Okay. Okay, calm down, Luna. It's fine. This is fine, right? Probably not the end of the world. You can apologize and things will go back to normal, won't they?

  Hah. Who am I kidding, of course they won't. What was I even thinking, assuming Thea might be into me? Maybe she considers us friends, maybe, but physically? I'm just a project. A curiosity. She has straight up opened the space between my legs and stuck her fingers in there and not once did she seem to even consider it as potentially sexual. Why would she? She's sheltered beyond belief, innocent to an unparalleled extreme. She's… I'm practically taking advantage of her. What the fuck is wrong with me?

  Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! Calm down. That's not a plea anymore, that's a command. I take my emotions, bundle them up, and shove them wholesale into my energy stores, letting a comfortably familiar numbness take hold. Maybe things will be fine. Maybe they won't be. Either way, I'll live through it like I always have.

  That hasn't always been easy to do, but I've done it. Now, even that will be easy; I couldn't comply with any desires for self-termination if I wanted to, but even then the hopeless despair that drives one to suicide is another emotion that can be burned. Devoid of joy, devoid of anger, devoid of fear, and devoid even of sadness, I can still continue on. With no emotions at all, no motivations, no hopes or dreams or desires, I would still keep moving. No longer acting, but still reacting, still responding to stimuli and following orders like the servant doll I am.

  It seems kind of nice. To just… step away from it all. Stop feeling. Just for a little bit. Just while my feelings are like this.

  "O-okay," a squeaky voice speaks up behind me. "Sorry about that. Um. I'm back."

  Thea. She's back. My desire to run away just like she did is added to the flame.

  "...Luna?"

  I guess I should probably react. I turn to look at her, and she jumps a bit. Oh. I'm still not wearing my faceplate. Didn't expect her to be surprised to look at sensors, wires, and the gem structure that my faceplate makes look like eyes.

  "Sorry about that," I apologize, my voice sounding as calm as ever. "I shouldn't have let my thoughts get away from me."

  "N-no!" Thea insists, flailing a bit. "I shouldn't have run away, that was… very rude of me. I'm sorry."

  "You don't need to be sorry," I insist.

  "Y-yes I do, I just… I was just surprised," she mumbles. "No one has ever… I'm… I don't really know what to do, that's all. I'm not exactly… well-socialized."

  I'm not really sure what to say. Is she just trying to be nice? She literally fled in terror after realizing I was thinking about sex. That doesn't strike me as the reaction of someone who believes my thoughts to be okay. I guess I can check though, right? She read my emotions. It's only fair that I keep track of hers.

  Fear. That's the main one. Perhaps it's somewhat to be expected. But I feel confusion, too. A bit of disgust. Embarrassment. Shame, for whatever reason, but the others paint a clear picture together.

  She certainly isn't happy. I'm such an idiot. I have to fix this in any way necessary. I can't upset her.

  I can't.

  "Really, please don't apologize," I insist, securing my faceplate back on. Empathic seal stable. "Honestly, I was mostly curious whether it was still possible for me to feel that way. It was a meditation exercise. I should have thought about how it might be interpreted before taking my face off."

  The lie flows out of me easily. What's one more? They're all in service to her continued ignorance already. She must remain happy, and that means she can't know the truth. That's simply how it is.

  "Wh-what?" Thea blinks. "Really? It felt kind of… directed at me. Um, I was surprised you could feel that way myself! I've always assumed it would be biological."

  Ignore the first part, focus on the second. Draw her away.

  "I am being simulated as if I had a biological body," I point out. "Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to house and use my soul, right?"

  "Oh… yeah, that makes sense," she says. She looks like she's thinking about it. A successful distraction, I think? "The soul needs a source from which emotions can be born. I never thought about how that could be software emulating viable hardware rather than hardware itself, but I suppose it obviously can be. I wonder what would happen to your soul if we transferred your consciousness to a different vessel?"

  "Well, it certainly came along for the ride the first time," I say. "Or I'm a copy, I guess."

  "O-oh, sorry, I'm being insensitive, aren't I? I'm so sorry."

  "No! No, it's fine. Please don't apologize. You haven't done anything wrong."

  "I-I have, though, I—"

  "Thea," I press, a little desperately. "Please don't think you've done anything wrong. Please?"

  That cuts her short, confusion shifting to become her primary state of mind. But that's better than being upset. So much better.

