Cyber Magica Neon Youko (NaNoWriMo)

[Omicron]

Cyber Magica Neon Youko

Episode 1: The Evening at the Soup Kitchen​

On the first day of school, Alicia came in wearing an arm of gold.

It immediately made her the subject of rapt attention, gossip and questions; her high-class friends professed their admiration and complained that their parents would never allow them such an upgrade, and they laughed together about the strictures of a rich teenagehood. But most of the class came from a biocon background, and instead took this as an opportunity to revive all sorts of dreadful rumors about the dangers of augmentation, with not a little vitriol at how blatant and gaudy a display of Alicia's wealth her new arm was. They talked about gremlins and mahotsukai, and about syndromes and corruption, and they glanced at Alicia and her friends while doing so.

Youko's parents were very much biocons as well, but she found that sort of gossiping uncomfortable. As it took over any discussion of the student's holidays, she retreated from conversation for most of the day, instead focusing on her work.

She was sitting in one of the vacant rooms some time after noon, having finished a sober meal of soycakes, when a shadow obscured her math notes. She looked up with a frown, and there stood Alicia, grinning defiantly with her ridiculously white teeth, golden right arm firmly planted on her hip, marrying so nicely with her long, wavy auburn hair. She looked as if she were about to explode; Youko looked down at her table – three pages of notes and calculations and book references after only her first math class of the year – and sighed.

"Go on," she said. "Say it. I know you want to."

Alicia took in a long breath, then let it out. "Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-"

Youko sighed a second time for effect, then piled up her sheets and notebooks and put them away in her backpack with her lunch box, then massaged her temples.

"-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerd."

"Are you done."

"Nerdy nerd nerd."

A silence.

"Okay, now I'm done," Alicia said with a smug smile and a nod to herself.

"Look, working on math alone in an empty room wasn't my first plan today. But everyone's conversation was so..." She made a wavy motion of her hand.

"Ah, yes, Youko Williams finding other people's conversations dull. Will wonders never cease?"

Youko rolled her eyes. "It's not like that."

"Speaking of wonders..." Alicia said, absentedly flicking some imaginary dust off her shining metal wrist. Youko cracked a smile.

"Okay, okay, I get it. Time for me to be amazed."

Alicia slid into the chair next to her, waving the arm in the air. "It's so great! It can do so many things! And I mean, look how smooth it is. Even at the joints you barely see the creases and the connections between the plates. And it feels so light!"

"Okay, it's real pretty, but what does it do?"

"Everything!" Alicia laid her hand out in the air, palm up, and a glittering rectangle emerged out of it, showing a muted video. "Holographic screen with haptic feedback, so I basically have computer in it." She flexed her fingers and the screen went away; she moved them in some other fashion and golden plates shifted, her fingers drawing graceful motions through the air. She recited many words, dextro-this and servo-that, lauding the ways in which it changed her life. Youko could have safely bet Alicia did not know any of the technical jargon she was using a week before the operation, but now she spoke with the self-assurance of an expert, even as most of the details passed straight over her friend's head.

Youko felt a tad guilty that her friend's boasting annoyed her – not out of envy; god knew she had no particular desire to plate her limbs in gaudy tech, but if her friend liked it all the better for her. Rather she was frustrated at how much of that incredibly expensive technology was a matter of convenience and comfort, of making the little things of Alicia's life a little easier and giving her a few skills she could flaunt to the admiration of her peers but which she would never have missed had she not had them. It felt... wasteful.

"You know," she finally said as Alicia took a breathless break between two run-on sentences, "most of that technology already existed twenty years ago."

"Oh, sure," Alicia rolled her eyes, "but then I would have had to actually cut my own arm off to get it. Even I'm not that much of a geek."

"But is it all right? To, like, keep it on all the time?"

"Oh, I let it breathe once in a while, don't worry. My doctor insisted." Alicia frowned and her eyes seemed to focus on something Youko couldn't see; and with a delicate silken sound the golden plates along Alicia's arm folded at their seams, gathering in a boxy-looking shape around her shoulder, leaving her right arm exposed to the light for the first time in the day.

"It did ruin my tan. Look at it. I'm 90% fashionably bronze, and then I have a rice noodle arm."

"You have no idea how sorry I feel for you."

"Hush you. You know, you could have one too."

Youko raised an eyebrow.

"Well, I mean, I know my model isn't exactly your style, but come on. Your parents could totally afford gearing you up. It's trendy! You'd be a hit among my other friends. And, like, you wouldn't have to keep lugging around that laptop on top of your school material. Just an integrated PDA? I'm sure you could get your parents on-board with just the right 'it'll help my studies' speech."

"Alish, you've never met my parents," Youko said with a dour look. It's not that she particularly wanted to get "geared up." Even if the process was reversible, the idea of implanting pieces of electronics in her flesh felt wrong on some fundamental level. Gross. Gross was the word.

But dammit, she'd have liked to not be geared up because it was her choice, not because her parents had grown steadily more biocon with age and wouldn't let her have one in any event, academic efficiency or not.

"Also then I would have to endure your other friends whoo'ing and aaw'ing all over me like they did you this morning and, no thanks."

Alicia rolled her eyes so hard it seemed like they might take flight. "It wouldn't hurt you to make some jet-set friends, you know? We won't be in high school forever, and in today's world connections are everything."

"As my father is fond of repeating..." Youko sighed, but she stopped mid-sentence; a slightly older girl, her black hair tied in a long braid, stood in the entrance to the vacant room.

"Oh hey, it's-" Alicia caught herself before saying something snappish and unwelcome, "Maria. Hi." Youko looked at the girl, and a quick and strange exchange played out too fast for Alicia to translate. With a gesture of her chin Youko invited Maria to come in, which she rejected with one shake of her head. Youko shrugged interrogatively, Maria briefly glanced at Alicia, Youko rolled her eyes and waved towards her table with her hand, Maria made a silent stomping gesture of her heel, then finally Youko frowned and Maria reluctantly stepped into the room.

"Hey, Youko. Hey, richie."

"I actually don't mind that nickname," Alicia said, unfolding her golden arm again as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

"Are you coming to Gert's this evening?" Maria asked, only looking at Youko.

"Yeah, sure. I'll meet you outside school for it, yeah?"

"What, are you still volunteering at this soup kitchen thing?" Alicia asked. "Come on. It's a new year! You can probably slip out of it and do something more useful. Like hang out with us at the Super. Remember: connectiooons..."

Youko shrugged. "My parents want me to. 'Builds character,' you know. 'Community values' and such. And if you say 'biocon values' I'm punching you."

"I wasn't gonna. Just thinking it very loud."

Youko reached out and mock-punched Alicia in the hip, which made her laugh, but her own smile was forced. Maria made an uneasy smile, threw a last glance at Alicia, and nodded, more to herself than to anyone else; then she was gone.

"No offense, Youko, but I don't get why you're friends with her."

"She's nice."

"No she isn't! She pulled my hair! She clawed my back!"

"That was, what, four years ago? And you still haven't forgotten."

"I actually have a memory amp specifically dedicated to storing my grudges."

"What?!"

"Relax, that was a joke. I wouldn't need one anyway," Alicia said with a smug smile. "I perfectly remember the visage of everyone who has ever wronged me."

"Please tell me this gold arm of yours doesn't have a hidden weapon for use in zany revenge schemes."

"It might not have such a weapon."

Youko let out a despairing groan just as the bell rang. Picking up her backpack, she playfully flicked at Alicia's arm, which let out a crystalline note beautiful enough that it was probably by design, and headed to her next class.

*​

Youko stood alone in the first floor washroom, the great mirror facing her. She thought the kind of thoughts she only did in silence and alone.

She wondered what she would look like if her parents were more like Alicia's. If she herself was more like her friend – or perhaps more like one of Maria's bolthead acquaintances.

She wondered where the hardpoints might go, and how they would feel. With a finger she traced the length of her arm, wondering how having it all covered in metal could not feel smothering, the tightest of prisons.

Some mostly wore facial augs, and their hardpoints were on the neck, or very small on the face, worn like piercings, a badge of pride. How would she feel to have others look at her, in school, in the streets, eyes sliding off her as just another student until they came across the small piece of metal? It scared her somehow.

The door opened, breaking her reverie. Someone entered the washroom and Youko exited, her head held low, heading for another class.

*​

"I don't get why you're friends with her," Maria said as they stepped out onto the street. Above them smoke and mist choked the sky, and the streetlights had started lighting up despite the sun still being out.

"Alicia is nice," Youko answered vaguely.

"She's not 'nice.' She's a smug jet-set who hangs out with you because it gives her charity cred."

"You don't know what you're talking about. She's not that shallow, she just plays it up."

"Coulda fooled me."

Youko groaned, and looked around her for something that could prompt a change of topic. But the street was the same it always was. No smooth-curved driverless cars sitting along these curbs – they would get vandalized within a night. Decades-old stone buildings had been patched up with cheap materials, the sturdiest of them adorned with ad hoc extensions by dedicated squatters, little bubbles and warts of quickcrete popping up from their flanks and roofs. Complex frescoes of spray paint boasted the influence of the LZHK over this area.

Youko glanced back at Technê High, her beautiful school standing pristine amidst this urban decay, and felt more than ever the presence of the steel fence that surrounded it on all sides.

"Gives you chills, uh?" Maria asked.

"Hm?"

"It's like every time you step out of these gates, you move out of their world and into ours. Makes the unfairness of it all stand out all the more."

Youko shrugged uneasily. 'Their' world, 'our' world. She wasn't sure either of these were true where she was concerned. She didn't think she deserved to have Maria talk as if they were in the same murky waters, when Youko had been gifted with so many advantages and Maria had had to do it all with hard work. Not that Youko didn't work hard, but she wasn't the one with the scholarship.

"My parents want to move out of the Rosecroix," Youko blurted out before thinking it over. Maria said nothing, but briefly looked as if she'd been punched in the gut. "I don't, obviously, but..."

"Why?" Maria interrupted her. "Who wouldn't want to move out of this dump? Look around you."

"You know that's not all there is to it. Tagged facades and dirty streets doesn't speak to what's inside the walls."

"'I know a bunch of people who live in the Rosecroix and would have smacked you just for using such a convoluted sentence.'"

Youko frowned. "They're not... Everything about this place."

"No, they aren't," Maria said darkly, and once more Youko felt a distance between them, as if they were talking about two very different things without realizing it. She shrugged it off.

"Let's just get to Gert's," she said, and hurried her pace.​

*​

Youko was on cleaning duty that day. Plate after plate passed between her hands, wiped of food debris and rinced before putting them in the machine. Hundreds of items of cutlery danced in her fingers, blades and points never cutting her after so many hours spent learning the robotic gestures that would handle them most safely. Around her the dull roar and humm of the kitchens abstracted into some kind of white noise that accompanied her trancce.

The truth was that Youko could have gotten out of volunteering. Her parents had grown less invested in this sort of community service of late, and claiming that she needed more time to study would have resonated with them. Youko did it of her own will, but for some reason she didn't feel like admitting it to her friends. Alicia would mock her for it, but there would be a playful edge to it. Maria would think she understood, but she would not. Youko was not even sure why she wanted to do this herself. Perhaps for this trance, this meditative, repetitive state where items passed in and out of her hands in an endless cycle.

"Youko?" Someone asked, and she started. Miriam stared at her, looking a bit puzzled, and Youko realized she'd been speaking.

"Sorry. I was, uh, phased out. You were saying?"

"Johnny had to go home early. Can you take his place in service?"

Her heart skipped a beat, and she felt bad for it. "Sure, yeah, I can do it." The older lady smiled and moved in to take her place cleaning, and Youko stepped away from her basin, a shiver going down her spine. There was no reason to fear serving duty, but she still did. It wasn't that she had an issue with the kind of people who came to the soup kitchen. It was more... There were so many of them. So many faces passing through, each one pleading for a piece of her attention, of her memory. It made her feel dizzy.

Gert's was a large building; it had been the cantina of local school before it ran out of funds (it had not been the same kind of school as Technê, not by a long shot). It could house hundreds, but usually only welcomed dozens. They simply didn't have the resources to feed that many, and every day some people got turned away.

She took a place behind the counter, where Johnny had stood – she could see the round marks burned into it by the burning-hot coffee cup that never left him an which he always kept full. Maria stood to the left of her, asking a patron about their day. Jenna was to her right, looking bored as usual – she too had been "volunteered" by her parents, but she was older, and more wounded by the blow to her social life.

Looking at Jenna, Youko spotted the hexagonal chrome of a plug in her neck, surrounded by faint scars. It looked recent, the work a bit clumsy, not a professional surgeon. So Jenna was a bolthead. She'd probably have known if she'd exchanged more than a few work-related words with her.

A strange face appeared in front of her, a middle-aged man with a rough stubble, trying an uneasy smile. She mustered one back and waved to her right, where someone handed her a plastic board with a bowl and a plate. She poured soup into the bowl, and in the plate put asortment of soymeat in a little rainbow of color, to give the illusion of fancy. The man gave a nod, but no thanks, and moved along with his plate. Another took his place immediately – Youko repressed a shudder. He had a shining, sclera-less blue eye, and his hand was steel – but crude and thinner than a real limb, so it couldn't be plate over skin; this was his real arm now. She served him quickly and he muttered a dull thanks, and on and on it went.

There were many others like him, men and women, all adult, many middle-aged or older, wearing chrome where the rigors of their work had betrayed them, where they had lost an arm or a leg or a face to the grinding jaws of machinery, or on some distant front lines. Working the kitchens Youko had never really seen it before now. And here they came, these people wearing thousands of dollars in advanced prosthetics, some of them true augmentations, begging for free food.

A hand rested on her arm, and she started. Maria was looking at her encouragingly.

