Yellows: Support to the Core

Yellows aren’t part of the traditional team core of Red, Orange, Pink, and Green that most parties pick. However, their movesets on Star Princess mean they can replace any of those four roles and maintain a balanced team. With various buff and debuff spells, a good Yellow player can be the difference between victory and machine-fueled death in high-level play.

Classes: Time Mage, Hex Witch, Enhancer Dancer, Eldritch Scholar

Secondary Colors: Red (Striker), Green (Defender), Pink (Healer)

Sample Ability: Samba of Strength (Level 5)- maintaining this dance enhances the damage your party does by 5/10/15/20/25%, increasing at levels 10, 17, 25, and 33.

Sample Magical Girls: Weakpointer, Overclock, Ballroom Blitzer

Attack: **

Defense: **

Speed: **

Magic: *****

Difficulty: ****

In real life, Yellow Magical Girls tend to be soft-spoken, mild-mannered figures who usually support their Orange team leaders and make everyone around them better. They believe in the success of everyone rather than in their own strength. While they tend to be more introverted than Oranges, Reds, or Pinks, they fill the role of party spokesperson if there are too many Purples, Blues, or Greens.

* Excerpt from the official Wiki page for the Star Princess: Machines’ Rise MMORPG

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Chapter Two

Warning!

Emergence Detected

An Emergence event has been detected at or near your location. Internet connectivity has been disabled. Phone systems have been disabled. Audio and visual surveillance have been disabled. Electricity has been rerouted to emergency lighting, communications, and power. Emergency ordinance and State of Emergency laws are in effect.

* Please remain calm and follow your optical augment’s directions to the nearest shelter.

* Avoid contact with aberrant Machines at all costs.

* Do not, under any circumstances, interfere with any Magical Girls operating in your area.

I sat glued to my seat. My body felt frozen, even as my mind went into overdrive. Emergences weren’t unheard of in Sanctuary. The warning message wasn’t new to me. We even had a shelter in the school basement that I’d been in…twice. Once for a real Emergence. Still, they’d been getting less and less frequent, and my only experience was going from a classroom to the shelter.

My heart pounded in my chest, and I took a shaky breath as I, just like everyone else, stared at the stage. At Overclock.

She said something into the microphone she held, looked at it, and dropped it onto the stage. Mrs. McMillian flinched at whatever the Magical Girl had said. So did Sora. Not for the first time, I wished I’d learned how to lip-read.

I saw her mouth move a few more times before she started shouting, her words amplified by some sort of magitech device that appeared in her left hand. “Okay, let’s try again! There’s no reason to panic! Your augments should point you toward the nearest shelter, which is…”

Mrs. McMillian leaned over and said something in her ear.

“...inside the school! Please follow your arrows to basement level 1 in an orderly fashion. We’ll have this whole mess sorted out -”

The field grew silent as the Emergence event began right on top of us. Almost animal-shaped machines, their exteriors made of segmented off-white plates and something gray-black and plastic-ish. Tubes and wires ran in and out of the plastic, and yellow lights glowed as the machines got their bearings before flashing red as they fixated on the crowded soccer field.

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The biggest machine that had appeared was massive - the size of the bus that’d taken Dad and me to graduation; it loomed over the stage. Mechanical legs held up its gray body. In front, six wide, off-white armor-plated arms reached up and hinged down to the ground to cover a bright red eye. A dozen smaller machines slid off of it, sprinting around the stage toward us, and the big one’s two heavy arms started to swing down onto Mr. Andrews’ side of the stage.

“Initiating Overclocking! You all have a need for speed!”

The machines froze, and so did Overclock. Her body just…stopped mid-pirouette, facing the massive robot. Her bob cut looked like a comic book character’s hair in motion, frozen in place, and her skirt seemed caught in mid-spin, pleats nearly perfectly still and clock motifs glowing. The glow bleeding off her body moved much faster, a yellowish halo around her that shimmered like a mirage.

The teachers started running and screaming; a second later, so did everyone else. Trent’s chair hit my shin as he pushed off, sprinting toward the doors to the school's blocky main building. Green arrows slowly popped up in my vision, but people shouldering past me left me facing the wrong direction. I looked around to find Sora, Dad, or anyone, but all I could see was an ocean of green gowns.

