Reimi

  Her energy transfer was... sloppy.

  I sat perched on the thick branch of an oak tree three houses down the hilly avenue, my knees drawn up to my chest, balancing with a stillness that had been drilled into my bones before I was twelve. I wasn't using any magic to hide, but I didn't need it. People in this this soft, idyllic suburb, didn't look up. They didn't scan the tree lines. They assumed the rustling leaves were just the wind, not a predator calculating trajectory.

  Through the lenses of my digital binoculars — I watched the spectacle unfold on the Hoshino lawn.

  "Starlight... Shine!"

  Maya screamed the incantation like she was trying to reach the back row of a stadium.

  Then, the world turned pink.

  It wasn't a focused beam. It was a deluge.

  A riotous, uncontained vomit of high-density mana and twinkling sparkles that didn't just hit the target; it engulfed the surrounding ten meters in a blinding, saccharine flashbang.

  Sloppy, I thought again, though the corner of my mouth twitched.

  Terrible form. No bracing. She almost dislocated her shoulder on the recoil. And the mana efficiency... god, she wasted nearly sixty percent of that charge just heating the air.

  Below, the silver training golem was gone. In its place was a smoking crater and a melted strip of lawn and pavement that looked like someone had dragged a star across the grass. The blast continued, ricocheting through the New Jersey tree line, blasting branches off trees and leaving a trail of scuffed bark. I could see the wave of heat ripple through the canopy, sending birds scattering.

  Borderline atrocious, even... I thought again.

  But impressive, considering her baseline.

  I didn't know what Level she'd been before our... encounter. Maybe Level 12 or 13. Still a novice. But I could sense the latent potential in her.

  This was the fourth world I'd set foot on in my journey to chase after the damned entity that had taken Momoka from me.

  She was going to be strong. There was no doubt. All four of them.

  I didn't know what she'd been a month ago, but she certainly wasn't a novice anymore. She was an anomaly. A statistical outlier. The kind of thing that drew eyes. Attention.

  And it was far too freaky of a coincidence that she was the third pink-themed magical girl prefixed with a 'Star' or 'Starlight' I'd met in as many worlds.

  The man in the suit looked impressed. I scanned him again, focusing my goggles on his badge. He wore a holographic name tag, and it was easy to read with the enhancement. Inspector Thorne. Tri-state Sentinel Association. I didn't recognize the name. But that wasn't surprising. Every time I stepped through a rift, every name changed. The geography changed.

  Sometimes the faces stayed the same, but that was rare. I'd found a girl wearing Kaito's face with his exact mannerisms, previously while helping a certain magitech researcher. It had been... strange, to say the least.

  But there were constants. Constants that tied these realities together. Like the fact that the more I traveled, the more I began to see the strings connecting them. The architecture. The technology. The symbols that kept repeating. It was like being caught in a giant, elaborate web, with a fat, bloated spider waiting patiently at the center.

  If the number of timelines and worlds out there was truly infinite, it was strange how close they were. My home reality was the only one where the Sanctuary Islands existed. The only one I'd been to so far, at least.

  But the notion of a Canada, USA, Thailand, France, and so on persisted. I'd been to a world where every major city had been wiped off the map by a war and the subsequent Chaos incursion.

  They still called the smoldering remains of their dead civilization by the same names. The laws of physics seemed to hold true. Mana existed in the same way. Systems were different but similar. It was like the worlds had some kind of shared blueprint that it was working off of. Some kind of... collective unconscious.

  And that made it easier to navigate. I could see the patterns. I could make educated guesses. The Association. The Sentinels. These were familiar concepts. The Sentinel Association was the governing body that policed the dungeons, regulated the dungeoneering industry, and oversaw the distribution and licensing of mana-based technology.

  Inspector Thorne stared at the wreckage. Even from here, I could see the stiffening of his spine. He wasn't just impressed; he was terrified.

  I leaned back against the bark, a sigh escaping my lips.