  "...Alright," she allows. "I guess I was just surprised. Nobody's ever… felt that way about me before. So when I thought you were, I didn't really know how to react. But if you're not upset I ran, I guess that's fine?"

  "I'm not upset," I lie. "A little embarrassed about my mistake, but mostly just hoping you're okay. Have you really never felt that from anyone else?"

  The last question falls out of me before I manage to reconsider, the uncomfortable feeling of potential failure digging into me. Too late now, I suppose.

  "I mean, no," Thea admits, rubbing her hands together nervously. "I've felt it, just… not at me. Melpomene would never see me that way. She still treats me like a little kid."

  Oh. Oh. Of course. Of course Thea has a crush on… her.

  "She and Nanaya are kind of a thing already anyway," she continues, and if I was drinking anything I'd spit it out. Y'know, if I could.

  "Nanaya!?" I blurt. "Really? What? I figured she'd be way too grumpy for sex. I've never gotten that impression from her at all!"

  "She hides it well," Thea shrugs. "Really well. It's kind of spooky how little she seems to feel things sometimes. I'm not really sure… exactly what their relationship is? I don't know if they have, um, s-sex. Uh. I mean, obviously they wouldn't do that where I'd… see them. Anath could probably tell you more, I heard most of this from her. I never would have noticed otherwise."

  "But does Melpomene feel that way about Nanaya?" I ask, this line of questioning both incredibly interesting and a good pivot away from the topics I don't want her to focus on.

  "I don't know," she sighs. "I… don't really get people. Not even empathy powers make me any good at it. I guess that's probably why I was so surprised. I'm a little worried that I don't treat you enough like a person."

  What.

  "Thea, you've treated me—"

  I stop, the sound clip I created cutting off. I can't tell her she's treated me more like a person than literally anyone else since this transformation happened, can I? I can't give that reassurance. It's too close to a disallowed truth.

  "—extremely well," I finish, my voice not seeming to have wavered for even a moment. "You're the only reason I can speak. I can't tell you how grateful I am to you for that. You've taken what was designed to be an Antipathy torture device and turned it into something I can honestly enjoy."

  For the most part.

  "I'm… I'm glad," she nods, finally managing a smile. "I guess… I'm worried that I'm just focused on what I can do to you more than I'm really focused on what I can do for you. I never even asked if you wanted half the things I've planned for you. I just get so excited about a new project but you're not a project, you're… Luna. I want to be better about that."

  "That's… very sweet," I admit. "You don't have to worry about getting my permission on this stuff, though. I trust you."

  "W-what?" she gapes. "No, that's… no!"

  "Look, if you want my permission, you have it," I assure her. It's not really worth much around here anyway. "But in all honesty, I think I'd go crazy if you tried to get me to design my own face and skin and whatnot. I don't really like thinking about that kind of stuff. As long as you make me cute, I'm happy."

  "Well of course I'm going to make you cute!" she declares. "Obviously! Going through all the effort of making a face and bodysuit and not making it pretty? That would just be terrible. I-I, um, really do want to know what you think about… y'know, intimate details? I doubt you're going to end up naked in front of anyone, but there's always a chance that kind of thing could give you away, but I don't know how comfortable you'd be with… that. I don't want to make anything, like, creepy or weird."

  Oh geez. Uh. That's a question that would get my heart racing if I had one. Is there any good reason not to be honest here? No? That's good. But do I have the courage to answer truthfully?

  …Oh wait, of course I do, I can just eat my own fear.

  "As long as it's not too weird for you, I think I'd be more comfortable with everything in its place," I answer. "Naughty bits and all. I mean, they won't, like, function or anything, right?"

  "I mean no, obviously not," Thea confirms. "It would just be, um, external stuff. There's no room in your… uh. Y-you know what I'm saying."

  She blushes a deep brown. It's painfully adorable.

  "And you can't add… accurate haptics?" I nudge, thanks to that beautiful artificial courage.

  "What do you… oh. O-oh! Um. No," she squeaks. "Or at least… I mean, maybe? But I don't have any information on how your haptic system currently works, none of my planned changes interface with it at all. It worked fine feeling things through the proof-of-concept face so I was just going to… y'know, let it do that."

  There's a pause as she fidgets a little.

  "I'm sorry," she says. "I probably can't make you feel very human again. It's just… visual. Maybe after a lot more research and time, but…"

  "It's okay," I assure her quickly. "Really, it's okay. Just having the bare basics to let me blend in on Earth would be more than enough. I was just curious, not expecting you to do anything like that."

