Chương 4: Prologue 04 – Star Blaster!

Mitsuki found that Tomoko's spirits—and her own, she was willing to admit—had mostly returned to normal as they accompanied Chloe while she installed her long-awaited higher caliber weaponry to the assault rifle/sniper rifle that as Glass Heart's rig, then took it out to the firing range just outside of the town's walls to test it.

A kilometer-wide, fenced-off area surrounded by thriving rustwoods, alumbarks, and patinatrees, the latter quarter of the range was an artificial lake in front of a tall berm of dirt and rocks, both of which were meant to catch any stray bullets and spells.

"Star Blaster!" When they arrived, they found that many of their crèche-sisters had also decided to come. Many of them were trying out new spells.

"Star Blaster!" Well, not really new spells. Old spells. Kaede's spells.

"Star Blaster!" Fortunately, even with dozens of newly adult girls, off-duty Rangers spending time with their friends to keep their ranged skills sharp, and someone who seemed to be breaking in a new rifle, there were still plenty of lanes open for them to use. The firing range was a popular place to pass the time, since it was the only place people could safely use spells that had incendiary or explosive components. Well, the only convenient place within the town's safety border, anyway.

"Star Blaster!" Once they'd secured firing lanes next to each other, the six of them cheered—all right, five, Lorelei wasn't really the sort of person who cheered—as Chloe broke in her new grenade launcher tube with low-yield test grenades, the explosions just strong enough to visibly mark where they went off. Once she and her buddy had the ballistics and accuracy figured out, she sent test grenades flying to blow up in the range's water-filled trench. This time even Lorelei cheered.

Who didn't like a good explosion? With that done, Chloe had switch to testing the accuracy of the slugs being fired from her shotgun tube, and the rest of them had dispersed to their on firing ranges to do their own shooting. Mitsuki was eager to test some of the new spells that had been uploaded to their buddies, and she assumed the others were as well.

"Star Blaster!" Despite having a head full of dream-like new memories to dispel the mystique from it all, Mitsuki found there was something giddy-inducing about the thought of using spells that Kaede herself—Magical Girl Stardancer, the progenitor and reason that the Kaedekin existed at all—had devised and used at some point in the distant, distant, distant past and a few universes sideways.

That being said, she didn't just have her buddy Stagehand load them up so she could send magic through the buddy so they could mold her venn into the spell. She wasn't seven anymore, after all! Nope, she was an educated, legal adult with three years of schooling in magic under her hair! Mitsuki wasn't going to use this magic as is… more than once or twice because it was cool.

Nope, after she let it out a half-dozen or so times, she was going to look at the details of how the spell worked like how much she could manually alter and how much Stagehand would need to actively control, and change it all to make her own spell.

"Star Blaster!" Looking back at it now, all the magic they used to do that they thought was so impressive have basically been just lights, sparks and bubbles that had served to get them used to actually using their magic—those of them that had thaumaturgy. Their teachers and big sisters had still lectured them as if they could hurt each other with it, though.

Even now, the rules were ingrained into Mitsuki: always treat any spell as if it could harm; never aim your magic at something you don't intend to destroy or kill; do not manifest your magic until you are ready to shoot; and always be aware of your target, what was around it, and especially what was behind it, because a spell will almost certainly over-penetrate.

"Star Blaster!" As Mitsuki sat down for a moment to analyze Kaede's spells with a pair of vennfluid earpugs on, she could still hear the sounds of Chloe's new shotgun slugs as she got a feel for them, aiming at a target that was a hundred meters downrange. The mutters of dissatisfaction at any deviation were all imagined, but she knew her crèche-sister.

Personally, Mitsuki thought that getting within ten centimeters of what you aimed at was good shooting at that range when you were using ballistics, but Chloe held herself to high standards of range and precision.

"Star Blaster!" In the firing lane next to Chloe, Tomoko was doing target practice at a more reasonable range, both her pistols in her hands as she took aim at moving targets a mere thirty meters away.

White bullets of venn—vennplate in this instance, since it was just target practice—erupted from the muzzle of her pistol with every squeeze of the trigger, the recoilless magical projectiles flying straight towards their targets: moving panels of vennplate that would appear in midair with either an 'O' or an 'X' for her to shoot or not shoot. Every so often, Tomoko would reload her pistols with a new cartridge of venecite once the indicator light at the back of each turned red.

Mitsuki kept glancing at her with some concern, since she seemed to be still upset. According to the display, Tomoko's target accuracy was a mere 94. 7 percent, well down from her usual.

"Star Blaster!" Lorelei was running the same target practice program in her lane, her buddy's cane-like rig collapsed back into a long rod that she held like a baton. The emitter head at the end glowed the yellow of her eyes as she manifested fist-sized spheres of venn. She was silent as she directed the glowing stars to shoot at the targets. Each 'star' exploded on impact as it violently sublimated from vennplate to vennplasma.

As it was only target practice, the result was a small explosion, just a little pop barely audible from two hundred meters away. Her accuracy was also down to 97%, likely due to the unfamiliarity with the spell.