"Everyone here's hungry, but you're a little bony for their taste. They'll settle for the soup."

Youko smiled, and kept going. After a while she saw Maria eyeing the supply of soup, and looked at it herself; there was not much more. She asked Miriam in the kitchens, but was told that was all for today. Youko bit her lip as she looked back to the main room, and the small queue of people waiting for their meal. Not many of them, no. But still too many for what they had. And now she was the one who was going to have to tell someone that they would not be eating tonight. Her left hand shook a bit as she resumed her station.

The door opened again and something shifted in the atmosphere of the room.

The man wore a broad-rimmed hat and a long, worn coat. He was impressively tall even though he was hunched over; everything about his attire and posture seemed designed to hide his features. But nothing could hide the span of his shoulders, too broad, too square; and nothing could hide the creaking, metallic sound of his steps as he limped his way across the floor, one arm hanging limp along his side.

He had left the door open, and the night wind was rushing in with a contingent of smog.

Jenna swore loudly, and Maria muttered: "That's an Arnie."

The thing's hat tipped up, as if he had heard the words from halfway across the room, and Youko saw the glint of steel beneath the rim. Conversation and eating noises faded across the room, as everyone inside looked at him as he slowly made his way inside.

"Please," the man said in an obviously synthetic voice. "I am told this is a place of charity. I require sanctuary."

"Miriam?" Youko called out, trying her best not to let her voice quiver. The older woman emerged from the kitchens, looking irritated, then froze as she saw the thing.

"I have to call Gert. I am not qualified to handle this," she said and disappeared again.

"Sir..." Maria began. The thing had almost reached the counter.

"Nice of you to use the word," it said, and there was something wrong with his voice, like its speech device had been damaged. "Please. Give me shelter."

"I'm not sure we're qualified-"

Then the windows exploded.

The blast of wind took Youko's breath away and knocked Maria over; there were screams from the patrons as they were blown to the ground or dove behind a table for protection from an attack they couldn't see. Smoke poured out of the door and the broken window, black smoke- no, Youko thought distantly has she gathered her senses, not smoke. It was more like gaseous darkness flowing into the room. She couldn't see the cityscape anymore, only the dark, as if the soup kitchen had just become its own tiny pocket of a world.

The thing in the coat and hat turned towards the door and spoke a word, but Youko never heard it. The darkness surged towards him and she felt the shock of its impact against him in her gut – steel moaned and screamed and snapped, and the hat flew into the air – in an instant followed by a dozen pieces of the Arnie's robot body, piercing tables and walls.

Youko never had time to see the blow coming. The piece of metal flew across the room and hit her in the shoulder so hard her whole world exploded into stars and flashing lights, and she was knocked back, sliding across the floor into the kitchens as if she'd received the backhand of a god. She screamed, but she did not hear her own voice. She clutched at her shoulder, but she could not feel her own hand through the pain.

Everyone was screaming, now. The main room was a chaos of feet and moving furniture as people tried to escape, but she could not see them from where she stood. Not that she could see much of anything right now. Tears drowned out her vision. Somewhere beside her, the piece of metal rolled on the floor, then stopped. Out of sight something moved like a hundred silken ribbons slashing through the wind.

"W-we don't have anything," Maria said from very far away. "We're j-just a soup kitchen. P-please-" her sentence was interrupted by her own scream, then a dull thump.

That, if nothing else, pulled Youko out of her haze of disorientation. She blinked the tears away, looking around her in confusion, hoping to find Maria, or anyone. A kitchen boy was running away through the back door. Where was Miriam?

A damaged synthetic voice spoke up.

"Young girl, I do not know your name, and I realize you have no reason to help me. If you give me to this woman, she will likely leave you alone. But if there is goodness in your heart, if this place is a shelter, I implore you to save me."

"What..." Youko looked down, and for the first time saw the object that had been hurled out from the darkness into her shoulder. A round, chrome-like sphere, about the size of her head, featureless except for blinking lights on its surface, from which came the voice.

"What woman?" Youko muttered, clutching her limp arm against her chest.

At this moment the darkness poured into the kitchen, and Youko saw what was within.

"Mahotsukai," she whispered, as a woman stepped on the tiled floor and gathered the darkness around her like a cloak. Dozens of black ribbons – or tendrils? – whipped around her like sniffing dogs, all connected to her back and joints; black metal covered her hands and forearms, her shoulders, her legs, all of her chest. Incongrously she wore a dress, a long black lacy thing which seemed not to end but to dissolve into mist past her knees, mist that joined the dark smoke.

Youko scrambled on her knees, instinctively pulling the chrome sphere with her, to hide behind a kitchen counter.

"Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod-"

"If she takes me there is only torment for me," the soft voice continued, too artificial, too polite for its circumstances. "Secrets that ought not be revealed. Pain for the world, and you too in time. So I beg, young girl. Save me."

"Save you?" Youko stammered, her shoulder lancing her, her whole body shaking and terrified. "I could hardly save myself. I'm hurt. I couldn't even carry you and run..."

She leaned beside the counter, glancing at the room, and saw the woman – the mahotsukai – walking through the room, long black curls of hair framing cold grey eyes as her black ribbons brushed the countertops, slithered underneath chairs and tables, searching for her... prey?

"Young girl, I can heal your wounds, I can give you the power to stand up to her. But once it is done it cannot be undone. I understand the weight of what I ask of you, but lives are on the line."

"Power? What-"

The silken sounds stopped.

"What is that voice I hear?" Said a smooth, faintly accented woman's voice.

Youko's heart seemed to freeze.

The counter behind which she was hiding seemed to delicately explode – torn apart in a quiet instant, pieces flying every which way but for where she was standing, and where it stood there was only a forest of black ribbons – and then the woman, standing in their midst, upright in the air, suspended on a dozen fragile legs, looking down on Youko with a smile.

"There you are, little one. Would you mind handing this sorry little machine to me, please?"

It was not a question. Youko knew it was not a question. She knew the implications of refusal, and that it would change nothing in the end. She understood all that, and she had no reason to care for one speaking robot head over her own safety. And besides, she was shaking too much to say no.

So she did not know why her good arm wrapped around the metal sphere and brought it against her body in a protective embrace.

"Ah," the mahotsukai said, her smile turning to a frown. "Disappointing."

The black tendrils reared up behind her, and Youko knew that whether they simply tore the sphere from her grasp or killed her for standing up, her effort was about to become entirely pointless either way.

Then Miriam came screaming out of the back of the kitchen.

"LEAVE HER ALONE, MONSTER!" She shouted, and the woman turned, bemused; but what she had not expected was for Miriam to bring with her a sauce pan full of boiling water, or for the ageing volunteer to throw it in her face.

The mahotsukai screamed, and Youko thought she heard the sound of flesh sizzling under water, although perhaps that was just her imagination. She backed down, still unable to stand, but clutching onto the sphere, hoping to perhaps get as far as the back door.

Miriam, tired but good-hearted Miriam, her hair in a safety net and wearing her perpetually stained apron, screamed even louder than the burned woman as she hit her square in the face with the empty sauce pan, her face distorted with fury. She raised her ustensil for another blow-

A ribbon snapped it out of her hand, another slapped her across the face, then five more slammed her against the wall behind her. The mahotsukai stood up, face half-burned, eyes wide with anger, and three of the ribbons wrapped around Miriam's throat.

In that moment, halfway to the back door, holding the sphere against her chest with a limp arm at her side, terrified and in pain but watching a woman who had dedicated a year of her life to helping the poor of the Rosecroix, Youko understood. She understood why she had clutched that sphere and so feebly stood up to the mahotsukai. She understood why Miriam had come racing at her rescue despite this being a hopeless fight.

It was not just that helping someone in danger was right.

It was that this was her soup kitchen, her sanctuary, and no twisted cybernetic invader was going to make it a place of fear and death while she was still standing.

"I will save you," she said to the sphere. "And I will save her. Give me power."

The sphere did not answer with any word she could hear. But it shifted in her hands, metal sliding and hissing, and the blinking lights over its polish surface finally resolved into something so out of place she felt she could laugh.

It was a smiley face.

Then there was a sound like a gunshot, and something punched her in the chest as hard as the sphere had moments ago. She wavered on her feet, the robot head fell out of her hands, she stumbled and found support on a nearby countertop, and she looked down...

Metal crawled over her chest like a tide, and all her nerves seemed to light on fire at once. She had not thought she had any strength left to scream again.

She'd been wrong.​

*​

​

Ad Break
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(Frantic male lead) "You do not! understand. I am almost at a breakthrough. With only last augmentation..."
"UNTIL JAMES EARLING WAS NO MORE."
(Snap shots of the transformation scene; Earling's hardpoints grow like tumours, his flesh bulges, his augmentations grow to engulf him in steel.)
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​

*​

Fire consumed her. She was molten steel, living agony.

The steel hardened. The fire waned. She was left cold, hard. Steel.

Youko Williams stared at her own hand, where long strands of black metal, hair-like, wove themselves over her skin. On her solar plexus she could see a sun of shining chrome, six-branched and radiant, and from it the black tendrils swallowing her.

She heard drums in the distance, beating louder and louder.

Something in her shoulder popped, and she felt the pain only distantly, as if through a murky glass. She tried to move her left arm, which had been limp only an instant before, and found it more responsive than ever; she knew that if someone had pitched a ball at her she could have caught it left-handed without looking.

The drums shook her whole body now, their rhythm steady, primal, yet fast and getting faster.

The strands crept over her face, covered her mouth and nose and eyes, and for one brief panicked moment she was a terrified child again, breathless and blind; then it all lit up, she breathed an air more clear than ever in her life, and the world resolved into more colors than she thought possible. Everything was bright, everything was distinct, she could see the patterns of motion in every moving object and anticipate their position. She could see the future of things.

The drums were not around her, she realized. They emanated from her own body, from her chest, a drum beating so loud it shook her flesh. There was a buzzing sensation in her limbs, a shiver crawling up her back.

She knew she could run as fast as the wind and shatter stone with one blow. She knew she was immortal.

A distant voice she'd ignored finally pierced into her awareness.

"Young girl, you must restrain the suit or it will consume you."

Synthetic voice. The robot head. She looked down at it, and its metal shell seemed so fragile to her right now.

"This suit is incomplete! There should be an AI assist handling all its subroutines, but- it doesn't matter. Young girl, your body and mind cannot handle its full power on their own! You have to limit it!"

Limit it? That felt silly. She felt better than she'd ever had, except for that drum in her chest that seemed like it would break out of her ribcage at any moment. If she could only get that under control...

She heard a rattling sound, a choking voice. Miriam. Her eyes snapped up and she saw her held against the wall, ribbons strangling her, and the mahotsukai staring at her as if dumbstruck.

It was like being doused in a cold shower. She felt the sweat, the growing numbness in her limbs, her heartbeat gone crazy, the black armor covering every inch of her skin, tightening like it would squeeze her. She was going to pass out.

"How do I... Limit..." She gasped.

"Give it a mental image. Focus on something, anything – something that matters to you, the reason you're using the suit! It will pattern itself after what you're fighting for!"

The reason she was fighting. Her eyes fixated on Miriam. She wished to be there in an instant, slicing those ribbons, saving the woman like she'd been saved by her.

She was fighting for the soup kitchen. She had known that from the moment she'd accepted the sphere's offer. And with that thought, that moment of clarity, the smothering sensation and the maddening heartbeat relaxed. She inhaled deeply, and her mind and body cleared up. The black strands around her arms retracted, gathered around her body and legs; her black hair wove itself into a knot, and she felt something in her hand – closed her hand and grasped it like the hilt of a sword.

She rushed forward, slicing the air, and the ribbons that held Miriam parted like tissue. The cook fell slumped to the ground, breathing free at last, but unconscious; the ribbon-woman hissed like a cat and leaped back, away from her. Youko clicked her heels, felt the thick boots around her feet, and for the first time realized what the suit had become: an apron very much like the one Miriam was wearing, except thicker and dark, covering her torso and her legs down to the knees. In her hand was something in the shape of a large kitchen knife, but the edge that hummed along its blade was not steel but blinding bright energy. On her left hand she wore a glove of mail like those the cooks sometimes wore when cutting harder food, but like all the rest was dark as night.

"STYLE ONE: APRON BLACK," spoke a cold woman's voice in her mind.

"You stole my prize," the mahotsukai said, and her voice was half-bewilderment half-hatred.

Youko blinked.

"Do you have any idea how important this suit is?" The woman spit.

"You know what?" she answered, finding herself now strangely confident, "No, I don't, and I don't care. You attacked my place of work. This is the last chance you have to go away before I use this... Whatever this is... Against you. Got it?" The last sentence she tried to make sound tough, but her voice faltered. She did feel confident, but the realization of what she was saying hit her as she finished speaking.

She was threatening to hurt someone if they didn't do what she wanted. No matter how justified it was to save others, it felt wrong on a level she couldn't shake off. She tried to keep that doubt off her face, but the mahotsukai was not fooled. She smiled, and stepped forward, rising on the tip of her ribbons and shrouding herself in shadow.

"You may have steel all over you, little one," she said softly, "but you have none in you."

Black ribbons streaked out of the darkness, and Youko yelped in panic; she felt a thousand tiny blows all over her body and rushed to the side, trying to escape. The cloud of darkness moved with her, tendrils lashing out, tables and ustensils flying on all side under its advance, food spilling to the ground. Youko leaped over a counter and into the now empty main room, where food laid strewn on the ground. Tendrils whipped at her arms and she struck blindly with her knife; they fell to the ground with a sizzling sound, and the mahotsukai grunted her anger.

