"Object permanence acquired."
Objective... complete?
Regardless of how Suika felt about her situation, it persisted.
With her newfound emotions, she was able to experience things that she had never experienced before. Mainly, Suika noticed that she was starting to care about things. Class was no longer something that she could only manage to stumble to every day. She was aware that her teachers and classmates would have opinions about her. She could respond to people’s emotions with her own emotions. Another thing she became aware of was how emotions could be just as monotonous as not having emotions. Her concern for where Tsubomi had gone off to hadn’t really subsided. She had told Suki some time ago that she was glad she didn’t have emotions. Now she could know if she had answered her own question right or not.
The formerly apathetic girl wanted to hide. She wanted to curl up into a ball and sleep for a year, or better yet to spend that time in her own head to continue her search. But she couldn’t.
She’d only ever
wanted things indirectly, usually for the sake of someone else's wanting, but it was always hollow. There was no substance to them. Suddenly, there was a tremendous
weight to her growing list of desires.
Finding out what happened to Tsubomi and doing something to help her was at the top, of course. In a close second was finding a way to adapt, or re-remove her newfound feelings if she couldn't.
But those weren't things she could do right now. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't force herself into whatever subliminal world she had interacted with her in before.
Suika wasn't always logical, she knew. In fact, considering that many people considered logic and emotion as separate or entirely opposite, they might think that she must always have had a logical reason for things if she didn't have the turmoil of complex feelings to get in her way. Yet she was always the strange one, always the one who thought differently.
Although, that didn't mean she couldn't think things through. The obvious thing to do in order to fulfill her new desires was to mute her feelings with magic. Which made it all the worse that she
couldn't, that she could only
feel them with it, unable to so much as nudge them.
It was almost like a reverse of the last time she'd run out of her stockpile. Unable to feel what others felt, and unable to affect what she felt. 'Empathy' had seemingly been replaced with 'empathy.' Consideration of the feelings of others rather than the sense for them. A reality she quickly found that she hated.
What could she possibly do to get the overwhelming maelstrom in her head to calm down? Surely she wasn't the first to have to deal with this sort of thing...
With a sigh, she rose from her prone position to sit upright. This was when a person would rely on their 'friends,' right? Yet another thing she was questioning recently.
Suki had claimed that their situation was one of the duo being friends. Before, Suika had no reason to doubt that. But now, with a deeper understanding of how she had hurt her host and a strong doubt in the motivations of nearly everyone she interacted with, she wasn't sure anymore. And worse, what if they
were really friends, and she did something wrong?
... Maybe it was too late for that. With Tsubomi's memories slowly coming under her control she knew that the situation at the Arcade was not a neutral one. People would lie about that sort of thing for less reason than thinking it would save someone's life, even if nothing was actually in danger of happening.
Worse still, what about the rest of the Detention Club? She had never been particularly close, by the standards of a normal person, with any of them... What if they realized that she would only bring them even more trouble? She'd already been
kidnapped, so when would they figure out how terrible she really was?
Tsubomi's head struck the wall behind it at the invasive vine's command. Strange, how that seemed to help somehow. And with her Aunt and Uncle out of the house, she didn't have to worry about making too much noise.
'Worry.' What a strange thing that was, to worry. She hated it. Her hands jumped to the sides of her head in an attempt to physically smack sense into it, but like everything she did now, it certainly seemed pointless to her when it failed.
Another sigh escaped her lips.
"Might as well find out..."And so she found herself once more in the Arcade, hesitant for the first time at the idea of spending her pocket money on something that would be over so quickly.
Like back home, the arcade was relatively empty. There were a few people here and there, but nobody that should have been able to instantly recognize Suika. It was the weekend, and most students were doing other things early in the morning. It was a day for relaxing and sleeping in. They’d come to the arcade closer to lunch and definitely later in the day. But right now Suika had the place more or less to herself.
As she stood in front of the token exchange machine, where money was converted into tokens
not unlike what happens in a soulless gacha game where money is converted into premium game currency, She was approached by a tall woman.
"What’s this? Have you forgotten how it works?" She grinned.
"At least you remembered how to have fun." There was something strangely menacing about her tone, like she both knew about Suika’s predicament and found her suffering amusing. That, or it was the woman’s red hair that made her seem dangerous. Though it wasn’t just her hair. She was clearly a foreigner, if her round eyes were anything to go by.
"Huh!?" Suika nearly jumped out of Tsubomi's skin at the words.
Run. Something insider her seemed to whisper, though she couldn't quite make out the message or its origin.
"Oh, uh, sorry!" Suika turned towards the older girl and stepped back a few times, giving her access to the machine.