"Star Blaster!" Reiko continued to call out as she sent another amber beam of concentrated and contained vennplasma to the end of the range to explode in the water before the berm. She wasn't even trying to hit any sort of target except for the water, just using the spell for the sake of using it, which… all right, Mitsuki couldn't really blame her. They all appreciated things in their own way.

Reiko was already altering the shape of the beam from a simply cylinder into something like a twisting, subtly curving tree branch so that it would strike the water.

"Star Blaster!" Meiya and Rain had opted not to do any target practice just yet. The former, like Mitsuki, seemed to be going over the list of spells and trying to analyze them before she used them. From how she seemed to be continually scrolling downwards, Meiya seemed to be examining spells that Kaede had developed far later, her face alternating from intense fascination and a distant gaze. Mitsuki wondered if that was the face she made when she was trying to recall Kaede's memories.

"Staah…. Blastaaaa!" Rain, for her part, was clearly putting together an ingredients list for tonight's dinner. While they hadn't consciously decided to skip lunch, as none had been in the mood in the immediate disorientation, Mitsuki could feel her stomach politely asking why it hadn't been filled, and it was only a matter of time before it would start asking impolitely. No wonder Rain was getting ready to big sister all of them. Mitsuki looked forward to whatever Rain was putting together.

In the meantime, she had spells to test! The spells had been placed in a new directory in Stagehand's memory, separate from all the other lists of spells Mitsuki already had, and her buddy helpfully assisted her in finding it. She didn't doubt that there was more data that she wasn't seeing because it had been formatted for use by a buddy and not a magical girl. What she did find had her raising her eyebrows.

Mitsuki had been half-hoping for comments and notes, but had resigned herself to finding only a venngram chart—not to be confused with a Venn diagram—which basically showed how to shape the spell and maybe a few numbers to indicate triggers, tolerances or variables that had been hardcoded into the spell instead of being controlled and adjusted by the buddy processing it. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Or the magical girl, if they happened to be good at that kind of thing.

What she found was that Kaede had apparently made 57 iterations of the same spell in the span of three years. Mitsuki recognized the name: Shooting Star.

It was one of the spells taught to them in school, for several reasons: it was so simple it didn't need a buddy to control it (but their buddy helped anyway to keep them from accidentally hurting anyone with strays), it taught the basics of how to read venngrams, it was a basic control exercise, and it contained the basic principles needed for pseudo-telekinesis spells. Mitsuki was sure she wasn't the only one with a spell specifically for grabbing things that rolled under the couch. She paused at the thought.

"Stagehand, does the legacy list have any spells for grabbing things that rolled under the couch?" Her buddy helpfully scrolled down and expanded a tab. Wow, three different spells, and one of them had 83 iterations? She opened that one out of curiosity and a rather giddy feeling of 'she was just like me'.

As expected, iteration 1 was a construct of solid vennplate, with subsequent iterations rounding off the edges to not accidentally cut anything, then switching to a thick gel-like vennfluid, then making the vennfluid glow as a flashlight, the usual dead end of trying to use vennglow to make a pseudo-fiberoptic camera… Mitsuki found memories bubbling up as she looked over each iteration. Dropping a small bottle of some kind of drink—something called Lactokult—and having it roll under the sofa.

Trying to reach it, but it was in that awkward spot right in the middle that was hard to reach from either side. Reaching for magic, shaping it… She shook her head and collapsed the list, going back to Shooting Star and looking over the iterations as made an effort to not try and remember Kaede actually using these. Instead, she opened them one at a time. Iteration 1 was fairly basic. It was actually much more basic than the version they were taught in school. Nearly every aspect of it was buddy-controlled.

The only thing that could be manually adjusted was the target and when to start launching the stars. Iteration 2 was much the same, but it looked like targets could be re-designated in midflight, even though the actual control that maneuvered the stars was the buddy. Iterations 3 through 6 were to increase the speed, decrease the size and increase the pseudomass of the projectiles.

It wasn't until iteration 7 that a manual override was added, allowing the user caster to both redesignate the target and actively guide the star's flight path. Which meant it was no surprise that iteration 8 decoupled the star's velocity from its trajectory control, and iteration 9 added buddy assistance to the manual control so that it would smooth out the steering and immediately take control of the star again when manual control was released.

Iteration 10 added variable speed control to what could be affected by the manual override… It was giving Mitsuki flashbacks, and not just to Kaede's memories. She could distinctly recall schoolwork that looked like this, where they had to iterate on a spell to solve a maze in the shortest amount of time. She checked the timestamps, and there were two or three iterations that were literally made seconds apart.

Mitsuki frowned when she looked at Iteration 28, a variant where the magical girl and her buddy controlled the casting of a spell, but the magic for it came from an external source. This was notable because according to the metadata, the iteration was created about a year after Kaede had already developed her Celestial River spell, which as a part of its casting drew magic from the environment to significantly augment its total power output. What had this—?

A memory arose, of a tired Kaede holding hands with a green-haired girl with purple eyes. Dione's venn pressed against her own, and she gently guided it along the surface of her own towards Lyrica. The two of them swirled their magic together, Kaede's a thin stream from her exhaustion as her buddy accepted the magic, and Kaede cast the spell.