  She was powerful. Absurdly so.

  That Prismatic Lens I’d fabricated was just a focuser; it didn't create energy, it only condensed it. That output was all her. It was only supposed to be a 300% output, but it may have placebo'd her into overcharging it and putting her all.

  She was a prodigy. She had the raw talent. All I'd done was give her a little nudge.

  She reminds me of her so much...

  The thought came unbidden, a shard of glass in my chest.

  Momoka had been like that in the beginning. All raw power and enthusiasm, tripping over her own feet, apologizing to the monsters she incinerated. I remembered watching her from the shadows of the Sanctuary eaves, back when I was still hunting her. Back when I thought her kindness was a weakness I could exploit.

  I remembered Kaito standing behind her, scolding her for closing her eyes when she blasted me through three consecutive warehouses.

  "You can’t save anyone if you can’t see them, Star Sakura!"

  The sharpness and concern in his voice that I mistook for condescension.

  A bitter, self-deprecating smile curled at my lips.

  I wondered what Kaito would think of me now.

  I didn't need to wonder. He would have told me it was reckless. He would have said I wasn't thinking rationally. That this wasn't about Momoka. This was about revenge.

  He would be right. But it didn't change anything.

  I closed my eyes for a second.

  Arrogant jackass.

  Stupid, naive, idealistic, conceited, self-sacrificing jackass.

  Who the fuck was he to tell me I wasn't allowed to sacrifice myself? I was such a loose cannon it was obvious that the best thing for everyone would be for me to just die in a ditch. And then he had to go and pull that shit.

  They needed you.

  You and your stupid, ugly white scarf and your pretentious aura farming.

  Think I didn't see you stirring up the wind around your scarf with magic just to make it flutter dramatically, you poser?

  They needed you and your big stupid heart.

  They didn't need me. I didn't deserve to live through that.

  But he was the only one that saw me despite our belligerence. The real me. He was the one who pulled me out of the darkness. He was the reason I found a family.

  He had everything. Everything I wanted. Everything I needed.

  He was too stupid to understand that people like me... we didn't get happy endings. We got what was coming to us.

  He deserved better than what he got. He had his whole life ahead of him.

  I had nothing. All I did was make everything worse.

  Stupid, selfless son of a bitch.

  Fucking asshole.

  I closed my eyes for a second, letting the phantom memory of Kaito's voice fade. He was dead. Akane, Ruri, Kohaku. All of them were dead.

  And I was here, sitting in a tree in New Jersey, playing babysitter to a girl who held her wand like a glowstick.

  The front door of the Hoshino house opened. The "Retiree"—Maya's father, ushered the Inspector inside, probably to sign paperwork that would put his daughter on a watchlist.

  The yard was empty now.

  "You can come out now," I said, my voice low and flat. "I know you're there. You two have been tailing me for the last ten minutes and I'm sick of the suspense."

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  For a second, there was only the sound of the wind.

  Then, the air near my vision shimmered. Two small sparks of light - one pink, one blue - popped into existence, swirling and coalescing into form.

  Momo and Popo hovered in the air. They looked like a cross between a gerbil and a marshmallow, with oversized ears, long, twitching tails, and eyes that occupied fifty percent of their faces. They floated on unseen currents, trailing faint sparkles of stardust fluttering with white wings way too small for their bodies.

  They were adorable.

  I hated them instantly.

  "Eeeh! She saw us!" The pink one, Momo, squeaked, covering her mouth with tiny paws. "Popo, she saw us! Her senses are sharp like a kitty!"

  "Indeed," the blue one, Popo, replied. His voice was deeper, calmer, but pitched up in a way that made my teeth ache.

  They floated toward my tree, drifting up to eye level. They didn't look afraid. They looked... fascinated.

  "You smell funny," Momo declared, sniffing the air. "You smell like burnt candy and... old rain! And sadness! Why do you smell like sadness, Miss Reimi?"

  I stared at them. My hand twitched toward the empty holster at my hip.

