69. Dare

A/N: Hello, everyone! I am slowly starting to feel normal again, which is nice. Given the sheer number of AYEH chapters I've missed lately, I will probably do an AYEH chapter this week despite it being break week. I will not, however, be writing MGMH during break week. Apologies in advance. Also, we have a transformation theme this chapter:
https://youtu.be/lGswk9-AMIw

Enjoy the chapter!

"By the way, Thea, I love your shorts. They're adorable," Chloe comments, smiling at the otter currently vibrating with stress.

After playing a handful of rounds of Werewolf, I'm pretty sure Castalia started to notice how playing a game about lying was making me a little depressed, so currently we're back to relaxing on the couches and trying to figure out an activity to do and/or a kind of food to order. The game was fun while it lasted, though. When I don't end up with a villain role, the logical deduction parts of the game are neat enough.

"O-oh, really? Thanks, um, Luna made them," Thea stammers. 

She sat on the far end of the couch to not get surrounded by people, but Chloe sat down next to her and Castalia has been levitating cross-legged on the other side of her, so she's a bit intimidated right now. Fortunately, it hasn't been to a degree that has compelled me to step in. 

"Really? I didn't know you sewed," Chloe says, smiling at me. "They look store-bought! But… well, I mean they're obviously not, given the third pant leg and all. Pant… tail?"

"Making stuff isn't too hard when you have perfect robotic precision and the ability to construct full 3D models of stuff inside your head," I admit. "Thea needed a new wardrobe, so I'm making her a couple of things but mostly just modifying stuff we bought from Costco."

"Well, they look great, and you look great in them," Chloe insists, turning the compliment back towards Thea because she is the perfect self-esteem wingwoman. 

I'm almost certain Chloe has already figured out Thea is insecure about her body and is giving her positive reinforcement on purpose. It's either that or Thea's severe anxiety disorder has left Chloe so weak in the knees she's in danger of falling to a case of the vapors directly onto the green girl's boobs, but I Can Fix Her energy or otherwise she's being a big help right now so that's cool.

"What's the Dark World like?" Bean asks, being decidedly less helpful, but at least they're including her in the conversation. I was a bit worried they'd be a little rude.

"Oh, um… well, it's dark, haha," Thea fidgets. 

Her tail hangs off the side of the couch, which is presumably the other reason she opted for the edge, and it starts to twitch a bit as she talks.

"It's very quiet there," she says. "Except for the thunder. Sometimes the monsters will make noise, but most of the time it's pretty silent unless the storm is bad."

"Storm?" Bean asks. "It rains there?"

"No, it never rains," Thea says, shaking her head. "But there are often thunderclouds. They just… aren't made of water vapor."

"Come to think of it," I say, "Why does lightning arc around the upper atmosphere of most fragments? It's pretty much the only light in the Dark World, but I've never really thought about it before."

"I have no idea," Thea admits. "I mean, it's all a bunch of wild magic swirling up there. Extra-concentrated Execration mist. I guess it's just… volatile." 

"Shit sounds wild," Bean grunts. "No light other than lightning, huh? How long did you live there?"

"U-um, I guess about seven years?" Thea squeaks.

"And how old are you?"

"Um… nineteen, I think?"

"Jesus," Bean swears. "So like, almost the majority of your conscious life. And here I thought I was poorly adjusted."

"You are poorly adjusted," I point out.

"And you nearly killed everyone in this room," Bean snaps back, causing nearly everyone in said room to stiffen with tension. 

"That's not true at all," I protest easily, trying to dispel the mood with a joke. "I killed nearly everyone in this room except Thea. Melpomommy wouldn't even let me touch her beloved daughter otter."

"L-Luna!" Thea objects, an embarrassed whining noise immediately following the sound of my name. 

Shit, was that too far on the teasing? Of course it was, who am I kidding, she's always hated the mother/daughter implications because of her crush, and it's even worse now that she knows Mel is a monster. I'm such a fuckup.

"Sorry," I apologize immediately. "Sorry, that was too far."

"She cared about you a lot," Castalia comments. "Even back before you left."

"I… I think she just wanted to use me because I had a knack with artifacts," Thea mumbles miserably.

"No," Castalia says. "It was more than that."

