Chương 98: The Great Act II

I love Addy. I really, really do. But sometimes… sometimes she had a defiant smug-streak so wide you could paint her name across several states with it. Smiles and Smoothy flanked her to the left and right while I boxed her in from the front. It was the sort of patented girlfriend-protecting formation you'd expect for someone who was expecting to be shot at. Addy stretched with a satisfied groan, seeming all-too content to let the red criss-crossed shibari peek out as her shirt lifted up. It was distracting.

Above all, it was mortifying. What I wouldn't have given for the good old days of getting pounced in the middle of a dollhouse game back at the Academy instead of here, in my hometown, where everyone knew my face. I turned around, pulled her arms down at her sides, and fiddled with her shirt until it was tucked into her belt.

"Please, please tell me you aren't doing this on purpose."

"I don't know." A wry grin.

"Am I?"

"Addyyy!" The smug little shit grinned before confidently stepping ahead of our protective ring.

"You're finally paying attention to me. Good. Now come on, you've got a magical girl to ambush."

"It's not an ambush! I'm not even sure if Trust's champion, Trust — really inconvenient naming scheme — is a magical girl, a magical boy, or just… are the dress, the heart-shaped wand, and the massive gem necklace a statement, or does he just like to dress that way?"

"You're planning to talk about a lot more worldshaking stuff than that, Sam. If it's bothering you so much, just ask?"

"I just… I don't want to make any mistakes today, or seem rude. He might explode me over it." I gulped.

"Talking the other champions into a tentative alliance was easy because in the end, they all just seem like normal people. But whenever I imagine Trust, all I can think of is a giant hurricane, a natural disaster coming right towards us."

"And then there's the fact that he killed a Custodian."

"Yes. That." I groaned into my hands as we continued on. Soon enough, the cool waft of air conditioning washed over us as we entered the mall.

"I really hope it's just a misunderstanding, or that there's more behind it, because if not…" Then the only way of achieving peace among champions would lie in dealing with and trusting in a murderer. It was perhaps hypocritical of me to point it out now, when Addy had killed Murl, fully premeditated and full-well knowing there was no legal protection in place for her actions. It's kinda amazing what I'm willing to forgive her for. Love doth make blind, and all that jazz.

Addy tried to stretch again, a knowing smirk revealing how she was just trying to get a rise out of me, when all of a sudden, Smoothy pulled her to the side behind a potted palm and smooched her, deeply. Addy's eyes were full of surprise as she was pressed up against a fake brick wall. It was… more than a bit hot to watch. Addy and I had practiced enough kissing to know exactly how and where to push each other's buttons, but that hunger that one associated with a fresh whirlwind romance never seemed to leave us.

Maybe it was because Addy left for the Cauldron so soon, that her visits were a strictly limited thing, which caused my brain to think of kisses as something to be sought and cherished more than usual. The sloppy affair ended while Smiley and I desperately made sure that nobody was staring too much at us. Smoothy grinned at me as she dabbed her mouth on her baggy shirt.

"We'll deal with her, and secure the perimeter. You go do your thing, miss busybody." She made it sound like a sacrifice. Showing up with several mes would be intimidating, true. However, I wasn't sure I wasn't the one missing out here. Her feather earring dangled with mischief and glee. Ngh.

"Thanks," I muttered. They disappeared into the crowd, either looking for something to distract Addy with, or a private nook. Worst case, they were probably going to crawl up a wall somewhere to do… girlfriendy things. Stop imagining her naked dammit. I did, my imagination instead turning to the ropes again. Focus. You're supposed to be saving the world you touch-starved… gah! As far as missions went, this one was off to a great start. Not. I took a deep breath, reminding myself of the facts about Trust.

The champion, not the envoy. He — everyone called him he — had about five times my social media following. I know, big whoop, also, focusing on that first was superficial as heck, but it had real-world implications. Besides the money and the fame, his 214 million (!) followers represented a non-insignificant percentage of the world's population.

They showed up across youtube, streaming sites, and social media to watch what were in effect mass-produced compilations called 'making the world a safer place - episodes 1-4512'. It was a format completely counter to mine. Where I just gave reports before and after convergence events, he filmed the whole thing from front to back, then uploaded the records. The clips showed every single one of his kills in gory detail. He even had a little counter for amount of kills and soulcoins gained in the bottom right corner.

