Alice took the gun, keeping the muzzle pointed down. “I’ll be back in just a bit.”
She opened the door, heading out to the ruined pistol, raising an eyebrow at the damage, “Must have overpressured it some. Forgot she was using the cheap versions.” She carefully pulled the gun from its rest, ejecting the somehow unharmed magazine and sliding it into the intact pistol.
She settled into a shooting stance and took aim at the hologram, “Firing in three… two… one!”
She fired the remaining four shots in roughly one second intervals, the rounds all hitting home squarely in the center of the block. Smirking as she ejected the now empty magazine, she left the gun on the rest and walked back to the observation room.
“So, how did that go?”
Wordlessly, Celica pressed a key on the terminal. One of the screens brightened and was replaced by an view from the side of Alice standing in a firing stance in front of the hologram. The slow motion video showed the bullets exiting the barrel, the small copper pieces on the sides of the bullet flying away like they had been designed to. The inside of the gel ballooned out with the force of the round, opening up a very clear temporary cavity inside the gel before the bullet came straight out the other side, it didn’t even appear to be tumbling.
“There’s some hydrostatic shock for ya’.” Alice commented idly, watching the other bullets impact the gel with similar effects, “Makes me wonder what’ll happen when I use my own gun.”
Celica had the edge of her lip turned down in a sour grimace. “I’m tempted to try again, and have you push the button. Make sure it wasn’t a fluke.”
Alice shook her head, “I’m pretty sure I need to be physically connected to it. Pulling a string would probably work, but pushing a button would just blow up another gun.”
“I hate when this happens.”
“When what happens?” Charles asked from his seat.
“When magic gets finicky.” Celica grunted, picking the next magazine and fiddling with it in an irritated fashion. “Sometimes it works like any phenomenon we might encounter in the natural world. Sure, it might look stranger and rather disconnected, but its effects can be measured, quantified and then predicted. Then sometimes it up and seems to do whatever it wants, as if everyone’s magic worked under a different set of rules. Rules that seem to be arbitrarily picked for no other reason other than to be inconvenient. Like bullets that can only be fired by whoever made them.”
Charles gave her a sidelong glance. “It sounds to me like you’re just upset you can’t use them.”
Celica threw him a glare. “Shut up,” she groused, all grace and eloquence, before standing up to set up the next experiment.
The next experiment managed to avoid further explosions. Celica conjured up another smaller but denser target in the shape of a short cylinder, and had Charles repeatedly fire it, same as before.
The bullets themselves penetrated the target easily, but Celica’s frown did not abate. When asked about it, she showed them an image of the testing room. Or rather, several images superimposed over one another. The trajectories of the projectiles were clearly outlined as she rotated and shifted the representation so that they were looking at the front of the disc, the gun behind their point of view.
The bullets seemed to have rapidly deviated from their trajectories, all striking the target at noticeably different angles, even at that distance.
“I tried to make ice cover the bullets while flying,” she explained. The ice sprouting on them must have somehow thrown off the trajectory. It was a new idea, either way, so she was not terribly surprised it had not worked exactly the way she had envisioned it. She made a mental note to fiddle with the enchantment some other time.
“Suddenly increasing the mass and volume of a projectile in flight is going to cause problems no matter what you do with it,” Alice commented idly, as if reading her mind. “I’m not even sure of the purpose of covering a bullet in ice midair.”
“It’s very dense, very hard ice,” she offered in the way of explanation. “And I can’t very well make them the way you did. They’d melt eventually.”
That left four magazines sitting on the table. Two of them were marked in yellow, while the other two had red dots on their bottom.
Once again, Celica conjured up the block of demon-calibrated, holographic gelatin, and took one of the yellow magazines with her. She went and came back in moments, sitting down in her chair with a slow breath. The experiments so far had not been too terribly encouraging, at least when it came to her own options. Part of her wondered if she should feel happier about Alice getting her gun and powers in working order, but she was still upset that those powers would only work for her.