Shooting stars materialized, bright purple and crackling with electricity before Kaede sent them shooting forward, the stars managing to thread their way through a shifting barrier of floating debris, her control precise— Mitsuki shook her head to clear the memory. Ah, that was why. Too tired to cast the spell, but only her control and reaction time was sufficient to guide it. Some of the iterations where flagged, and by the metadata had likely been variants that Kaede had used on a regular basis.

Iterations 33 to 39 was a direct iteration of one of those flagged variants. This time the changes were to the composition of the stars being fired, as the star was changed from being solid vennplate to vennfluid, which confused Mitsuki. Then it was vennplate that would explode into a glob of vennfluid several times its original volume. It wasn't until Mitsuki saw the version where the star would break apart into vennfog before turning into the same volume of vennfluid that she understood what she was seeing.

Kaede had been trying to make a Shooting Start variant that restrained, as she was clearly experimenting with an early form of capture gel—"Mitsuki? We're leaving. Do you want to stay and get some shooting in?" The girl looked up in surprise to find Rain standing over her, looking politely inquisitive. Mitsuki looked around. Chloe had packed up her rifle, compacting it into a smaller, less awkward form, and everyone seemed ready to leave. Checking the time, she groaned.

She'd just been reading the venngrams this whole time, not even using her firing lane? That must have looked so rude, blocking out a firing lane but not using it!

"There, there," Rain said, patting her on the shoulder as Mitsuki covered her face with her hands and groaned in embarrassment.

"If you want, I can stay and keep you company while you get your target practice in?"

"No, no, I'm done," Mitsuki said, blushing as she got to her feet to join the others, tucking Stagehand back into her pocket.

"I just got lost reading the venngrams. I think I'll look them all over first before I actually use any of them, see if my element would cause problems because of how the spells are assembled."

"Ah," Rain nodded.

"Very prudent of you. Lorelei didn't seem to have any problems, but you never know. Come on, we need to pass by the food bank to get stuff for dinner before we head back to the park. We're cooking pasta, for long life!" Mitsuki brightened. Yes! Pasta!

"Pasta!" she cheered. The venngrams could wait. They had traditional good foods to make and eat! As the group headed for the exit of the firing range, they passed a sister in khaki shorts and a plain white shirt wearing a baklava and a full-face mirror-like mask—"Jane?" Reiko exclaimed on behalf of everyone, as they'd stopped to stare and try to place the unrecognizable sister.

"Is that you?" The sister paused and turned around, but not before everyone was able to see Jane's name printed on the back of their shirt.

"Hey, everyone. I'm just… trying something new," she said. Her voice was slightly muffled by the mask, which was smooth and expressionless, but even with that Mitsuki could hear the tiredness in her voice.

"I… thought it would be best if people didn't see my face for a bit. Every time someone saw me, they started getting flashbacks." She patted the mirrored mask, which was still so clean and polished that Mitsuki could see her own face on it.

"So I made this keep everyone from getting lost in their own minds until they could adjust." She must have rushed to the nearest makerlab to build that mask as soon as she got out from the cloning crèche. Especially since reflective materials tended to be time consuming to work with, as they needed a lot of polishing to get back to a mirror finished once you were done working them. Mitsuki stared at Jane, and found her own face staring back at her. It was actually a thoughtful gesture.

Just thinking about Jane's dark, undyed hair and green eyes right now— Kaede sat on the chair as the hairstylist carefully secured the styling cape around her neck to keep hair from getting under her clothes. One seat over, her mother was chatting with— She shook her head to clear the memory and noticed Tomoko doing the same, much more firmly.

"Yeah, like that," Jane said, nodding.

"So yeah. I'll be wearing this for a while until everyone adjusts." Jane was weird, but she was a great sister.

"Will you be able to eat through that?" Rain asked. Jane stood there for a moment, then slumped.

"Ugh, I knew I forgot something…"

"Why don't you give me the design file for the mask, and I'll go and make one with a removeable mouth for you so you can get some range time in?" Mitsuki offered.

"Oh, thank you!" Jane said, sounding relieved.

"Plain, could you send Stagehand the files, please?"" Transmitting," the buddy said from Jane's pocket." Received," Stagehand confirmed as Mitsuki pulled out her buddy to look at the plans. Ah, no wonder she'd been able to make it so fast, it was just a plate of transparent aluminum oxide that she'd applied a reflective coating on. Jane must be using some kind of night-vision spell to see through it or something.

"All right, I'll go and build a replacement for this, and meet you guys at the park," Mitsuki said.

"Join us for dinner? I can give you the new mask then and you can test it out."

"I'll stop by and bring along some of the dumplings we're going to be cooking tonight."

"We'll see you there, then," Reiko said, even as she exchanged looks with Tomoko. There were probably discussing what they'd be cooking in addition to noodles that would go well with dumplings. Tonight was going to be a proper celebration of finally becoming adults before they all went about finally taking advantage of that adulthood tomorrow, so they had planned to make a night of it. Well, they'd planned to make an afternoon and night of it, but everyone hadn't expected Kaede's legacy to affect them so strongly.