Then a tendril wrapped around Youko's ankle as she leaped, and her whole world went upside down. She slid and smashed into a table, and the cloud of darkness swallowed her. A thousand blow came out of every direction and she curled into a ball, clutching her knife. Somewhere, the woman laughed. Prostrate on the ground, Youko squealed in pain as countless bites gnawed at her.

But now that she lay there, her mind taken off her frantic run, she realized that it was all they were. Bites. Her arms, lightly protected, hurt. But her black apron and boots seemed to absorb every blow. She hurt – but she suffered no real injury.

She blinked, and felt something like a pulse come out of her. The darkness surrounded her on all sides, but she could feel the electric current pulsing through the building like lifeblood, and somehow from its course she could feel the contours of the building; every pipe in every wall, every upturned table, and in the dark the moving silhouette of the mahotsukai.

She knew in that instant that calling this place her sanctuary had been no idle gesture. The uniform she now wore called out to it, and it answered.

One, two, three seconds more she withstood the assault of the black ribbons; then in the moment the mahotsukai closed in to intensify her attack, Youko burst out, the bright golden blade of her knife slicing through the dark, screaming a challenge. Her opponent backed away in surprise, and two handfuls of ribbons fell writhing to the ground. Youko stepped up, pursuing her, and sliced through another handful. The darkness parted before her blade with a smell like burning charcoal, flickers of ember fading in an instant.

The mahotsukai gathered her ribbons, and they moved faster than they had before, whirring on themselves and forming something like giant drills – one of them on each side of her back; they struck out both at once. Youko instinctively presented her mail-gloved hand to take one head-on, and it absorbed the impact like a simple softball – but the second one hit her in the ribs and she flew backwards, slamming into one of the tables.

Youko saw stars, her vision flashing dizzyingly. Her hand grasped the edge of the table, and she acted on instinct, leaping behind it. Her eyes could barely see, but she could still feel the room – and her enemy. The wave of darkness dashed towards her, both ribbon-drills streaking out again, and Youko kicked the table into the air. One of the drills ripped against it, deflected by its edge, and raked the ground with a grinding noise; the other hit the table head-on and pierced right through it, but the obstacle slowed it down one fraction of a second and Youko stepped aside, slashing with ker knife. A dozen ribbons flew harmlessly into the air, and she found herself in the mahotsukai's range, past her defenses – staring at her in mutual surprise.

The assailliant had felt much older when glimpsed through the dark, and she was indeed an adult – but a young one, only a few years older than Youko. She could have been her sister. She had been beautiful instants before, but now only one of her eyes was open; half of her face was red and raw, painful even to look at, and her black hair that had been done in such beautiful curls was now wet and messy with the strain of effort. She looked hurt. She looked human. Youko backed down, her grip on the knife weakening.

"I don't want to hurt you," she said softly. "Please, just go."

"Not without him," the woman said, and her voice lacked the arrogance it had had earlier. Her panoply of ribbons was in tatters, at least half of them shaven off, and sparks at the end where their circuits failed to connect. Youko hesitated, and in that moment of doubt the woman gathered her cloak of darkness, masking her face but for her one gleaming eye, hiding her burns and her messy hair; her ribbons started whipping around her in a fury, their loss of reach compensated by frenzied speed. The woman took one step, and a nearby chair desintegrated into fist-sized fragments.

"Your suit is strong," the woman said, and the arrogance was back in her voice. "But your will is weak."

Youko stepped back, the knife shaking in her hand.

Then the robot head spoke.

"If you do not wish to cause harm," the damaged synthetic voice said from the kitchen – its voice loud enough to reach across the room, yet without the inflections of a shout, calm and steady, "then the suit will answer your heart. Trust in me: you wield a blade that cannot kill."

"Enough," the woman said, and she charged. The ground weeped at her passing, her maelstrom of ribbons scraping pieces off the floor and scattering them around her. Youko stared, wide-eyed, her hand clutching the knife.

She chose to trust.

Her gloved hand reached out to take the brunt of the assault, a thousand needles pricking her skin through the mail, and behind this narrow shield she pushed with all her upper body to thrust the blade upwards, slicing through the black barrage. The darkness took her again. She brought the knife back, slicing down, closing her eyes to what she was doing; she felt like a huge, mighty hand squeezed her entire body. The smell of burnt copper and hair filled her nostrils. Gasping the air out of her lungs, she lunged one last time, and her blade came to a stop against something hard.

The room fell silent and still. Then something liquid dripped onto the floor, and Youko opened her eyes.

The ribbons had cut her skin at the elbows, where she had no protection, and the pale cuts were starting to pool with blood. The mahotsukai stared at her in surprise and bafflement, as if she could not believe what had happened. Her black ribbons lay fallen on the ground, useless now. Her shroud of darkness was gone. Youko's knife, hitting blindly – or perhaps compelled by her suit beyond Youko's own senses – had cut straight through two hexagon of black metals on the woman's shoulder – her hardpoints. Now they were destroyed, and her cybernetic black dress had been rendered useless.

But the bright energy blade had gone no further. At the very contact of human skin it had turned off, and only a blunt, light edge of chrome now rested against the mahotsukai's flank. She was unharmed.

Youko blinked. The mahotsukai answered in kind. They both took a step back.

"It is not weakness..." Youko said between two halting breaths, "to wish to do no harm." The blade of her knife flickered to life, and she raised it like an accusatory finger towards the woman. "Do not come back here again. This is my sanctuary," she said, and was surprised to find steel in her voice. The other looked down at the shredded remains of her panoply, then back at her.

"You are weak," she said, "you've merely found a suit that humours you."

"Go," Youko said, her tone harder.

The woman shook her head, but said nothing more. She turned on her heels and was gone through the same front door she had come in through.

The knife turned off and clattered to Youko's feet, falling out of her open hands. Her legs quivered, and she almost let herself fall – then she remembered the others. Her eyes sweeped the room and came upon Maria's prostrate form – she rushed towards her as fast as she could manage. Pain was now washing over her body like a tide, taking its time wearing out every joint and muscle in its path.

She fell to her knees next to her friend, held her head in her hands, looking at her in panic. She did not know first aid; she had no idea how to even check whether she was in danger. Maria was limp, her face showing no bruise, but there was a faint coating of plaster on her back where she had hit the wall behind her.

"Will she be all right?" The robotic voice said behind her, and she startled. She turned to find the chrome sphere, but – different. Its featureless round head seemed to have grown four short, stubby legs and a little body into which it was plugged.

"How did you..."

"I salvaged components of my modular chassis to construct a temporary transport aparatus," the robot said. Will she be all right? We should call an emergency service."

The incongruity of a small robot talking to her while sitting like a cat was such that Youko's fear seemed to recede; it was hard to feel shock in so surreal a situation. She tried to think rationally. Did Maria have coverage? Plenty of people in the Rosecroix did not, and taking an uncovered person to a hospital might not be doing them a favor. But Maria's father had this cybernetic arm, did he not? Then he must have had some kind of coverage, and it probably extended to his family.

She looked at Maria's pale, unconscious face. It was a risk but she had to. She went for her cell phone in her pocket-

Her hand stopped when she realized she was still wearing this improbable black apron. She pinched it, trying to feel what it was like – it felt soft as fabric, yet strong as steel. It had stopped blows that she had seen shatter the furniture of the soup kitchen with ease. What was she wearing?

Then she remembered the first moment of her transformation, and her hands clutched her chest just above her breast, where she had felt the steel star like a gunshot. The apron covered it, she tried to push it to see what it was that had changed her so – and in that moment the fabric yielded in her hands; she felt a rush of air, and all her new clothing – the apron, the boots, the glove, even the knife – all of it dissolved into black strands that she felt absorbed into her torso.

Youko was staring down at her chest; the top of her shirt around the solar plexus had been torn, and there she could see in her skin a star of chrome with a heart like a black jewel, each of its six branches sliding into her skin. She touched its surroundings and she could feel the metal stretching out beneath, into her flesh.

It was a hardpoint. Or, more specifically, it was an augmentation plugged into a hardpoint she had not had before. Just like the mahotsukai, just like Alicia, just like Jenna – she was "geared up" now. Only this was the largest hard point she'd ever seen on anyone, and-

She didn't have time to think about that. Not only was Maria right there, wounded and unconscious, but there was Miriam in the kitchen, in the same state. She had to help them before she focused on anything else. Youko dug into her pockets for her cell phone and typed in the number of the nearest hospital, hoping with all her heart she wasn't making a mistake.

When she turned around, the robot was gone.
​

*​

The police came, eventually. They paced around the soup kitchen and inside, and they recorded what Youko had to say. She told them the mahotsukai had fought a robot and hurt her friends, and they did not question it. Soon they were gone as if they'd never been there. One of the officers verified that neither of the injured were in immediate danger, and with that they were gone. Hunting down one of the elusive cybernetic terrorists was for a higher agency than their own, and they had no other role here. Youko said nothing of her part in the fight, of what the robot had done to her – she always kept a change of clothes in the locker room and a new shirt was hiding the augmentations.

People had come afterwards. For a time there was a circle of silence and fear around the soup kitchen, as neighbors and passerbies feared to become involved into something beyond them; then some of the patrons who had ran came back, one by one, and more people came. By the time the ambulance arrived to take Youko, Miriam and Maria, Youko's elbows had been disinfected and bandaged by an older lady to whom she had served soup not an hour before, and her face was all orange with the fluid she'd painted over her many scraps and bruises. She'd heard people ask questions and tried to comfort her and had droned on answers and nodded along, all the time clutching her shirt and irationally fearing someone would realized she had changed her clothes after the incident, as if anyone cared about that.

Then there was the ambulance, and the hospital, and her parents coming to her as she waited for news of Maria and Miriam, their fear, their confusion. There were hugs and tears. There were laments that this volunteering had been a terrible idea all along, that this was a dangerous place they should move away from as soon as they can. It was in that moment, hearing these words that Youko realized at last that leaving was the last thing she wanted.

She had received a gift, and although she did not understand its nature yet, she knew one thing: to move away from the Rosecroix would be like betraying it. She had a place to protect, people to help, and she could use this... Whatever it was... To do so.

And then she was home. In her bed at night. Sitting up with her knees against her chest, staring at nothing and trying to put together the broken pieces of that evening, moving dizzyingly through her mind. With one hand she brushed against the star on her chest, even though she refused to look at it.

Her window creaked open. The wind blew softly in.

She looked down, and the robot was there on her bed, sitting at attention on its tiny steel legs, a round chrome face staring into her own.

"I was waiting for you," Youko said softly.

"I am sorry for everything I caused to happen to you," the sphere spoke softly. "I owe you explanations." Youko nodded slowly.

"Yes," she said. "Yes you do. But first I need to know your name."

The robot stared at her, and she got the impression it was surprised. Then again lights shone on its surface – soft pink light drawing a simple emoji, a smiling face.

"Call me Archie," he said.

​

End of Episode 1​

 

[Private Lee O'Malley]

OHBOYOHBOYOHBOYOHBOY

 

[LGear]

Not every day I check out an original story instead of a fanfic, but I'm giving this a like because it's awesome. Can't wait to see more

 

[Retsof]

oh wow. quick, someone call an animation studio!

 

[beleester]

Cool stuff. I wonder how the technology in this setting works - it's mostly Deus Ex-y cyberpunk, but "mahotsukai" and "gremlins" seem to be on another level and I wouldn't be surprised if they and Youko were literally magic.

Also, I like "Arnie" as a slang for a Terminator-ish robot.

 

[Private Lee O'Malley]

MALLEY'S NOT SO EXCELLENT STREAM OF CONSCIOUNESS REVIEW.

"The Evening at the Soup Kitchen" Sounds like some sort of jazz event imo. A bit weak, admittedly I would've done something corny like "SOUP IS A DISH SERVED HOT UNLIKE REVENGE WHICH IS COLD."

Ad breaks? We Robocop now bois.

"HE WAS ONCE A MAN!" Why do I feel like they're going to break out into song.

fuk u lady cyborgs are hot.

METAL CONSUMES HIS SOUUUULLLLLL goddamn now I want this to be a song.

HAIL THE GREMLIN KING.

Y'know, the ad just makes people more wary of cybernetics not approve of it. 0/10 back to the drawing board ad dudes.

Speaking of songs, "CONJUNCTION CONJUNCTION WHAT'S YOUR MALFUNCTION?" Also Sunset labs! That's not shady as fuck.

MORE METAL SONG LYRICS YES.

YEAH MEGUCA METAL TRANSFORMATION *HEADBANGING INTENSIFIES*

Huh, reminds me of Kill la Kill with the life fibers n' shit. That or Big O where if the Megadeus rejected it's Dominus it would squeeze and kill it with cables. That or fuse with them for better control.

Not sure if cliche, but I actually like the whole "Yo concentrate to focus yo powa on the shit you want fucked or get fucked by yo powa." So if it's fresh, yay! If not, still good use of it.

Ribbon Witch/Killer Queen (Okay okay she doesn't Killer Queen powers I know.) vs EDGEMISTRESS ROUND 1: FIGHT!

PFFTTT YO IF YA CAN'T HANDLE THE HEAT GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE KITCHEN. Motherfucking Cooking Mama's final form. (But more seriously, so whatever she focuses on the suit morphs to? Cool.)

Good suits are hard to come by. *sagely nod*

Yeah I'm fine with this, admittedly I would also be okay with "OKAY...LET'S PAAAARRRRTTYYYYY" and then she just goes ham but that's not what her character is like. Good characterization/restraint.

burrrrrrrnnn.

Wow witch lady you're getting yo ass kicked by a FNG. I know you're the first boss n' all but still.

SWING THAT BITCH AROUND WO-wait wrong team.

