With radio communications established and Hale talking to the Venture’s tech people about how to make it better while Namine exchanged medical info, Rain found she had a bit of free time on her hands. While talking to Captain Trout had been nice—although he seemed to focus on the strangest things sometimes, but that just seemed to be a harmless quirk of his—Rain was aware that he was probably a busy man and most likely wasn’t normally free to just talk all the time. And with the discussion going from general ‘getting to know you’ stuff to more technical nuts and bolts—although medicine usually had neither—Rain’s role as first contact spokesperson was unneeded at the moment. She could probably have done what Cloud was doing, talking to someone on the ship about Earth history, but that was exactly what Cloud was on the First Contact team for, and it would be rude to impose like that. Besides, everyone deserved the chance to make friends with the aliens too!

  Rain would have normally bustled about getting everyone drinks and stuff, but the last thing Namine had done before talking to the doctors on the ship had been to tell Rain to go off duty on medical grounds, something that Knight Captain Margaret had supported. She would have protested, but… well, her throat was a little sore. Best to let it rest so she wouldn’t lose her voice.

  With her time free, Rain went to do the little things that a Ranger needed to do to stay in shape. She practiced with her sword, getting in a hundred swings because she was supposed to go easy, doctor’s orders. Then 99 pushups, 99 situps, 99 squats, 99 pull-ups, and a nine-kilometer run. Cool down exercises, then a long bath to just soak and relax. Then she picked up an MRE from the cafeteria and took it to her room to eat as she called her friends to see who was available to talk.

  She called Lorelei first, of course, but wasn’t surprised when Domain told them her partner wasn’t taking calls at the moment, as she was busy with teacher stuff. Tomoko and Mitsuki were much the same, since the former was in training to be a doctor and crèche specialist, and the latter was no doubt assisting Meiya with building her science ship. After all, everyone knew that to properly do science you needed all sorts of weapons and fighters so you didn’t need to get killed out there. Pomelo had replied that Reiko was asleep.

  Rain had started crystalizing her magic into venecite when she’d called Chloe, not really expecting a reply. So she’d been pleasantly surprised when Glass Heart had said that Chloe was free to accept calls.

  “Chloe’s house of earthly delights, we do delivery!” Chloe’s greeted as the call had connected. Despite the fact that nearly all Kaedekin sounded alike, Rain could never have mistaken her crèche-sister’s voice for anyone else. There was just something about the way she talked that was so… different from everyone else.

  So Rain was only a little confused at the strange greeting. “Hey, Chloe,” she said, moving to the bed so she could lie down, venecite continuing to crystalize in her hand. “Are you making candy now?” That’s what she meant by ‘earthly delights’, right?

  “More like juice,” was the dry reply. From the sound of it, she was putting together bullets. “How’s my favorite spacegirl doing?”

  “I was medically dismissed for the day, so now I’m making venecite before going to sleep,” Rain said. “You?”

  “Reading up on our 12th criminal this generation,” Chloe said. “Although not everyone’s sure they are a criminal.”

  “Another one? Oh, that’s going to look terrible. The aliens are going to think we’re some kind of crime-ridden hive of scum and villainy like Manila. What did they do?”

  “They stole the statue of Nikaede from Hero Park.”

  Rain blinked. “Wait… stole? That’s a big crime! Why are people wondering if they’re a criminal or not?”

  “Because they called themselves a Phantom Thief,” Chloe said.

  “Ah…” Rain understood. While Phantom Thief Adler the 4th was the one Lorelei had written about first, Kaede had encountered other Phantom Thieves, such as Phantom Thief Landmine Alice, Phantom Thief Wraith Jack, Phantom Thief Masque Raider, and Phantom Thief Santa Robin, the last of whom had been accepted as a member of the Magical Girl (and Boys) Association once legitimate charges against her were dropped and other claims were proven to have no merit. Kaede had always felt… complicated after encountering Phantom Thieves. Whether or not a Magical Girl was good or bad was easy to discern. Bad Magical Girls acted like criminals, hurt people, stole things, destroyed things they didn’t need to destroy, and usually swore a lot. Good Magical Girls helped people, did their best to make those around them feel safe, and usually felt really bad about putting holes in buildings that they didn’t mean too.