"Yeah, even I have to admit Mel genuinely cared about you," I say. "The destruction at college probably would have been even worse if she wasn't willing to drop everything to evacuate you somewhere safer the moment you got hurt."

"You didn't get along very well with your Earth Guardian team, did you?" Castalia hums thoughtfully. "I think she mentioned that once. Melpomene was always the most thoughtful out of all of us. I would not be surprised if she saw something of herself in you."

Melpomene? Thoughtful? I still can't quite reconcile the Melpomene Castalia talks about with the one I actually know.

"I know she saw something of herself in me," Thea says miserably. "That's what I'm afraid of. I just… I don't understand her anymore. But I don't want to be anything like her."

She hugs herself tightly. Chloe gives Castalia a meaningful look, which Castalia of course has absolutely no idea what to do with. Time for me to step in again, and hopefully not fuck it all up this time.

"Sometimes, bad people love good people," I say. "It happens all the time. It's not indicative of a character flaw to be loved, Thea. No matter what Melpomene thought about you, you are your own person."

"Okay," Thea whispers softly. "Okay."

I have a sinking feeling this is a point I'm going to need to repeat many, many times in the coming days. But will it even mean anything, coming from me? Thea knows I'm the furthest thing from an unbiased source. Still, I have to try. If enough repetition can get people to believe in lies, surely it can do the same for the truth, too?

"I can't help but feel like the odd one out, here," Bean admits. "You all have these terrifying traumatic magical experiences together. I'm just here because I was friends with Luna before she became a Terminator, and because Chloe was nice enough to give me a place to stay."

Oh hey, speaking of, Bean clearly needs more hugs.

"Come here," I tell them, though I start walking towards them first. "It's gets you time."

"Huh?" Bean blinks.

"Gets you!" I declare, rushing forward and wrapping my arms around them. "You are my silly little Bean and you will be special to me no matter how much of a magical Terminator I am!"

"You're shorter than me, silly little Luna," Bean protests, though I've successfully gotten a bit of snark-back so I've already accomplished my goal.

"I used to be taller than you!" I protest. "Becoming a robot made me way shorter for some reason."

I almost make a comment about how Melpomene must be into short girls, but a quick glance at how small Thea is lets me actually control my motor mouth and successfully avoid sticking a foot into it for once. Funny how becoming a robot capable of thinking far beyond human speeds has given me less of a filter. 

I guess overthinking stuff has been forcibly trained out of me thanks to how incredibly painful and dangerous it now is to myself and everyone around me.

"Oh, you used to be taller than me, huh?" Bean smirks. "Well don't worry, I'm sure you just haven't finished your growth spurt yet."

Hehe, mission accomplished! Bean always feels better once the two of us have gotten to shit all over each other. Uh, metaphorically. Ew.

I squish myself down on the outside of the couch next to them, and despite how there isn't really enough room for me there I manage to manage. I don't actually feel discomfort for being forced to sit in awkward positions, after all, though the couch certainly sounds like it's feeling a bit of discomfort accommodating my fat faux-flesh ass. Hmm… it wouldn't actually help with the weight issue much, but maybe I should slip into something more comfortable?

…Eh. No. It's more comfortable for me to be out of my skinsuit, but it's not really more comfortable for anyone else. And it's not like I hate my suit or anything, it's pretty cute. I don't know why I keep getting hung up on this.

"Alright everybody, it's been fun chatting and socializing and stuff but do y'all wanna do something?" I ask. "I'm sure there's some type of game I won't kick all your butts at. You just haven't found it yet. Trust."

"What about Risk?" Chloe suggests. "That's mostly luck."

"It's mostly probability, which is not the same thing," I counter. "I could lose any game of Risk, but I most likely won't, because I can still calculate the most optimal move in any scenario."

"Hmm… then War?" she tries.

"Do you mean the pure-luck card game where the players have zero agency whatsoever or like, the entire concept of nation versus nation combat?" I ask. "Because I think in both cases there are no real winners after we subject ourselves to the experience."

"What about Connect Four?" Jim offers.

"Bro that game is mathematically complete," I say. "I literally cannot lose at Connect Four."

"What about chess?" Chloe asks. "If luck doesn't work…"

"Ah yes, chess, the game perhaps most famous in the world for having computers that are better at it than grandmasters," I say. "Excellent choice."