Wait does this make her an Iron Chef? "AND TODAY'S SECRET INGREDIENT ISSSSSSSS: THIS HO RIGHT HERE" *head tilt*

Hmm...for a second I thought she was going to pull some Jackie Chan shit and start using the environment to her advantage. Like the entire room bends to her will now but I guess not/too OP.

MAMI NOOOOOO but fucking ribbon drills? YEEEEEEEAAAAAHHH

oooohhh is she the rival? Or just a new recruit for Youko's squad?

You know if your ass is getting kicked, you don't get to act cocky about it. Unless we're under Kung Pao rules where taking the most damage makes you the winner.

Sweet! This is like the ending of the Binding Blade. Well, the prologue as well where the dude doesn't want to kill the dragon since her true form was a little girl. Hence why the sword didn't pierce.

Oh shit she had a cyber suit too? Huh, cool. I thought she was just some random magical demon from nowhere.

Ah fuck off dude. You can't just say "WELL YOU'RE WEAK." when you got your ass handed to you by motherfucking Iron Chef Sanfransokyo. That's like me saying "YOU DIDN'T WIN YOU DIDN'T WIN" and flipping the chess set aside.

USE NANOMACHINES TO FUSE YOUR BODY FURTHER WITH METAL. BECOME FULL METAL MEGUCA.

oh hi kyubey.

I imagine a Gatekeeper with four stumpy legs.

oh is like kitty. Gatekeeper kitteh.

SHE NOW POSSESES THE JOESTAR MARK. ALL HAIL THE NEW JOJO.

Get well soon you two.

She's a terrorist? Oh, like I said, figured she just came out of nowhere. Like "la la la serving soup OH SHIT THE PORTALS OF HELL ARE OPENING"

Archie, eh? Not a bad name. now is youko betty and alicia veronica?

All in all, good shit, keep it up man.

 

[Acatalepsy]

I'll take it.

Also, you should maybe have Maria and Miriam called something different, or do better about introducing Miriam. I had to read that section twice; you don't actually introduce Miriam as a separate character.

 

[Omicron]

I'll take it.

Also, you should maybe have Maria and Miriam called something different, or do better about introducing Miriam. I had to read that section twice; you don't actually introduce Miriam as a separate character.

Click to shrink...

I have endless trouble with names and titles.

At least this one is better than the one where the main character is "Mali" and the main secondary character is "Mary."

 

[kinigget]

interesting concept here. A Magical Girl story with no magic in it, or at least, not so far.

I like it

 

[LSkullD]

I have endless trouble with names and titles.

At least this one is better than the one where the main character is "Mali" and the main secondary character is "Mary."

Click to shrink...

Is there magic? Or is it Clarke's third law?

 

[Omicron]

In an ideal world I would take a few more days to edit this thoroughly to make it shorter, or else make it longer and split it into two equal-sized chapters. That said, this is not an ideal world. I hope you'll enjoy it anyway.

Episode 2: Hand of Steel​

The alarm clock beeped angrily, and Mateo reached out with his missing arm to shut it off. More than the beeping itself, it was the confusion of feeling his arm moving and not sensing the response that woke him up. He blinked his eyes open, grunted, and rolled to his other side so he could finally slam his good hand on the off button. Then he was fully awake, sitting in his bed, his wife snoring softly next to him.

His shoulder ached. He poked at it with his left hand, testing the junction points where the support for his metal arm melded into his flesh. The skin stopped, bulged slightly, and turned to steel; but his muscles strained at the border. He took a small glass bottle out of his cupboard and downed two pills, then went to take a shower.

His metal arm sat in its case, waiting for him as he came out. Mateo could not help but ascribe it anthropomorphic qualities. It slept when it was away. It glared at him when he went to put it on. It took pleasure or disdain in what Mateo used it for. He knew it was irrational, but it felt right. This time the arm felt like it was goading him, inviting him closer; Mateo took it and inserted the shoulder joints into his support graft, and felt the clamps tightening, the sweet sting as the nervous connection opened.

He moved the arm across the air as he did every morning, going through a series of long-rehearsed testing patterns. The shoulder, the elbow, the wrist, the fingers, circling and angling. Within the construct sensors calibrated, coolant flowed, joints connected.

Mateo paused in the middle of a circular motion, frowning. He retraced the circle back, did it again in the other direction. There was a tension in the arm that was not usual, a slight delay in the response. He swung it sharply, and felt something like a kick. His mind read it as the arm rebelling against him, even though he knew it made no sense. Mateo pushed such thoughts away and completed his routine in spite of the issues, making note to ask his mechanic about it.

He was running late. He knocked on his daughter's door, once, and heard no response. He wen to do it a second time, then paused before touching the panel; instead he delicately pushed the door open and peered into the room. There she was, sleeping soundly in her bed, his little Maria. For a moment he did not want to wake her up; he wanted her to stay home, safe, not go out in a world where he couldn't see her and she could get hurt again. He accepted that feeling, and accepted also that it was wrong, and that to thrive she had to leave his grasp. He closed the door again, and knocked louder; from the other side he heard a groan of displeasure as the teenager stirred. Mateo smiled and went to prepare Maria's breakfast before they both headed to her school.

*​

Youko's eyes snapped open at seven sharp. She did not feel tired; in fact she felt great. She looked outside her window and saw the run rise, and this felt beautiful – a sharp contrast to only a week before, when her only reaction to seeing sunrise was a feeling of deep outrage that anyone would be made to get up so early. She stretched her arms and hopped off her bed. At its foot Archie stirred, stretching its robot legs like a cat, and trotted up to her.

"Is this thing doing something to my body?" Youko said with a frown. "I forgot to set my alarm but it woke me up anyway, and I don't feel tired at all."

"How odd," the little robot said. "The suit is capable of adjusting your hormonal response so as to let you awake at specific times and not feel tired, but it shouldn't do so without a prompt."

"That's weird. I'm not sure I like it."

"If it really is the suit doing it, then it must be in response to you. If you did not command it to do so yourself, then it must be answering some powerful subconscious desire."

"I do hate waking up in the morning," Youko said with a frown, heading for her wardrobe.

"Then perhaps this is for the best," the little robot said wisely. "I have a gift for you."

"Oh?" Youko perked up in the middle of choosing her clothes; Archie – she couldn't help but feel he looked like a cartoon cat with his big round head and his tiny legs – bowed to the ground, and the small torso of his chassis opened up, depositing a shining thing on Youko's carpet. She picked it up.

"An earring?" she said, puzzled.

"It looks like a simple pearl, but it actually contains a simple vibration radio. If you put it in your ear, I will be able to speak with you from anywhere in the city, and no one else will hear it."

"That's..." She paused. Pretty? It was, but that didn't reflect the intentions behind it. Nice? It wasn't a gift just to make her happy. "...utilitarian," she said.

"Well, I could have made it a simpler and more discreet shape. I thought you would enjoy the pearl."

"Aw, you do care about me!" Youko said teasingly, and knelt to rub the robot's head – it yelped and dodged under the bed, and she laughed. Thankfully, her ears were already pierced, and the pearl fit just fine. She looked herself in the mirror and liked what she saw.

Her parents were in the kitchen, their faces pale and their motions comically slow. Her mother had wrapped her hair into a bun, but had missed a full quarter of it which now stuck out like a bizarre crown around her head, and her eyes looked glassy and had three layers of grey circles. Her father was at this moment pawing at the table trying to find where he'd left his glasses – they were actually on his nose and he was squinting through them. Both had a big cup of steaming coffee in front of them, and would be better once they'd drank it; but upon seeing them Youko realized that she had never been awake enough to realize just how funny her parents looked in the morning. After all, she was always just as slow to wake up as they were, and barely saw them as more than blurry figures until she'd gone through half her breakfast. But here, standing at the edge of the stairs, she was seeing them so human and vulnerable, and it was both very amusing and... Something else.

"Takeshhhi," her mother said through a mouthful of bread, "giff me the... The..." Her father looked around the table, found what she was looking for, and passed it to her mother before she'd finished remembering the word "marmalade." Youko chuckled and moved around the table like a breeze, taking a piece of toast. But as she went to make herself a cup of hot chocolate, she paused. She was coming to the strange realization that she did not want to sit down and spend half of her morning slowly going through her breakfast. She didn't need it – the food perhaps, but not the time. She was already fully awake. She needed to move, she felt compelled to try and experience the morning world she'd never felt before.

"Mom, dad, I'm going to school early," she said, piling up two toasts and moving to the door before her parents had time to fully digest what she was saying. "Love you see you bye!"

The air was cold, but refreshing. Youko walked quickly through the streets, for the first time in a long while looking at her alone. She stopped at a small moving stall built into a truck where a tan young man poured her tea, and with the hot cup full in her hands she walked more slowly. In the distance she could see glittering buildings of steel and glass in the BDC, and behind even them the black pyramid of the Sunset Arcology, where she was unlikely to ever go. Her parents were better-off than most of the Rosecroix, and more and more they distanced themselves from the protests and demands of the locals; but even so they had far more in common with them than they had with the high-tech life of the BDC, where she was told everyone was not only geared up but constantly experimenting with new, cutting-edge mods, experimental technologies that were always at a risk of going terribly wrong. The stories of gremlins had originated in the Sunset Arcology, after all.

She paused, looking at this distant sight, and touched her pearl earring, hoping to activate it somehow. After a few seconds of awkward fumbling, she pushed on it in a particular way and felt a vibration in her ear.

"Oh," said Archie's voice in her ear, "I was just thinking I had forgotten to tell you how to do that. Good work finding out yourself." Youko shuddered; the voice felt strange, like it originated within her skull without being a whisper or her mind's voice. She opened her mouth to ask him a childish question, then closed it suddenly. It was stupid to ask if gremlins were real. They were urban legends that demonized augmented people. No trustworthy news report had ever shown one to exist.

"...did you want to ask me something?" the little robot said, and Youko shuddered.

"I just didn't want to be alone going to school," she said, and started walking again.

*
​

Maria had looked sad parting ways with him, and Mateo fancied that she too would have rathered stayed home and safe than going back out there; but she was his strong daughter, so she said nothing, smiled saying goodbye, and left for her class. Mateo continued on his way through the school where he worked. Students recognized him – if not from his face, at least from being one of the only 'borgs they were likely to meet in their daily lives. He greeted them and sometimes they greeted back.

In the locker room he hung his clothes and put on his blue uniform, checking his toolbox – the school had provided him with one at the start of the year, but it was worthless, and if he wanted his job done to expectations he had to buy and maintain his own tools. He did not mind; he liked having his things. But today they didn't feel quite his, like something had changed about them while he was away for a few days; their places had shifted in the box, his careful order was broken. His steel hand had trouble holding them, he had to put ever slightly more of a conscious effort into grasping them and it bothered him.

As he put his tools back someone entered the room, and he looked up to see an unfamiliar face. A woman, younger than him by maybe five years, white with dirty blond hair in a sober ponytail, all tense muscle. She eyed him back the moment he turned and her gaze was cool, scarily analytical like it was tearing him apart; then she blinked and that look faded, and she seemed like a normal woman, a bit tired. She walked towards him and offered her hand, and her leg whirred slightly; that made Mateo paused and replaced the vague fear he'd had by some sense of distant camaraderie. He shook her hand with his steel arm and it did not seem to bother her.

"Bad servos day?" he said, trying on a smile. She nodded.

"Every day's a bad servos day with this piece of crap," she said and stomped the ground lightly.

"Veteran?" he asked, and she looked surprised.

"How'd you guess?"

"Leg's a pretty common one," he said, "and you didn't expect anyone in the room so when you saw me you had that surprised 'do I need to kill someone' look in your eyes."

She blinked. "Did I? I'm sorry. Bad habit given how long I've been out of service. You've got good eyes." Mateo shrugged the comment off, smiling. "What's yours?" she asked back.

"Factory. Hydraulics ate up the original," he answered. "Could have kept the arm but couldn't have done shit with it, so I had them cut it up and replace it with one that worked. I'd rather have a job than a meat limb."

She nodded. "Wouldn't we all. Name's Jane, by the way."

"Mateo. Pleasure to meet you."

The conversation was over, he felt. Whatever Jane had come in the locker room to do she would rather be alone to do it. He assumed she'd gotten a job at the school over the holidays and would have liked to ask what – would have liked to take this chance to build a rapport with someone like him – but his shift was about to start and he didn't want to be a bother. He gave her a last nod and left the room, Jane eyeing him as he left.

*​

Youko paused by Gert's soup kitchen on the way to school, or at least she thought of it as "pausing by," even though it was out of the way and was actually a complete détour. She wasn't sure what she was looking for here. The place was locked up, the broken windows not yet replaced, a sense of desertion having fallen over it. But it was only a few days, Youko told herself. She would put in work herself if she needed to make sure it opened again soon. She had fought too hard to protect, but everyone was afraid – many of the volunteers might not come back.

Even with this detour she was early at school, thanks to having skipped most of her breakfast. As she walked through the steel gate of Technê High she spotted Maria saying goodbye to her father and her heart made a leap; she rushed towards her and her friend only had time to hear her footsteps and turn before Youko was crushing her in a hug.

"Youko I'm happy to see you too but oh god when did you get that strong," Maria squealed in her hug, before tapping frantically on her shoulder; Youko stepped back, trying to keep herself from crying.

"Are you alright?"

"Uh, I should be asking that," Maria said uncomfortably, "you're the one who looks all sad and stuff."

"You're the one who was hurt!"

"Yeah but... Come on, you saw me at the hospital and home. I got hurt and I got better. It's not like I got wounded and suddenly disappeared and am back."

"Yes, but..." Youko said, frustrated, not finding the words. "...it's school?" she tried, and Maria looked at her blankly. She sighed. "Let's just get to class."

