“You know, this isn’t what I meant when I asked for a date.”

“I said maybe.”

“You stabbed my hand.”

“You tried to ambush me.”

“You shot me in the eye.”

“You cracked my rib.”

“You stabbed my [i]mouth.[/i]”

“You bled over my clothes, so I guess we’re even.” 

Charles Lafreniere gave a surly frown, and Celica flashed an innocent smile at the monitor. He did not see it, of course. After a moment, the man sighed, once again turning to the device she had roped him into setting up. The object was much like a vice, sitting atop a table for height, and it held in place a black pistol similar in size to Celica’s own weapons. A small bar was held horizontally by the device near the trigger, such that it could pull on it. It was connected by a cable to an outlet in the wall, leading to the room she was in.

Such arrangements were rare at that point in time. The room itself was often used by Shifters to experiment with their powers, with various implements and sensors available in an adjacent room connected to it. It did not play host to firearms that often.

It wasn’t particularly odd for Celica to use it this way. At that point, she considered the machine Charles was setting up to be pretty much her own. 

That he was there was more of a coincidence. The man had shown up during lunch that day claiming that she had agreed to a date with him. She had not recognized him. Then again, the only time they had spoken, he had been a gigantic winged snake bent on eating her. The Charles that approached her had been a man about her height, toned, with light brown hair, dark eyes and a dazzling smile.

He was rather pleasant to look at, she reflected.

The heavy metal door slammed shut with a boom as someone else entered the room. Alice had expensive looking noise canceling ear muffs slung around her neck, and had a large rucksack full of what looked like metal plates. Sitting in a black shoulder holster/bandolier apparently made of small metal plates with the grip prominently displayed was the gun she’d been trying to obtain for the past several months. The same bandolier also played host to a double row along its entire length to pouches holding cylinders of the full power ammunition she’d loaded last night inside each one, 

She gave a small wave towards Celica, “Hey, already setting some things up a—who the ад are you?”

The man looked up from his work, surprised for a moment, before giving Alice a slow look from top to bottom. Then he quirked a grin at her. From the viewing room, Celica wondered if his teeth actually sparkled or if it was a trick from light from the camera.

“Well, this might make it worthwhile.” The man stood up, rubbing his fingers for a second before extending a hand in greeting. “Charles Lafreniere. A pleasure, mademoiselle.” His voice had a vibrant, noticeable accent to them, the pleasant kind that sounds distinctive without distorting the words themselves.

Alice glanced at him, raising an eyebrow. “Hi.”

Celica’s voice blared into the room. “Hey Alice. This is Charles. I asked him to help me set up.”

“More like suckered me into it.”

She ignored him. “Did you bring everything?”

Alice nodded, “Mm-hmm, bullets, ammunition, targets, firearm, et-cetera, if you need it I’ve probably got it in this thing.” She grabbed the rucksack and shrugged it off her shoulders, holding it out to Charles. “Could you hold this for a second?”

He took it with a sour expression. It turned into a surprised yelp as the bag almost dropped him to his knees. “What is in this thing?!”

Alice looked over at him in mild surprise, slipping off the shoulder holster, “Just some two centimeter steel plates, ammunition, some cleaning supplies, some other testing media, nothing much.” She pulled off her omnipresent coat, throwing it on one of the benches at the back of the room as she slipped the shoulder holster back over herself. “I’ll take that back, thanks for eh, slowing its fall I suppose?”

“Sure, no problem,” he wheezed, gladly letting her take the burden from him. He took a breath, recomposing himself. “Hey Celica, I’m done with that thing.”

“Alright. Just about ready on my end. You can leave if you want.” As an afterthought, she added, “sorry, by the way.”

Charles opened and closed one of his hands. It still had some gauze around it. He looked at the rig he had set up. “It’s fine. I think I’m going to stay and watch. Didn’t expect this, so I kept my schedule open afterwards.”

“Of course you did.” Celica’s wry smile seeped into her voice. “You managed to make the bullets, Alice? For both weapons?”

Alice nodded, “They’re the same diameter, so I just made a bunch with some in different sizes and weights. The multi purpose rounds are also modified to break up at the lower velocities for you. I’m going to assume you can tell the difference between the two cartridges.” She fished around in the rucksack, dragging out plates of steel and several cans which rattled considerably.

