The sun had finally begun to set by the time a certain trailerless eighteen-wheeler cab pulled into a nondescript garage on the very edges of Grace City, the engine rumbling as it slowly maneuvered itself inside before going deathly silent once more.

  Several attendants nearby quickly moved in to assist with unloading the arriving haul… before noticing the ck of any trailers behind the truck, stopping in pce in mild confusion before slowly wandering back to their earlier positions, only a singur mechanic continuing towards it to check on the status of the vehicle and its automated pilot.

  As the skeleton crew manning the building remained mostly unsure of what to do with the newly arrived transport, there was a dull thump from the rear of the vehicle, pulling the attention of those present to rear of the truck.

  Having weakly rolled herself off the rear of the truck where she’d wedged herself in for the long drive back, Mari Prosmek groaned quietly, sprawled out on her back as she slowly tried to get her sparking, heavily damaged legs back underneath her to stand up once more.

  “…ah, w-welcome back, ma’am!”

  She didn’t bother replying to the less-than-warm greeting, instead waiting until she was lifted upright again, clutching her painfully swollen and bloodied eye with her less robotic hand as she eventually turned to face the attendant addressing her.

  “…yeah. Get the truck cleaned up or something, I’ll fix it up myself after I get all my legs working again.”

  Not interested in further conversation, she trudged slowly onwards to her makeshift personal quarters, two of her tendrils trailing along the floor behind her, sad and headless necks of the beaten hydra lying bloodied and unresponsive.

  “R-Right away, ma’am! And, u-um…”

  “…what? If something else needs doing, I’ll do whatever it is myself after I get to sit down for a few minutes…”

  “W-Well, it’s… it’s f-fairly urgent, so I was told to inform you immediately on returning—”

  Her head snapped back and to the side, gring daggers at the unimportant messenger, enough to make them physically recoil back a few steps in fear of the metallic creature looming above them.

  “Can you take a fucking hint?! I’m stumbling in here half-dead, with most of my goddamn legs either broken or not responding right, with more blood in my fucking eye than I thought I had left in me, and your stupid, useless ass thinks something is more important than me getting five goddamn seconds to myself?!”

  The attendant cowered at the verbal barrage, backing up further still, their voice barely more than a half-hearted whisper as they struggled to reply.

  “…i-it’s… it’s the Mistress… s-she’s waiting for your report, i-in person, in the meeting room…”

  Every drop of seething anger and irritation in Mari’s face dissipated like steam, her expression going bnk, lightly tinged with fear as realization dawned on her.

  “I… she came in person…? Of all the times to… fuck…!”

  “I was j-just instructed to tell you to go meet with her as soon as you returned, is all, m-ma’am…!”

  “…fine, yeah… just… you did your job, go find something better to do now, get my repair supplies moved to my room or something…”

  “R-R-Right away, ma’am!!”

  Leaping at the chance to rush away from the behemoth of metal in front of them, the irrelevant attendant sped away towards the supply rooms, vanishing from sight almost immediately.

  Several beads of sweat traced down Mari’s face, cutting rivers through the dried blood caked upon it as she stood frozen in pce for a long few moments.

  “…why the hell did she pick now of all fucking times…?!”

  As much as every muscle in her body, both the biological and artificial ones, tried to stay locked in pce, she pushed at them as hard as she could, forcing her reluctant body forwards as she made her way towards the singur rge room set aside in her complex for meeting with the other members of her retinue.

  She paused in front of the unremarkable door leading in, her heart beating faster and faster as she stared at the doorknob, every muscle in her body wanting to avoid stepping foot within, even knowing that it would only make things worse for her if she did.

  Finally mustering up her courage, she took a deep breath, opening the door before stepping inside, ducking to slip through the entrance without hitting her head or her myriad limbs against the doorway.

  The room was almost entirely unlit, the lights in the open space all turned off still as Mari entered, looking around for the woman she was here to meet with.

  In the painfully dim space, the silhouette of a singur figure could just barely be made out at the very far end of the room, seated patiently as she awaited her invited guest to finally join their unscheduled meeting, not uttering a single word as she silently watched the silvery jellyfish join her.

  “…ah, Mistress, y-you are here! I… I apologize for being slightly te to arrive here, I had pnned to tend to my wounds as soon as I came back, but rushed straight here as soon as I was told you’d decided to come visit my--”

  Mari’s eyes went wide mid-sentence, feeling a tightness spreading through her chest as she doubled over, clutching at her sternum as she gasped for air.

  The woman across from her had barely moved, the outline of a single finger being raised in Mari’s direction the only movement she had bothered to make.