And so they did, even though it was the last thing Youko wanted. A week ago she was the most studious math student in her class, the one who did her homework in advance as a distraction, but now it all felt quaint and kind of pointless. When she was with her friends, her family, when she was walking the streets or looking at the devastated diner her mind was focused, preoccupied. But here, listening to the teacher, her mind started wandering. She tried to rein it in but couldn't, because that thing in her chest was bigger than any math class, it came back to take up all her thoughts no matter how hard she tried to set it aside. And this class wasn't math, it was history, which she'd already struggle to pay attention to even before then. Somewhere in a far-off horizon of sound her teacher was droning on about a war set some century ago when no one who mattered today had even been born, when the people of her father and the people of her mother had tried to kill each other, and she didn't particularly want to think about that.

She looked back on her notes and sighed. They weren't even history notes. They were other notes. They were Archie notes.

*​

"I was... designed... as an engineer," the little robot said, measuring its words, as if he wasn't sure how to talk about these things. It was late at night and they were both sitting in Youko's bed, her in pajamas and him sitting on his paws. "I asked to be assigned to a very special project. We wished to create a form of light, adaptative exoskeleton that would find convenient support on a small number of hardpoints. It was not groundbreaking in and of itself; rather it was the combination, and hopefully culmination, of the entire modern school of cybernetic design, which aim to enhance the human body rather than cut it apart and replace it. These suits could make you strong, fast, adapted to any circumstances. It would allow for infinite possibilities in terms of manual work, of compensating for disabilities, of..." his voice trailed off.

"Military purposes," Youko said with something like resignation.

"Yes. I was not a fool. There were obvious applications for these suits as weapons and my corporation would not have let such an opportunity for profit go. I did not work on them myself, but another department did."

"So what happened?"

"I do not know how familiar you are with the milieu of corporate work," Archie said, half-statement half-question.

"From movies, I guess," Youko shrugged.

"Well, movies may be inaccurate, but corporate espionage is real, and at times quite dramatic. Someone on my team... I do not know who... Betrayed me. Gave someone else access codes to our labs. Whoever got these codes... hired the mahotsukai. Being tireless and somewhat devoid of a personal life, I was the only member of my team on-site at the time of the attack."

"She just... attacked you? Like that, in your own building?"

"The betrayal was comprehensive. Drones and cameras were deactivated. Human security was bypassed with fake identifiers. She looked perfectly normal right up until she was alone in a room with a robot, and then she put on her cloak. And... I ran."

"You... ran?"

"I deleted every piece of research to which I had the proper authorizations as quickly as I could, grabbed the only functioning prototype, and escaped."

"...where were your labs? How far did you run from... Shouldn't this be on the news? Shouldn't you be talking to the police or, or, to your corp?" Youko waved her hands frantically. "This raises so many questions!"

"I understand. Let me give you what elements of answer I can. The call to delete the data rather than risk it falling into the wrong hands was questionable, and I may face severe punishment if it is decided it was the wrong choice. There is a traitor on my team and I have no idea who it is, so I do not feel safe going back either way. As for where I came from – I do not feel confident telling you this for now. I do not want you to get involved; you now hold the only surviving product of our development."

"But am I not already involved? You just said it yourself. Your technology is... In me now."

"Yes. And the last thing you need is for someone in my firm to realize you have it, and to decide that this unauthorized implantations legally empowers them to reclaim it, hardpoint and all."

"...hardpoint and all?"

"The suit's support is a unique proprietary design and the largest hardpoint implant ever designed. I don't know what would happen to you if it was surgically removed, but I would rather not find out."

"I... see," Youko said, digesting this information. She clutched her pillow against her chest, trying not to let her mind conjure up images of bloody operation tables and cold hard-eyed surgeons.

"You will be all right," Archie said. "But if you are going to make use of this suit – please do not let anyone know it is you."

"I won't. I... I already intended not to," she said, and felt the robot looking at her. "I don't think my parents would understand," she said simply.

*​

Mateo was usually fortunate enough that his job did not interfere with the students' studies. Whatever maintenance he had to perform on the school's infrastructure could usually be ordered throughout the day so that he would not be waving a torch and tightening bolt in the middle of class. Sometimes, however, such overlap could not be avoided.

Technê High did not look kindly on those of its students who thought they could get by as noodly-armed intellectuals. Once it had raised only the true elites of tomorrow, jet-sets who could have their bodies artificially toned and their beauty enhanced once they came out of school. But no matter how high Technê made their steel fence, they just couldn't keep the jet-sets from fleeing the Rosecroix; and as their standards (and their fees) lowered, the biocon middle-class moved in, craving a school with only slightly tarnished prestige and not caring for the look of its neighborhood. And biocons had little respect for a body 'unfairly gained' – and not enough money to spend on frivolous cosmetic modifications in any case. Thus Technê High had become all about sports and "healthy minds in healthy bodies."

Maria's class was in the gymnasium, playing volleyball, and Mateo was on the sides checking the electric installation. Two lights were dead, casting half the field in shadows, and he moved in that shadow, steel hand brushing the wires. This was a simple task, one for which he would not need his toolbox. Even the metal of his fingers could feel the grain of the cables and the walls, and he could feel the electric current within like a heartbeat. Blades slid out from where his nails would have been, cutting delicately into the metal outer case, and he saw where the wires had been damaged. He retracted the blades, and instead blue lightning arced between his thumb and his index finger as he welded the copper back together.

The children played not far from him, in the light, and he paused to watch them, to watch his daughter play. Clumsily, perhaps – she was fast and strong and determined to score, but her motions were imprecise, lacking in practice. To him that only made them more endearing, the signs of his child learning step by step. He shook his head, trying not to let this distract him. Putting the pieces of iron casing back, he thought of a bright blue flame and made a gesture with his fingers – and nothing happened. Mateo frowned and shook his prosthetic hand, then snapped his fingers, and focused again on the chain of micro-gestures and thoughts he had associated with the plasma torch; this time the bright blue flame came up willingly from his fingers, and in a moment the only sign of the work he'd done there was a faint scar on the cable. He moved further along the wires, looking for the next spot of damage.

He finished his work as the students did their PE class, and sighed as the lights flickered back to life. Looking for his daughter in the crowd, he saw someone else, another student who caught his eye; he waved his hand to draw her attention and walked over to her as the rest of the class departed. Youko Williams stared, waiting for him to say something, but he struggled with words. Her eyes flicked from his face to his hand – like all the other students she couldn't help but look. He did not resent them for it.

"You're Maria's friend," he said. Youko nodded. "I wanted to thank you, again. I know we saw you in the waiting room but we were..." His voice wavered as he thought back to the fear, the sheer panic of having his child in danger, and he shook his head. "You saved her. Thank you."

"I didn't... I did nothing important," Youko said with an awkward shrug. "I called the emergencies and stayed with her. Anyone would have done the same."

He looked at her, trying to see whether she truly believed what she was saying or was just dodging uncomfortable attention. He sighed.

"No. Not everyone would have. There were two dozens of people in that soup kitchen who ran for their lives, and I understand them. But you stayed. You helped as much as you could. And I want you to know that I am grateful for that."

The girl shuffled her feet, looking down.

"She... She's my friend."

"I know," Mateo said with a smile. "Thank you again. I won't hold you much longer."

The girl nodded. "Thank you, sir," she said, and ran off to join her camrad.

Mateo sighed. He felt an ache in his elbow, a slight trembling in his fingertips. But he didn't have the luxury to pause to see what was wrong. He too left the now empty gymnasium.

*​

Youko and Maria parted from the file of other students scattering through the cafeteria in small clusters, and found a table near the window where they could sit alone. It wasn't that the others bothered them, exactly. They just liked having a little bubble to themselves. They put their trays down and there was a moment of silence as Youko watched the recess grounds, its trees and flowers that allowed Technê to stand out from the steel and concrete of the Rosecroix – even though past the trees she could see the tall steel fence that surrounded them.

"Your father talked to me earlier," Youko said. Maria looked up from the plastic bag of dry biscuits she was opening and blinked.

"What did he want?"

"To... thank me, I guess?" Youko shrugged.

"What, for calling the emergencies?" Youko nodded. "Yeah, thanks. Although I already said that, I guess. A bunch."

"I know you did. It's just... I don't know, it feels wrong. I was just there, you know? I did the best I could and it wasn't much."

Maria struck her plate with her fork, spearing through the actual meat they got twice a week, and delighted in the taste of steak.

"It's cool, Youko. The others didn't bother to do that much, they just ran. And it's not like you could fight a mahotsukai."

Youko stared uncomfortably at her own plate. "Are you... all right?"

Maria stared at her with an upset look. "Everyone's asking me that! You did this morning, even! I was knocked into a wall, the hospital took care of it. I can deal. It's been a week, give me a-" she paused, frowning at something to Youko's left shoulder.

"Am I interrupting?" Alicia asked, holding her plastic tray, her voice all smile. Maria narrowed her eyes, but said nothing, and Youko waved towards an empty chair; Alicia sat down with a sigh of relief, and her eyes fixed on Maria.

"Are you alright?" She asked, and Maria rolled her eyes as hard as she could. "What did I say?!" Alicia shouted in confusion. Youko chuckled.

"It's all right, Alish. It's just what people have been asking Maria constantly for a week now."

"Oh well excuse me for caring, princess."

"Yeah, like you do care," Maria said with another eyeroll. Youko frowned.

"I do care!" Alicia shouted, then tried to contain her voice. "You're Youko's friend and you were hurt! Of course I cared!"

"Be nice, Maria," Youko said, thrusting her fork into her steak and tasting it. If she was completely honest, the taste was pretty close to that of soymeat. Yet it felt different on some level that wasn't taste, which she couldn't identify. Her two friends stared daggers at each other, and she had no idea how to manage that while taking interest in rare meat. Youko sighed.

"She does care," Youko said, "please don't fight each other. You're both my friends," she added, sounding wounded. Maria stared down into her plate.

"I'm... fine." Maria said. "I got hurt. I went to a hospital. I got patched up. I was... scared. But in the end, I got better. That's what matters."

Alicia nodded slowly. There was a moment of silence. All three poked at their plates, Youko deep in thoughts, Maria trying not to think back on the assault, Alicia... Trying to restrain something that was begging to burst. Her eyes kept flicking from one of her friends to the other and she seemed to be positively vibrating. Eventually Youko rolled her eyes and sighed.

"Go on," she said, "ask."

"Can I?" Alicia said, clapping her hands with a huge smile. Maria gave her an odd look.

"The hell's Richie twitching about?"

"She's been holding it in all week to not be insensitive, but-"

"What was she like?" Alicia cut her off, leaning over the table and staring at Maria disturbingly close. Maria leaned back a little in her chair to put some distance between them.

"What was... who like?"

"The mahotsukai, of course!"

"What kind of question is that?"

"A question only you can answer! I watched the news, they had surveillance footage and phone cams but all it showed was that huge black blob moving around. That," Alicia said, raising one finger in a teacher-like gesture, "was her Cloak. They all have one."

"Did you hear it?" Youko said with a chuckle, drawing a puzzled expression from Maria. "'Cloak.' When she says it you can hear the capital C. Cloak," she added with an ominous grimace. "If you hadn't guessed by her gold-plated arm Alish is a huge cybernetics nerd and like all huge cybernetics nerds she is completely fascinated by the mahotsukai."

"Who cares about me!" Alicia interrupted her again. "You saw her up close. What was she like?"

"...evil?" Maria said, not a little baffled.

"Well, obviously," Alicia rolled her eyes. "It's not like I'm a creep idolizing terrorists. But what was she like? I mean, her augs? Her look?"

Maria was starting to look a little uncomfortable; Youko frowned.

"She was... young," Youko said, drawing Alicia's attention again. "Two, maybe three years older than us. Angry."

"So young..." Alicia muttered.

"She had these, like, tentacles or ribbons or something," Maria said, her eyes cast on the table, reliving the moments. "They whipped around her, grabbed objects and tore them apart. They grabbed me by the chest and... I don't remember anything after that."

Youko nodded. "She could move with them, like stilts. She looked like some kind of huged, messed up daddy-long legs. It was..." She shook her head. "And that dark cloud-"

"I know that technology," Alicia blurted out. Youko blinked and looked at her.

"I'm sorry?"

"The ribbons. One of my friends told me about them. She-" Alicia bit her lip. "I shouldn't be talking about that."

"Oh, come on," Maria said, "you can't just tease us like that. Especially after grilling us on a violent attack like it was some kind of TV show!"

Alicia's eyes went from Maria to Youko and back, chewing her lip. Finally she sighed.

"One of my friends, her dad works at Sunset. They're working on an experimental technology that looks just like what you're talking about. My friend herself has an aug that's two black ribbons, long and flat, that extend from her lower back and which she can use to grab and manipulate things. It's one of the first successful attempts at creating an aug that can increase the number of manipulator limbs of a human. Normally when you try to implant someone with two new arms they just get splitting headaches and their hands can only flail around at random, but this... This works."

There was a pause. Youko's eyes narrowed.

"I'd like to meet your friend."

"She can't be your mahotsukai. She's just my age."

"Still," Youko said, her voice strangely firm.

Alicia sighed in resignation. "All right, all right, I'll set you up. Just don't..." She bit her lip, not finishing her sentence.

"Don't what?" Youko asked.

"She was going to say 'don't embarrass me,' I bet," Maria said accusingly.

"I wasn't- It's not like that! I didn't mean it that way!"

"And how did you mean it?" Youko asked. Alicia stared at her, her eyes gleaming with offense.

"I don't care that my other friends are jet-sets and that you're not, or that your parents are biocon or whatever. I'm not ashamed of my friends. Of any of them. But she too is my friend and I don't want you stomping around asking rude questions and hurting her because you think she might be the one who attacked you. Even if, if I understand that it must have been really hard on you, and that you want answers, you're not some kind of old-timey cop or..." Her sentence trailed off, and Youko looked contrite.