When I first saw this, I thought to myself 'that's it? People want to watch this sort of repetitive stuff'? But they did. The compilations were streamed in full ten-hour-long videos every single day, the chat divided into dozens of chatrooms to prevent the flood of messages from turning into an unreadable blur. On a closer look, each chatroom had its own little culture, its regulars, and sometimes even language.

There were betting games using digital reputation points, build and power discussion threads, a questions thread which was answered by someone called Trust, but who likely wasn't the Custodian in question, and so much more. He even had a hotline for reporting convergence events and other such threats. This was not just a fandom, this was an entire community, a little Trust-based ecosystem built around one Custodian exploding things with his mind. And that was what half the kills looked like.

The moment something came into shot of a camera drone, it was squished, torn apart, or flung into the ceiling and ground repeatedly like a rubber ball with an attention disorder. My guess? [Telekinetic strike], [Telekinesis], or some other such related spell was at work here. Both were channeled spells, which were weak until you got to around two hundred Soul, at which point the flexible and invisible tools became strong enough to work as lethal weapons.

The other half of his kills was made up of various telekinetically accelerated objects impaling, crushing, or flatout exploding anything from mimics to pain lizards and plushies with ruthless efficiency. This fixed the second issue of [Telekinesis] and other related abilities: their range was rather short, a trade off in exchange for their flexibility.

I had watched one compilation with full clips, one with quick highlights synched to a hard techno beat, one synched to an overly happy kid's show theme (hilarious contrast on that one), and one compilation that turned the few times Trust had emoted into an acapella song of ah's, tongue clicks, and sighs. That last one was a bit weird, but it showed one thing: Trust had universal appeal. That would explain where he got the rather insane amount of emotional energy from.

Because even with a big focus on the Soul and Mind stats and various magical items, conjuring up a permanent hurricane while juggling a dozen other telekinetic tasks was impossible. If there was always a crowd of people trusting in him wherever he went, he could siphon their emotions off and supplement his own. Though, how did he do that when convergence dome barriers blocked those emotions out, or when the emotion giver was halfway across the world? He's full of mysteries, isn't he?

Anyways, the clinical nature of his combats, the efficiency and speed was mesmerizing. At the end of each day, not a single drop of blood or machine oil marred his magical girl outfits, of which he wore a unique one for every single daily video. Today, he was wearing sky blue, with polka dots. His gem necklace — an accessory that likely had personal value as he wore every day no matter what — was tucked underneath, as its shiny lime-green colors clashed with the rest of his outfit.

He was the ultimate magical girl in power set, appearance, and effect. And he could have killed me and Alex, champion of vigilance, back in the dome near the Kobayashis' place with a single thought. Both of us. Yet he didn't. He chose non-lethal violence, which was still violence, but… well, the alternative was creating a new Samantha-flavored jam smeared across the nearest stone wall. A psycho nutjob on a powertrip didn't work like that, which spoke to his ability to reaosn and hold back.

It didn't change that the champion of sadness was dead though. So what did that make him? Something didn't add up here. Back in the mall, I watched a trio of Aasvex fly overhead, waving at kids and adults alike as they tossed hard candy into the crowd. Compared to Trust, their smiles and acrobatics seemed tortuously artificial, stilted even. Was I like that? They flexed and did a flip, all while flying.

A guy and girl Aasvex started a dance routine involving lots of gyrating hips which, in tight-fitting spandex, certainly was doing something for the crowd. Wow, okay, yeah, sex sells, I get it I picked up one of the scattered pieces of hard candy and bit down on it — yum, lemon flavor — and made my way to a certain cafe. The upside of streaming all day was that you had an incredible amount of content for people to interact with. The downside was that at any one point, people knew where you were.

Trust was sitting at a cafe, slurping an iced coffee with that trademark emotionless stare. A trio of giggling girls were grouped around him, gasping as he signed autographs on various belongings and appendages. I squeezed myself between them, fitting in as naturally as a spider in a shoe.