  "If you come any closer, you're going to smell like fear and pain."

  "We don't fear you!" Momo giggled, doing a little loop-de-loop in the air. "You saved Maya! And Linda! And everyone! You're a Guardian, just like us! Even if you are... prickly."

  "I am not a Guardian," I rasped. "I am a weapon. There is a difference."

  "Is there?" Popo floated closer, his large, dark eyes reflecting my own haggard face. "The Planet does not make weapons, Miss Reimi. It makes antibodies. It makes protectors. Sometimes they are soft, like Maya. Sometimes they are hard, like you. But the purpose is the same."

  I frowned. "The Planet?"

  "Gaia," Popo said reverently. "The Great Song. The World Soul. We are but the hum of its melody."

  I leaned my head back against the tree trunk. "Great. Magical hippies. Just what I needed."

  Back in my world, the "Fairies" had been distinct entities familiars contracted from the Spirit Realms. They had personalities, agendas, and usually a healthy fear of death.

  These two... they felt different. They felt ancient, despite looking like toys you’d buy in a vending machine.

  "You're the ones who drafted them," I said, gesturing toward the house. "You gave heavy artillery to children."

  "We gave them the potential to heal!" Momo protested, puffing up her cheeks. "The Wounds are opening, Miss Reimi! The bad dreams are leaking out! If we don't stitch them up, the Rot sets in!"

  "Dungeons," I translated. "You call them Wounds?"

  "Because that is what they are," Popo said somberly. "Tears in the fabric of the World Dream. The Sea of Imagination presses against the skin of reality. When it tears, the nightmares come through. We must purify them. We must turn the nightmares back into dreams."

  "Purify," I scoffed. "Is that what you call it? I call it a localized genocide of hostile entities."

  "Po-tay-to, po-tah-to!" Momo chirped.

  I rubbed my temples. My headache was coming back.

  "Why me?" I asked. "Why are you hovering around me? You have your sparkly team of magical girls. Go bother them."

  "Because you are... new," Popo said. He floated closer, hovering inches from my nose. "You are not from the Song we are tuned to. You are a discordant note. A glitch in the melody."

  "But a cool glitch!" Momo added helpfully. "Like a guitar solo! A metal solo!"

  "The Primordial Chaos," Popo continued, his voice dropping an octave, losing its mascot cheer. "The Great Unmaking. It has always been blind. A force of nature. It leaks in where the walls are thin. But lately... since you arrived... it has been looking."

  A chill went down my spine.

  "Looking?"

  "It has eyes now," Momo whispered, shivering and hugging her own tail. "It didn't used to have eyes. It used to be just... sludge. Angry sludge. But now it watches. It targets. The monsters in the tunnel... they weren't just wandering. They were searching."

  I gripped the branch.

  The Ashen Reliquary.

  The entity I had fought, or whatever twisted version of the god had run that nightmare lab - had been trying to weaponize the Void. Had I brought it with me? Had I dragged the gaze of the Abyss across the dimensions like mud on my boots?

  "We need help," Popo said simply. "Maya-chan and the others... they are strong. They are bright lights. But they do not understand the Dark. You do. You are made of it."

  "We need a... what's the word?" Momo tapped her chin. "A Consultant! We need a Bad Guy Consultant!"

  "I'm... not a bad guy," I muttered, though the protest felt weak even to me.

  On some level I knew it. Momoka and Kohaku had won me over. They'd convinced me that I wasn't evil. That I was just a scared, lonely, messed up kid back then.

  But that was a lifetime and three realities ago. I'd spent those years fighting, bleeding, and sacrificing everything to find a way back to Momoka.

  I'd done things. Horrible things.

  And I'd done them willingly. To save the people I loved.

  So what did that make me? Good? Bad? Neither?

  "You know the Dark," Popo insisted. "You know its smell. Its shape. Its song. And you can teach them to fight it."