"I'm sorry."

"It's fine," Alicia said curtly, stabbing her last piece of meat with her fork and swallowing it in one gulp. "I was done eating anyway." She got up with her tray and left the table, leaving uncomfortable silence behind her.

*
​

"Mateo," one of his colleagues called to him. He turned from the boiler, frowning at the disturbance in his work.

"What is it?"

"Boss wants to see you."

"The... principal? What for?"

The man shrugged. "Don't know. Didn't ask."

Mateo groaned, putting down his tools. He could finish up later; anything that had him summoned to the principal's office had to be important – and usually not very good.

The principal's office was caught between two worlds, the home of a woman who felt part of the wealthy technological elite but who needed to appeal to the skeptical middle-class. The furniture was sober, except for the shifting holographic picture displaying family and career achievements, hanging on the wall where in centuries past would have been a painting. Miss Huei was dressed expensively yet conservatively, every strand of her black suit a sign of excellence. Her eyes were framed by two sharp angles of steel sticking out of her skin, the only concession to augmentations she afforded herself; with a thought she could produce from them the actual glasses that bore her visual enhancements. Fashionable enough to satisfy her jet-set friends, discreet enough not to upset the biocon families that were now her main business venue. Mateo had always refused to let himself be intimidated by her austere demeanor, and today would be no different, he decided. In fact, today Miss Huei seemed not to be as stern as she usually was – if anything, that was what put him on edge.

"Mateo," she said as he entered her office. "Please, come here. I wanted to talk to you in person."

He noted to himself that she had not asked him to sit down. This would be a short interview, then. Containing his anxiety, he walked up to the wooden desk.

"You know I don't believe in pointlessly beating around the bush," Huei said curtly. "You're a good worker. We are grateful to have had you all these years. We're letting you go."

Mateo blinked. That was, at first, his only physical reaction to what he'd just heard. He was to stunned to do otherwise.

"You're... firing me?"

"It's not the preferred term anymore."

"But I do the work of three people for the same pay. I save you costs constantly on equipment and maintenance."

"And we are grateful for that," Miss Huei said with a tone of complete indifference. "We will, in fact, write you a letter of recommendation."

Mateo opened his mouth to spit out a retort, then contained it. He had spent years staking out maintenance as his domain, and knew for a fact that the school would be losing a lot of money by hiring-

His train of thought came to a halt.

By hiring unaugmented people.

"It's because I'm a 'borg, isn't it," he asked, his tone a statement rather than an answer.

"I'm sorry if you think that," Miss Huei said blankly, "but I won't try to change your mind."

He thought back to the morning, the locker room. To his chance encounter with the blonde woman with the... prosthetic leg... He chuckled, more out of bemusement than mirth.

"You need at least one employee with prosthetics to get funds from state and NGO subsidies that try to help people like us," he said, shaking his head, "but you need that employee to be as invisible as possible to please the parents putting their kids into your school. So you fire the guy with a huge steel arm he uses to repair your equipment, and you hire a woman who can just wear trousers and look like a 'normal' person."

Miss Huei narrowed her eyes, saying nothing. Probably she hadn't expected him to figure it out. It didn't matter, of course – knowing why and how he'd been fired didn't protect him in any way. But maybe, just maybe, she felt a little bad about being caught red-handed, even if she did not show it at all.

"Are we done?" She asked coolly. Mateo shook his head, a gesture of disbelief rather than negation.

He could picture her interview in his mind. Huei hearing her approach, and without any transition asking her about that noise in her leg. Jane, perfectly willing to tell a little lie to tell the job – just as much as he would have been in her place – telling her it was a temporary issue.

'Every day is a bad servos day with this piece of crap,' she'd told him. Well, that was fair enough. He would enjoy the thought of Huei slowly realizing she hadn't gotten all she wanted, if nothing else.

"Yes. We're done," he said, and turned back.

His cyberarm twitched. His steel hand closed into a fist, tight and tighter. He hadn't willed it to, but at that moment he did not care.

*​

What am I going to do now?

He tried not to think about it. He was a conscientious man, and if he simply walked home now he was just going to sit on his couch with dangerous thoughts racing through his mind. He could, at the very least, finish his work day.

How am I going to feed my family?

He had no idea if he could even find a new job in this environment. The only reason he had kept his head above the water for so long was because he had lucked into a relatively decent insurance plan that had twisted his former employers' arm into paying for his prosthetic after the accident. Then he had spent years dutifully upgrading it, turning it into a beautiful custom job, not out of pride or pleasure but as a form of survival, to always keep himself valuable.

But now he knew he was outmatched. Prosthetics technology was less glamorous and simply sold less than hardpoint technology. Some kid could do the same job he could without having to lose his arm to do it, and if he got fired he'd shrug and swap it out for some other aug.

He wanted to...

No, of course he didn't want to lash out. He wasn't a boy anymore. He was not going to yell at his former boss, punch walls, or sabotage his work out of spite. That was stupid and it bothered him that he would even think of it.

His arm twitched, the steel fist finally opening. His stream of thought broken, Mateo stared at his surroundings. His footsteps had carried him back to the boiler room without him realizing it. Sheets of metal lay neatly stacked on the ground along with internal components. It would have taken two men an hour to do this by hand and he'd done it in half an hour alone, unafraid to grasp scalding metal in his iron hand.

If worst came to worst, he could always sell his arm. He would have to buy a cheap prosthetic, the plastic kind that wasn't quite as strong or agile as a meat limb, but it would tide them over for a while. It was only years of work down the drain, and the loss of what he'd come to think of as part of him.

It was unfair...

His elbow kicked back; his fingers grasped at something he couldn't see. He looked at his arm, trying to get it back under control, but it only rose, fist slowly clenching in front of his face. His heart was beating too loud. He could some great heat on his skin at the joints of his shoulder. Realizing at last that it had been reckless to keep it on all this time while it showed increasing lack of response, Mateo brought his left hand to his steel shoulder and tried to release the clasp that would disengage the prosthetic.

It didn't work. The clasp opened slightly, strained, and snapped right back, almost taking Mateo's thumb with it. He stared at his prosthetic, uncomprehending.

He blinked, and somehow did not care anymore. His arm wasn't the problem. The loss of his job was. The betrayal from the people he'd given years of his life to...

He winced, a distant headache coming upon him. What was he thinking? He had to turn off his arm and figure out what was wrong with it-

He'd been stupid to think he would finish his work day. That was just playing into his own subjugation. He had to show the world that you couldn't screw over the kind of people who'd given their very literal pound of flesh to this broken system. You couldn't discount him. Never.

His meat hand grasped at his scalp, pulling the hair. The pain jolted him out of a trance. Dazed, he looked around him for a crowbar, a hammer, a power tool of some kind he could use to destroy the arm. His thoughts were disparate, incoherent, but he knew he had to-

-let them know payback was a bitch. His steel arm flexed, servos groaning with barely contained power, internal workings already shifting to become a better instrument of vengeance. He dropped the hammer from his useless weak hand, eyes scanning the walls for the power coupling. He needed to fuel the engine of his ascendency.

He smiled, and with one punch broke through to the electric wires.

*​

[pan shots of a post-industrial city, smoke choking the sky, police sirens blaring in the distance]
"Over the past year alone, urban crime rates all across the nation have increased by as much as twenty percent."
[long queue of people waiting for the opening of a soup kitchen, most unkempt, some staring at the camera]
"Unemployment rates have skyrocketed. Poverty is rampant. The state cannot help all who need it."
[crane shot slowly revealing an immense pyramid of black glass]
"There is another way. A better way. A place without crime, without lasting unemployment, a place with a safety net when times are rough. A place you can always call home."
[camera goes through the black glass, reveals a beautiful, sunlit interior, window untinged, green plants]
"The Sunset Arcology is this place. A place of rebirth, of regrowth. A place free of the turmoil and merciless competition of the outside world. A place where each can find their role in one harmonious whole."
[camera moves out of the windowed room into sunlit corridors, then up a great well at the center, capturing hundreds of person smiling, chatting and moving around]
"Sunset Arcology. A place to call home. Apply today."


[A leaflet stuck to a wall of the Rosecroix neighborhood. Haphazardly drawn on a computer program and printed on cheap paper. Depicts a profile view of a man, nose and lower lip pierced, hair cut in a small mohawk, with hexagonal hardpoints in his neck and temple.]
"Friday 7th 11pm:
FUCK THIS PLACE AND ALL THE PEOPLE IN IT, YES SUCKER YOU TOO, JUST BECAUSE YOU ATTEND OUR CONCERT DOESN'T MAKE YOU NOT A SQUARE
will perform
A Dirge For The Last Free-Thinkers Of This Rotten World, a two-hours concert
First act by I Can't Be Arsed To Find A Band Name, Just File That In, These Assholes Will Love It
Ticket price [price scratched off and rewritten several times, unreadable], we'll fit as many people as can pile up in the room, be prepared to fight off the rest of the audience"

*​

Youko's ear buzzed, and she froze midway across the hallway leading to her next class.

"Youko," Archie's voice hummed in her ear. "Are you using your suit at this moment?"

Youko glanced quickly around her, finding too many students to safely talk out loud, and ducked into the nearby restroom.

"No, why?" she whispered.

"I have calibrated my sensors to detect a surge akin to your suit's activation in case you found yourself into trouble. Such a surge just happened."

"But if I'm not... Does that mean..."

"Someone else is using a suit. Or some other, similar form of high-energy cybernetic equipment."

"Another mahotsukai? Where?"

"In your school."

Youko froze. A student pushed the door to the restroom, chatting on her cell phone, oblivious to her; taking inspiration from her Youko pulled out her own phone to have a pretext for talking out loud, and walked briskly back into the hallway.

"Where in my school?"

"I don't know the map of the building. A vast, largely empty space? Detached from the main building?"

"...the gymnasium."

Without needing another word, Youko took off, running without a thought for her abandoned class.

"Wait," she said, a thought suddenly coming to her. "Your sensors can cover the whole neighborhood?"

There was an awkward silence at the other end of the line.

"...I may have followed you to school just to make sure you were safe."

"Goddammit, Archie! You can't do this behind my back!"

"We can discuss the ethics of your safety later! I am heading to the gymnasium at the moment. How far are-"

"I'm there!" Youko shouted, pushing the doors open. The gymnasium, lamps off, lit only by the afternoon light streaming from the high windows, was empty before her. She swung her backpack off her shoulder, dropping it near the high benches, then hopped off the stairs leading to the flat plane where only two hours ago she had been playing volley-ball. "Where is-"

Something flew across the room, a hair's breadth from her face, and Youko backed away instinctively. A split second later, a broken chair smashed in the middle of the front row, launching off a cloud of debris and dust. She stared, her mind not yet catching up to how close she'd passed to death.

To her right, hunched over, panting, was a man she could only barely recognize as Maria's father Mateo. His skin was darkened, bloated, black veins running down his neck and shoulders, and his face was contorted in a grimace of anger so deep it seemed it would never come off. His eyes were bloodshot, his breathing ragged, and his right arm – his augmented prosthetic, his toolbox – was straining at the seams as if it were trying to expand, steam coming off its joints, sparks at its fingertips.

"Mister... Reyes..?" Youko asked, backing off in confusion and fear. This was not a mahotsukai.

"It's your fault," Mateo spit in a voice hissing with anger and... something else. "You can't stand to look at a 'borg. Entitled, sheltered, little BRATS!" He screamed, and his hand punched straight through one of the plastic chairs of the front row. He took a step towards Youko and she backed off again.

"Mister Reyes won't hear you," Archie's voice said – not in her ear this time, to her left. She glanced at him and here he was, standing on all four tiny robot legs on one of the chairs of the upper rows. "He has become a gremlin."

"But..." Youko uttered, "Gremlins don't exist."

"I EXIST!" Mateo Reyes screamed, ripping another chair off the front row. "DON'T YOU DARE DENY ME!"

He hurled the chair at Youko with inhuman strength. Her eyes widened, her mind thinking too slowly to do anything but stare.

"STYLE ONE," a cold woman's voice said. "APRON BLACK."

Her hand moved of its own will, mailed fist swatting the chair away, feeling only a mild shock. The piece of furniture crashed against the floor, and there was the knife in the other hand, the star in her breast shining as a black uniform wove itself into being around her.

That took Mateo by surprise; his assault stopped, and he stared at her, uncomprehending. He gaped, and the anger flowed out of his face. He only looked tired and confused.

"Youko? I... I don't know what..." He said, voice labored. "You have to call the police. I can't control this. I don't want to hurt you."

"It's all right, Mister Reyes," Youko said with her best forced smile. "I don't want to hurt you either." She flicked the blade in her wrist, the one that could not cut flesh. Anger flashed back on Mateo's features and he ripped another chair, hurled it again; she sliced it in two through the air, deflecting debris with her gloved hand. Immediately she launched into a sprint, circling around Mateo to try and find an angle of attack. "Archie. How do I stop him without hurting him?"

"His prosthetic arm must have been hacked. You must destroy the limb."

"Hacked? You can't hack a cyberlimb!" Another chair flew and she swatted it away; Mateo growled in frustration and started moving in her direction, prompting Youko to arc away.

"Not like you would a computer or an online device, but... Look, this isn't the time! His arm is the source of the infection. Destroy it, and he will be free."

"All right," Youko said, narrowing her eyes. Mateo was starting to pick up speed, heading for her, faster than a man his age and size ought to be. "I'm sorry, Mister Reyes." Coming at a sharp stop, she pivoted her heels and faced him head on. Mateo's face was deformed by rage, and he raised his fist, bringing it with incredible strength against her...