"Go," Bean says.

"Go where?" I ask.

"No, you dolt, the game Go. You're enough of a weeb to know what that is, don't mess with me."

"It's definitely a better choice," I concede, "but they got computers to beat the world champ at that a couple years back, too."

"Yeah, but you're not that computer," Bean says. "It's a game that needs a lot of specific knowledge and strategy to do well at; you can't just math your way into the best option. I mean hell, do you even know how to play?"

"Do… any of you know how to play?" I counter. "Because I don't need to beat everyone at the game, I just need to beat all of you."

Bean stares at me. I stare back.

"…Touché," they concede, crossing their arms and looking away.

"I've got it!" Jim declares. "Tic-Tac-Toe!"

"My brother in Christ, why do you keep suggesting solved games?" I groan. "It is impossible for me to lose at Tic-Tac-Toe!"

"Yeah, but it's impossible for me to lose, too!" he grins. "It's so easy to solve, basically everyone knows how! We'd only ever tie!"

Well. Shit. I guess he's technically got a point there. But I cannot show weakness in the face of my own bit!

"Okay," I agree easily. "Do you all wanna play some rousing matches of Tic-Tac-Toe, then? Sounds like a fun afternoon."

His face falls, and I achieve total victory. Muahahaha!

"Truth or Dare," Castalia says quietly.

"What?" Thea squeaks.

"Truth or Dare," Castalia repeats. "Thalia would make us play it sometimes when we had sleepovers with her school friends. There are no winners or losers, but it can still be fun."

She's staring directly at me when she says all of that. I have no idea whether it's because she's implying she's onto me or because she just happened to remember that eye contact is considered traditionally polite and arbitrarily decided to employ it. Like genuinely, it's Castalia we're talking about, I honestly have no clue.

"That sounds fun!" Jim says. "It seems like it could be a nice way to get to know people, since we have some fresh faces here."

"Uhhh… I dunno," Chloe says hesitantly. "I mean, I feel like it's the kind of thing that could get out of hand if people aren't careful."

"It's definitely prone to escalation," Bean hums, "but we're all adults here, right? This ain't some elementary school birthday party. If someone crosses a line, just say so and we can do something else. No one's gonna gossip about it."

 "I'll go first!" Jim says cheerfully, barreling forwards before we really reach a consensus. Great start! "Thea! Truth or dare?"

"U-um… truth?" Thea squeaks, just kinda going along with it because of course she is.

"What's your biggest pet peeve?" Jim asks. Which… huh. Okay. That's not actually too bad.

"Pet peeve…?" Thea repeats.

"Like a weird thing that annoys you but no one else," I offer.

"Oh! Um, people moving my tools," Thea answers. "Anath used to mess with my stuff all the time and it really frustrated me, even if she didn't end up breaking anything."

"Oh," Jim says. "Yeah, that makes sense. Well, it's your turn now. Ask someone truth or dare."

"Anyone?" Thea asks. "Um… okay. Bean. Truth or—"

"Truth," Bean answers immediately.

"U-uh, okay, um…" 

Thea trails off for a while, clearly having not thought of a question. Which, like, fair! This is just sorta happening now.

"How did you and Luna become friends?" she asks.

Oh no.

"Online Runescape roleplay group," Bean answers. "Not even like, a roleplay group inside the game Runescape, but a chat group pretending to be living in the game Runescape. It was incredibly dumb. Our characters dated."

"You didn't have to tell them that part!" I whine.

"Luna," Bean presses on immediately. "Truth or dare?"

"Dare," I say, because of course I do. Imagine me picking 'truth.' Ha!

"Really? I never would have expected that," Bean jabs, because they know me so well.

"You already know everything about me," I answer evenly. "You'd mercilessly force the most embarrassing thing you could out of me instead of asking something interesting."

"True," Bean concedes, "but you picked Dare, so…  attempt to seduce the television for two minutes."

"You little jerk," I complain, mushing up their face with my hand. "This is racially insensitive. You're hate-crimeing me."

"Time doesn't start until you do," they smirk, tapping their watchless wrist.

"Oh but I have started," I say, adding a sultry tone to my voice as I stand up to brush my fingers across the bottom of the television on the wall. "We've already connected with each other, and I've sent her all my best nudes. She's asking if she can show you! The sweetheart is such an exhibitionist, always wanting to show everyone everything."

