It took me a grand total of two seconds to come to a simple conclusion on what my answer to Rumiko’s question was.
“I don’t have any real preference. I suppose you can just get me a sword or something else that an MG would typically use.” Even as I said that though, I struggled to imagine myself making use of a sword despite it being the weapon I remembered seeing used the most within the MG cartoons I’d seen.
Rumiko’s tail curled inwards on itself while she glanced over at me. “You don’t sound so sure about fighting with a sword. Do you have any experience with any sort of weaponry, or something you’ve always imagined yourself wielding if you were to become an MG?”
I gave it another moment of thought before shaking my head. What would be the point in thinking about something that shouldn’t have ever happened to me in the first place.
She frowned at me for a moment, only for a grin to overtake it a moment later that surprisingly seemed a little forced to me. “Well, that’s fine. I’m sure something that you feel actually fits you will come to mind after I give you the crash course on your new capabilities!”
Rumiko capped off what she said with a little hop and I couldn’t help but tilt my head at her. She seemed so excited to tell me about what I could now do when it was really self-explanatory. I could do the impossible just like they did, even if it was a lesser version of the impossible since I wasn’t a true MG.
Her ears seemed to fall a little flat for a moment before she shook her head and they popped right back up while she launched into her explanation. “Now, you’ve already ended up learning plenty about what Repositories are and how they let you and every other MG access the Transcendents vast collection of supplies, but that is far from all. You now have your very own Status Page! It took a bit for me to set it all up for you due to some unforeseen complications on my end, but I think I’ve mostly solved them. Just go ahead and either say or think of the word ‘Status’ with a measure of intent and it’ll pop right up for you to inspect at your pleasure!”
I blinked at her. A status page? Like the ones I’d glimpsed in some of Gail’s games? Why would I or really any MG’s need that? Either way, I indulged Rumiko and said the word ‘status’ to which absolutely nothing happened.
That was anticlimactic.
Rumiko just sighed before her voice chirped up. “Status. You gotta say or think it like you’re emphasizing it with a capital S at the beginning or it won’t work.”
That didn’t make sense to me, but I obliged her and tried to incorporate what she had told me all the same. “Okay. Status.”
I felt the still foreign tingle of magic within me flare up and I found my eyes widening at what began to play out in front of my eyes. It was a little like the message log that had flitted across my vision, only it was far more elaborate as an entire animation of miniature waves crashed against each other. After a second, it calmed down with the water becoming a strange facsimile of paper while the foam that accompanied the waves became the ink of my Status Page.
I had no idea what to think about the info on it.
Magical Guardian Merrick Kandlebern
Fragments: 155
Essentials
MG Name: New Vow
Level: 1
HP: 6/12. (Gradually Rising)
MP: ? (Gradually Rising?)
Restoration Limit: 50%
Stability: Probably Fine?
Heart
Affinity: Water (Significant) Earth(Minor)
Shade: Dark Lilac
Dream: ?
Signature: Unidentified
Attributes
Strength: 7
Grace: 13
Vitality: 8
Endurance: 12
Focus: 21
Resolve: ?
Acuity: 15
Spirit: ?
Connection: 22
Presence: ?
Repositories
Basic Medicinals
Special
Heart Emergence Lock: 23:42:39 Remaining
Some parts of it made perfect sense to me. My name was my name, the Fragments matched up with what I had seen earlier, and Basic Medicinals was the Repository I had unlocked.
Then there were the things I could make reasonable inferences about. My MG name being New Vow wasn’t my actual MG name, it was probably just a placeholder. I apparently had some sort of strong connection with water and a weaker one with the earth. My Level and HP were concepts I had seen before in Gail’s games, alongside the idea of Attributes in the first place. My Restoration Limit was stretching it a little, but I could still infer it was connected to my HP and that Inhaler I’d used had raised that.
From there, my understanding of what I was seeing broke down swiftly.
My MP was apparently just a question mark and maybe, possibly, rising. Why was it like that? Only Rumiko knew. Stability was even less clear and seemed to be just as confused about its presence here.
Shade? Dream? Signature? I couldn’t begin to fathom what they meant and the question mark in Dream alongside my Signature being separately labeled as unidentified did not help matters.
The physical portions of my Attributes made some sense to me even if I had no idea what the numbers truly meant since I had nothing to compare them to except how far above they were zero. But all the other Attributes were a little too varied in what they could mean for me to understand them and at worst, obscure. Three of them expanding on the trend of confusing question marks was the frosting of my confusion milkshake.