"Where?" he asked in between slurps as I approached, not even looking me in the face"I, uh, hi, I— ack!" A fat permanent marker started scrawling his moniker across my arm, stopping halfway through the second T before he noticed the second set of arms, and a third. Slowly, he looked up at me. He wasn't exactly tall. Crap, I was looming all terrifying over him. I waved with my other arms, attempting a disarming smile.

"Hiya! Tis I, Trigger Happy. Champion of Joy? Erm, could we have a quick talk?" He went completely rigid, staring me straight in the eyes. The three girls' laughter grew hushed as they too noticed all my extra arms and eyes.

"Is that a yes, or—?" Trust shot up, flying nine feet into the air, before shooting off down the main strip, rustling a neatly trimmed tree in its planterbox.

"Wait!" I cried, running after him but finding the crowd of people an impossible obstacle to overcome.

"Sin, rope." <<shooting goo>> The rope snagged on the underside of a walkway three stories above me. With a yank and my cybernetic arm's spool, I shot straight into the air, right after Trust. He reached the middle point of the mall, then ducked left at an angle that defied physics. Never had watching someone fly felt so unfair. I managed to keep up, if barely, by a mixture of rope swings and running alongside walls. But the main reason was clear: he was not running away.

At any point he could've taken off into the air to escape. He was luring me. One point towards the psycho killer theory. Imma send Addy a text to look for me if I don't send a followup in the next ten minutes. Actually wait, Addy might be preoccupied. I'll send Smoothy a text. With my lifeline secured, I chased Trust down less and less well-visited hallways until foot traffic stopped entirely.

We were in the guts of the mall, uncovered heating and drainage pipes snaking along maintenance corridors that weren't as well-kept as the better visited parts of the mall. I turned a corner, and there he was, wand in hand, air almost crackling with magical tension, adding to the mundane tension as well.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"Why are you following me?"

"I… first off, is 'he' fine? Or would you rather, y'know, given the whole…" I gestured at his getup, "Stuff."

"He is fine. Boys can be magical girls too." Neato. Time for my specialty: Diplomacy. I held up my hands defensively.

"I just want to talk, about the whole 'the world is ending soon and for some reason we're fighting each other at the behest of sapient code instead of working out how to fix it'. Can we, er, do that, preferably without pointing that wand at me?" An invisible — even to my eyes — force picked me up, lifting me against the wall until it was pushing me flat against it.

"Okay. I'm… urk…. definitely picking up some unwarranted hostility here!" The pressure intensified until suddenly it stopped. I dropped to the floor, massaging my neck.

"I am perfectly fine solving this issue through combat and competition," he said in as deep a tone as his rather high-pitched voice would get.

"Because you're winning," I noted flatly.

"Because I will win. You can come at me alone, or in pairs, or all at once, I don't care. I was entrusted with the fate of the world, and I will not betray that trust." Woah, yikes, that's… an awfully familiar take. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

"Fair point. Counterpoint: You're not the only one with a stake in worldsaving-related issues." I got up, a pair of drinks materializing in my hands.

"Mocha?" He stopped. Turned around. Tilted his head.

"You seem uniquely dense for someone with a couple hundred invested in Mind so let me make it clear." The Mochas exploded in my hand.

"I don't want any friends. I don't want to talk to you, or anyone. I work alone because I want to be alone. Got it?"

"My mocha…" I'd paid a soulcoin for each.

"You didn't have to… and he's gone." A gust of wind was all that remained of his presence. Dammit. I sprayed myself down with tidyblank before rejoining Addy and the other me's. After telling them what went down, Addy had just one thing to say.

"What a dick."

"You seem a bit out of it," Smoothy said.

"Are we critically weak to not making friends?"

"I dunno. I've never been so thoroughly rebuffed before." I sat down, taking a sip of Addy's iced tea. It was hot out. Addy looked like she needed to cool off stat, with how flushed her face was.

"I'm not that hateable. At least, I don't think I am. Was it something I said?"

"It's because of who you are." All three of me's jumped in place as a ghost popped out of the planterbox we were resting on. She was a gaunt figure of modern fashion and manicured fingers and smiles, a smile that had haunted a child-me's dreams for years.

"It's Butchbean and her bitchless trio. Congrats on scoring with yourself — wait, no, what I meant to say is: ew."

