“Human Resources” Shouldn’t Be This Literal: A PMMM/ProjectMoon Quest

Chapter 117 - Over Paradise

Sayaka stumbles over to the table, still grinning brightly despite her shallow breaths, and collapses into an empty chair. Angela wordlessly conjures a glass of water and slides it over to the young Magical Girl. She stares at the glass for several seconds before flopping forward to grab it and then dumping the contents over herself. Angela blinks in confusion, then claps her hands. The glass refills steadily, as though somebody had poured more water into it from nowhere. Sayaka raises her head, blushing furiously and shrinking from embarrassment, and takes a tiny sip. You stifle a soft laugh. It's certainly not the most ridiculous thing you've seen someone do without thinking. It isn't even the first time you've seen someone dump water over themself out of nowhere.

"Go slowly." Angela instructs. "Your primary issue is lack of oxygen, not body temperature. Water will not help with that." A pause, short enough that you're sure Sayaka doesn't notice. "Try enhancing your lungs. You should be able to replenish oxygen faster that way."

Sayaka, still slumped over the table, stares doubtfully at your sister but does as she's told anyways. A soft blue glow flows across her body, like light falling through water. A moment later, her breathing has steadied.

"How's you know that would work?"

"Your enhancements are both highly versatile and capable of incredible specificity. That you would be able to improve the performance of a certain body part was already known. I just took the information to its logical conclusion." Angela answers calmly, hiding her smug smile by taking another sip of tea.

You've already made your way onto the training field. Gebura shares a look of readiness with you and you nod. She crushes her cigarette and pulls Mimicry back to a ready position. The fleshy blade squirms visibly, the eyes across its surface fixed on you. Distantly, you notice Angela's force field around the battle area shift to include more of the floor. The city-like buildings in the distance are now part of the playing field, as is the flooded area below the walkway Sayaka's training took place on.

"Say, what does it actually feel like to use your EGO?" you ask Gebura as you dismiss your coat and summon your own, modified version of her weapon.

"Haven't we talked about this before? I'm pretty sure you've asked me about it at least once when you were Manager." Gebura says before rushing towards you. You're immediately forced onto the back foot, narrowly dodging and blocking each swing and strike. Mimicry in Gebura's hands is less a single blade and more a wild, near-shapeless mass of red. It stretches into a spear on approach which morphs into a scythe after being pushed aside, hooks your sword out of position, then transforms back into a sword to take a swing at your neck.

You dismiss one blade and summon another to block, then call up your pistol and fire three shots towards Gebura's chest. The veteran Fixer easily dodges to the side, but the pressure is off you for the moment. "Maybe, but I didn't have the context for it at the time. It was more curiosity than anything important."

"Fair enough. To start, I guess I'd compare it to a more precise flow state. Everything's fast and instinctive, but you're still fully aware of everything. 'Course, that's hardly exclusive to EGO." You meet once again, weapons a blur of colors. Gebura's sped up quite a bit from her duel with Sayaka, easily surpassing you. Fortunately, you have enough ways to balance that out to stay in the fight. Swapping weapons on the fly, throwing in ranged shots whenever distance forms, a few less conventional forms of attack to strike at openings that a person couldn't ordinarily reach. Even as the fight escalates, Gebura continues to speak uninterrupted. "Plenty of people can get like that on their own. Using my EGO's got a deeper feeling to it, though. Like there's another layer past instincts that I'm wrapping into everything."

"Do you think that's why people always know how to use their own EGO?" you propose, using the momentum from Gebura's most recent swing to throw yourself into the metallic cityscape off to the side of the walkway before barraging her from your new vantage point. "I know we don't have a huge sample size, but the lack of a learning curve is rather distinctive."

Gebura streaks towards you, flicking aside rays of ivory light and beams of shimmering emerald to crash into you with the force of a falling star. You duck down just in time, Mimicry's edge brushing against the side of your face. The errant blade cleaves through the towering building behind you, parting steel beams and walls like they aren't there. "Eh, I'm not sure it's right to say you just know how to use your EGO right away. It's more like your whole life is practice, and you get your EGO once you've learned."

You dive back through the gaping wound in the building behind you, dodging and weaving between walls and supports. You're very clearly outmatched in direct melee, and while Gebura would probably slow down for you you'd rather keep things interesting. Being on this end of the famous Fixer is a novel experience, at the very least. Gebura follows, tearing through the obstructions as though they aren't there and dancing past the waves of projectiles you harrow her with. "That's an interesting way of looking at it. You sure you aren't some kinda philosopher?"

"Nah, all that stuff isn't for me. I prefer my problems to be straightforward." Gebura answers, dodging past a lance of crackling pale light and striking the flat of Mimicry's blade against your side. You try to move with the impact again to create more distance, but are held solidly in place by the new teeth sprouting from the weapon's side. "But I know myself well enough. You can't use your own EGO over and over again without starting to think about these things."