The cherry on top of it all was whatever in the world the Heart Emergence Lock was and why it was counting down from the moment I’d accepted the Vow. At least, I assumed that was when it started, even if it was a little surreal to think that only seventeen minutes had passed since then.
Rumiko seemed to at least pick up on my confusion as she swiftly spoke up. “Some parts of it are a little unfinished unfortunately. Despite my best efforts, there are some parts of your Status Page that I kept on getting some clearly wrong results from what I can tell about you through our bond, but otherwise it should be one-hundred percent accurate!”
I blinked at her. A bit strange to think she was so confident she was wrong and would rather put question marks in those places, but I had no idea what it was she was looking at about me to make my Status Page so what did I know. “Er, that’s good to know. But uh, can I get an explanation on what it all means? I’m afraid I don’t particularly understand things like my Shade being a ‘Dark Lilac’ or what the values of my Attributes actually mean for me.”
Rumiko gasped as an apologetic look overtook her face. “Oh! I’m so sorry, I’m not sure how it slipped my mind that I still needed to explain so much of this stuff to you. I’ll try and keep it short and sweet for you, that way we can minimize the risk of an Inversion happening upon us before we're ready to face them.”
The little fox took a deep and probably unnecessary breath before she began in earnest. “Alright, so the Essentials section are all the parts you might need to see at a glance gathered together and are what’ll be displayed towards others whenever you Party Up with one or more other MG’s. This way, everyone on a team together can be on the same page. The MG name ‘New Vow’ is just what’s given towards all MG’s before they get their official name, while your Level, which starts from one, measures how many times you’ve increased your Attributes and is a swift way to get a rough estimate of one’s capabilities before considering gear, spells, and experience.”
Another breath and she was going again. “HP is short for Healing Points which get used up to try and repair your body whenever it takes damage over a certain threshold, while MP is short for Mana Points which are used for any task that involves Mana from Spells to purchasing equipment from a Repository. Both regenerate naturally over time and this can be sped up either by using items like the Inhaler you used to restore your HP, or via Spells from yourself or other MG’s, but doing it like that raises your Restoration Limit until it reaches one-hundred percent and you gain increasingly smaller benefits from such things. Finally, your Stability is just a measure I generate of your mental snapshot and is mostly tracked so that it can be swiftly identified if an MG needs a breather or support so that they don’t transform into a Witch.”
She paused for a moment while looking at me and I gave her a nod to let her know I had gotten everything she had said. Or at least did so enough that I wasn’t going to fuss over the parts that still confused or worried me. The reminder I could become a Witch now that I was an MG just like what happened in those cartoons sometimes wasn’t the most pleasant thought.
Rumiko stared at me for a moment before smiling and continuing on. “Alright, then we have my personal favorite, the Heart section! Your Affinities are the types of magic that resonate with your Soul the most. Which for you is Water followed by Earth. Your Shade is the color your Soul naturally takes, which in part can be used to identify the type of MG you are and some of what might be involved in that. Dark Lilac is a unique shade, but it represents a tendency towards both Courage and Caring that I’ve already gotten the pleasure of witnessing from you, even if the Dark part of that isn’t generally seen as a particularly good thing by other MG’s.”
She began to prance in place before beginning with describing the next thing on Status Page “Your Dream lies at the core of your very being! It’s the concept that the formation of your entire Dream is based around and is a large part of what motivates you to fight in the first place. It’s the concept so ingrained in your very being, that it was able to shine bright enough to grant you a tenuous connection to magic which was used to identify you as an MG candidate. And it’s something I’m very excited to properly discover once I figure out whatever issue it is that has me constantly misidentifying it as ‘Despair’ of all things. Your Signature comes as a direct result from your Dream,uniquely manifesting into the world to aid you as an ability that no other MG will have! Of course, we have to discover it first, as even if I knew what your Dream was, I wouldn’t be able to tell what your Signature is until I noticed it in action. And even then, Signatures tend to grow alongside the MG and are always subject to further changes.”
Despair? Maybe she was right about her just misidentifying it alongside some of the other parts of my Status Page. An MG who fights for Hope and to protect others built on Despair just didn’t sound right, even for me. Not that I agreed with her analysis that my Shade meant I was Courageous and Caring either. Maybe she was wrong about that too and just hadn’t realized yet because there was no possible way I was either of those things.