“Okay,” she said with a sigh. “Fire.”
Charles did as she asked, and the gun blared. The bullet hit the slime, sending tremors across its surface. It didn’t penetrate much, barely sinking enough that the bullet managed to submerge itself completely. For a heartbeat, nothing remarkable happened, and Celica felt her stomach sinking in disappointment. Then, ice pushed out in angry spikes, bloating like an angry pufferfish, sharp points tearing into the gel like the hooks of a burr.
Charles winced, one hand coming up to touch his jaw.
Celica noticed and smiled guiltily. Their spar had given her the idea, after all.
Alice grinned at the result, “Now that is brilliant.” Folding her arms as she thought, “The only question is what would be the best way to get that inside an enemy…?” Titans had thick armor and dense muscle tissue, penetrating through that wouldn’t be very feasible for ice and regular metal – but then again they were big, maybe finding a way to shoot one of those up their noses or something... The block was calibrated for average Demon tissue, which meant it’d ideally reproduce the results in the block. Fae and Spirits on the other hand… they were squishy. Her mad grin widened. “I’m liking that bullet.”
“She sees the merits of ice,” Celica pronounced, nodding. Even as her smile faded and she turned to study the screens, she held an excited glimmer in her blue eyes. “I thought of having the enchantment trigger a certain amount of time after the bullet fired, but that was hardly reliable. I couldn’t use the usual method either because the enchantment would have triggered the moment the tip touched the gel. So I mixed the two, and found a way to introduce a delay to the trigger after impact.”
She dismissed the block, letting the ice fall again before resetting it to its intact state.
“Again.”
So it went until the first yellow magazine was spent, the results fairly consistent throughout the trials. Then it was the turn of the second. Before leaving the monitoring room, Celica adjusted some sliders in one of the terminals.
Charles gave the numbers a curious look. He hummed. “That looks rather solid.”
Celica was back moments later, and gave Charles a nod as she passed. This time, the bullets failed to penetrate. They crashed and shattered against the hologram, clattering uselessly to the ground in a shower of metal. The ice burst out in little scattered shards for each, but at that point, it did little more than jostle the debris around.
“That,” Celica said with a slight frown, “is unarmored, Titan muscle.”
Alice smirked, “Glorious runic steel master race.” She walked to the instrument panel, increasing the amount of material there was, just in case. Pulling out a pair of earplugs and sticking them in her ears, then pulling the ear muffs over her ears, she walked towards the door, pulling out her own gun.
Alice walked out until she was facing the block, calling over to the intercom, “Whenever you’re ready!”
“Go for it.”
Alice shook her shoulders, taking aim, she breathed deeply, in and out, in and out…
The report of the gun sounded less like a handgun and more like a thunderclap. The gun bucked in her hand like a mule, though she was able to control it with little trouble, shifter muscle definitely coming in handy.
She really couldn’t tell what effect the bullet had had, though she imagined it wouldn’t be pretty. She slid the gun back into its holster and removed her hearing protection, jogging back to the observation room and bursting through the door. “So? What’d it do?!” she asked, showing more excitement than she had at any other time at the Academy, but she didn’t really care.
Once again, Celica brought up a replay for her.
Alice eagerly rushed over, watching pleased fascination as the bullet tore into the titan tissue simulant.
Charles shuffled uncomfortably in his seat as he watched Alice’s expression. “Never thought I’d have to compete with a gun,” he murmured.
Alice heard him, but paid him no heed for the moment. She watched with a slightly manic grin as the bullet also shed its thin copper coating like intended and continued on, striking the dense tissue and tearing through. The bullet kept true, penetrating through the block in a more or less straight line, leaving a relatively small cavity behind it. Her grin widened as it came out the back end, still flying straight, and fast too.
