“Finally, I thought these dames would be crying forever!” The quaking had subsided and the young women in the common room had stopped their cries of terror.
Liara had heard of women referred to by that old-fashioned term before on her homeworld plenty of times, especially from older men, but it had never been used once in her time on Apophyllion. For one thing, people were very politically correct on the core worlds and for the other, it was just more polite. Nevertheless, Pellas’ voice whispered in her mind.
[Oh my, just try to overlook his gruffness, please. Not all golems are as genteel as I am.]
“Anyway, where were we?”
"You were about to ask us to go to the admin building," Liara stated.
“Oh yeah, I was! Good guess little girl! Did Pellas whisper you that in your mind?”
Now that did make Liara blink and before she could rip the geometric golem a new one, Holzer said, “I’m sure you’ll find that Ms. Liara is very capable on her own, messenger.” He looked over at her and gave a short bow of his head.
“We were heading there anyway,” Pellas replied. “Liara here was just concerned about survivors at this shelter.”
“How quaint,” Jarron floated next to Dana’s head. “Well, as you can see, we have things handled here. So, off you three go.”
“Now hold on. First, it is just Liara and I, Holzer is not coming, and second, what about you two?” Pellas’ eye looked like it was going to pop out of his frame if it glowed any brighter.
Jarron changed shapes again, to a sphere with one eye in the center that rolled in its socket, “Please, Pellas, calm down! Always so melodramatic! Obviously, Dana and I need to stay here and maintain the barrier for the sake of these girls! Here’s an idea, bond that old paladin there and you’ll have all the help you need!”
Pellas’ arms drooped and he glanced at Liara, unsure what to say, but she spoke, unashamed of the implications, “I can’t bond him. I don’t know why, but I’m unable to.”
“Oh! Don’t tell me that you gave it away already!?”
“Hold your tongue before I rip it out of you, golem," Holzer growled. “Messenger of ME-GO or not, I will do it.”
Jarron cringed back from the angry paladin and spikes jumped up around his body. Dana spoke before he did, "Sorry Doctor Holzer. I think I got one of the loud-mouthed ones. I’d bond you, but I’m saving that for someone else.” Dana let her last sentence trail off into awkward silence and it was up to Pellas to pick it up from there.
"It's ok Dana, a wrong bond is almost as bad as a bad golem," he said the last part with a glare at Jarron. "Perhaps one of the other young ladies here can bond with him and give him a boost?"
“Pellas, I appreciate that you’re thinking of me, but my answer has to be no once again.”
“Why not,” Pellas cried, “You were ready last time!”
“Last time I would have been bonded to a Magical Girl and thereby a paladin, but if one of these girls bonds me, and much more likely than not, is never chosen, then my fate is in the Mana Marines.”
“Well, if you ask me, that’s much better than dying.”
"And if you ask me, it's only one step above being an Imp."
"That's a bit of an exaggeration," Pellas mumbled, but he knew Holzer was not far off from the truth. Mana Marines were part of the hammer of the kingdom, sent on the most dangerous of military missions involving void ships and space drops. They were well-equipped and even better armed, but their mortality rate was extremely high, and generally, only desperate young men joined their ranks.
“I’ll go on my own then,” Liara said, catching every eye on her. The sudden pressure made her flinch a little, but she was starting to get used to it. “If we find survivors there, I’ll bring them back here along with the girls in the senior building shelter.”
“They’re still alive?” Dana’s eyes widened a bit and she smiled, though that quickly stopped with exhaustion creeping over her.
“They are, though the barrier over there is not working properly too.”
“See! I told you it’s that academy president of yours,” Jarron crowed to Dana. “She’s gotta be jacking up the gears for the rest of us!”
“Liara, maybe I should come with you,” Holzer gave an angry glance to Jarron. “I’m not sure I can make it here with him around.”
Liara put one hand on Dr. Holzer and smiled, “Thanks professor, but I don’t think so. I need you to stay here and keep everyone safe.”
Holzer gave a sad smile of his own, understanding that Liara was trying to spare his dignity, but that was quickly ruined by Jarron, “But how’s an unbonded, injured, old paladin going to do anything for us?!”
“Jarron, can you not just shut up?” Pellas’ command took a warbled tone and the other golem stopped talking immediately.
“Was that a golem ability,” Holzer grinned, to which Pellas only shrugged. “Hmm, with you two working together, maybe you can make it past that Destroyer. By the way, just how are you planning on getting past it?”
Stolen novel; please report.
“I dunno,” Liara held up one of her mana spheres and bounced it like a baseball in her palm. “Figured, we’d just lob a few of these at it.”
“That’s probably going to get you killed.”
“And do you have any better ideas?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
----------------------------------------
“I’m not sure I like the plan,” Pellas grumbled to Liara as they reached the first floor of the student barracks building.
“What’s not to like, I think it’ll work.”
“We had to use most of our points and it involves blowing me up!”
“Now, I didn’t suggest that and the mana eye upgrade is pretty useful.”
“But I did not see you disagreeing with Holzer either!”
"We can still take the long way and go around the main quad if you want to back out now."
“Eh, the place where he said he disabled the Destroyer sounds like the most inconvenient spot he could have chosen. He essentially gave the thing an elevated fire position over the entire quad and the space around the admin building. If there are survivors there, and if we want to move the others, then we need to take care of that Yabanchi and silence its gun eventually.”
Liara nodded and stopped before leaving the stairwell, she gestured toward the open entrance and Pellas caught her meaning.