  “...mmm. Mari, do you pn to waste much more of our precious time together here with useless babbling? I don’t particurly enjoy having my time wasted, you know.”

  “...ggghh… o-of course, Mistress, I had only meant to give you a very b-brief expnation of my tardiness…!”

  “…hm. I suppose it would only waste more time to address your needless excuses too much.”

  Her finger lowered itself slightly, Mari panting still as the weight on her lifted, quickly beginning to reorient herself in front of her short-tempered employer.

  “Thank you, Mistress… and in the interest of wasting as little of your time as possible, may I inquire as to the reason for your unannounced visit today…?”

  “You may, though I had thought such a thing would have been quite present in your mind as you stumbled in here, drunk on fear of seeing me for some… inexplicable reason.”

  The figure stood from her seat, her posture completely perfect in every way as she paced about the opposite end of the room slowly.

  “Do you happen to recall the task I assigned to you some time ago now, Mari?”

  “Of course…! I was tasked by our illustrious Mistress with the collection of sentimental valuables, alongside the spreading of chaos and unease throughout the city, all as an initial assignment to prove my worth as a member of your personal elite!”

  “That is all correct, yes. In which case, I would ask if you believe you have managed to make any amount of progress in this task since I first gave it to you?”

  “W-Well, yes, of course! The Guardolls I completed the development of with your exceedingly generous donations of resources have come back with exceedingly positive results from the several skirmishes I’ve collected data from, even managing to push back magical girls sent to respond to their appearance on most of their deployments!”

  “And the collection of items of sentimental worth? I trust that has gone just as well, seeing as you failed to mention that in your glowing self-endorsement?”

  “…well… thus far, the primary units have proven less useful in the collection of goods as opposed to simply… destroying them outright. B-But I am working on other models more suited for that now, so the results should improve drastically!”

  “Yes, I believe you mentioned something about creating another model of your little toy soldiers. And I believe you had pnned to take them out on their own test deployment just a bit earlier today, did you not?”

  “I… yes, I did do precisely that earlier. I only just returned from it, actually…”

  “I see. And would you like to report on how successfully these automatons built with my money and my resources operated in comparison to the other automatons built with my money and my resources?”

  “They… they performed their jobs perfectly, Mistress, collection was overwhelmingly improved and expedited, and I even made sure to personally verify their effectiveness in person.”

  “Ah, that’s lovely to hear then. So I would take it then that the items they collected, as well as the automatons themselves, are currently nice and secure somewhere here in this complex? And not, say… lying abandoned in the middle of the highway some number of miles away from here?”

  “…that’s not… I…”

  The figure opposite Mari did not bother turning to face her, raising a single hand slightly, extending her pointer finger upwards, not breaking her posture for even a fraction of a second.

  As soon as the finger began to extend, Mari braced herself as well as she could, the wave of crushing weight returning to her chest as she stumbled to the side, smming against the wall as she did her best to stay standing through the pain racing through her upper body.

  “That’s not what, Mari? Not true? Because I believe it to be very true from what I know. You performed your first successful raid, a feat I was very proud of you for, so much so that I thought to make time in my very busy schedule to come congratute you in person for it. And yet as I arrive, I am informed that you simply abandoned everything you collected for me on the side of the road as you rushed back here with your pathetic little tails between your… well, where your legs would be, I suppose.”

  Her fingers squeezed down on her throbbing chest, her vision clouding as she struggled to anything but groan in pain, her tendrils slipping as they struggled to keep her upright, the wave of crushing pain extended even to them through her integrated nervous system.

  “T-The… situation was… significantly worse than expected…!”

  “Oh, was it now?”

  “They sent… f-four of them there… and you told me y-yourself not to… not to fight those twins…”

  “Hmm… I suppose I did tell you something along those lines.”

  The weight on Mari’s internal organs lightened by a fraction, still unimaginably painful as it continued its vice grip on her.

  “But you were given instructions to endanger civilians as a means of distracting them, were you not? Did you fail to do even that much?”

  “N-Not at all…! It worked, exactly like you said it would…”

  “Of course it did. In that case, there were only two magical girls left to disturb your work, is that correct? And those two alone were still able to prevent you from delivering your acquisitions back to me?”

  “…t-three of them stayed back to… to evacuate people… not j-just the two…”

  There was a pause, and the magically applied pain once again amplified to it’s previous intensity, Mari nearly colpsing backwards as her beaten body trembled.