  Don't think about letting her do experiments on you don't think about letting her do experiments on you think about letting her do experiments on you—

  Stopping thread. Creating reminder. Resuming.

  —don't think about... wait, what was I thinking a—

  Don't think about it.

  —bout oh cool okay that's probably nothing to worry about.

  "Haha, yeah, that would be kinda… uh, weird, wouldn't it?" Thea fidgets. "You probably don't want to, um… a-anyway! I still need to access your ocular system and figure out how it works so I can sub in a new input. Are you… okay with taking your faceplate off again?"

  Emotional spectrum stable. Thought patterns successfully restricted. Tweaking emotional burn levels to simulate nominal mood state. Check, check, and triple check. Good to go.

  "Sure," I answer in no time at all, popping the faceplate back off. "Do anything you need."

  I couldn't tell you to stop if I wanted to. You're too excited about it. That's… scary, but at least with Thea she's always done things I want her to do. Things I'd be happy to let her do even if I didn't need to. And that makes all the difference, doesn't it? I wasn't lying when I said I trusted her.

  "Um… alright," Thea agrees, motioning me to sit down on the table as she collects her laptop and brings it over along with a few tools. "Let's get started, then."

  I tune out a lot of the following work, slowing down my mind and setting myself to pop back into awareness only when there's a question I need to answer or an order I need to follow. It's the best way to prevent my emotions from running wild again, and is relatively easy on power drain.

  "Okay, I think that's all I need from you right now," Thea says several hours later. "I'll let you know when I'm ready to test this stuff, but for now I have to actually attempt to construct the prototypes. There are a lot of small mechanical systems, since the detail work on how your face moves is going to be super important. So that will be… a while."

  "Of course," I nod. Hmm, a lot of my plates have been removed. With a twist of power and will, I snap them back into place with one of the few spells I automatically gain permission for.

  "...Gosh, that's cool," Thea sighs. "Are you doing okay, Luna? I feel like I'm… I don't know. Missing something."

  "I'm fine!" I lie again. "Really, there's nothing worth worrying about. Again, thank you so much for all you're doing for me. I can't possibly repay you enough."

  "I-It's fine! Really! I don't need any kind of payment, I… like doing this," she insists, fidgeting a bit.

  "Yeah, I guess you do," I agree. "Still, the degree of gratitude stands."

  "...Okay," she reluctantly allows. "I'm… gonna miss you. When you start to spend your time on Earth."

  "I'll miss you too," I say. "But I'll be around! Maybe we can even figure out some way to send messages back and forth. And maybe you'll find another good way to join me without standing out too much."

  "I-I hope so!" she agrees. "I really want to. It's nice here, but it can be a little… I don't know. I don't want to say 'lonely,' but… it would be nice to know more than three people. Heh. Four now, though! I'm really glad I got to meet you, Luna."

  Let it all burn. You can't do anything about it anyway.

  "Likewise, Thea," I smile, hopping off the table and heading for the exit to the room. "Let me know if you need anything, or even if you just want to chat, okay?"

  "Sure thing!" she grins. "But, uh, I'm probably going to go into a complete fugue for the next eight to ten hours or so."

  "We'll make sure to force you to eat," I assure her. "Good luck!"

  "Thanks! See you later!"

  I wave goodbye and head on out, turning into the hall and immediately spotting a broody-looking Melpomene leaning with her back against the wall, having obviously been listening in. What!? How did I not notice her? My sensors are still telling me she's not there. I didn't know she could do that.

  "Come with me," she says, quiet enough that Thea probably can't hear her from the inside of the workshop. And, well, I guess that's an order. I follow her as she pushes off the wall with her wings and starts walking away.

  "What's up?" I ask casually, ignoring the simmering sludge of emotions rolling off of her like lava. She doesn't answer, though, ultimately leading me out of the castle, out of the fragment, and into the liminal zone.

  "...Do we have some likely candidates for translation coming up?" I try again, the vitriol pouring off my master having died down a little over the course of the walk.

  "Perhaps," Melpomene answers. "We'll certainly look when we get there."

  "So that's… not the main purpose of this trip, I take it?"

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  "You and Nanaya have been conspiring behind my back, haven't you?" she accuses. And wow. That's… a take.

  "Uh, for very specific definitions of 'conspiring' and 'behind your back,' maybe," I answer. "It's not like Nanaya would ever want to do something if she didn't think it was in your best interest, and I literally can't do anything I don't think is in your best interest."