Sure I had fought through the fear within me to save my friends, though that was only after freezing up on stage and dragging us into this situation in the first place with my tardiness. And I cared for my friends and my twin, but that was about it. And I’d already seen where my caring took those I was close to with Noelle.
Still, I couldn’t help but notice a few other things in what she said that I felt the need to actually ask about. “Okay, I think I got that. What do you mean Dark’s aren’t generally seen as a good thing though?”
She just shrugged. “They just aren’t since they’re usually seen as loners who’re a tiny bit more unstable than normal compared to Shades without that descriptor. But I’m sure with you, that won’t be a problem! One look at you and they’ll see your more caring side and how the light shines from you despite that!”
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With any other group of people, I would’ve gone with my first instinct and had no faith in Rumiko’s words that it wouldn’t be a problem and they’d see the ‘light’ in me anyways. But if there would be anyone to do it, even if it’d hurt them in the end considering the whole more unstable and likely to become a Witch part, it’d be other MG’s. They were just a better group of people who I could only pretend to be a part of now.
I didn’t say any of that to Rumiko though of course. Instead, just jumping to my other question. “If you say so. And is the reason you’ve themed so many things around the waves, including yourself, the whole Significant Water Affinity I have?”
She just smirked at me, the waves in her eyes seeming to swirl around a little more than they already were. “Ah, but you see, you’re the one who changed me in the first place to be more wave themed from when we bonded. I had no control over that part, all I did was just continue the theming you started.”
I stared at her confused. Before I could ask the question on my mind though, she spoke up as if she knew exactly what I was thinking before I said it. “Of course, you didn’t actually change me. No, it’s just your Affinity for Water is so strong at Significant that just by bonding to you it changed me alongside a few other things. It’s really quite perfect for getting a good start on the branding too.”
I just stared at her. I knew the more popular MG’s had all sorts of fun branding, I mean I was in a literal theme park based on some of the biggest ones, but branding for me? Like a lot of things today, it just didn’t compute with me. “Do I… need branding?”
Rumiko coyly smiled at me in response. “Of course you do! It’s a vital part of-”
There were no signs of what had just happened, until it slammed into us. One moment I was listening to Rumiko begin to explain to me how branding was somehow something I might have to deal with now as an MG. The next, my Status Page was nowhere to be found while I was struggling to not collapse onto the ground with my hand clutching my chest, heart pumping furiously in my chest. And even then, without the wall behind keeping me from doing so I would’ve collapsed despite my best efforts.
A sensation that couldn’t help but remind of how wronged the world felt when I’d witnessed my twin's fate ran throughout my very being and I couldn’t help but shiver uncontrollably. It was a terrible fear I didn’t understand the source of worked its way all around my entire body. Rumiko didn’t seem to be in a much better shape, standing frozen with her expression stuck in a horrified gape.
Eventually, after what felt like an eternity, it began to let up and I sucked in as many deep breaths as I could while desperately telling myself I wasn’t about to die. No matter how much I glanced around to find nothing in my vicinity had changed but Rumiko’s unmoving form since whatever it was that happened had occurred, I couldn’t convince myself that it wasn’t the case.
As it was, even Rumiko finally beginning to shift around again to meet my gaze again got me to flinch. For too long, she didn’t say anything. She only stared at me with a haunted look in her eyes, the waves within them having completely stopped swirling around.
At some point, I just couldn’t take it anymore. “Rumiko! Please, say something, anything! Just stop… stop staring at me like that.”
It took her a moment, but relief shot through me when she began to slowly blink, the waves in her eyes swirling again at the same speed. “I… I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
I couldn’t tell how much time had passed while we stood there in silence together. The feeling of cold terror shooting through my veins never letting up for a second time, only getting more bearable while I slowly grew more and more used to the terrible feeling.
Neither Holly’s nor Gail’s unconscious bodies seemed to be affected by it in the same way both of us were, with not a single sign they were struggling with anything more than their gradually healing injuries.
It took another few minutes for Rumiko to speak up again. “You felt that, right?” No, stupid question. You did. We did. You’re too magically sensitive to have not felt that with your level of Connection.”
“What do you mean? Do you… Do you know what that was?” I got out after a moment.
Her ears were folded all the way down, though she still managed to unfold one and flick her head towards where I just knew the source of the terror had come from before it fell back down. “It’s the magical alarm of the main shelter letting us know it’s been breached. The fear, probably from a powerful Fear Inversion amplifying and twisting the alarm combined with your newly enhanced magical senses being unprepared for such an assault. I think.”