Alice pushed herself away from the monitors, practically vibrating with excitement, “If a bunch of those doesn’t take out a giant or dragon, I don’t know what will.” She declared, adding, “I’ve also got some different rounds I made for slightly… softer targets, like Demons, as well as something for the Fae and Spirits, gotta spread the love if you know what I mean.”
She flashed a pleased grin towards Celica, “I think this might be one of the best moments of my life. I’ll mark it up there with finding out you’re a decent person and getting separated from dad. Oh the potential of runic bullets! I’m almost tempted to dig one out of the wall and see the effects it had, and test the ductility and malleability.” She paused for a second to catch her breath, having lost it at the rate she was speaking and breathing.
“Well, congratulations. I suppose we’ll be calling those ‘Dragonslayer’ bullets from now on.” Celica let out a soft snort and tapped her bottom lip. “I think you’re drooling a little.”
“I can get that for her,” Charles interjected, making to rise out of his chair, only for Celica to curl a cold hand on his collar and pull him back down.
“Now, if only you could find a way to make it usable by others,” she continued, ignoring the outburst, “we could have a proper firearm that’s not considered obsolete in this war.”
Alice nodded, face having shifted to a slight frown. "Don't think there's much I can do to fix that."
“I can dream.”
“Right.” Charles coughed, one hand rubbing where frozen skin had touched the nape of his neck. “What do those red ones do?”
Celica frowned, glancing at the two remaining magazines. “The enchantment is the same, but I had a good idea of what would happen when I tried it on the Titan hologram, so I asked for something other than the old standard issue. They are AP rounds.” She picked one up and made for the door. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
“AP?” Charles parroted as Celica left, turning towards the resident gun lover.
"Armor Piercing," Alice replied, looking off into space and running ideas through her mind, continuing offhandedly. "I'm curious to see what they'll do."
True to her word, Celica walked in a few seconds later, giving Charles the go-ahead to press the button.
The effect of the bullet was remarkably similar to the earlier trial against Demon muscle tissue. Little penetration, perhaps even less than before, but enough of the projectile broke into the hologram itself to tear a vicious hole once the enchantment trigger. Still, Celica would not bring herself to celebrate. Understandably. It was rare for Titans to be unarmored. She silently allowed for the test to continue until the bullets had been expended.
The second magazine she tried on the Demon tissue hologram. Predictably, the bullet penetrated deep into the block. Most of them were stopped by the enchantment releasing its spikes at the last moment, but a few managed to pierce it completely, tumbling out at a much reduced speed before the enchantment was triggered.
“I think I’ll keep the standard issue,” Celica said, once the last bullet had been fired and the hologram dissipated. “Maybe the AP would work if I consistently hit bone, but there won’t be much of a point to these if the enchantment triggers once the bullet is outside of the enemy’s body half the time.”
"You're forgetting things like internal organs, skeleton, armor, distance, et-cetera." Alice interrupted, "The gel is only used to get an idea of how it might work in practice."
“I’m ignoring them for the sake of simplicity. The more variables I add, the less reliable the results will be. The specifics can wait until I think they’re worth testing.” Celica grunted. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t see this working on a Titan with these guns. Even if I suddenly decided to bring an anti-materiel rifle to the field, I have my doubts it would go through some of the defenses they have.” After a moment, she narrowed her eyes and added, “And I can’t very well field test this in a sparring match.”
“Couldn’t you adjust the delay?” Charles offered.
Celica grimaced, but nodded. “I could, but it even if I review the videos to get the timing I’d need so that it triggers while inside a body, it’s difficult for me to stick to a specific timing. It’s not as if I’m just entering numbers on a computer.” Not even close. She was constantly amazed at the difference between time as perceived by her and the actual time elapsed. “I tend to stay away from timers in my enchantments unless I can have a wide margin for error.” She sighed. The cast of her shoulders told everyone she was contemplating putting some practice into it, nonetheless.
Charles nodded slowly, glancing between the two women. “Well…” he started after a moment, “was that all you wanted to do?”