  "And you know how they think!" Momo beamed. "Will you help us? Please? The Planet is getting an tummy ache from all the bad mana!"

  I looked at them. They were ridiculous. They were naive. They were everything I had been trained to despise in the labs.

  And yet...

  "Speaking of which, I need mana," I said. "This world... I think the ambient density is too low. My Void Core is starving. If I can't regain it naturally, I can't fight properly. And if I shut down, I can't protect anyone."

  Popo tilted his head. "Mana? There should be a solution."

  "There is a Wound," Momo said slowly. "Not a big one like the tunnel. A small one. A scratch. The ability you used was intended to drain the wound of its entropic energy, was it not?"

  I hesitated. For a pair of fluff balls, they were surprisingly sharp.

  "Yes," I said. "That's the theory. But I lost consciousness before I could complete it. From what I can tell though, there are no dungeons within a hundred miles of here that would have enough power to replenish me. And without power, I can't collapse them safely."

  "No," Momo agreed. "But this Wound... it has the scent of the Void. It has been... tampered with. Corrupted. It is small, but it is growing. If left untreated, it could become very dangerous."

  "We would not normally ask a fledgling Guardian to attempt to cleanse a Wound," Popo said. "But you are... not a normal Guardian."

  "Where is the dungeon?" I demanded, grabbing the branch.

  "Somewhere dark, and scary!" Momo chirped. "With lots of concrete, iron, and spooky noises!"

  "The abandoned railyard," Popo added, nodding his head while crossing his stubby paws across his chest like arms.

  I let out a breath. "Figures. It's always the subways and train station, isn't it?"

  "We can show you the way," Popo said. "We can even open the entrance. The veil is thin there. The nightmares are leaking. Little ones. Imps. Shades."

  "Sounds like an all-you-can-eat buffet," I muttered, already plotting a course in my mind.

  "And if you fill up, you'll help us?" Momo pressed, leaning in so close I could smell her. She smelled like cotton candy.

  "I'll help," I grunted. "But I don't do the cute stuff. No frills, no sparkles, no theme music. I'm not a mascot. I'm an exterminator. You want someone to hold hands and sing about rainbows and friendship? Ask someone else."

  "Deal!" Momo squeaked, clapping her little paws. "Oh, Popo! Isn't this great? We have a new friend! We have a Cool Big Sis!"

  Popo regarded me with his solemn blue eyes, and I couldn't shake the feeling that he was measuring my soul somehow. Like I was a book and he was thumbing through the pages, reading the chapters of my life.

  "You'll do," he said finally. "Welcome to the team, Cool Big Sis."

  "Call me Cool Big SIs again, and I'm feeding you to an Imp," I growled, swinging down from the branch. I landed lightly on the pavement.

  "Oooh!" Momo squealed.

  "Just one thing. I'm dragging the pink eyesore and her friends along. They will be bait. They will get the dungeon to reveal its core, and then I will extract it."

  "Bait!" Momo gasped, her eyes sparkling. "So... Cool. So... Badass! Oh my god! Let's go prepare Maya! She'll be so excited to be bait!"

  Popo turned to me with a small, thoughtful frown.

  "It is strange," Popo mused. "Your power. Your smell. I cannot place it. But it feels... familiar. Like I have sensed it before."

  A jolt of electricity went down my spine.

  "Probably just gas," I said, stretching out on the tree. "Now go away," I said, waving my hand. "Before I decide you look like a snack."

  They squeaked and vanished in a puff of glitter.

  I sat alone in the tree.

  Guardians of the Planet, I thought. Antibodies.

  It made sense. It wouldn't be unusual for a world to have an immune system. In my world, the immune system had been burned out years before it had ended by the activities of Madame Ignis - my so-called mother ages ago. Here, it was still active. It was cute, and fluffy, and woefully underprepared for what was coming.

  I pulled a protein bar from my pocket. One I’d swiped from the pantry while Maya was distracting her parents with the explosion. I unwrapped it and took a bite. It tasted like chalk and chocolate.