Suddenly, I felt a crushing pain as someone’s shoulder slammed into my nose. I looked up from the grass a second later, watching Mr. Andrews as he staggered, recovered with a hand on the ground, and kept sprinting away from the stage. I blinked tears from my eyes and rolled over onto my stomach. How could a teacher just run down one of his students? My eyes flicked back to the stage.

Overclock still stood there, unmoving, the massive machine looming over her. The yellow mana around her flickered, flared, and then went out. A second later, her enemy’s arm slammed down on Overclock, the wafer board stage splintering and metal scaffolding screeching in protest as its weight drove her into the ground. She pushed its arm off her, looking dazed, only to have its other heavily armored forearm slam into her from the side. She flew toward the math wing of West End High with a cry of pain, crashing through cinder block walls and disappearing inside. The colossal machine turned and skittered over to the stage, tearing it apart with its two arms and crushing one of the teachers who hadn’t run fast enough.

“Oh, shid…” I mumbled. I touched my nose gingerly, then suppressed a scream of pain. Pushing myself up, I got back on my feet and started wobbling toward the cafeteria doors.

“Alice!” Someone screamed my name. “Look out!” I zoomed in on my eye augment. Sora stood at the doorway, screaming and pointing at something. Someone grabbed her and pulled her inside, and the door slammed shut.

A pair of six-legged machines, each the size of a wolf, ran to the door, surprisingly silent except for servos and joints whining. They stopped, turning their heads. A single eye on a long, thick gray neck flickered from red to yellow. One turned to skitter around the cafeteria walls, spiked white legs digging into the concrete.

The other turned to me. Its eye flickered red, then yellow again for a split second, then red.

It started moving toward me, stepping on another student who hadn’t gotten up quickly enough over and over. Its sharp white legs were covered in grass stains and blood as it moved closer to me.

I ran.

It wasn’t a graceful run. I tripped over folding chairs, got tangled in my gown, and stumbled past the bleachers where Dad had been sitting. Was he okay? Was Sora okay?

The green arrows marking my path flashed as I turned away from the cafeteria door and sprinted toward the math wing.

The machine followed me, skittering away across the soccer field. Its leg punched through one of the steel folding chairs, tripping it up, and it took a moment to shove the chair off before picking itself back up.

The red eye grew closer as I ran toward the building. I had a horrible thought. The doors were probably all locked except the cafeteria door. How was I supposed to get inside? To get to the shelter? I stopped. The skittering sound grew closer, but I needed something. Anything.

A folding chair. That’d do.

I scooped up the chair and kept running. The building grew closer. Ten feet away, I spun and threw the chair like a hammer thrower in the old Olympics videos. I wasn’t the best at that, but the chair flew more or less straight, crashing into a window. A second later, so did I.

Shattered glass dug into my hands as I pulled myself up and into the window. I cried out in agony but kept going, bumping into desks as I moved through the dark room. The six-legged machine skittered to the wall and started pulling itself in behind me. I ran to the door, panting, and pulled it open. A second later, I stood in the hall, panting and sneaking glances into Ms. Apodaca’s math room through the little window in the door as I leaned against the wall.

The room glowed red as the machine skittered across it. Desks scraped across the linoleum tiles, screeching and thudding into each other. It moved quickly toward the door, and I flinched away from the little window, holding my breath as blood dripped across my mouth from my broken nose.

Red light poured in through the window.

It flickered yellow, then red, then yellow again.

The yellow light faded, and I breathed a shaky sigh of relief. My legs felt like jelly, and I slumped against the door, trying to catch my breath. Trying not to break down. I’d made it! I was inside the school. All I had to do was follow the green arrows and I’d be safe inside the shelter. And not…outside.

What had happened outside to the teacher and the fallen student - the crushing and stabbing - hit me, and I puked. The mess mixed with the blood from my nose all over the front of my graduation gown.

“You look like hell, kid.” I jumped, startled, and nearly tripped over the gown’s hem.

There, on the floor of West End High’s math wing in a pile of broken cinder blocks, lay Overclock.