  “…one, then. One, singur magical girl was all it took to stop you from returning back to me with a mission successfully accomplished. Did you not just a moment ago state that you had reported widespread success with repelling magical girls with the toys you’ve been so fond of tely?”

  “This… t-this girl was different… than those no-names…!”

  “Different? How exactly was she any different from the rest?”

  “I… I shot her… clean, right through her eye, she should’ve died on the spot… b-but she just… got right back up… over and over…”

  “…oh?”

  The pain wracking Mari’s body vanished all at once, the sudden disappearance of it almost making her fall to the floor, only barely managed to keep her massed tendrils below her as she hung limp above them.

  By the time she managed to catch her breath and turn her eyes upwards again, the other woman has returned to her seat from before, legs crossed as she waited for Mari recompose herself.

  “I don’t believe I’ve yet to be informed of a magical girl of such abilities operating in this city before now. You’re certain what you shot at was not simply some manner of illusion or hallucination? No light tricks and parlor magic?”

  “Haaaah… haaaaah… I’m completely sure, Mistress… I saw her do… things a person’s body shouldn’t be able to do, ever…”

  “Such as…?”

  “Well, she ballooned her arm into some kind of fleshy sword thing, she managed to keep talking after I blew the top half of her skull off… she threw herself into the truck tires and grew on them like some sort of human mold, that’s why I had to detach them, she’d have crashed it and killed us both otherwise… or hell, maybe she’d have been fine…”

  “Oho… It’s been a while since I’ve heard of any manner of magic quite that potent… though I have to wonder how such an interesting little creature escaped my notice until now…?”

  “I-If I may? I believe it’s less that she’s gone unnoticed, and more… she’s only just shown up…”

  “Hmm? And what makes you believe that?”

  “Well, I got a couple reports from Guardolls I deployed yesterday that never showed up for retrieval. Their camera feeds and event reports, that kinda stuff…”

  “More wasted and broken toys?”

  “…the reports they sent before they went offline were… of fighting off some random civilian, no magical girl outfit or readings or anything. Just some girl who they killed and… who just got back up again. Two of them in the same day, right around the same area downtown, both going offline after sending back fuzzy camera feeds of some kinda biological sludge like what I saw…”

  “I see… so a fresh face, then. And one with a bit of a grudge against you specifically, it would seem.”

  “I don’t know who she thinks she is, but the next time I see her, I’m gonna make her wish she could die…!”

  “Oho, I haven’t seen quite so animated for some time now, the grudge must be quite mutual then.”

  “No smug little upstart freak gets to break my-- I mean, your belongings like that and get away with it! I’m not letting her get away with embarrassing me like that until I’ve made her pay for it…!”

  “Now that’s the lovely demeanor I do so love to see in my subordinates. However… what exactly makes you think your next encounter with her will go any better, hm? As you mentioned, she seems to have taken a liking to breaking those toys you surround yourself with, and for the things you’ve said she’s capable of as a completely fresh magical girl… don’t you think you’re just a bit out of your league here, Mari?”

  “Not at all, if she hadn’t broken the trailers earlier I would’ve had her dead to rights right then and there! I ask that you allow me to handle her myself ma’am, and--”

  The wave of soul-crushing pain returned in full force, Mari falling forwards in a heap as she writhed in pain on the cold floor below.

  “…what was that, dear?”

  “I-I said… I humbly ask that you… allow me to handle her… myself… Mistress…”

  The pain receded as rapidly as it had come, leaving her gasping and breathless as she cked the energy to stand once again.

  “…very well, I’ll permit it. However, before that, you will see to the repcement of the automatons you constructed for me and their increased automated deployments. I expect you to be able to gather something to show for all that I’ve granted you so far before you start going off on your own little witch hunts.”

  “O-Of course Mistress, I’ll update construction notes as soon as possible and get another batch online immediately!”

  “Good, I expect increasingly impressive results from them going forward. I’ve invested quite a lot into you since I scooped you out of the gutters, Mari, and I do expect you to repay that selfless generosity of mine.”

  “…there is… nothing I want more, Mistress, I swear to you…”

  Mari could just barely make out a tiny smile through the veil of darkness she sat in, the expression unnatural on her marbled and emotionless features.

  “That’s what I like to hear. Now then, you’re dismissed. Go make yourself look presentable again, I hate having to look at messy rabble littering my facilities.”

  She didn’t wait for any manner of response from the girl lying on the floor in front of her, standing and stepping past her without a second gnce as she exited the meeting room, the door quietly clicking shut behind her, leaving Mari to weakly attempt to stand up once again on her borrowed, artificial legs.