I let out a shaky breath. I heard what she had said, but it just didn’t make sense to me. The main shelter wasn’t supposed to ever fall unless it ran out of power, was sabotaged, or something far worse came to pass. “That shouldn’t be possible, not with how fortified that place is supposed to be. And even if it was, there’s supposed to be a loud physical alarm, right? I know we’re in a soundproofed building, but…”
Rumiko just shook her head grimly. “There’s no physical alarm for that. Only a magical one. It’s said to the public that there’s one on the off chance a main shelter falls, but it’s assumed if that were to happen, there would be no point in warning anyone but those with magical senses since anyone else would presumably already be dead or dying. Thus, they never built a physical alarm into the main shelters.”
“That’s…” I began only to trail off, finishing my sentence a moment later with the only word that felt appropriate for the situation. “Fuck.”
She sardonically smiled at me. “Fuck indeed.”
Minutes passed with us together underneath the suffocating terror. Me dealing with the absolutely horrifying thought that was imagining the sheer scale of destruction that would come with the main shelter falling in an Upheaval Inversion as severe as this. Rumiko dealing with whatever it was that was haunting her.
Eventually, I forced myself to ask the next question. The only question. “So, what now?”
“I don’t know. I need a moment to think.” It took her a good moment to say what were perhaps the least reassuring words I’d ever heard from her, her head falling towards the ground in the process.
I didn’t blame her. I knew the Inversion Upheavals had been worsening recently, but for the main shelter for an area to fall? That was unheard of. Or well, it had been unheard of. Now I was living in the reality that it did happen.
A sense of hopelessness began to join with the terror to take over me and my gaze fell towards the ground, only for me to catch sight of my friends. My breath hitched in my throat. We were all still alive despite how all of us should’ve died to that one Inversion. All because I had acted to save them, because I was somehow an MG and Rumiko was here.
My gaze hardened and suddenly, the terror still surging through me felt that much easier to push past. We hadn’t died then, we wouldn’t die now. But, I couldn't do this without Rumiko to help guide me like she had been. I had to get her out of her funk somehow.
“MG’s are supposed to be capable of the impossible, right? Even me.” I softly said, the fear lessening with every word until it might as well have not even existed for me. “I mean, it’s not like this situation can get any worse at this point. But I need you with me, Rumiko. Otherwise, I don’t think I can pull off the impossible for a second time.”
Rumiko’s head rose back up to meet my gaze. A second passed like that before she began to giggle almost hysterically. “Hehe, Merrick, it can always get worse. I know exactly how it can get worse and at this point I’m expecting the other shoe to drop alongside it just to hammer home how bleak our fate is now. And I don’t know where you got that line from about MG’s pulling off the impossible.” A split second of silence passed before she continued. “Your sentiment rings wonderfully true though. Give me a second and I think I might have the basis of a plan ready for what’s coming for us. You should…”
She trailed off before gasping. “Wait, are there really not any Inversions converging on us right now?”
I worriedly blinked at her now. “Er, is there supposed to be?”
“Yes! When the Fear Inversion twisted that alarm, it should’ve worked like a reverse alarm and alerted every single Inversion in the nearby area to your presence without a care in the world for the magic resistant materials this building is made of. So why…” She grew quiet, only for the waves in her eyes suddenly began to swirl at full force again while she stared at me. “Of course, that’s it! That’s your Signature! Submerged Soul!”
I opened my mouth to question where in the world she got that from, only for a vision to strike me an instant after she stated the name of my newly crowned Signature. One of the eternally drowning girl I’d seen and grasped the hand of within my Dream, because that’s what that place I had found myself while making the Vow truly was. A second later I emerged from it with a sensation telling me without a doubt the name she’d given it was right.
Rumiko, seemingly oblivious to the sudden vision I’d experienced, continued to talk like it hadn’t happened. “It all makes sense. I just hadn’t noticed it because it was active from the very moment I first began to watch you. Something that you shouldn’t have been capable of, even though clearly you’re proof that it had been working even before the Vow. And that’s how that first Inversion hadn’t noticed you until you harmed it, because it was active then too. This is incredible!”
“Wait, I thought that first Inversion ignoring me was something you did.” Was it really some aspect of me that had caused it to ignore me?
“Nope!” She stated proudly. “That was all you! Here, let me share the description I have for your Signature. You’ll understand just why I’m so excited about it once you read it.”
Before I could even blink, text flashed onto my vision and suddenly I really understood why her mood had done a complete one-eighty.