"Do you think that's the important part? Knowing yourself?" you ask, twisting your body and flinging a fistful of starlight directly at Gebura's face. She ducks, giving you space to kick off the wall and dive directly at her. The changing angle lets you slip out of Mimicry's grip and aim a kick at the legendary mercenary's head as she's still ducking back.

Gebura, being who she is, reacts immediately and catches your leg before twisting bodily and slamming you into the ground. The reinforced, probably magically strengthened steel turns to splinters and you crash all the way into the floor below you. You leap back up just in time to miss Mimicry spearing through you from the level above. "Eh, maybe? If you wanna know exactly how to make your EGO show up, you'd've been better off asking a scientist."

"Nobody else's able to consistently manifest their EGO like you do, though." you counter as you burn away the floor beneath you in time to miss Gebura's descending slash. "I already know all the technical stuff, I wanna hear about how it feels. That's more important here."

You land in a river of molten steel, slowly flowing down its pipeline to… somewhere. A lot of the machinery in the Library is just superfluous decoration, so this is probably more of the same. It's not hot enough to hurt you or heavy enough to weigh you down, but it does give you an idea.

Gebura tears through the ceiling of the pipe, steel reduced to dust by a descending crimson comet trailing down from above. She is the very image of a warrior, hair trailing behind her in a long tail that almost looks like a streak of fire. You look up at her and know immediately that you won't be fast enough to dodge. All you can do is face her head-on.

Your hand clasps your sword, letting foreign strength filter into it. The weapon is more a spear than sword now, a crackling beam of crimson in the shape of interlocking clawed hands. You raise your weapon and strike upward, meeting Mimicry's descent as a mountain rises up towards the setting sun. Crimson light scatters everywhere as your weapon's arc and Gebura's meet. Your body nearly buckles from the sheer force, even held back as much as she is. The ground under you cracks and folds inward with a horrible screech. Molten metal scatters up, filling the air with dull orange light. You slide back, swinging your weapon wildly and sending more liquid steel flying through the air.

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Back at the proper training area, Sayaka and Angela pause their conversation to turn back to the duel. A titanic geyser of crimson has erupted from the cityscape, reducing several buildings to shapeless scrap.

"They certainly seem to be enjoying themselves."

"Is that gonna be a problem?"

"The Library's constructs here are mostly superficial. This place is not connected to anything important in any way that would allow for collateral damage."

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The burning fluid here isn't a hazard or impairment to either you or Gebura, but it's opaque. Every splash sent into the air blocks like of sight and forces Gebura to either clear it away or swing blind. Your vision is supplemented by your emotion senses, enough that you can make a guess as to how Gebura will attack. Down here, at the speeds you're both moving, every step sends another scattering splash of burning metal into the air. It's not enough to give you the upper hand, but you can hold your own like this.

"I might not have always had my EGO, but I knew what it meant to fight to protect people long before that." Gebura says as you clash at speeds approaching impossibility, the casual and relaxed tone leaving her voice. "It's the same feeling I get standing in front of someone else. The same feeling I got fighting Garion. I might not be some special hero like people seem to think, but if it gives me the strength to make a difference, even for a moment…"

"I can be that ideal."

You pause, letting your weapon fall to your side. That's probably as much of an answer as you can hope for. Being your ideal self… you're not totally certain who that would be. You prefer to keep your self-image as accurate as you can. Gebura isn't done, though.

"If you're looking to try and gain your own EGO, you might be doing this the wrong way." she suggests, an odd hint of reluctance working its way into her voice.

"Oh? Why would that be? You'd know better than anyone else."

"It's because you're not human anymore." she answers bluntly, Mimicry wrapping in on itself and disappearing up her sleeve. "Abnormalities work different than humans do. You might have to extract it the way we used to."

That… does have some merit. There are a few problems, though. For one, you'd rather not lean further into being an Abnormality. It feels too much like a reminder that you don't belong, that you always have been and always will be a creature of the Facility. Not to mention it might damage your already-tenuous lifespan.

You'd also probably have to talk to Binah, which is a whole other can of worms.

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You decide to…
[] Call it a day here
[] Try taking the fight up a step
[] Go talk with Hokma about EGO
[] Visit Binah for insight in EGO Extraction

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Der Freischütz's Sapling - Observation Level 2/3
Porccubus' Sapling - Observation Level 2/3
CENSORED's Sapling - Observation Level EXPUNGED/REDACTED

This was just going to be X and Gebura talking for a chapter, but that felt kinda basic and this was supposed to be a training session between them.

For getting a sense of relative levels of power, Gebura is sandbagging here very hard. She's slowed down enough that X can react to her, isn't fighting with lethal intent, and isn't using her EGO. X is pretty strong even by the standards of the City's elites, but Gebura's considered The Strongest for a reason.