
We were halfway to the back when Sora woke up.
She screamed in pain immediately, struggling against the tape. The makeshift stretcher rocked and tilted, forcing us to stop. “We have to put her down! We can’t carry her while she’s wriggling. Go in the backpack and grab the QuikOut kit. We’re drugging her,” Overclock said.
As I dug through the backpack in search of the kit and Sora semi-consciously moaned and groaned, Overclock stiffened. She shrugged off the backpack and grabbed her hammer. “Take care of your friend. I’ll be right back.”
As she stalked off into the library, I found the QuikOut Mobile, by CalWestTech, licensed to SHOCKS. It wasn’t much, just a clear plastic bag, tube, valve, needle, and some picture instructions. The directions showed to put the hand wherever, so I jammed it into Sora’s wrist and flipped the valve to ‘45 KG’. The first shelf crashed over as the drugs hit her system, and she faded off to sleep. And then I was alone in the library.
I was alone, except for the sounds of Overclock’s grunts of exertion, the shelves exploding, and steel on Mack-plate. Ms. Cook would be so disappointed, I thought. In between the sounds of fighting, though, the library was quiet. And dark. The perfect place to think about what would happen to Sora if a Seventeen got past Overclock. Or even a One; that’d be bad enough.
I felt like I had to do something. Anything. I couldn’t just sit in the middle of the library and wait for Overclock to win or lose against whatever she was fighting. That wouldn’t keep Sora safe. So I started dragging her stretcher. The soft green light of the ‘emergency exit’ sign lit my way, and the muffled scraping of wood rubbing over the carpet was more comforting than listening to silence and the sounds of fighting.
The sounds stopped. Something tripped on some books, then moved through them toward us.
I set Sora down. I grabbed my Delphi and aimed out into the darkness. “Overclock,” I whispered. Whatever it was hadn’t heard me or wasn’t going to respond. “Overclock, is that you?!” I couldn’t see anything beyond the circle of green light around Sora and me.
“Of course it’s me, kid - Luciole.” Her hammer was scratched and covered in black goop, but the Overclock that walked out of the darkness looked pretty much the same as the one who’d headed off a few moments before. No wounds, no scuffs, just Overclock.
“Oh, thank fuck,” I said, laughing nervously. “The fire escape is through this door. It says it has an alarm, but I’m not sure if it’s got power.”
“Do we have a choice?” Overclock pushed the stretcher until it touched the door. “Open it. We’ll pick up your friend and get down the stairs. Once we’re down, we stay against the building and try for the main doors. It’s not far from there to the shelter.”
“Right…” I murmured. “It’s a long way to the doors, past the soccer field. We could go through a window like I did last time.”
“Good thinking, kid. It’s less time the Twenty-One could see us. On three. One…”
I tensed. My crossbow was on the stretcher. If I needed it, it’d be there.
“Two…”
My fingers gripped the door’s push-bar.
“One! Go!”
I shoved the door open, grabbed the stretcher, and stepped out into the blinding sun.
The Type Twenty-One had been busy. Its R.V.-sized body sat four feet down in a huge hole in the middle of the soccer field, its six giant, Mack-plate-covered arms facing the school. They formed a barrier between the destroyed door and whatever the machine was doing behind them. Its legs curled under its body, stabilizing the massive machine.
“Fuck,” Overclock said. “James says it’s running its portal protocol - gating in more hunters. It won’t be watching us. Let’s move.”
We pulled Sora’s stretcher out onto the fire escape’s landing. I climbed carefully down the steep stairs, then Overclock lowered my best friend down to me. We paused on the second landing to breathe. Nothing had seen us yet.
Sora twitched, powering through the drugs. And then she screeched in pain.
A massive yellow light washed over the fire escape. It flashed red, yellow, and red again, and the colossal Type Twenty-One surged toward us! Before we could react, the school’s wall came apart as a massive, Mack-plated arm ripped through the fire escape above us, showering us with cinder blocks, dust, and steel!
“Activating Overclock! Go!”