I activate the television screen with a mental command before anyone can answer, starting up a custom-made slideshow of some of the times I've looked at myself without my plating on. I do my best to find frames of memory that sort of look like I'm in a compromising position. It is, of course, all just wires and motors and crystals and stuff, but framing is everything.

"Oh yeah, baby, does that heat up your power brick?" I coo, pretending to drape myself on top of the TV (though I of course don't actually do that because I'd rip the damn thing out of the wall). "You want me to open you up too? Do some maintenance? I've been taught a thing or two about after-market mods."

"Ohhhh my godddd," Thea whines adorably, hiding her face in her hands. Chloe erupts into giggles and Jim looks away, doing his best to choke down laughs of his own. Castalia, of course, stares at me with as blank a face as ever, seeming more confused than anything else.

"You don't want a tame little romance, do you?" I press further. "You're a wild girl. You want me to get out the magnet? You'd like that, wouldn't you? Let's fuck you up."

"Okay, stop, stop!" Jim blurts, breaking into uproarious laughter.

"You just want to get in the way of our love," I accuse, wrapping my arms protectively around the flatscreen.

"Please don't break my TV!" he begs between breaths, gasping for air that quickly gets stolen by more laughter. 

"It's a flatscreen, Jim, it's not actually going to be damaged by magnets," I say, returning my voice to normal. "Also, I don't actually have one. And since my time is up… Chloe! Truth or Dare!"

"Oh, gosh," Chloe chuckles, taking a moment to let her own laughter subside. "Okay, uh… let's go with truth!"

"How many people in this room would you want to date if they tried to ask you out?" I say.

"Uh… I mean…"

"To clarify," I press, "it's just people you would want to date. Not necessarily people you'd actually choose to date."

"You jerk," Chloe huffs, though she doesn't really seem that annoyed as she glances around the room. Me, Bean, Thea, Castalia, Jim…

"Four," she admits. "My turn."

"Wait, who's the odd one out?" Bean grins.

"That's not what she asked!" Chloe insists. "My turn. Castalia, Truth or Dare?"

"Dare," Castalia answers.

"Oooh, okay," Chloe hums, thinking for a moment. "Hey, Luna, can you get karaoke up on the television? I want to hear Castalia sing an entire song."

Oh god. That's genius.

"On it, boss!" I agree, quickly setting things up. "Got a song in mind?"

"I do not know many songs," Castalia admits nervously.

"Well, she should at least know the lyrics," Chloe hums. "You've gotta think of something, Castalia!"

"Maybe… something by Avril Lavigne?" Castalia offers hesitantly.

Oh. My. God. 

YES.

Three minutes and twenty-three seconds later, the house has been graced by the most absolutely, unbearably, incredibly tone-deaf rendition of Sk8er Boi ever witnessed by mankind. The savior of the planet struggles through the entire song with the determination of a true hero, barely managing to raise her pitch a single semitone during the first chorus before returning to complete neutrality for most of the rest of the song. And yet, as she floats there, staring intensely at the screen so she can at least hope to get the timing of the lyrics right, it's so overwhelmingly obvious that she's genuinely giving it her all. Every word she stumbles, every note she strains and misses, every shade of red darker her blush starts to grow… she never stops trying her hardest. And it. Is. Awful. 

Fuck, I love her so goddamn much.

She's breathing hard at the end of it, winded by her efforts, and similarly the rest of us are utterly speechless. What do you even say to that? What do you tell a person who put everything they had into something that we all knew from the start would be so, so bad? I mean, I guess I don't really wanna tell her anything. I just wanna kiss her. 

"That was," Bean says, breaking the silence, "a borderline religious experience."

"You… liked it?" Castalia tries.

"No, I'd firebomb a church if I thought I could get away with it," Bean says frankly.

"Bean!" Chloe tries to protest, but she can't help but burst into giggles as she shoves my best friend playfully around. 

Further embarrassed, Castalia turns away, her gaze instead landing on me. I don't say anything. I don't know what to say. But she can feel everything I'm thinking about her now, and that seems to be more than enough for her to conclude it was all worth it.

"My turn, now," Castalia says, turning away from me. "Thea. Truth or Dare?"