Her open mailed palm met it in the air, and the impact blew Youko's hair off; she felt the shock in her entire arm, shoulder and back – but she held fast and stopped the blow. With his guard open, she brought the knife held in her right hand towards his face, and panicking at its bright buzzing edge Mateo brought back his arm in a desperate defensive move, which was exactly what Youko had wanted. Her beam knife struck the forearm head-on with all the strength she could put into it, and dug into the steel with a sizzling sound.

And stopped.

Youko stared in confusion at her blade, which was still blindingly bright yet had stopped a bare inch through the metal plate of Mateo's arm. The gremlin's panicked surprise at the light subsided, and he smiled; Youko tried to back away but was too slow, he pushed against the knife stuck in his arm, and with one wide arc of his arm backhanded Youko across the face. The impact stunned her and she felt herself slide across the floor, a world away through stars and tears.

The knife, she thought dimly. The knife had been made to cut through hardpoint augmentations, flexible sheets of metal over skin. Never through a limb made out of solid metal. It was a losing proposition from the start.

She shouldn't have been standing up, not after a blow like that, and she shouldn't have been thinking about the flaw in her tactics, not through this shock and pain. Yet still her gloved hand was pushing off the floor, her shaky legs were pushing her up, and she was standing, her eyes blinking away the tears.

Somewhere far above Archie was calling to her, but she couldn't let him distract her. She changed her grip on the knife, bringing both hands on the handle. First she would have to try a two-handed cut, for greater strength. Then if that didn't work she would try to target the vulnerable joints. It was all she had, and she would not allow Maria's father to become a monster.

He moved, too fast. She moved, too slow. He had strength and speed, she had only resilience. Banking on it, she did not parry, a half-hearted dodge allowing his steel fist to bruise her shoulder. She brought the lame up to slice the underside of the arm, cut through the steel again. Not enough. Mateo brought his arm back for a second blow and her shield hand let go off the grip to parry just as she had before. Again, his fist met her palm and she endured the impact; this time she was going to thrust at the joint of the elbow-

Something burned. Her shield hand, which had endured every strike head-on, became a lance of pain. Youko released her grip on his fist, screaming, and saw the fire coming out of his palm. He whipped his hand across the air, leaving a trail of fire in its wake, and she barely dodged, reduced to pure instinctive reaction; the flames masked her vision and she did not see his fist punch through, hitting her square in the chest. She flew. Again, she slid against the floor.

Youko spat something. Blood, maybe. Or bile. She did not look. She just stood back up.

"He had... a plasma torch," she muttered to herself as Mateo stepped slowly forward, a plume of red flame coming off his hand. "Not a freaking flamethrower."

"Gremlin hacking has a material component which hijacks cybernetics and makes them go rampant," Archie's voice said in her ear, disturbingly calm. The stands were too far away to hear his voice without him shouting, now. "It's the reason for the power surge. He was draining electric current to fuel the initial stage. Now it is 'improving' upon his original cyberlimb from the inside."

"Is there any way I can stop him if I can't destroy the limb?"

"Unconsciousness. It's partly reliant on nervous signals. It flares up with anger and resentment and... Knock him out."

"And if I do," Youko asked, panting, taking a step back from the looming figure approaching her. "Can you fix what's wrong with his cyberarm? So that it doesn't have to be destroyed?"

"...possibly, yes, but that would be reckless and- why do you even ask?"

Memories of idle discussions with Maria flashed through her mind. Moments of privacy shared. Stories about her father, each one innocent or mildly frustrated, which were now coming together into a greater picture.

"Because if Mister Reyes loses his arm, he will never get another as good as this one, and it might cost him and his family their livelihood. And I said I wouldn't hurt him."

There was silence on the other end of the line. Just as well. She had to focus on the threat in front of her. The threat that was not Maria's father, but what something else had made of him.

She knew. In her heart – or in something made out of steel and wire that now lay over her heart – she knew what to do. She closed her eyes, even though the gremlin was now a few feet away, and she exhaled, letting go of her knife.

The strands of the apron dissolved and rewove themselves. Light poured out of the star in her chest, and she thought of where she was, of what she fought for, of who she fought for. She was a student of Technê High, and for years Maria's father had worked every day for her sake. Now it was time to repay him, as a student.

"STYLE TWO. SAILOR BLUE."

It felt far more familiar than the apron had. The blouse and the tie, the skirt reaching to her knees, the long socks – although the shoes were lighter than she'd ever worn them, and there were gloves on her hands, both white contrasting with the deep blue of the outfit. She opened her eyes, and at first was dazzled by a mess of lights, lines and dots moving through the air; then she reached up to her eyes with one hand and found the glasses. In her other hand, where she had held the knife, was now something square and soft – she looked. A notebook.

Youko smiled. The gremlin stared at her, having stopped mid-track, bemused.

"Round two," she whispered. The gremlin roared as if in approval, and thrust his hand towards her – flame surged out of it, scorching the linoleum floor; Youko threw herself to the side – and was carried three feet by her hasty dodge, barely recovering from her own speed. Her opponent adjusted his motion, the stream of flame following after her, but she simply raced away from it. With a few light steps she picked up speed, then kicked the floor once, instinctively corrected her course in the air – and there she was on the third row of chairs, several yards away from Mateo, a black mark on the ground between them. She stood on the narrow back of a seat as simply as if it were solid ground.

The lines and circles and dots kept shifting before her eyes. She thought she could make some sense of them – they were an HUD, clearly, monitoring and broadcasting information, but it went simply too fast for her to keep track of.

On a sudden inspiration she flicked open the notebook she'd been clutching all the while. There, bright as day, the information collected by her glasses was writing itself in electronic ink. The speed at which the cybernetic arm could move through the air, the maximum length of its fire spray – five feet as of now, but worryingly it increased the longer the fight went on. Other details she had no time for now.

She snapped the book shut again and slid it into a book holster at her waist which she hadn't realized was even there before she'd completed the gesture. The Gremlin stared at her from beneath the stands, eyes narrowed in careful study, the flame gone. He must have realized she could avoid it as long as she had enough range, and wanted her to come closer before triggering it again.

Her current outfit would have none of Apron Black's incredible resilience, and she wouldn't be able to hit as hard. A single blow would spell her doom, whereas she would have to hit plenty. Against the mahotsukai she would have been torn to shreds in a moment by the sheer number and wide area of her attacks. But against an opponent with a single enhanced limb and an otherwise largely human body...

Youko launched herself off the stands, landing lightly on the sports grounds, and rushed towards the gremlin. He answered in kind, meeting her head-on and hurling his fist with tremendous, graceless strength. Youko ducked her head to the side, almost casually; steel knuckles brushed her cheek and she hit his exposed flank with her fist, drawing a gasp. Finding the opponent at his side, the Gremlin whipped his hand around, trying to catch her with a backhand; Youko crouched lightly, the hand passing above her. In her glasses, red circles outlined at certain points of his chest; Youko punched them each in turn quickly. Rage overwhelmed her foe, his hand burst into flame, and he went for a straight punch in a cloud of fire. Letting inspiration carry her, Youko cartwheeled to the side, circling around him and landing lightly on her feet; she hit his back with three jabs, and as he staggered, she punched him square in the face before hopping back out of range.

She had to contain her laughter. It felt fantastic. Her entire body was energized, and she had never felt this fast, this light, this confident.

Mateo screamed, and she snapped to attention. Bruises over his face and shoulder, he came barreling at her, hand trailing flame; she leaped back, then sprinted around him, knowing he would expose a weak point sooner or later. And then-

She blinked. He should already have been down after the series of blows she had delivered to him. She might have been a schoolgirl and him a grown man, but she had hit hard and fast, with augmented speed, hitting where it would hurt. She slid the notebook out of its holster, flipping it open as she cartwheeled away out of flame range.

She couldn't read fast enough to absorb such information in so little time – her normal self couldn't, at any rate. But in this suit it seemed the easiest thing in the world. There on the page, plain as day, was the realization that cybernetics sustained her opponent just like they did her, nervous and hormonal adjustments suppressing pain and fatigue, preventing shock, easing concussions.

The high of speed came down as her intellectual mind caught up to the fact she was reading. She wasn't feeling great because her injuries had miraculously healed, she felt great because the suit was keeping her battle-ready. And whatever gremlin hack monstrosity was making her enemy... Maria's father... Mateo act that way did the same for him.

She could not knock him out. Even assuming her glasses could point to her the exact point to realize a movie-style knock out it would kick him up with adrenaline. If she wanted to stop his body, rather than destroy his arm, she would have to break him. Shatter bone. Inflict concussions, maybe causing lasting damage. That was even more unacceptable than the alternative.

Again she had to refrain from laughing, but this time it was a bitter, nervous laugh. It was like the world conspired to keep her from victory, to force her hand into hurting someone. But she'd already done enough harm with these reckless punches. No more. The notebook returned to its holster and she stood straight up, a blackened trail of scorched floor separating her from the gremlin, from Mateo, who stared at her waiting for her next move. So he'd learned rushing in would do no good. If he learned so fast, then she really was doomed.

"Youko!" Archie called out from the stands. Still there. Trying to support her somehow. "The rational mind – the robotic mind – must tell you to stop focusing on your opponent's safety. If you fail, then both of you fall. You should simply dispatch him as safely and quickly as you can, and hope he can be healed!"

Youko bit her lip, clenching her fist. If even her robo-cat was getting into it...

"However!"

She froze.

"I chose you first as someone who would put her life on the line for a stranger! I supported you as the wielder of a blade that cannot kill! I am here, at your side, because I know you are the kind of person who will not listen to that advice! With the power of my suit in your hands – make your own way!"

This time, Youko really did laugh, drawing a confused look from Mateo.

"I promise you this won't hurt," she said with a grin, "but it ain't gonna feel good either."

She moved. In three steps she was in front of him and he was punching. That was not what she wanted; she ducked and stepped back out of fist range, not trying to hit him. He moved in to close the gap, she stepped back too fast to follow, without withdrawing completely. His hand snapped open and closed in a gesture of frustration; a brilliant sphere burned at its center, and he whipped forth with a gout of flame. Youko's grin widened.

She raced against the flame again, circling around him but never moving away. He whirled around, and her assessment of his speed proved off; the flame caught her elbow, singing the skin. Yelping she darted away, he followed, fire in front of him. She stepped to the side of the fire spray, closed back against his flank, forcing him to again wave the fire around. He was burning himself now to an extent, sheets of fire deployed closed to him again and again, but it was light and not was Youko was after anyway.

Realizing that the spray of fire was dragging his arm down, Mateo turned it off, punched forward with an open palm and only then released a burst of fire. It took Youko by surprise, and she had to step back, one of her gloves taking fire; she snapped it off and it dissolved immediately. She immediately went back in, and Mateo punched his bursts of fire again and again; she jumped over a burst, turning in the air, and her hands touched his steel arm; she pushed lightly off it and landed in his back. Eyes wide with frustrated anger the gremlin opened up the spray to its fullest extent, flames surrounding him. Keeping as close as she could Youko rolled low to the ground, against his legs, and he brought the trail of fire behind her.

They were dancing. She was not landing a single blow and neither was he; they were moving one after the other, fire following a fraction of a second after each motion, and she stuck to him, pirouetting and hopping and leaping around as he waved the flame around like a demented maestro, each breath he took deeper and faster.

And he was slowing down. He was slowing down to a stop.

The fire died all of a sudden, the gremlin arm going silent. Mateo stared, glassy-eyed, mouth agape trying to catch a breath. Then he fell like a tree.

Youko jumped in, the flames sticking to the ground proof enough of how hurt he would be if he touched it; she winced as the grown man's weight fell on her arms, but she pulled him out of the thrice-scorched area where the fight had ended. She let him fall on the ground only when it was safe, and checked his pulse. His heart was beating, and his breathing had resumed, but he was unconscious.

She had danced with him until the fire he'd shrouded himself in drained all the air out from the tiny space at its center, even as she darted out just enough to breath. His augs might have made him withstand pain and fatigue, but they couldn't inject oxygen into his lungs. And he had fallen without a single blow.

"Archie? He's not going to be unconscious for long. Can you fix his arm?"

The little robot was already leaping from the stands and trotting over to the man.

"I can try. But if it doesn't work, you need to be ready to-"

"Make it work."

They said nothing more. Archie inspected the arm with his eyeless face, probbing at it with metal paws, until he let out a curious "ah-ah." Turning the arm over, he nodded to himself.

"Shoulder joint, of course. Vulnerable, connection to the nervous system. I'll see what I can do."

The plates of his head shifted, and some odd appendage, like a supple steel wire, came out of it; it slithered into the open joint. The arm shook; the hand twitched; the elbox flexed, then relaxed.

The distorted plates that had been ejecting steam slid back together. The arm seemed to deflate, becoming smaller and thinner.

"It might not be exactly the same. Some previous functions might have been lost, new ones might remain. But the gremlin hack is purged. Your friend's father will have full control of his arm after he wakes up."

"Good," Youko said with a nod. Then she frowned, considerations that hadn't mattered to her in the moment now rushing to the fore of her mind. "Will he remember?"

"Not everything, no. He might or might not remember his last plea, before the rage overtook him. The rest will be a blurred fever dream. He might decide to discard his arm, you know; just because he fears it now. He won't know all that you did just so he could keep him."

Youko bit her lip. "He needs to have the choice."

"Well..." Archie's chrome head whirred left and right. "There is also the matter of how to explain this." Youko swallowed, looking at her surroundings. Broken chairs. Burn marks everywhere. It could have been worse, but it could also have been much, much better.

"I..."
She raised a finger, blinked.

"I'll figure something out."