"I didn't mean to block the way. Sorry.""Two sorries? My my, even by Japanese standards that’s a bit excessive, isn’t it?" She began feeding money into the machine. While the machine rumbled and spit out her tokens, her eyes were focused on Suika.
"Hmm, any reason why you’re here by yourself? The whole point is to do this with someone, isn’t it?" She shrugged.
"Guess it can’t be helped, let’s go." She practically pushed Suika in front of a light gun game. It must have been a new one, because it wasn’t a title that she recognized. Something with aliens in it.
"Oh, I almost forgot." She picked up one of the light guns.
"I go by Regina. What do you prefer? Your friends don’t call you Tsubomi right? What was it? I thought it had something to do with a cartoon mascot..." Suika couldn't help but fidget a little under the other girl's gaze. In spite of her faster thinking recently, she wasn't able to process the question until she found herself in front of the game.
"Regina?" She didn't think she knew that name. Maybe she'd heard it and never paid any attention? That was her M.O. until recently... But more importantly,
huh!?It was one thing to not know she was trying to step away from Tsubomi's name, but it was another to think that her friends didn't call her by it.
... Actually, she hadn't really told any of them what she'd chosen yet, had she? They all probably thought she was still going by Tsubomi's name, or by the one she'd given her if not. For this girl to know anything about that was... scary. But was it okay for the first person other than Tsubomi who learned her new name to be some frightening probably-magic girl who wasn't even in the Detention Club?
"Um... yes. I've been called 'Zassou' a lot recently." That was all she could manage as she finally lifted the second light gun from its resting place on the machine.
"Oh, sorry," Suika repeated her apology once more as she looked at the pregame cut-scene, acting out some story she didn't pay attention to.
"I didn't actually get any tokens yet...""That’s fine, I’ve got it." She slid another coin into the machine, and player two’s gun lit up.
"It’s a little much though, isn’t it?" The cutscene was still playing out as Regina balanced the plastic gun in her hand.
"Coming up with a name for yourself. It’s one thing to have an alias, but that’s because an alias is a creation. Parents name their children, inventors name their inventions. No one who gives themselves a name is taken seriously." It was hard to tell what the enemies were supposed to be, because Regina was blowing them up as soon as they came on screen.
"Just a shower thought. So what’s this about you becoming more empathetic?""..." Suika stood in silence a moment as she mulled over Regina's commentary. The redhead must play this game a lot, to already know where the enemies spawned.
"I guess so." She wasn't even trying to shoot; whether she wanted to be competitive or not was irrelevant when the other girl left no openings.
"But isn't that weird? Shouldn't everyone decide their own name?" A single enemy fell as she pulled the gun's fake trigger, half of the duo that had spawned on opposite sides of the screen simultaneously.
"When Tsubomi came into this world, do you think she even had a concept of what a name was?""Mm," she began, her mind starting to relax slightly as it focused less on the girl next to her and more on the screen,
"I don't really get it, but..."Wait, how?
"... You're magic after all." And not just at the game, it seemed. But she was too old to be a GEM, wasn't she? Well, as long as she wasn't starting a fight, did it matter?
"I knew it had to be obvious, but I didn't think someone outside the Club would notice." A missed shot, milliseconds after Regina had already killed the target, bringing Suika's hit rate to 50%.
"Hmm?" Regina managed an inquisitive grunt between reloads.
"I didn’t figure any of this out on my own. I was talking to ‘Michi’ or whatever cover name she used when talking with your lot. I’m surprised the club let her go. She’s definitely going to be an asset once the deadline is up." Finally something that couldn’t be instantly killed came up on screen. It was a boss of sorts, a giant space craft that was beaming down aliens.
"Are you taking practice for our fight seriously? Or are you just killing the weekly giga miseria that occasionally shows up?"Ah, Michi was the reason for this too, huh? Which meant that this girl was Sn-... Ashbringer. That gave the sense of unease she'd felt credence.
"I didn't want to. The others were probably only okay with it because their emotions were running hot. I guess... I sort of get that now."Suika's 'gun' started firing, her shot count raising exponentially now that there was little chance of wasting them. They began hitting random places, anything that looked like it might be a weak-spot, but the pattern was erratic. From one side of the boss to the other, then back or somewhere else entirely, as if Suika wasn't looking at it the way a brain trained on reading a certain direction would.
"I don't know. I know that I'm not taking it seriously, or wasn't, I guess. I'm not sure if I will be now either. There's way too much to worry about to focus on something that far away."Finally, she seemed to have found two of them. One of them exploded, leaving only the other for her to target. She wasn't sure which of them had dealt the final shot to the first.