  How did I get here?

  The question had been gnawing at me since I woke up.

  I remembered the end. The sky tearing open. The Reliquary's citadel crumbling. I remembered chasing the Administrator - the false Hephaestus - into the core of the Singularity.

  I remembered chasing Momoka through the void. I'd grabbed her hand. I'd pulled her out. And then...

  Nothing. The Void had consumed me. Consumed us. I'd lost consciousness.

  I remembered walking through a wasteland after, gunning down chaos beast after chaos beast, trying to fight my way back to a world that no longer existed. But it was hazy, like a dream. I couldn't tell where reality ended and the nightmares began.

  Another world. Helping a magical researcher and scientist. Kicking the shit out of a rogue AI that was trying to take over a planet and unleash the Azure Blight on it.

  Then I was here, with these new girls. The ones with the sparkly eyes and perfect family.

  It made sense. And yet... something was wrong. Something was missing. There was something... something I wasn't remembering. Something important.

  I took another bite of the protein bar.

  I remembered the fire. The cold.

  And then... a gap.

  A massive, black hole in my memory.

  I didn't remember entering the Solar Sarcophagus. I didn't remember setting the coordinates.

  The Sarcophagus wasn't a transport pod. It was a stasis unit. A coffin. It was designed to keep a Void Knight from that world alive in suspended animation between deployments. It didn't have a dimensional drive.

  So how did it cross the rift?

  Who or what, sent me here?

  I chewed the protein bar, staring at the Hoshino house.

  My head throbbed. The memory block felt artificial. Smooth. Deliberate. Like someone had edited the file of my life and hit 'save.'

  I looked at my hand. The scars were there. The calluses from the Withered Calyx were there. I was real. I was here.

  But I felt like a piece on a board I couldn't see.

  Below me, the front door opened again. Inspector Thorne stepped out, shaking hands with Maya's dad. He looked suspicious, but satisfied. He walked to his car, a sleek black sedan, and drove off.

  The coast was clear.

  I finished the bar and stuffed the wrapper in my pocket.

  "Time to go home," I whispered.

  The word felt strange on my tongue. Home.

  This wasn't my home. This was a dollhouse. A temporary shelter.

  But tonight... tonight we were going to the railyard. Tonight, I would get to hunt again.

  And maybe, in the blood and the noise and the violence, I would find something that felt real.

  I dropped from the tree, landing silently in the grass, and slipped through the back gate just as Maya came out onto the porch to stare at the crater she’d made.

  She looked terrified. She looked exhilarated.

  She looked like a girl who had just realized the world was bigger, and sharper, than she had ever imagined.

  I didn't know why I was alive. Why I was here. Why I had been spared. All I knew was that I needed to get back to Momoka. No matter what.

  Even if I had to kill a million monsters to get there. Even if I had to tear the walls between worlds apart. Even if I had to burn this world to cinders to get home. I would do it.

  For her.

  I had a promise to keep, after all.

  I walked up behind Maya.

  "Nice shot," I said.

  Maya jumped about a foot in the air, spinning around. "Reimi! Oh my gosh! You're back! Where were you?"

  "Around," I said. "Walking."

  I looked at the melted golem.

  "Your aim pulls to the left," I noted. "And you telegraph your cast. A real threat would have taken your head off before you finished the incantation."

  Maya blinked. "Uhh... thanks?"

  "But the output," I admitted, looking her in the eye. "The output was fairly adequate."

  Maya beamed. It was blinding. "Really?"

  "Don't let it go to your head," I grunted, walking past her toward the sliding glass door. "We have work to do tonight."

  "Work?" Maya asked, trotting after me. "What kind of work?"

  I paused at the door. I looked back at her, and for the first time, I let a small, sharp smile touch my lips.

  "Field trip," I said. "Get your friends. We're going to the railyard."

  "Why?"

  "Because," I said, rolling my eyes. "The Planet has a tummy ache. And we're the cure."