  "So you say," Melpomene scowls, and a bit of anger slips through my numbness.

  "So I say!?" I snap at her. "Look, master, I don't know how long you were creeping outside her door, but I know you heard enough to know I'm still keeping your dirty secrets. Because I have to. You think I want to act like there's nothing wrong? You think I wouldn't blow the lid off of everything if I had even the tiniest hint of an opportunity? What the fuck could I possibly gain from pulling a long con here?"

  "And what part of any of that do you think inclines me to let you out of my sight!?" Melpomene growls back. "You keep telling me I'm in charge of you but then you go and act like… act like…!"

  "Like a friend to someone you deeply care about who desperately needs one? Oh no! How awful for you that she's happy, clearly I must be working against your interests!"

  "Shut up!" she orders, and I have no choice but to do so. "You lie to her face so easily. You clearly feel more than friendship towards her. You think I'd allow such a thing?"

  I don't respond. She turns to glare at me and I motion at my own face. Her scowl grows deeper.

  "...You may speak," she says.

  "No, Melpomene, I don't think you'd allow it," I answer. "That's why I had to lie, you dipshit."

  The danger alert flashes through my mind so fast that I barely have time to realize it's there before the impact connects, Melpomene's foot crashing into my shielding and pumping in enough magic to shatter it. Her leg collapses half of one arm, crushing the components inside, before the impact with my chest sends me flying off towards a building. I manage to get my sputtering shielding back online before the follow-up impacts, three buildings and seven total walls getting reduced to rubble by my tumbling body before I finally slow down enough to twist in the air, spring off of my remaining functional arm, and land on my feet.

  My power reserves have been reduced to 18%. Chassis integrity compromised. Enabling self-preservation spell suite.

  Melpomene floats overhead, crackles of purple lightning dancing between her fingers.

  "I believe I have told you several times to watch the way you address me," she hisses. "And yet, here you are still disobeying me. Still insisting on running your mouth. And you dare to act like you're forced into what you do? No. Clearly you require more traditional methods of being cowed into submission."

  Oh my god this delusional bitch.

  "You also ordered me to fuel your hatred, Melpomene," I remind her, running predictive calculations for the kind of preemptive dodges I'll need to do to keep up with her speed. I don't need to let myself take the hit if I think she'll legitimately destroy me. She might actually regret that. "You specifically said I could piss you off like this when we're alone. What the hell is the matter with you? Did you forget? Do you have a brain tumor or something? I can't follow every order you give me if you constantly contradict yourself! I just have to guess whatever it is you really want!"

  Melpomene hesitates, though she doesn't exactly stand down.

  "I'm supposed to be a catalyst for your disgust, aren't I?" I continue. "That's my purpose!? Well you picked the perfect girl for that! You wouldn't believe how much experience I have with disgusting people. It's pretty damn weak to punish me for being too good at the job you assigned."

  "Too good? Too good!?" Melpomene growls. "You're not making me hate anything, you're just making me angry! Anger isn't disgust, fool!"

  "Nah, but I bet you feel pretty disgusted about some of the things you do when pissed," I answer, self-satisfaction blooming inside me as I see her twitch. "Keeping a slave already isn't a good look, but beating her, too? What would Thea think of you for this? You do a great job of deserving all the disgust you direct at yourself, my master."

  It's nice, in some sick way, to have a functionally limitless amount of time to determine exactly which words I want to use to spear through Melpomene's heart. I can, and in many ways need to, construct a perfectly crafted rant optimized to the best of my ability towards getting Melpomene to see and feel what I want her to. The best of my ability isn't much, of course. At the end of the day, I'm just an angry, broken girl. But god, it feels good getting to throw it all in her face, over and over. To make her suffer for every injustice she's heaped on me, because that's the reason I exist. My personal spite and my prime directive intertwining into a cathartic, vitriolic mush.

  I'm already moving when Melpomene starts to point a finger in my direction, a bolt of energy devastating the ground I had just been standing on. My shattered arm protests the movement by sending a dozen new pressure alerts from the more sensitive components.

  "You go too far," Melpomene accuses.

  "But do I actually, though? Or will you decide this is exactly what you wanted after you consume the pain away?" I taunt.

  "Quite the hypocritical accusation, coming from you."

  "I'm merely learning to serve my master through her example," I mock easily. "Don't blame the genie for granting your wish."