"But I don't think we've gotten any stronger. These Giga Miseria, they're difficult, but they don't seem to help much. If anything, it seems like it's been the other stuff that happened at the same time that's caused the most improvement."Suika shrugged, her shots still hitting the same spot despite the movement,
"Plus, to be honest, this is like the third or fourth time that something has made me think I might be losing my magic. And now that I'm... aware, I guess? I'm thinking, worrying, that the rest of the Club might not really want me around, even if it doesn't go away. So I can't even say for certain that I'll be involved in that fight.""I guess that when it comes down to it, I just want to make sure nobody loses anything important." Especially Tsubomi, if she's not already gone for good... "I wasn’t asking for your life’s story." Regina smirked.
"But I get it, I think. You have a lot of problems. At the end of the day getting stronger or trying to protect your friends isn’t as important as trying to protect your host, right? That’s typical parasite behavior." She chuckled.
"And no host wants to be infested forever. And even if you have Tsubomi in your grasp now, you’re a drain on the club. But that’s a problem that’s much easier to deal with.""Why are you after it, anyway? You're strong, you have strong allies, especially now that you have Michi if she wasn't already with you... Does beating Miseria eventually leave you at a plateau where you can only get past it by fighting other Magical Girls?"The second weak point Suika had found broke. She wasn't sure which of them had done that either.
"If that was true, the infighting wouldn't make sense. There are plenty of Light Girls in the city you could be fighting instead of some Dark Girls in a small town."Unable to find any more intact targets, Suika stopped firing for a moment.
"Or do you have some grudge with the boss?""Who can say?" Regina tossed her gun to Suika, practically forcing her to go akimbo.
"Just because you want to trauma dump on me doesn’t mean I’ll reciprocate. Look, I came here to verify what Black Gate told me and see how you guys were doing. I’m only telling you where I’m at because I know staying on track can be hard. Like with a diet." She leaned over Suika.
"I don’t want you to think this is anything more than a simple project for me. Hell, I don’t want you to think of me at all. As far in the future as our encounter may seem, I assure you it’s coming. You had a year to train, now you have just over six months. Maybe you’ll be there, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have eroded away as Tsubomi takes her rightful place in her body again. But regardless of who happens to inhabit this body, I’m going to make sure I destroy it. Because as far as I’m concerned, it was there when I issued my challenge. I don’t discriminate."Suika fumbled the second blaster when it entered her reach, barely catching it before it fell. Even so, she kept listening as she began to play Regina's half of the game.
"..." Silence stood for a moment after Regina gave her threat. Like an anvil in a kiddie pool, Suika's estimation of the girl fell. Was she stupid? If that's what she was going by, half the Club wouldn't be under threat. Maybe not. Maybe she herself was simply misremembering; it wasn't like she had been paying complete attention at the time, or that she hadn't had about half a year of time erode those memories.
Maybe Regina wasn't stupid. In fact, it was entirely unlikely that she was, Suika decided as she realized that the toy pool, miraculously holding the weight of the metal inside it, was floating itself on the waves of the ocean. There were too many things that didn't fit now, in her 'life' and in this situation.
"Mm." The girl gave her trademark reply, turning half of Tsubomi's body away from the game as she did.
Suika stood with one of the blasters still pointed at the screen while the other was held just underneath Regina's jaw. She pulled both triggers once, and the boss on the screen was defeated. How unfortunate that the one in the room with her wasn't. But there would be time to correct that later, she hoped.
A realization came to the forefront of Suika's mind. This new sensation, familiar only in its presence a short time ago... it was still there. Her hands that had been stained by hope hadn't been cleansed of it just yet. They may have gotten covered in grime and dirt since then, but those things could be washed away. She supposed only time would tell if anything remained afterwords.
As the machine's victorious fanfare reached its zenith, she placed both of the toy guns back in their holsters.
No, you do. You must. If you still stood by that challenge, you wouldn't be collecting allies. There was only one real conclusion that Suika could come to.
We're missing something."Well," Suika finally said,
"thank you for the game.""No need to thank me, I haven’t given you anything of value." With a grin, she folded her arms and walked off.
"Untill next time, Zassou. If there is one."As Regina's footsteps slowly left her range of hearing, Suika looked back at the screen, and a small smile tugged at the corners of her lips as she read the game’s results screen. It seemed that maybe Regina,
Ashbringer, wasn't quite invincible after all.
[Player 1: Accuracy 100% | 0 Missed Shots | 10 Damage Taken | A+]
[Player 2: Accuracy 98% | 3 Missed Shots | 70 Damage Taken | B+]
Threads of Fate
D3AD ST4R
RPM
Lady Arya
souleaterfan320
Antlers
Stargazer6225