“Nice. Alright, I’m done here.” She stepped back, taking a look at some of the monitors. The technology used for setting up holograms was useful in more than one way. The way they were set up, she would be able to record each test, measure the velocity of the projectiles and compare their trajectories. She could just shoot and it would feed her the numbers from the points of reference she had given it. She could even impose virtual recreations over each other to compare them more easily. 

Celica sighed wistfully. They did not have this kind of equipment in high school physics lab. She doubted they’d need as much of it, though. What mattered most they would be able to see.

Her hand pressed on the intercom. “Need help setting up, Alice?”

Alice shrugged, speaking into the corresponding intercom on her side “I’m fine. I’ll let you go first, I’m just testing out an old theory and brushing up mainly.”

Celica nodded to herself for a moment and gave the monitors another looks, giving it a quick once-over to see if everything was in place. Bullet magazines were arrayed on top of the desk, colored dots marking the bottoms of each. From those she scooped up a magazine, marked with a white dot, and opened the thick doors to the testing room. 

She was in her Shifter form, and she’d somehow gotten her hands on a white lab coat. The sleeves were pulled back, leaving the crystallized portion of her arms bare, and her long hair had been gathered into a ponytail. Some things just had to be done the proper way.

She loaded the testing weapon before turning to address her audience of two. “I just loaded the gun with my usual ammunition. The one I used in our spar, Charles. I have everything set up so that we can fire and watch from the next room.” She glanced at Alice. “I’d rather the room be empty before I start testing. Just in case something doesn’t go as planned. Do you need to do something here first?” 

Alice shook her head, grabbing her coat and slinging it over her shoulder she walked towards the door, letting it slam shut as she walked towards the other room. 

Entering the room, she looked over at the computers and other equipment, “Sorry, which rounds were these again?”

The door opened again, letting Celica and a whistling Charles in. Celica moved to one of the terminals, plopping down on the chair and clicking through a few menus. “The ones I keep offering to you. The bullets I loaded into the pistol are standard issue, save for an enchantment I worked into them.” With another click, a light materialized in the other room and resolved into a see-through disc, visible from a few angles in the monitors.

“Charles, do you see the red button? No, that one. Right. Push it.”

In the screens, the gun roared. When the projectile slammed against the target, ice burst from the impact like a blooming flower.

“The enchantment is meant to trigger when the bullet strikes a solid object,” she continued, eagerly. She was particularly proud of how her enchantment managed to distinguish between the moment of firing and the moment of impact. Part of her reveled in her chance to explain and play with her powers this way. “The temperature around the impact will drop dramatically. It will pull any water that is close towards the bullet and flash freeze it.” She held up one hand, drawing the attention of the two other Shifters, then snapped her fingers. With a sound like grinding glass, a jagged crystal similar to the one in the screen snapped into existence, floating above her hand. “Just like that.”

Alice nodded in acknowledgement, though she still saw little use in freezing something as opposed to incinerating it, “And, what if you go up against a giant or other Titan? I doubt that’d do much more than irritate them.” 

Celica grimaced. “They’re not really meant for use on Titans.”

“They helped you with me,” Charles observed. “I was half convinced you knew you’d have to counter my camouflage.”

Celica waved her hand, letting the ice dissolve into white mist. “A lucky coincidence.”

She looked at the guns and ammunition, “What’re you shooting next?”

“The rest of the magazine.”

Alice shrugged, ignoring Charles, “Fair enough. Do you know what it’d do against another Demon like us? Titans aren’t exactly hard to hit, and Fae are kind of squishy by comparison.”

“It depends. It would hurt, might make it hard to move. And,” she said with a small, impish smile, “you have to remember that my power is not limited to making ice. I can move it too.” With another click on the terminal, the hologram disappeared, letting the ice fall to the floor. Another press of a button had it reappear. “Fire it again, Charles.”

Alice took a seat, glancing idly at the firing range, her runic bullets weren’t up yet, her excitement was minimal. “Makes me wonder if you could crystallize the moisture inside someone if you touched someone, imagine ice crystals spearing through a giant’s brain and out his eyes. That’d be one way to deal with ‘em.”

Celica smiled noncommittally as the gun blared again. They repeated the process until the pistol clicked empty. Celica logged the results, already set in the spreadsheet she had prepared before the three had gathered, and went outside, another magazine in her hand, this one marked in light blue.

In the silence that followed the closing door, Charles rapped his fingers against the desk. “So,” he said, turning to look at Alice, “are you doing anything later?”