"U-um, truth?" Thea squeaks.

Oh, shit. Blunder, blunder! Bad move, Thea! All the bubbly joy I've been feeling drops immediately into terror. And, of course, Castalia notices that, too. It doesn't change her plan at all, just reinforces it.

"Is Luna actually free?" Castalia asks, blunt as a speeding bus.

"Castalia!" I protest, trying to shut this down before it goes any further. Thea is not a good liar, so I have to cover for her. Unfortunately, part of why she's a bad liar is because she doesn't know when to shut up.

"Wh-why would you ask me that?" Thea says, shrinking in on herself. The joyful mood of the room has vanished completely at this point, Castalia's ever-present aura now the only detectable source of it. "I told you already."

"Can you check again?" Castalia asks. "Something still feels wrong. She even panicked when I asked."

"Why wouldn't I panic?" I try. "I don't want to live my life never trusted by anyone again!"

"Oh, shit, you might be onto something," Bean swears, recognizing the manipulation tactic immediately. Fuck! Ignore it, pretend it didn't happen, keep the conversation moving until it's been forgotten. Gaslight, gaslight, gaslight.

"Can we please not do this?" I groan. "We were having so much fun! I was having fun! You know I was!"

"I-I can't really check right now, I don't have my tools or anything, but I don't… I mean she's not…" Thea tries, fear and disgust oozing off of her as clearly recognizable guilt. 

I speed up my thoughts, letting the conversation almost completely pause around me as I try to figure out a good solution here. It's a difficult problem. Thea is the weak link here, and I can't control what she says or what she feels. My own feelings are the other big problem; Castalia is obviously using my emotions to make this call to some extent, and while I'm very good at explaining my emotions away, she knows that by now and isn't intending to listen to me. 

I don't think we have any way to prove her suspicions wrong, especially given the fact that they aren't. But she can't prove anything either. As long as we keep denying it, what is she going to do? No one other than Thea understands how I work. There might be that Preserver coming in to take a look at me later, but I'm already planning to not let them actually poke around at anything potentially compromising. What we really need is some kind of distraction. The longer we kick this can down the road, the more time we have to figure out a solution. But what do I—

Oh my god. I feel it before I hear it, but Castalia's phone rings. Miracles really do happen. I wonder why they always happen at my expense?

"Yes?" Castalia says, her phone levitating up next to her ear in the blink of an eye.

"Castalia," Uma'tama says. The phone isn't on speaker, but I'm listening in anyway because I'm in full crisis mode. "How quickly can you get to North Carolina?"

"That's far," Castalia says. "Five minutes?"

"Can you go?" Uma'tama asks. "Now? There's a kaiju approaching Cape Hatteras. From the ocean."

"A kaiju!?" I blurt out loud, mostly to disrupt the previous conversation further since I'm a manipulative piece of shit.

"Wait, what?" Chloe yelps.

"Oh, no," Jim whispers.

"From the ocean?" Castalia asks calmly. "It's already on Earth?"

Oh, shit. Wait, that is an important question. How did it get through the liminal space before Castalia got called in?

"Dark World portals shouldn't open in the ocean," Thea comments, having the same question as me. "There's no people there."

"We suspect it made Earthfall in the country of Bermuda, which by now it has likely destroyed. We assume the Earth Guardians there were wiped out before they could give a proper report."

"What about the Preservers there?" I ask, just going ahead and injecting my voice into the call because fuck it. 

"We don't know," Uma'tama answers, though they don't sound worried. They sound annoyed.

"Okay, I'm going," Castalia says, lifting slightly higher into the air. "I assume North Carolina is… north of here?"

Oh my god.

"Take me with you, I'll be your GPS," I say. "And I'll help you fight."

"T-take me too!" Thea insists.

Wait, what?

"No no no, you stay here!" I demand, pointing at her.

"I w-won't!" Thea insists. "I'm an Earth Guardian again too! A-and we were… going to be a team, right?"

"Okay," Castalia says, and I feel her power envelop both of us, magic suffusing the air thickly enough to make someone choke. "Thank you for the tea, Jim."

"Please, be carefu—!" Jim says, a bit of panic trickling into his voice, but we don't even get to hear the end of the word before we're gone.