"Elise." My old bully. She, who made me small and miserable. Tanya's master-slash-owner in the sense that she adopted her like a stray dog, shaped her to be whatever she needed at the time. Elise, who died in the Creektin convergence event, and now haunted this mall due to her worldly attachment to being a colossal bitch.

"You look terrible."

"Bitch, please, I'm fabulous." She brushed imaginary dust off of her ghostly crop top. One of her fingernails was broken. The wound on her neck where the Ur-mimic had killed her never went away.

"Ghosts are real, vampires too, so what? I admit, it wasn't easy at the start. But after getting over the… mild bout of existential crisis, I'm living my best life. Unlike you, who seems to be changing ever more into something… grotesque."

"What is happening?" Addy asked.

"Old school bully came back as a ghost to haunt my hometown's mall. I never got around to exorcizing her," I whispered to the side.

"Great. I can't see or hear her," Addy grumbled.

"I can hear you, y'know." Elise laughed.

"Exorcize me, really? Your pet girlfriend should've checked your red flags, 'cause apparently friendships with you have an expiration date."

"That's not…" A brief, cold something gripped my heart, but only for a moment. Talking back to her was useless. I was over here years ago. I took a deep breath and looked her straight in the eyes.

"We're not friends."

"And now she's trying to be cute. Aww. Is da widdle spider-fweak twying to stand up for hewself?" Suddenly her face morphed, features lengthening as she boomed straight into my ear.

"I SHOULD KILL YOU FOR LEAVING ME BEHIND. ME! WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF HERO ARE YOU, HUH!?" I shrunk back on instinct. It shouldn't have been that easy to fall into those old habits again. Addy gave me one look. Then she grabbed into her pocket, applying a yellow eyeliner to herself. A metal-plate-studded glove that glowed ominously snapped around her left hand, another on her right.

With a delicate calmness that was entirely uncharacteristic of her, she rubbed the gloves together, breathed into them — and then looked up, straight at Elise.

"What? Butchbean, get your dog to sit down and — erk!" Addy's hand closed around Elise's neck. Just one was enough, the vice-like grip distending the ghost comically as Addy flexed with the other hand.

"We don't know each other. Hello. My name is Adelaide Kobayashi." She feigned a punch, stopping inches away from Elise's eye.

"Talk like that to my girlfriend again, and I will show you that even the dead can feel fear." Addy released her, and ghost-Elise spent the next minute coughing her heart out, despite not needing air to live."'Course Butchbean gets herself a little violent monster." She flinched as Addy raised her fist again.

"You two really fit together!"

"Thank you," Addy said, completely ignoring the hiss of venom and sarcasm.

"Now, Sam? Anything you'd like to add?"

"Just a couple questions." I turned to the ghost flitting about.

"You came over here to torment me. Is that all you do?"

"Beats doing nothing all day. I've been reduced to watching TV, on channels I cannot change, about stuff I don't care; of course scaring people is a lot more fun than that! The other week, someone came in to check the lights. I showed up next to his reflection in a window — scared the shit out of him — and he fell, screaming like a little kid. He hasn't shown up again. He's probably called in sick for weeks, hah!"

"You're a mean spirited spirit."

"Fuck you. This is all your fault, somehow, I just know it is." While she wasn't right, this was my hometown, and I was responsible in part for not dealing with any loose ends. I had the means. The question was just whether I could justify them. Hugging ghosts into the afterlife was only a good deed if they wanted to leave. But if they didn't, and they were causing trouble, didn't that also fall within the purview of problems a Custodian needed to fix? One last question.

"Have you ever thought of Tanya?" Elise grinned.

"Not even once."

"Alright." I took a deep breath.

"I understand." I opened my arms in a hug. The ghostly woman scoffed.

"Friends? Really, you want to make friends, now?" I smiled.

"Just a hug. For old time's sake. Who knows, maybe you'll get to possess my body." Ghosts didn't work like that. Humans, vampires, all sapient things already had a soul. No space for a second. But she didn't know that.

"You're probably the dumbest bitch this side of the equator. Alright butchbean, square up, show me what you got–eeeeek!" I hugged her. And then she disappeared, sucked up into the sky. I watched her trail of ghostly stuff grow intangible for the longest time. [Congratulations! You have reached level 72] [+7 Body, +4 Sense, +7 Mind, +7 Soul] So, we really are meant to bring people to rest as well. [You have reached a stat breakpoint.] I blinked, staring upwards.