“I think I did all the testing I wanted to for today,” she said. “Alice? Want to keep trying yours?”
Alice nodded, "I've got some hardened steel plates to stand for dragon scales or a bit of giant armor. That and I'd like to test the rounds I developed for Demons, Fae, and Spirits."
She looked over at Celica, "You curious about any of those in particular?"
“A bit,” she said, looking over the console. With a few practiced motions she saved the data and sent it to her terminal. “But after seeing the one, I have a good idea of what will happen with the rest. I need a breath of fresh air. Can you look over this while I’m gone?” she asked, motioning towards the stand, guns, and empty magazines.
Alice had de-shifted and put her coat back on at that point, and was paying attention to the small black rectangle in her hand, rather than Celica. A small grin lit up her face for a half second, before it vanished back into the normal half scowl, “Sorry, what?” She asked, looking up at Celica,
“Adela just messaged me. Apparently she can make it – you’d think someone as rich as her wouldn’t get so hyped up about shooting some guns on occasion. I mean, she could buy her own shooting range if she wanted.” Alice slipped her phone back into her coat, “You remember her right? The one who carries a flute everywhere?”
“Norma? Adela Norma?” It was Charles who had spoken, and odd smile in his face.
Alice glanced at him suspiciously, “Yes.”
“And she’s coming here.”
“No, she’s going to the other practice area set up as a shooting range where I’ve planted clones of myself and Celica.”
“Indeed? You are a woman of many talents, Alice,” he said in a tone so earnest it was hard to consider it sarcasm.
“You know Adela?” Celica asked, eyebrows raised.
“Why?” He smiled. “We’re practically childhood buddies! I couldn’t spare a chance to say hello.”
“She never mentioned you.” Alice shot back at him.
“I suppose it’s to be expected. Long time and all. And she never said much in the best of days.”
Celica gave him a narrow glance, leaning back against her chair. “I think I’ll stay here for a bit too.”
Alice walked to the door, heading out into a hallway of the main building. She idly wondered what was with Charles, mainly whether he was smoking something or not.
A brief note of music caught her ear, and she turned swiftly, small smile breaking through the normal half scowl. “Adela! Nice to see you!”
She always felt dwarfed by Adela, the other girl was almost two meters tall, and towered over her like a big Swedish giant. Nonetheless she was possibly one of the nicest people she knew, unless you got on her bad side, in which case… Alice had seen what happened. How someone could make a group of people punch each other into unconsciousness and fall in a mud puddle with nothing more than a flute and a smirk was a mystery to her.
She didn’t say anything as she and Adela walked back towards the observation room, though Adela was examining one of the runic bullets in silent fascination. Whispering something to her, Alice pulled open the door as they arrived at the observation room and Adela followed inside.
Inside, near the door, Alice and Charles were trading swift words. Charles back was turned to them, but Celica had a suspicious frown set on her features.
As they walked in, Charles turned around, his mouth curling into a smile, eyes widening with pleased surprise. “Adela! Long time no see.” His arms flew open in the beginnings of a hug as he took a step forward.
Adela’s eyes narrowed when she saw Charles, and she brought up the omnipresent flute to her lips, nonchalantly playing a short but melodic tune. She stepped to the side slightly, and Charles walked right past her and out the door, arms still extended. The music stopped abruptly as Adela quickly leaned in and shut the door. She walked towards the back of the room, extending her middle finger towards the door. Alice just smirked.
“Well. That happened.” Celica blinked, then rubbed at her temple with an icy hand. “I think I’m going to take a break. Nice to see you, Adela.” Without much more preamble, she snuck outside, leaving the gun-toting Alice and the flute-laden Adela behind.
Alice just smirked again, “Anyway, let me tell you about what we did today. And then we can exchange some ideas of our own.”
Adela hurriedly scribbled something down and turned the screen towards Alice, who burst out laughing.
“Yeah, I think we can do that.”
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