"Seems like this is where we part ways,” Rumi said to them as they reached the train station in the upper city. Though their business together had been over for a while now, they ended up walking together back to the centre of the island, still weary of being followed.

Maze had to admit, she didn’t hate the magical girl as much as did before. She disliked the heroic types and had a distaste for all the corporate bullshit that came with public ‘hero’ type personas, but she couldn’t deny the girl had been extremely patient and helpful.

“I am really sorry for all the trouble we caused today,” Qullqi said.

“You guys somehow are harder to deal with as allies than as enemies.” Rumi jested, punching Qullqi on the shoulder lightly.

“Heh. Sorry, we can’t offer more against the Tengu.” Qullqi said. “But you know, if we happen to be in the same area, fighting the same people...”

Chalry smirked. “Oh, that is good, but could you word it differently. Something poutier, like I guess I could help you sometimes, but only because it's convenient! Don’t go thinking this means I like, idiot’ ARGH”

Once again, the magenta-clad woman was hit in the ribs to stop being obnoxious. Maze didn’t know if she wanted to smirk at Chalry being this humiliated or cringed in pity at how far the woman has fallen.

As the train approached, Rumi and Qullqi shook hands, Alana gave the magical girl a hug, and Maze offered her a less hostile smirk.

As the two left, the werewolf couldn’t hide that she was glad. Chalry was trouble, and Rumi, while nice, had a certain ‘gravity’ to her, the whole world seemed to start working in her favour as soon as she appeared. Came with being what she was, the werewolf guessed, a natural protagonist.

But now with them gone, this was really the first time Cerberus was together without further issues. No mad dash through the sewers, no one of them being transformed into a dog. It was her chance to fix things.

Yet the thought also worried her, every time she tried to fix something, she just broke it further.

Honesty would have to be the path forward, she couldn’t be fully honest, especially not with Alana, but she could right one wrong.

“Girls.” Mazeline clapped. “Since the whole group was formed to smuggle certain items, I think it's about time I show them to you.”

----------------------------------------

The looks of suspicion on Qullqi and Alana’s faces had only intensified as they entered the bathroom of a rundown restaurant within a depressingly empty mall.

“Come in, come in~,” Mazeline said playfully as she entered one of the stalls, Qull’s stare gained killing intent, but the girl still complied.

Once they were all inside, far from comfortable but still with some room to move, Maze picked up her lipstick and started to draw a simple shape on the wall tiles to her right. The silhouette of a wolf’s head against the full moon. As she did so, the tiles she drew over became transparent, revealing a secret compartment behind them.

“Huh. That is cooler than I expected.” Qull admitted, tail swinging at the showcase of practical enchantment.

In the makeshift secret hole, there was a wooden box, pretty with a golden lock. Mazeline ignored it, instead patting the wall until she picked up a simple linen bag of the same colour as the stone walls of the compartment, barely visible.

“Well, I may suck at many things, but I am a good thief. Hidden caches were the first type of magic I ever learned.” the werewolf said proudly, wagging her tail. “Now, let’s open this, I want to know what got the Tengu so mad at me.”

The other two nodded, cautious but equally curious. Mazeline then sat on the toilette lid and started to unpack the wrapped items.

The first things she took out were two crystal disks and three diskettes.

“Been a while since I saw one of these things.” Mazeline fidgeted with the lid of the floppy disk. “I don’t take any of you have a computer, right?”

“Not in here, no.” Qull sighed. “There was one back at the camp, but I am no longer with the mercenaries so it would be odd to request a computer from them, Rumi had one too...”

“You saw my place, I have none.” Alana sighed.

“Using public computers could be too overt for my taste, I guess we will keep these at hand until we are out of Lullaby. That said, what is your judgement, Qull? Do you think this could make the Tengu mad at us?”

“Of course. It all depends on what is in those disks. It could be nothing, or it could be everything. I’d also take a bet It will be encrypted, so we should keep an eye out for people who understand these things.”

Mazeline nodded and then moved to the next item in the bag. Scrolls which were not written in Babelish but in the language of Izumo. The pictures seemed like instructions on how to dress up, and how to handle Tengu-provided weaponry. It wasn’t terribly interesting, and nobody in the group knew how to read it.

Next were square glass boxes with vividly coloured symbols on them, they all looked like flowers, extremely thin, with many extending petals around a radius.

“Oh. Those are dissipators.” Qull hummed. “Look like high-quality ones too.”

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“What do they do?”

“When you are using magic, you build up excess energy and accumulate improper elemental charge, typically heat. Our framework has its own systems to deal with that, but using these in your clothing or skin helps to improve that even further.”

“Wow. That looks fancy, but not enough of a big deal for the Tengu to be after me.” Mazeline hummed. “Are they expensive?”

“Let's see. Alana, can you charge up one of them?”

The witch nodded and picked one up, casting a simple wind spell around them, causing the dissipator sigil in her palm to start spinning and shifting in colour.

“Oh yeah, it's expensive,” Qull answered.

“Really? Then should we give at least one to Alana?”

“I don’t think so.” Qull shook her head. “We could sell them all and buy a cheaper one for the same effect.”

This caused both Alana and Maze to look at her with curiosity, what she said made little sense.

“Basically, what I am saying is that a cheaper dissipator without these colour effects would work as well but be much cheaper.”

“Then why would people buy this?” Maze tilted her head and squinted.

“Because it’s pretty, and when you observe the aura of someone using these, they look like a one-man rave party. It's idiotic, I know.”

Maze shook her head. “Oh no no, now that you mention it, it seems cool, I just wish it wasn’t rainbow coloured, if I could get some cool red aura around me, I would start using magic more.”