A thin trail of red fog connected me and where Elise disappeared into the sky, quickly winnowing into nothing. Addy followed my gaze.

"You can see it, now? The residue left by emotions?"

"Is that what it is?"

"Magic is like water. Emotions are a bit more… gooey. They stick and adhere."

"Wow. Neato." I hugged my knees and watched the trail disappear before letting out a long suffering breath.

"Well. That was terrible."

"She's probably going to the afterlife of anger," Addy noted dryly.

"What's that like?"

"Dunno. Probably full of internet trolls getting angry at each other over fake social media posts on inane topics."

"Checks out." Some part of that hell already existed in the real world. And yet, slowly things were falling into perspective.

"You know, I'm feeling oddly clarified, like she took all the bad emotional gunk with her. Trust was mean, sure, but that's all. Mean. Not evil. Not irrational. Why should I stop trying after failing once? I'll try again tomorrow, and the day after, again and again, until I either have a new friend, or I have answers."

"You might not have a friend, but you have caught someone's interest." Addy pointed up. Past the panes of glass on the skylight far above, I caught the tail-end of a sky-blue dress. He'd been watching. +++ Trust had odd habits, the first of which was that he never seemed to smile. Through mulching plants and mid-day lunch breaks always taken at 1: 15 PM, there was only that impassive face that seemed like it couldn't carry any emotion at all. Trying to make him smile seems like an angle for cracking his shell.

It's worth a shot. There was much to learn in following his daily routine of mulching monsters, lunch break, mulching monsters, dinner break, and then a short round of answering one, maybe two audience questions before going back to mulching monsters until midnight. He appeared to value a daily routine which, on a second look, extended to his followers, who congregated in the same chats at the same times of day. I was not stalking him. This was just me doing market research on a competitor.

However, he didn't stay in one place for any longer than was necessary. Given that he could just fly, catching him with any reliability was difficult. Three days after our first meeting, I finally managed to slip into line next to him at a convention. As all conventions traditionally were, it was hosted in an old warehouse, the speckled gray carpet torn in places to reveal bare concrete, and a leaky ceiling creating unidentifiable wet spots.

But you didn't come here to appreciate failing modern architecture, you came here to appreciate media: Manga and anime, cartoons, model kits of mechas, figurines, fanart, and more, everything had its own stall. I snuck up until I stood right next to him. Trust had a decent amount of Sense, but his sensory apparatus was all human baseline. Disguising myself with [Of Many Colors] and a leather jacket was easy.

"Wow." I looked at a poster of a magical girl, the original kind only found in comics and manga usually aimed at younger girls.

"Feels like a long-awaited home-coming, doesn't it?" Trust froze, turning to me. My hair was green and my skin color a more mediterranean shade, changed like a true chameleon.

"Why are you here?"

"Would you believe me if I said that I'm a fan of Hayakawa-sama's Magical Shoot-Shoot-em' up?"

"No."

"Darn. Well, I am a fan, and I'm glad I'm not the only person who thinks magical girls with guns are cool. Though, I've never actually been to a con." He snorted.

"You're not a real fan then." I watched him walk up to a rather demure looking girl with glasses and straight black hair cut to shoulder-length, bow, and hand her a first edition copy of the aforementioned manga. Hayakawa-sama in the flesh.

"Oh, are we gatekeeping who gets to enjoy what now, Trust?" I called at him. The girl froze halfway through her swirly autograph. She seemed to have recognized Trust. The chances to be recognized in a space like this wasn't exactly small, especially since Trust refused to be seen outside of a frilly dress and a cute outfit.

"Being a true fan is not about what you feel. It's about dedication to the artistic vision." He took his manga, thanked the author in Japanese, and then left.

"I suppose you can make elitism a habit and hobby too," I muttered. Hayakawa-sama was making a sound like an overheating Kettle.

"You alright?" I asked the mangaka.

"I, erm, yes. Yes. Trigger Happy-san, thank you." I blinked at her.

"You know me?"

"I, erm, am a fan," she said in heavily accented English.