She shrugged, fiddling with a cylinder of ammunition she held in her hands, examining the bullet for any defects. Sliding it back into the pouch where it had come from she dug around in another pocket, pulling out a couple walnuts, cupping them in her palm and smashing the fist of her other hand into them, before popping one of the now cracked nuts in her mouth. 

“Wasn’t going to do much, refine the ammunition, fine tune the gun since it’s been sitting around for two years, work out a bit and see if I can break the 160 kilo mark on the bench press, all I’ve been able to do so far is 158.” She dumped the shells of the nuts in a nearby trashcan, throwing the remaining nuts in her mouth and pulling out another cylinder of ammunition to inspect.

In the screen, Celica waved a hand before the fallen pieces of ice, making them dissipate. She stopped for a moment, tilting her head.

“Impressive! Do you need a spotter?”

She glanced at him suspiciously, “Already have one.”

At that moment, the intercom crackled to life. “Guys, the comm’s still open.” After a moment. “You actually do say that to every girl.”

“I didn’t squish her either,” Charles replied, shameless.

The door opened to the monitor room opened once again, letting Celica walk in, shaking her head. She took her seat and motioned towards Charles. “Fire.”

Once again, the weapon discharged on the target, ice sprouting from the impact. 

Visually, it was the same as the previous test. Charles began frowning at the third shot, something which only deepened as they continued.

“Did you confuse the ammo?” 

“She had them marked, so I’d imagine not, that or that’s a different velocity loading or something.” Alice looked over at Celica, “Guessing that’s more or less what it is?”

Celica shook her head, frowning. “No. It’s the exact same projectile. Only the enchantment itself changed.” She glanced at the monitor, in particular at the ice stuck to the floating target. “Though I was expecting more ice. I’ll have to compare the volume and weight later. It’s what the first test was for.”

Charles scratched as his chin. “Speaking of that. In our fight, you made a lot more than that, very quickly. What is stopping you from having a bullet make enough ice to fill the room?”

“I’m glad you asked.” Celica smiled, slipping back into professor mode. “Enchantments of the sort I do need a certain amount of energy to carry the task I give them. The problem is that there is a limit to how much energy a single object can hold. This is usually determined by size. Some materials can hold more magic than others, but eventually they all saturate.”

“And bullets are small.”

“Exactly.” She nodded, then glanced at Alice. “Can you hand me one of those runic bullets?” 

Alice nodded, fishing out a magazine loaded with five rounds of the runic steel. “125 grain flat point with a copper coating on the sides to stop it from demolishing the barrel, it should fall off the moment the thing leaves the barrel. Clocking 450 meters a second or so.” She tossed it over to Celica as she walked to the viewing screens. “I’ve got a bit of a hunch on something, but we’ll see what happens.”

Celica took the magazine, then fished one of the bullets from the top. She held it between her index finger and her thumb, giving it an intent stare. Almost immediately, frost began gathering on its surface, before giving way to tiny crystals.

Celica snorted. “It’s already saturated.” She passed a finger over the ice, dusting it off the metal in little puffs of vapor. “This bullet is so chock-full of Alice’s magic that it saved me the effort. It won’t hold my magic.” 

She returned it to its magazine. “Okay, enough delaying. Let’s finish this trial.”

The next magazine to go into the pistol was one of Alice’s. This time, instead of the circular disk, Celica conjured up a bluish, transparent block. She explained it was supposed to mimic the muscle tissue of the average Demon.

Once everything had been set up, she leaned back on her chair and nodded for Charles to fire. She had already seen Alice’s sword and armor in action, and suspected that the projectile would clear the holographic slime entirely. Maybe, if she wanted to stretch things, bore itself into the wall behind it to the point where they’d need either magic or to dig a bit to get it out. Mystical steel and all it entailed. 

What she did not expect, was for the gel to remain untouched, while a very loud crack resounded over the speakers.

Swiftly realizing what had happened, Celica groaned. “Not again.”

Alice folded her arms. “It appears my hunch was correct.”

Celica shot her a sour look. Of course. Why wouldn’t she have a hunch that her bullets would make the gun explode?

 “You could have said something.”

“I did.” She pushed herself away from the viewing screens, wings and armor appearing as she shifted, she walked towards the door and pushed her earmuffs over her ears. “You have some spare guns, right?”

Celica produced a second gun from a drawer, same model as the one that had lost its back end in the last trial, and set it down on the desk. She already had an inkling on what Alice wanted to do.