  Phantom Thieves… Kaede knew that there were good and bad Phantom Thieves, but they all looked and acted alike! They dressed fancy, acted suave, and it wouldn’t be until later that you learned whether they stole that fancy painting to give it back to the legitimate owner that it had been stolen from, because it was actually cursed and/or haunted and they were trying to protect people, because someone had hired them to, or because they wanted it for themselves. Kaede had once encountered a Phantom Thief who’d been doing all four at the same time. This was doubtless why people were divided on the issue, especially since it was undoubtedly a sister who had chosen to become one. People were no doubt asking themselves ‘why’?

  “Yeah,” Chloe said dryly. “‘Ah’.”

  “Do they have any leads?” The question was prompted by the Legacy again.

  “Absolutely none,” Chloe said. Rain could hear the click of bullets being loaded into a magazine “Which is actually calling into question how prepared the Metro Rangers are do deal with theft and similar crimes. To be fair, outdoors in a public park is probably the absolute worst place to try for them to try and gather leads. There aren’t any witnesses because everyone was a good girl and stayed out of the Rangers’ way, there weren’t any cameras because there wasn’t any reason to gather traffic data in the middle of the park, and all the Metro Rangers were in the completely wrong place to even catch a glimpse of the sister that did it. It’s practically a perfect crime.”

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  “There’s no such thing,” Rain said immediately. More memories. “There’s always some kind of physical evidence if you know where to look.”

  “Well, we don’t know,” Chloe said. Click, click, click. “Mortal and Nightmare always handled that sort of thing in the Outguard, and in the Association it was the Mei Tantei Magical Girls like Detective Sonia, Frozen Garden, or Princess Mystery who did forensics and Sherlock Holmes stuff. Though even if this sister isn’t trying to be a good Phantom Thief, they’ve done us some good in revealing the currently failings of the Metro Rangers. Best we figure it out now than later when we have aliens visiting and getting killed in closed room murder mysteries.”

  Rain blinked. “Huh. You’re right. I’ll pass the word on to the rest of the First Contact team. We might actually need to try and slow things down to keep the aliens from getting to the surface.”

  “Glad I can help,” Chloe said. Rain heard something being set down. “Anyway, enough about the ever-rising crime rate. What’s up with the aliens? Anything interesting?”

  “We’ve been broadcasting everything! Haven’t you been watching?”

  “Not really. Big sis and I were on a hunt when we heard the aliens finally showed up, and since they didn’t start coming down like asteroids we decided to finish the hunt first. Then I’ve been getting my guns ready in case they invaded anyway, and then I heard about this Phantom Thief. Been busy trying to get into this Phantom Thief’s head. You know how not all of us come out of the tube with our heads the same as everyone else. I’ve been trying to figure out what they’ve been thinking, maybe predict what they’ll do next. After all, now that they have the statue, what are they going to do with it? It’s not like they’ll sell it to private collector or use it in some kind of ritual because the person who made it put some kind of magic amulet inside the statue.”

  “Ah… any luck?”

  “Hmm…not yet. My conclusions are bit too broad to help narrow it down to anyone. But it’s clear that whoever it is, they have a reason good enough to convince their buddy to go along with their activities. Either that, or their buddy thinks what they’re doing is harmless enough to not bother to stop them, so they’re likely no worse than the kind of supervillains we already. That’s the best I’ve got so far. So, aliens! Come on, talk to me! I haven’t really had time to check out the primary sources.”

  Rain shifted on her bed, glancing down at the venecite she’d been crystalizing. It was the size of her pinky knuckle and still growing. “Well, did you at least hear it was the Confederacy that arrived?”

  “The Feds, huh? So, did you ask them?”

  Rain chuckled. “You’ll have to be more specific. I asked them a lot of things.”

  She could practically hear Chloe rolling her eyes. “Did you ask them how they lost against the Hegemony? From what I remember, it seemed like the humans were going to stubborn it out even though their logistics were starting to break until they managed to convince the pajhadin and the rakido to ally with them to form the Confederacy. Then after a few months the fighting stopped, and we both know humans don’t just stop fighting even if it’s the sensible thing to do. They either win or they get beaten so badly they have to admit they lost, and from our analysis they weren’t at that point yet.”