"Sugoi, I, er… Big fan! You make for good references in pose and the face expressions, too. Can I, er… autograph?" She was blushing up a storm. I realized I was holding up the line.

"Yeah, sure, just… write it on my metal arm." <<this good turret lodges a formal complaint>> <<graffiti is evil>> <<as an apology you must feed me oil okay thanks luv you <3>> With almost reverent slowness, the autograph appeared on my left lower forearm. Hayakawa-sama had stopped taking deep breaths as she wrote it, a focus so utterly complete enwreathing her form I'd almost thought she turned into a robot for a moment.

I gave her my own autograph — really not as pretty as hers, yikes — on her shirt and circled it with a heart and a tiny spider nibbling on it. The pure joy that radiated off of her felt unearned. I didn't even do much, and yet she was practically and literally glowing. Every action no matter how small counts. Maybe it was just an overactive instinct, but by the time I left the venue I was feeling watched again. +++ Trust always avoided me during lunch and dinnertime. It seemed he'd gotten extra wary.

He didn't even take the time to sign any other fan's stuff as he normally did. That… was not the effect I was hoping to have. Am I stressing him out? Is this negatively affecting the rate at which he's clearing convergence events?

"Sam. You're thinking about something sad again," Addy said. I slapped my cheeks and focused on the present. Currently, it was midday in Ethiopia, and we had a job to do. There was a high level convergence event in Addis Ababa, and the local level 80 Custodian was still recovering from when he saved it from a battalion-sized murderbot incursion last week.

A city-wide electromagnetic spell he'd been preparing with reagents for just this case had backfired because someone illegally paved over part of his magical circle. He was lucky to have survived the miscast. Given the amount of regeneration potion bought under his name, he had to be regrowing everything below his neckline. Poor guy. It gets harder getting extra lives at high level. Currently, a pair of Aasvex heroes were floating outside of the dome looking mightily useless and annoyed in equal measure.

The barriers didn't allow them inside since they didn't possess the kind of emotion-magic that would allow it to fuel itself from the people inside. From the barrier's perspective, the Aasvex were civilians, in spite of all the good they'd done in the past few weeks. They made a vaccine for Ebola and HIV.

From their great ship in the sky they sent down scientists from the bureau of change, who immediately got to work spreading knowledge on food cultivation, soil retention, and micronutrient flows that was decades ahead of humanities' own science. And all of it was for free. It was nice having some friendly aliens as neighbors for once. But back to the convergence event. It was rather large and rather slow-growing.

Most of the civilians knew what to do since this stuff had been happening for close to two years in the open. People were either evacuated or hiding in communal cellars with reinforced bunker-like doors. The bunkers helped most of the time, but not always, and not equally against every threat. Against plants, they were useless, so running was recommended. Against mimics and murderbots, they would slow them down, but they would eventually get inside. They were entirely painlizard proof unless they had a shaman.

And against the teddybears? Well. Time to find out. A yellow teddy bear half my height peeked over a distant defilade. Its curiosity was rewarded with a 30mm explosive round straight to the head. Needless to say, there was little remaining of the bear besides a cloud of fine cotton fibers while my autocannon's barrel hissed on a patch of gunpowder-stained grass. The African heat was doing terrible things to its barrel heat, but hey, at least I'd realized one small fact.

Outside of my Body-transformation it was too heavy to use while standing, but while lying on the ground, the high-velocity autocannon made for a terrific sniper. Another teddy bear popped in the distance. They were showing themselves at regular intervals, almost like they wanted me to keep me entirely focused on them.

"Commandos, behind us." Through my rearward-facing secondary eyes, I saw Addy turn to intercept them. She wasn't asking me for assistance, and not because that was not Addy's style. She was simply informing me to ensure we both had the same view of the battlefield. There were three of them, skipping across the sun-cooked asphalt with cheetah-like speed and ninja-like agility. They wore eyepatches, berets, and a scar somewhere on their face, with two little black brows giving them a cute-angry look.

Also, they each carried a knife so sharp it could cut a man's limb off in one swoop. Sadly, this had been proven on multiple occasions, though not yet today. The commandos were the ones who killed the other teddy bears' captives if they decided that the tactical situation was irrecoverable, the same way militaries destroyed ammo dumps that couldn't be evacuated during a retreat. Scorched earth tactics, from motherflipping teddy bears.