Alana laughed nervously. “Actually... If it wouldn’t be much, could I keep this one? It’s... It’s pretty.”

Qull blinked rapidly and then smiled. “Of course, Alana, sorry if I sounded rude.”

Maze pouted at not receiving an apology as well, but she couldn’t say she didn’t deserve the cold treatment from Qull. Before the already awkward environment in the bathroom stall got worse, Mazeline moved to the next item.

“Shiny stones? What is this? Uranium? Energy charged batteries?” Mazeline tilted her head as she picked up a palmful of small opaque gemstones, they would look extremely cheap if not for the glow they had.

“Wow!” Qullqi and Alana said in unison.

“I don’t know what that is but seems so pretty, and so malleable. Like playdough, the ones you see in toy stores.” Alana said, but Maze couldn’t follow her, to her it just looked like stones.

“It’s Oneirite,” Qull informed. “Dream energy given form. To me, it looks like an opaque rock though, but I know how to recognize it.”

“Is it valuable?”

“Extremely, even with the advent of synthetic serums that reproduce some effects of these stones, they are still useful in creating artifices. The price varies depending on the colour. Magenta from the Destructive half of Dream Magic and Blue from the Constructive side are the most valuable, because Magenta is Law, and Blue is Intellection, both which are easily used in all sorts of artifices.”

“Ah. This one is cyan, or maybe turquoise.” Alana said.

Qull’s eyes widened. “W...What?”

“Oh? Is it good?” Mazeline’s eyes shone.

“Its... I don’t know.” Qull shook her head.

“What do you mean?” Maze’s eyes grew with a certain concern, she was confused at how Qull was reacting to it.

“It’s extremely rare. I can’t even find the proper words to explain to you how absurd a cyan oneiric stone is.”

“Make an attempt. I am sure you can do it.”

“Okay. In Dream Magic’s colour code, Cyan is on the destructive side, along with Magenta and Yellow. The destructive side is already hard to use and describe, but cyan takes the cake because it is the concept of chaos, unpredictability, the storm that drives you off the plotted course”

“Ah. Is that why Rumi is cyan?” Alana said.

“Yes. Even among magical girls, who are defined by the Colour Code, a true cyan like her is rare. Chaos isn’t very likely to take form.”

“So, it gotta be expensive,” Mazeline said. “If it's so rare.”

“Not necessarily, rarity doesn’t equal to usefulness. At least in artifices, what would be the point to add a stone that makes the device act in unpredictable ways?”

“Hmm.” Mazeline nodded, pensively. “I guess that is just one more point why I need to visit my contact back in Iarapira. If there is someone who would find a buyer for this, it would be her.”

“Is there anything else in the bag?” Qullqi asked.

“There is one talisman and a small box. Let me see.” Mazeline picked the talisman in her hand, and it shone, immediately, she went from the clothing that Sefi had given her to one of those Tengu uniforms, the suddenly appearing witch doctor mask hitting Qullqi in the tummy. Mazeline fidgeted with it again, and she was back to her normal clothing.

“Huh! This could be useful later.” Mazeline smirked.

“I think it could be useful now,” Qullqi said, patting her gut. “For Alana.”

“Ohhhh! So I don’t go around naked whenever I transform?” The witch smiled. “Yeah! That would be nice!”

“And this last one is...” Mazeline didn’t finish her sentence, as soon as she opened the box, she went silent, eyes widening.

“A core?” Qullqi asked. “I never studied much about magical creatures, so I don’t know if that is expensive or not.”

“I don’t like the vibe it gives. It looks like a little metal box, but it's wiggling in a way. I don't know how to describe it, it's yucky.” Alana added.

Mazeline gulped and made sure she was seeing it right, as she pressed her hand on the smooth silvery surface of the core, words in pink, green and cyan appeared. Not an arcane or ancient sigil, but something in modern Babelish.

"May this maxim kindle the flame of wisdom within you, embolden you to transcend the bounds of your mortal limitations, and reach for the stars beyond." Mazeline read aloud.

“This is...” she continued. “Almost the same as the core I saw within that anomalous slime.”

The dogs reacted with widened eyes as well, starting to understand the implication.

“What if... They didn’t let me go that day because they were thankful I saved their friend, but because they thought the slime they had killed was the one with this processor core I stole?”

Qull patted her chin in deep thought while Alana held her hands together with worry growing on her face.

“Isn’t that very bad? The slime killed someone, maybe even more, isn’t that protocol breaking?” Alana asked in a tense tone.

“Not if you can prove it was an accident, they wouldn’t be the first corporation to get away with it. It would be a PR hit, but a bit of extra marketing budget could fix anything,” Maze said.

“I think you underestimate how much the public would be scandalized if this core was leaked, this type of careless boldness is more akin to changelings or the futurists from the 40s,” Qull said.

Maze closed one eye and let what Qull said simmer in her mind. “If only they have the cores, then they can hide their involvement with it, and should it leak, they can just say it was another, less intentional type of accident.”

“But if the core is shown, it acts as definitive proof it was not a result of carelessness, it goes from an accident to an accepted side-effect of their experimentation with cores.” Qull continued for Maze.

The werewolf nodded, and the environment within the bathroom stall became quite heavy. For safety's sake, Mazeline decided to divide the spoils of her thievery in three among Cerberus.

With that, their meeting was over, but their bond seemed stable once again, the shared information only they knew somehow increasing cohesion. It was what Mazeline had planned, so she was happy with this, she thought she would be worried about sharing the items with them, but after doing so, she felt lighter, like the burden was no longer just hers, like she had people who would have her back.

An old woman was on the other side of the bathroom, her eyes growing wide, and her face mixing a dreadful pale with a wide blush, as she clearly misinterpreted three women leaving a bathroom stall together.