  It was both a virtue and a curse. Humans never stopped fighting, and so could manage to pull a victory from almost certain defeat. But on the flip side, humans never stopped fighting, even when they really should and just talk to each other! And from what the Kaedekin had been able to pick up from transmissions, the humans here were pretty much the same.

  “Yes, I asked them,” Rain said.

  “Well? Come on, tell me!”

  “Okay, okay… so to understand how it happened, we have to go back to the formation of the Confederacy. The United Human Front and the Changers had their alliance, but the humans were losing and the changers weren’t really as emotionally invested in the war, so they were mostly operating supply, repair and hospital ships. So the humans approach their next strongest trading allies—the pajhadin, the rakido and the Children of Tianiata—and convince them to form a political and trade union in exchange for favorable trade deals, with everyone combining their navies together to act as escorts for their trading ships..”

  “Makes sense. They’re all trading already, so just do more of that.”

  “However, it’s all in the name. Earth and its allied human colonies wanted to form a federation, with a centralized government that was intended to be based on Earth. Everyone else didn’t want that, including the Changers. Apparently they’d had bad experiences with that kind of system and wanted more autonomy, so they voted and instead of a federal system they ended up with a confederate one. However, this still included a mutual defense agreement, as well as combining their navies, so the Confederacy ended up fighting the Hegemony because the Hegemony were still at war with the humans.

  “Why did Earth think it could get away with trying to get everyone to join a federation? The United Human Front exists because the human planets don’t want to all be governed by the same body, you’d think Earth would realize even other members of the Front wouldn’t have agreed to that.”

  “Eh, it must have seemed like a good idea at the time, I guess. Anyway, so the Confederacy is at war with the Hegemony now, and obviously they’re losing. Even with their Alcubierre drives, the Hegemony’s plasma guns are still better than the lasers, missiles and drones the humans are using and have shared with everyone else’s ships. After three months, everyone in the Confederacy but the humans decided to sue for peace, and since it’s a confederate system instead of a federal one, the humans were outvoted. The humans thought the Hegemony wouldn’t agree but instead the Shinkamrai took them up on their offer. So, officially, the humans lost because all their allies basically surrendered for them, and the humans could either go along with it, or leave the confederacy that was their idea to make in the first place just so they could keep fighting. The corporations wouldn’t let them do the second, and the regular humans who weren’t in their governments were tired of the war, so the UNF had to go along with it.”

  “…that sounds about right for humans. So, they didn’t get invaded?”

  “No, no invasion. Actually I don’t think anyone’s ever tried to invade their Earth. They seemed really surprised by the idea when I brought it up.”

  “What, really? Not even once?”

  “Well, Trout didn’t mention any. Cloud is probably asking them for more information just to be sure. For all we know, the invasion was localized to a small town in the middle of nowhere, and it was repelled by a scrappy local wizard or three preteen detectives or something. If it happened like that, we wouldn’t know about it. Remember what happened to Knight Queen?” The Magical Girl had been visiting her grandparents in the countryside and her team had ended up repelling an invasion by shapeshifting impersonators.

  “Maybe… still, no invasions at all?”

  “Doesn’t seem like it?”

  Rain could hear Chloe shaking her head in disbelief. “This is a very strange universe, sis.”

  She felt a yawn coming up, and stifled it before answering. “Well, it’s the one we’re living in, so we’ve got to make the most of it.”

  “You sound tired. Go to sleep, spacegirl. You need your rest to keep the Earthlings from invading us tomorrow.”

  Rain checked the venecite in her hand again. The crystal was almost the size of her pinky now. It was a good size. She stopped crystalizing and dropped the chunk into the bowl she kept near her bed, which was already filled with other crystals. The bowl was getting full now. She’d have to empty it soon. “Yeah, it feels late. ‘Night, Chloe.”

  “‘Night, sis. Love ya!”

  “You too.”

  The call ended.

  “‘Night, Princess,” Rain said. “Wake me if something comes up, all right?”

  “Of course. Sleep well, partner.”

  Letting out another yawn, Rain closed her eyes and let her conscious slip into the darkness inside her soul…