“What? You want me to look around the doorway?”Liara did not reply but pointed to the nearby corpse of the Lurker from earlier. "Ah, good point." Pellas scuttled to the ground and went into the lobby. As soon as he did so, a gargoyle launched itself at him. The little golem cried out and barely dodged the four scrabbling hands that were trying to grab him. Seeing this new threat, Liara decided to test out a mana ability she had not tried yet and used her “hallucination” skill on the Yabanchi.
The monster’s head snapped up and looked at her, the wolfish features were stuck in an eternally stuck snarl on a craggy body, but then it looked to its left and right, as shadows of human figures started walking in circles around it. Thinking that it was surrounded, the Yabanchi started scrabbling away from the Magical Girl, but Liara did not want it stalking her outside again, so she chased it down to the doorway. Evidentially, chasing a fleeing animal was a good way to make it bite, since the Gargoyle stopped running on its six limbs and spun around with a lunge toward Liara.
The Yabanchi’s jaws wrapped around Liara’s left shoulder and would have normally drawn blood and ripped through her flesh, but instead, its teeth met hard and flexible armor. Its bite slackened when its heart was carved out by a mana strike to the chest and by the time its body hit the floor the corpse was rock hard, making a hard crack like stone being dropped.
“Feeling confident with Holzer’s borrowed mana armor are we? Please, tell me, why did I have to scout ahead if you were just going to go and charge that thing?”
“There’s a difference between confidence and stupidity, something Paladin Penn always told us in class.”
“Did he also tell you that there’s a fine line between them?”
“In so many words,” Liara replied and looked at her stat screen. Seeing it in her mind without a personal tablet was still a little disorienting, but it was one of the advantages of her mana eye. The Yabanchi she had killed was coincidentally called a “Gargoyle” and worth fifteen points, but what she was more concerned about was how much mana she had left after the Gargoyle bit her.
Years ago when she had gone on her first internship to a Yabanchi-held world, it had been explained to her that mana armor was superior to power armor in several different dimensions. First, a Magical Girl or bonded man wearing mana armor did not have to wear a helmet, since an invisible field was generated around the wearer's head. Second, it could absorb damage better than regular armor since any damage it received was translated into an expense of Liara’s mana pool. For instance, the bite from the Gargoyle only took ten mana from her overall pool of three hundred and thirty. Even then, if the damage ever exceeded Liara’s mana pool or her mana pool did not have sufficient mana, then the armor still provided excellent damage absorption.
Putting her stat screen away, Liara glanced at the small bite marks on the armor and watched as they slowly faded away as the armor self-repaired itself. While she had been looking at her stat screen, Pellas had been putting the tiny scalpels in his hands to good use and carving the mana core out of the Gargoyle. He absorbed it and said, “Now, this will be a useful mana ability for me.”
“What is it? Stone skin or something?”
“Nope.” Pellas seemed to disappear in front of Liara’s eyes, but when she squinted, she could tell that he was still there, it was just that his surface had taken on the same colors as the Gargoyle’s corpse. “Camouflage.”
“That is going to make our plan to take out the Destroyer so much easier.”
“Tell me about it, maybe I do not have to get blown to ashes now.” He paused and returned to his normal coloring. "But with that core integrated, I have only one more space remaining. I need to upgrade my frame or else do a reset after that.”
Liara did not reply, since she heard the sound of the Destroyer blare from the direction of the quad. Accompanying the Yabanchi’s electronic scream was the sound of gunfire, most likely the Destroyer’s turret. If it was firing at something, then that meant…
“Another survivor! Pellas, it sounds like someone is getting shot at by the Destroyer!”
Pellas tilted his body, listened, and said, "Indeed! Based on how many rounds I have counted so far, it is either firing at a lot of persons at once or having a really hard time with just one. If it is the latter, perhaps it is Magical Girl reinforcements?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Liara jumped through the broken doors of the student barracks. “Come on!”
Pellas sped after his Magical Girl and gasped, “But what about the plan?!”
“We’re still doing it!” The golem started grumbling, but Liara was too distracted by her fear than anything else. For one thing, she was doing that thing again where she just ran into danger, especially out in the open air of the academy grounds, but she was more afraid of being too late to help whoever the Destroyer was shooting at than anything else. An irrational fear kept bugging her, like a violent image playing in her mind over and over again, of Talia being crushed under the treads of the Destroyer or being ripped apart by Yabanchi claws. Whether her fears were founded or not, they lent speed to Liara’s sprint and she was able to ignore the stitch forming in her side when she rounded the corner of another school building next to the student barracks, Liara was finally at the main quad and she had a good view of the current situation.
The Destroyer was in the center of the quad like Dr. Holzer had described and at that moment it was firing its turrets at full blast at a young woman. This woman would have been turned into paste if she was not running impossibly fast in circles around the Yabanchi. Every circle around the cybernetic beast brought her a little closer to it and when she had made a circle close enough that it only took her a second and a half to run around the Destroyer, she lashed out at it with a bright sword that crackled with electricity. The blow from the curved sword took a chunk out of the Destroyer’s metal chassis and flayed some of its flesh, but aside from making it scream more in rage, it did not appear to slow down its rate of fire.
A hasty dodge away from one of the Destroyer’s organic limbs made the other Magical Girl stumble and in that moment the turrets had her in their sights long enough to squarely hit her with a hose of lead. The young woman went down from the force of the bullets, her mana armor flaring in response to the attack and she cried out in surprise and pain.
Liara cried out too because even though it was another Magical Girl fighting the Destroyer, it was a Magical Girl she recognized.
“Belle!”