End of Episode 2​

 

[Private Lee O'Malley]

MALLEY'S NOT SO EXCELLENT STREAM OF CONSCIOUNESS REVIEW: THE ELECTRIC BOOGALOO

I'm suddenly thinking of that Toy Story scene where Buzz just chucks his arm at Woody. Oh it's just him dislodging his arm for the night hence why he can't move it.


"Pleasure or disdain in what Mateo used it for." "I see you're cranking it to catgirls again, fucking 0/10 shitty taste in waifus.

Also does the arm come to life and choke him? CLEARLY HE IS KIRA SINCE HE IS OBSESSED WITH HANDS. *CHASE INTENSIFIES*

I do like the description of the arm though! Nice. This is the best kind of porn, tech porn. Oooh baby.

uh ohh rejection issues. Gotta get them Deus Ex drugs bruh.

I still think of Maria as Marina, is she brown and have dark hair? and also a darcsen.

Youko finally conquered the sun after fusing with the metal magic nanomachines. SHE HAS BECOME ULTIMATE HIGHSCHOOLER. But hey for once a teenager who likes to wake up in the morning.

Man I want that suit.

Hey man if you don't want I'll have it, feeling refreshed everyday is a Godsend.

I think Archie looks like Sheer Heart Attack. Oh wait no he's normal cat.

Ah, like the...seashell, or the bullet, or...fuck what was the thing in Fahrenheight 451?

Archie don't like being touched. A bit odd, that. Guess it's not used to positive human contact, poordude.

Pfft, that's a good way of putting it I like the morning description.

TAKESHI'S CHALLENGE: GET THE MARMALADE.

Ah the toast in the mouth, finally she is now animu.

Cold mornings are great for a run.

BLACK PYRAMID BOY THAT'S NOT SHADY. unless it's like Luxor or some shit. "Business District Center." We need a better name for Not! Wall Street. Also the whole "Cutting Edge Mods" reminds me awfully of Glitch City.

"YOUKO, THIS IS ME, ARCHIE." So basically Codec.

Maria is the best. She's strong.

Ah blue collar worker.

Boo augs not working well makes me worried since I do plan on chopping off my own limbs to get augs if I could afford it.

"Meat limb." Iunno I just like this word.

Also I think Jane is our next villain.

Eyup Jane is evil.

MARIA THIS IS A SIGN YOU SHOULD GET SWOLE TOO. HIT THE GYM, ROCK LEE THE SHIT OUT OF IT SO YOU CAN BEAT YOUR FRIEND THROUGH SHEER HUMAN STRENGTH.

Wait Youko's a smart kid? Oh yeah I forgot about that.

*history buffs rees in the distance*

"Archie Notes" as in Archie was telling her stuff and she was writing it down or was she writing down stuff about Archie? I do like this detail tho.

Translation: Youko, make a goddamn super suit.

fuck you techne high, that is classist/racist/whateverthefuck you are discriminating people for what they are on the surface. #METAL4EVER

Again, loving the descriptions.

YEAH SHE'S THE LIGHTNING BRUISER CHARACTER! LIKE...A GRAPPLER OR SOME SHIT, she can't do a lot of combos but when she hits she hits hard. I like it!

dude her dad has fire powers. that is sick. Come onnnn Burning Finger!

Oh boy, Mateo's going to be involved with the villain of the week eh.

"A little bubble to themselves" *YURI GOGGLES INTENSIFIES*

Ah, do they subsist entirely on veggies/tube meat on other days? Also classic landmark of dystopias.

i do get some sick sort of satisification having her to constantly reaffirm she's fine i know that's actually annoying irl but still kek.

I like to imagine they're literally just poking holes through their paper plates.

"What was she like?" "Evil." Oh Maria, this is why you rock.

Tentacles. Grabbed chest.



What, are they working on Doc Ock tech now?

"THE CLASS WAR STARTS NOOOOOOWWWWW" -Woolie

Ah, a very delicate balancing act.

Oh so Jane is evil...BY TAKING JERBS AWAY. THE WORST KIND OF EVIL

I like the whole "Augs have a mind of their own." I like it.

BECOME DOOMFIST. JOIN TALON. CRUSH OVERWATCH.

I KNEW IT, THE ARM IS EVIL.

LET THE PROLETARIAT RISE. RISE, MY BROTHERS. RISE! OVERTHROW THE YOKE OF THE TWISTED BOURGEIOSE. RISE, RISE, RISE! Fuck yeah One Metal Arm Man fights are great. See: Jetstream Sam.

I swear this is an ADVENT Commerical. You ain't taking my goo, no matter how much that ayylien looks like Kamen Rider!

THAT IS PRETTY MUCH ADVENT. FUCK WHERE'S XCOM.

Just as good as a band name as "Good Name for a Metal Band" eh?

wtf Mateo where did you get high quality cyber augs.

archie you fucking creeper. >: (

YEAH THROW THE CHAIR! WOO!

ah shit this is some armstrong stuff.

wait so he's obsessed with doritos, mountain dew, and gaming now?

"Gremlins don't exist" "FUCK YOU I DO" why do I imagine tinkerbell slapping the shit out of a man saying fairies aren't real.

oh right forgot she was a joestar.

"Apron Black" needs to have a cooler name. "JET BLACK CORDON BLEU STYLE!" or something equally silly.

"HACKED THE PLANET! HACKED THE PLANET!" -Probably Jane that fucking hacker she takes jerbs and limbs.

Please tell me they manage to salvage it to sell it.

"I'M FUCKING INVINCIBLE" or "NICE KNIFE." Both work here.

"KOCHIO MIRO!" im sorry i still manage archie as SHA.

YOUKO, YOUR SUIT CHANGES BASED ON YOUR WILL. FUCKING TURN INTO RAIDEN OR SOMETHING IUNNO.

THIS HAND OF MINE IS BURNING RED! IT'S LOUD ROAR TELLS ME TO GRASP VICTORY! HERE I GO, ERUPTING, BURNING, FIIIIINNNGGGEEERRR! AND NOW...HEAT END! FUCK YES BURNING FINGER I SO WANTED THIS THANK YOU.

Dude I am so in love with his kit. Please tell me he passes it down to Maria. Ahh~ Also, evil powering up stuff. I like it.

Can she bring Maria to try to calm him down? I mean admittedly that's super risky but power of love yo.

THANK YOU YOUKO. Finally. Also she's a stance/dynamic fighter that's great.

Also you need better names.

HEAVEN'S DOOOOORRRR oh wait no.

Ah, fragile speedster mode. Figured. The best way to destroy a tank is by comboing them to death.

ZANDATSU MOTHERFUCKER. also this reminds me too much of getting comboed to death as a slow tanky character. : (

So basically this is the Scholar class, except Physical based.

Essentially this is how you play Ganondorf. You wait for them to fuck up, not you. He's a punish based character. Mateo is learning the Meta.

DON'T LOSE YOUR WAAAAAAAYYYYYYY

OH SHIT IT'S LIKE ZA HANDO. Basically using the erase ability slows down The Hand hence why Okuyasu can't beat RHCP. Fuck this is basically RHCP if Okuyasu had way more tankier defenses.

I love dance battles.

Interesting, yeah that does make sense it being connected to the nerves.

Fuck yeah, Mateo: DOOMFIST.

"Man I had the most awesome worst dream ever. I had sick fire fist powers but I was beating up a little girl so I'm not sure how to feel about that."

"Gas leak." "But how does tha-" "Swamp gas is highly incedinary." "Oh okay..."

 

[beleester]

I'm enjoying this. You're introducing the story's mechanics very nicely - we now have a clear idea of what a mahotsukai or a gremlin is, what's the difference between hardpoints and 'borgs, and it didn't feel like an infodump, we just see them in action.

It's mostly got the feel of a magical girl story - girl fighting monsters with the strength of a good heart - but it's got just enough cyberpunk feel to keep me nervous.

Also, Youko's powers don't have any sort of secret identity protection, it seems. And her fights are big and flashy with lots of collateral damage. And she has a megacorp looking for the thing stuck in her chest. That's not a good combination.

Edit: Also, I think we've confirmed that magic is a thing in this setting, seeing as the gremlin somehow managed to turn a robot arm into a flamethrower.

 

[Omicron]

I'm enjoying this. You're introducing the story's mechanics very nicely - we now have a clear idea of what a mahotsukai or a gremlin is, what's the difference between hardpoints and 'borgs, and it didn't feel like an infodump, we just see them in action.

It's mostly got the feel of a magical girl story - girl fighting monsters with the strength of a good heart - but it's got just enough cyberpunk feel to keep me nervous.

Also, Youko's powers don't have any sort of secret identity protection, it seems. And her fights are big and flashy with lots of collateral damage. And she has a megacorp looking for the thing stuck in her chest. That's not a good combination.

Edit: Also, I think we've confirmed that magic is a thing in this setting, seeing as the gremlin somehow managed to turn a robot arm into a flamethrower.

Click to shrink...

Until demonstrated otherwise, Youko will assume that this is NANOMACHINES, SON

Or something similar. It's hard to get into why some things work while maintaining what you say about introducing mechanics without infodumping, which is very important to the tone of the story.

 

[notthepenguins]

Until demonstrated otherwise, Youko will assume that this is NANOMACHINES, SON

Click to shrink...

Ah, the magical girl sequel Metal Gear Rising always needed.

 

[beleester]

Until demonstrated otherwise, Youko will assume that this is NANOMACHINES, SON

Or something similar. It's hard to get into why some things work while maintaining what you say about introducing mechanics without infodumping, which is very important to the tone of the story.

Click to shrink...

I'm just saying my deductions. Obviously, the characters in the story have their own ideas about what technology can and can't do.

 

[LSkullD]

Until demonstrated otherwise, Youko will assume that this is NANOMACHINES, SON

Or something similar. It's hard to get into why some things work while maintaining what you say about introducing mechanics without infodumping, which is very important to the tone of the story.

Click to shrink...

Also, introduce a character flaw in your third chapter.

That makes characters more relatable.

 

[Spectrum]

This is interesting. The characters don't seem one-note, the setting is pretty distinctive so far, your fight scenes are good, and I don't hate your protagonist.

My lone complaint is that this is mahou shoujo in a high school setting (futuristic cyberpunk or otherwise) but is, thus far, desperately low on yuriyuri content.

 

[frozenchicken]

Ah, the magical girl sequel Metal Gear Rising always needed.

Click to shrink...

I changed my 'funny' rating to a 'like' because you speak truth.

This is interesting. The characters don't seem one-note, the setting is pretty distinctive so far, your fight scenes are good, and I don't hate your protagonist.

My lone complaint is that this is mahou shoujo in a high school setting (futuristic cyberpunk or otherwise) but is, thus far, desperately low on yuriyuri content.

Click to shrink...

.....

...As does this person.

 

[Private Lee O'Malley]

Also, introduce a character flaw in your third chapter.

That makes characters more relatable.

Click to shrink...

Wait you think everyone is flawless in here? Shit, am I just cynical or something?

 

[LSkullD]

Oh.

I just can't find Youko's flaw.

Everyone else has one.

 

[Omicron]

Oh.

I just can't find Youko's flaw.

Everyone else has one.

Click to shrink...

I try to write nuanced characters but I don't generally just assign keyworded flaws and try to wrench in "this character is Selfish/Arrogant/Naive" in early character-establishing moments. Youko is kind of an average teenager who was a huge doormat until she was handed great power and asked to stand for others. She's flawed and I intend for it to show through but not necessarily in big glaring ways.

She does have the Standard Heroic Flaw of always gunning for the Best Ending but it's hard to call it a flaw because I'm not trying to run a dark deconstruction where that's proven to be foolish. She deliberately gambled both her death and the loss of Mateo's humanity as the stake for trying to stop him without causing irreparable harm to him, and she let the mahotsukai escape rather than hurt her. But I realize that when that actually works it would be hypocritical to call it a character weakness.

 

[LSkullD]

I try to write nuanced characters but I don't generally just assign keyworded flaws and try to wrench in "this character is Selfish/Arrogant/Naive" in early character-establishing moments. Youko is kind of an average teenager who was a huge doormat until she was handed great power and asked to stand for others. She's flawed and I intend for it to show through but not necessarily in big glaring ways.

She does have the Standard Heroic Flaw of always gunning for the Best Ending but it's hard to call it a flaw because I'm not trying to run a dark deconstruction where that's proven to be foolish. She deliberately gambled both her death and the loss of Mateo's humanity as the stake for trying to stop him without causing irreparable harm to him, and she let the mahotsukai escape rather than hurt her. But I realize that when that actually works it would be hypocritical to call it a character weakness.

Click to shrink...

... So, Youko's flaw is Sloth?

That works, but start emphasizing it.

 

[Omicron]

... So, Youko's flaw is Sloth?

That works, but start emphasizing it.

Click to shrink...

My point is that I don't say "this character has Sloth" and have it be their keyworded flaw you can put in two words. "Flaw: Sloth."

Youko has flaws, like all teenagers. They'll show up. But they also aren't necessarily huge life-impacting things that cripple her superheroics. They're mostly just...

"I don't like when my friends are fighting but I don't have the skills to really solve their issues and am not comfortable trying, so they don't like each other and it starts fight that I'm not sure what to do about."

"I work at the soup kitchen mostly out of inertia and because I need solitude, and I feel bad that my friend thinks it's out of altruism."

"Poor and homeless people and people with full-replacement cybernetics creep me out and I try to hide it but can't always."

"My classmates gossip about my friend behind her back but I would rather avoid a fight than defend her so I just go in an empty classroom to do my homework."

They're stuff that happened to her in the first two chapters. But they're not huge heroic flaws that drive tragedy. They're just teenage things.

 

[LSkullD]

Oh.

I'll just stop arguing now.