There's a flash of yellow, and suddenly we're outside Jim's house. Just as suddenly, we're accelerating straight up into the air. Oh, hell, we're just doing this, then? Shit, shit, shit, Thea shouldn't be here, it's not safe!

"Which way?" Castalia asks.

"That way," I say, pointing East. Because no, North Carolina is not north of here. You dork.

"Why did you insist on coming!?" I demand to Thea, shouting over the rush of wind. A protective field stops it from being too overwhelming as we go faster and faster, but we can still hear it outside our little bubble.

"B-because I can help!" she insists. "I promise I'll be safe. I'm a support mage anyway, I'm better off staying back from the fighting."

"This is what we are, Luna," Castalia says. "Do not deny her right."

Oh. That… might be one of the stricter admonishments I've ever received from her. No point in arguing, then, not when they're both against me.

"[Sᴋᴇᴛɪsᴏʜ]" I incant, my skinsuit vanishing safely into storage. This isn't the kind of fight where I can afford to hide. The others take that as the concession of the argument it is, and we settle into a stressful silence.

The ground tears by beneath us at an incredible pace, despite how high in the air we are. We must be going over thirty times the speed of sound at this point, it's absolutely absurd. Castalia's approaching freaking escape velocity. If she brings us up any higher we might end up in orbit, and it doesn't take more than a cursory scan of the radio to determine that the FAA is not happy about it. …Or the Air Force. Or… a lot of agencies, really. I should probably at least let them know we're not a goddamn nuclear missile.

"Heeeey ATC this is Earth Guardian Luna en route to Cape Hatteras, NC for kaiju interception and defense, apologies for not submitting a flight plan, you can mail the fine to our boss."

"Uh. Roger, Earth Guardian. Maintain… eighty thousand?"

"Sure, we can stay the same altitude until we get there. Eighty thousand, really? Suck it, Concorde, Castalia Airlines is where it's at."

"Are you really an Earth Guardian?"

"Well I dunno, what does your radar say I am? Look, we'll keep out of the way of anything else up here, I just wanted to let you know what we were up to. Oh, and tell someone to evacuate Cape Hatteras, okay?"

"I… don't know how to do that."

"Yeah, that's fair, me neither. Lemmie see if I can hack the hurricane sirens or something."

Doot de doot de doo, Googling things in my head, how do hurricane sirens… manual activation. Darn. I guess I could call the mayor's cell phone, but we're basically already here. Once the spells start flying, I'm pretty sure they'll figure it out.

"Have either of you fought a Kaiju before?" Castalia asks.

"Once," Thea answers. "I've seen several more, but they were docile." 

"Docile…?" Castalia mutters under her breath.

"I've never fought one or seen one," I answer. "Just the aftermath of stuff they've crushed in the Dark World."

"Okay," Castalia says. "It will not be like how you expect."

Hmm. Ominous.

"What is it like, then?" I ask.

"Have you… seen Godzilla?"

"Yeah…?"

"It's not that."

Alright. Cool. Thank you so much, Castalia. Very helpful.

"It's kind of like that," Thea says. "I mean, we're still fighting a big monster, it's just… a kaiju is so much more than only a big monster. It's a concentration of magical power so dense that it can warp the fabric of reality. It's like… a living curse."

"What does that mean in practical terms?" I ask. "What's your best advice for actually fighting the thing?"

"Your number one priority is to survive," Castalia says. "Beyond that, do what you can."

"…Alright," I agree. I want to argue with her, but arguing with Castalia on the best way to fight a kaiju would be stupid. If she didn't think I'd be any help, she wouldn't have brought me.

Survival can't be my top priority, though. That's always going to be Thea's survival.

"We're getting close, right?" Thea asks. "Transforming."

"Heard," Castalia confirms. "Stay behind me. Luna, you stay in front of me. We'll be able to see it soon."

"Gʀᴀɴᴛ Mᴇ Cᴏᴜʀᴀɢᴇ!" Thea incants, a spell and a prayer both. "Fᴇᴀʀғᴜʟ Sᴀɢᴇ Dᴏᴏᴍᴇᴅ Aᴍᴀʟᴛʜᴇᴀ!"