Signature: Submerged Soul - Your soul has been drowning underneath the waves of the sea for so long, that any who might be able to sense it would assume its fate is already sealed. But never once has it stopped swimming towards the surface, no matter how far away from it or how long it has to swim, it will never stop. Despite this though, it’s been invariably affected by its time underneath the waves. With its dim light and diminutive size, it’s near impossible to spot at a distance by all except those with the strongest of magical senses.
I read through the text on my Signature until it disappeared, letting my gaze drift back to a preening Rumiko. “That’s really good right now, isn’t it?” Also not the most pleasant of descriptions for something so integral to me I’d ever read, but I wasn’t about to complain about that.
She nodded her head swiftly in response, her tail swishing from side to side like mad. “Yup! If I’m being honest, I don’t think you could have had a better Signature for this situation then the one you do now. I’m not entirely certain your soul being smaller and dimmer is a purely good thing, but its effect is equivalent to more advanced stealth spells, if not better since it’s always on. Here I was trying to figure out if there was even a chance for me to try and keep this from becoming a Last Gift situation, something that’s been far too common as of late, only for you to be, well, you!”
“Last Gift?” I couldn’t help but inquire.
Rumiko waved me away with a paw. “Ah, don’t worry about it. If we do this right, we’ll be able to get you and your friends out and to safety despite how badly this situation is devolving right now. Oh, what I wouldn’t give for you to have access to your Heart Emergence, but this just makes up for it and then some!”
Something struck me as odd about the way she was speaking now and I had no idea why my ‘Heart Emergence' was important, whatever that meant,, but I waved it off for now as relief at what she thought was a doomed situation. “Well, that’s good to hear. So what’s the plan for getting me and my friends to safety, alongside everyone else in the theme park?”
The little white fox seemed to freeze as she stared at me now, though for entirely different reasons than she had the last time. “Huh?”
I frowned before schooling the expression away. It must’ve just slipped her mind in the excitement of her discovery about my Signature. “Well yeah, there’s no way I’m leaving my friends here. Not to mention, if the main shelter’s been breached, there’s no telling how long the other shelters here will have until they get breached by that Fear Inversion you said broke into the main shelter. It’s my job as an MG to handle this until more experienced MG’s arrive, isn’t it?”
She stared at me for almost too long without answering. The only reason I knew that it wasn’t a repeat of earlier was because she was still glancing around and obviously thinking about something, constantly biting her lip. Eventually, she sighed. “I take it back. Your Signature awakening isn’t going to be enough to make up for everything. This is an extraordinary situation where nobody would blame you for just getting you and your friends out. Getting everyone else out and/or ensuring their safety here… I’m not even sure more experienced MG’s in your place would attempt this. Are you sure you want to?”
I shrugged, even if I was a little worried about her swiftly shifting moods. “I mean, it’s my duty, isn’t it? Do what I can here until more experienced MG’s can arrive and relieve me. Speaking of that, how can we contact them to let them know of the main shelter falling and that the theme park is in need of immediate assistance?”
“That’s… going to be very complicated. Both in trying to help out here with it being dangerous enough that a main shelter has fallen and getting in contact with other MG’s before they arrive here.” Rumiko said while giving another sigh for whatever reason before shaking her head, a smile forming a second later. “But you certainly wouldn’t be a Dark Lilac if you were the type to be daunted by the danger here when there were still those who might be in need your help. Before you set yourself on this path though, we should really try and get a feel for how bad this situation really is and if it’s possible to save others in the first place. It should be something you’re more than capable of with your Signature.”
If I wasn’t mistaken, was she… not wanting me to save the others in clear danger if the main shelter had fallen? A thought that still brought up blossoms of uncomfortable feelings throughout me just thinking of the loss of life there. No, that wasn’t it. She was probably just preaching caution so I gave her a nod. “Okay, I can do that.”
The small white fox seemed to relax a little when I said those words. “Good, I’m glad. And you wouldn’t have happened to have gained any sort of predisposition towards a weapon while we talked, did you?”
I gave it a good try to imagine myself with any sort of weapon, though I still came up with a blank. I shook my head. “Nothing comes to mind for me. I mean, do you have any recommendations?”
“I believe I have a good one that suits your physical Attributes for the moment, synergizes well with your Signature, and that fits the ongoing situation. All while being easy to pick up.” She took a deep breath before giving me a small smile. “How would you feel about using the crossbow?”