Addy waited with her sword in hand, its blade as thin as a katana yet twice as long as she was tall. It looked comical and unwieldy, that is, until she made her move. With a flick of her wrist, the blade disappeared into a shadow, and the first commando lost his knife-arm despite dodging with inhuman reaction speeds. Addy kicked it towards the second one, who side-stepped his ally — straight into her follow-up strike, beheading it.

Cotton and internal steel wires flew at Addy's face, forcing her to blink for just a moment. Then the third one was on her. She slashed and missed, the stuffed critter jumping on her blade and kicking off the hilt to stab her right in the face. The knife missed her cheek by inches, drawing a red line as the teddy bear fell apart mid lunge, bisected cleanly in two from head to groin.

Addy's own sword was buried in her deep afternoon shadow, the tip of the blade emerging atop her wrist where the bear had leant its shadow as an aperture for the briefest of moments.

"Cutting it a bit close?" I joked.

"Hardly. I would dissect your efficacy, but I know as little about guns as you do about knives."

"A cutting remark."

"Your quips are getting duller by the moment."

"Let me grind on you and we'll see how sharp they can get." Addy coughed at the innuendo as the camera drone bobbed around us. As much as I didn't like putting the actual process of clearing convergence events on screen, recordings like this were useful for post-battle debriefs. They could be used to scout in a pinch as well, and were cheap enough that replacing them didn't break the bank. Also, we weren't just here for the convergence.

Somewhere in the distance of the truly gigantic convergence dome, a telekinetic tornado was turning the insides of hundreds of teddy bears into clouds pasted to the ceiling. Did I forget to mention that Trust was also assigned to this level 70+ convergence event? Yeah, I probably forgot to mention that.

"We should probably step up our game," Addy noted, to which I just grunted in agreement.

"One moment. Got an annoying one." Another teddy popped into my view, this one waving a captured person around as if to taunt me. The young man strapped to its chest was likely pierced through-and-through with the thin, gossamer-like threads that erupted from the eldritch stomach-mouth of the teddybears, allowing them to puppeteer their victim around and even steal their abilities. They were an absolute pain to remove without medical complications, even after the bear was dead.

I clicked my tongue, channeled [Arms & Arms Proficiency], and aimed at its head with my Lucky 7's trust shot. The critter jerked of course, and I would have hit its hostage clean in the head, were it not for the trust shot's unique properties. It phased through my non-target, only to emerge and pierce the bear straight through its sternum. The teddy bear didn't like this. It began running straight for us, anger suffusing its red hide with glowing stitching.

I knew from experience that these things could smash through concrete structures without being phased in the slightest. Unless Addy stepped out of a shadow and decapitated it first though. Which she did, rather abruptly bringing it to a halt. I secured the hostage — a Custodian, level 31, just passing through when the convergence event happened — and sent him stumbling and confused through the barrier to the outside world where first responder vehicles were already waiting.

"So," I said once I rejoined Addy at our little defensive position behind some sandbags in the middle of the road.

"You know, this is a bit of a weird date. Smoothy planned a whole day of sightseeing, and Smiles was just happy cuddling while watching Doctor Who all day." She tore a metal string off of her sword. There were a couple more dead teddy bears at her feet than moments ago. The mundane spider-shaped bandaid on her cheek suited her well, and for the moment marked her as mine and mine alone. Stomach, stop doing somersaults, it's just a damn sticker.

"I mean, we could go on a date after this, see what Addis Ababa has to offer." Addy crossed her arms.

"In the meantime, you've roped me into another scheme, haven't you?"

"Yes, but on the bright side, you'll forgive me because I'm cute?" Addy hummed.

"We'll see." The plan was simple: Trust was all about habits, he was always working towards increasing his reach and popularity, and he enjoyed a good magical girl bit. I wasn't getting anywhere trying to run after him, therefore there had to be a way to get him to come after me willingly.

"Moe. Dress." The tiny gnome shuffled inside my backpack. Addy's eyebrows raised as I pulled forth my most lethal secret weapon.

"Is that…"

"Yes it is." I buffed the ol' fae dress out.

"It is time for the comeback of… the Evil Queen Arachnia."