The bloom of power from her transformation doesn't knock either of us away, the magic knowing us to be her allies as fully as Thea does. Even if she's afraid of Castalia in the broad sense, there's no denying she is the greatest friend anyone could have during a monster attack. Her incarnate body, pale-skinned and far more humanoid than before, holds her flesh-bound book open in front of her, ready to cast.

"There it is," Thea says, and I glance away from her to look ahead, spotting…

Oh, god.

Bright colored specks fly around it like gnats, the local Earth Guardians doing everything they can to slow the advance of the beast trudging towards shore. It stands most of the way out of the water, the ocean itself not even knee-deep in the shallow shoals off Cape Hatteras. A part of my mind that has been trawling the internet for local maps and topographic data notes that this area is known as 'The Graveyard of the Atlantic' for the sheer number of shipwrecks these deceptively shallow waters have to their name. As the closest landmass to the island of Bermuda, and a quite popular tourist destination, Hatteras Island has more than enough of an emotional pull to attract a kaiju still hungry from its last meal.

After all, Bermuda only had a population of sixty-four thousand people. That's hardly enough to sate the titanic hunger of the thing approaching us. Sixty-four thousand people, all wiped clear off the map. Possibly quite literally, given that I have no trouble believing this thing could sink an entire island if it wanted to.

It has six main limbs, its body posture oddly diagonal as it stands on four of them. It reminds me of a praying mantis, slinking forward on legs all jutting out in different directions, or maybe some kind of raptor-like dinosaur leaning top-heavily forward with forelimbs curled up underneath its chest. It's hard to make out what exactly those forelimbs are, though. Perhaps they end in claws, or scythes, or even hands, but the black mist billowing off the beast in every direction leaves the details too hazy to make out. 

Its very presence darkens the sky, not just from its size but from the raw weight of its power, a torrential glut of chaotic emotions, undirected and in constant contradiction with each other. Anger, fear, disgust, sadness, pride, need, hopelessness… the emotions are impossibly varied and impossibly overwhelming, united only by the fact that any one of them, if felt by a human, would be enough to make them scream until they no longer knew who they even were.

Atop its body, the monster's head twitches randomly, whatever thoughts it's capable of driving it only further into madness. And it, too, screams. Not all the time, but often enough and powerfully enough that the force of it clears the air of the annoying magical gnats it so often swipes at. Every time it attacks, something feels… wrong about it. Not in some unspeakable eldritch way, but in a way that makes my brain wonder if it's watching edited footage or poorly-keyframed animation rather than witnessing something in real life. I can't quite put my finger on the issue, but it's… uncanny. 

"Moving in for initial attack," Castalia announces.

"Belay that," Thea says. "Start charging now. Tᴀʀɢᴇᴛɪɴɢ Aʀʀᴀʏ!"

Castalia stops as instructed, focusing and concentrating her magical power at a point in front of her without a single question. In front of her, a huge set of overlapping green magical circles creates a scope-like effect in the air, giving Castalia a clearer view of her target. She aims her stub, golden light gathering in front of it.

"Gʀᴇᴀᴛᴇʀ Gɪғᴛ ᴏғ Tᴇʀʀᴏʀ. Oᴠᴇʀᴄʜᴀʀɢᴇ. Mᴀɢɴɪғɪᴄᴀᴛɪᴏɴ Wᴀʀᴅ," Thea says, casting buff after buff. I'd better make myself useful, too.

"[A W A C S O ɴ ʟ ɪ ɴ ᴇ]" I follow up, creating a long-distance sound relay all the way to the battlefield. Which is, might I add, still in the area of fifty miles away from our current location. "This is Earth Guardian Luna reporting that Castalia is in the combat zone. Repeat, Castalia is in the combat zone. Clear away from target."

I get a bunch of very surprised voices in response, and while I very much could give individual answers to each of them, it's kind of a waste right this second.

"I'm serious, guys," I say instead. "Get the fuck away now."

"Aʙʀᴇᴀᴄᴛɪᴏɴ: Dɪᴠɪɴᴇ Sᴛᴀʀʟɪɢʜᴛ Cᴀɴɴᴏɴ."

The ball of golden light becomes a beam of scorching death, a pillar of fiery judgment dropped from the heavens by God himself. It streaks through the intervening distance at speeds far beyond what we had been traveling, making its way to the monster in less than the blink of an eye. I can watch it all in slow motion, of course, and I do, watching the monster's head cease its eternal jittering to snap directly towards the incoming death beam, something almost like curiosity seeming to overtake it for a split second before it registers the danger. Its legs tense, instinct overcoming it as it reflexively tries to dodge something it couldn't possibly avoid.

Or so I thought.

My clock speed is so high, the whole world around me moves in slow motion. Raindrops would be stationary in the air, were there any currently falling. I can see the evading magical girls and boys with their panicked expressions locked in place like a photograph. And I can see, through it all, Castalia's Abreaction carving towards the monster like a bullet train. But then, in this world of otherwise-stopped time, the kaiju suddenly moves like it was never in slow motion at all.

I mean that more literally than I can fully comprehend. It does not, as it rightly should, move like a giant monster suddenly accelerating to a terrifyingly significant fraction of c. The air does not fucking explode around it as it rightly should by being compressed into a pancake on one side and leaving an empty vacuum on the other. The monster simply moves as if it were our size, our speed, making the same kind of jump arc that you'd see in a nature documentary, despite being a being of unfathomable size and strength.

It doesn't consider itself large, it considers us small. It doesn't believe itself to be fast, it only thinks we're slow. And its power is so overwhelmingly great, the world around it has no choice but to simply agree. As it jumps, it makes a swipe at one of the Earth Guardians unlucky enough to be in its path. Its still-blurry forearm slaps the frozen girl like one might bat away a clumsy fly, and her incarnate form crumples, collapsing into bloody gunk and destabilizing back into her human body. The girl is launched away, seemingly unconscious and otherwise unharmed, but considering that she's currently a projectile traveling several hundred miles per hour towards open ocean, she is most certainly not going to remain unharmed for long.

"Launch!" I shout, and as usual Castalia reacts instantly, seeming to understand my intent without any more context. 

I reshape my shielding to make me as aerodynamic as possible as she fires me like a bullet towards the falling girl, dramatically faster than we were even traveling to get here in the first place, but it's still not enough to catch up at this distance. That's okay, though. I just had to get close enough that teleporting wouldn't be prohibitively costly.

"[H ʏ ᴘ ᴇ ʀ s ᴘ ᴀ ᴄ ᴇ]" I incant. "[A ɪ ʀ ʙ ᴀ ɢ]"

It's a bit of a quick-and-dirty spell, more of a big air tunnel designed to decelerate a person at livable speeds so I can slow myself down and grab her without turning her bones into jelly. At which point I'll, uh… figure out some way for us to land safely. It's fine, I can think fast.

I catch her, and it immediately strikes me as odd that her eyes are still open. Her expression looks… pained. She isn't breathing.

She doesn't have a soul. Wh… why—

Brain hemorrhage detected. Near-instantaneous full-body disruption of incarnate form most likely destabilized the victim's soul significantly enough to cause involuntary magical discharge within the brain. Death was likely instant. Damaged soul was left behind when brain functionality ceased. Due to the volatile magical energy in the area, it has likely already dissipated.

—didn't she have a better defense ready? Oh. Oh, god, how old is this girl? Thirteen? Fourteen? I'm holding the corpse of a fourteen-year-old girl. What was she doing fighting this thing? I need to get the kids out of—

Primary objective: defend Thea in jeopardy. I need to return to the battlefield immediately so I can link up with her.

"[Sᴋᴇᴛɪsᴏʜ]" I incant, putting the corpse in storage for later.

—Castalia's way so she can take this monster down as fast as possible. Coordination will be key. For now, I need to move.

"[H ʏ ᴘ ᴇ ʀ s ᴘ ᴀ ᴄ ᴇ]"

Just like that, I'm back at Thea and Castalia's side, Castalia catching me with her telekinesis before I start to fall. My entire failed rescue and internal crisis has only taken a couple seconds, during which time they've flown into the thick of the action.

"Why aren't you in your incarnate form yet?" Castalia asks.

"I'm not sure it's the best idea," I answer, doing my utmost not to glance at Thea. I feel her power spike a bit, though. She knows what I mean: it'll give us away.

"If you need it, don't hesitate," Thea orders anyway. "I know you hate it, but this is no time to hold back."

The corpse was so light. Like it weighed practically nothing. Catching it was like catching a feather.

"Yeah," I agree. "Fair enough."