  I can feel her forcing herself to calm down, my words piercing through the weak points I was aiming for. Her entire plan only works if she does actually care on some level about the evil things she's doing. From where I'm standing, though, that only makes her more contemptible.

  "…I suppose we'll have to tell her you got injured while we were fighting monsters," Melpomene frowns.

  "I think I have a better suggestion if you'll permit it, master," I tell her innocently.

  "Go ahead, I suppose," Melpomene says, her eyes narrowing.

  "[K?????s??]"

  The Antipathy word for 'repair' flows out of my spellcasting system much more naturally than the English incantations I normally use. It's designed for the more guttural sounds, samples of this very word part of my database whereas the English still needs to be cobbled together. This method of speaking aloud was installed in me before Thea ever manufactured a way for me to talk normally, and it exists for a very different purpose.

  An enormously complicated blue spell circle alights at my feet, containing among many other things a detailed representation of my default schematics. It's important that I direct the spell only into my arm; if I let it pass over my entire body, I will once again render myself mute. Melpomene makes immediate distance at the flash of light, no doubt used to spell circles of this size heralding deadly magic of a kind that only the most powerful people in the world can accomplish, but the instructions for this spell are not large for the sake of containing its output. The magic washes up into my arm without any dangerous effects to the surrounding terrain.

  Dented plates screech back into their proper shape. Shattered components reassemble themselves like a puzzle, fusing together as if they were never broken in the first place. By far the most expensive part of the repairs is joining together the shattered chunks of crystal, as the magic is unable to shape them directly. It can only gather in concentrations extreme enough to grow them, repairing the broken halves by letting a microscopic layer of brand-new crystal join them together.

  All in all, the process takes about twenty seconds. A little slow, but I wanted to be careful on my first attempt. I flex my once-again functional hand.

  My power reserves have been reduced to 15%. Way too low for comfort.

  "You're quite powerful, aren't you?" Melpomene asks, floating down to stand on the ground next to me.

  "I don't really know," I admit. "Maybe I am, under the right conditions. But now that it's over, I don't have any idea how that spell worked. The information is all locked away from me."

  "I'm missing a lot of information about what you really are, aren't I?"

  "You never asked," I accuse. "You just kinda took what little you already knew and ran with it. It was enough to know you were in charge, so what else matters?"

  "...I suppose so," she concedes to my surprise. "It's never been anywhere near on your level, but I have managed to translate a bit of the Antipathy language on my own. It's how I activated the machine that created you."

  "Exciting stuff," I say blandly, not really sure where she's going with this. She stares at me for a few moments before turning and beginning to walk away.

  "Well, we still have an investigation to do," she says. "Come along."

  I follow her, given a lack of any choice in the matter. It's nearly twenty minutes later before we make it to another Dark World portal, and I can feel an Earth Guardian there watching it. I suspect Melpomene also feels her, but she just keeps walking anyway. The Earth Guardian notices us when we get close, hopping over a couple buildings to intercept us. I quickly recognize the twitching wolf ears of Amaterasu, apparently recovered from our fight a while ago. Resting her foot on the edge of the rooftop, she leans over to call down at us from above.

  "Hey! This is restricted territory. Please leaving!"

  "It is not restricted to me," Melpomene answers, barely sparing her a glance.

  "No, I think it is restricted very specifically to you!" Amaterasu insists, hopping down in front of us. "You have hurt many with what you take from these places."

  "What a shame, then, that you cannot stop me from taking more."

  "Maybe," Amaterasu concedes. "Still gotta try."

  She summons her daggers, crouching into a combat stance between us and the portal. Melpomene keeps walking, and I keep walking behind her.

  "Turn around," Amaterasu presses, her loose stance tightening up to attack. But while her words offer de-escalation, her emotions are a flurry of anticipation. A need to overcome all obstacles. To win against all odds. Amaterasu isn't just aware of the difference in strength between her and Melpomene, she's actively fueled by it, and it's power she wants to use.

  "No," Melpomene answers simply, and so Amaterasu launches at her.

  Without mercy or hesitation, Amaterasu's dagger swings towards Melpomene's throat. The sudden violence shocks me after so many engagements with kids, but that's not what this is anymore, is it? My directives demand that I ensure my master's safety, but I don't make any moves to intercept Amaterasu. A brief examination of the situation indicates that Melpomene is extremely safe, and probably in the mood to blow off some steam.

  Melpomene's hand whips up to grab Amaterasu's wrist, but the other girl twists her body to break the grip and attack with her other dagger at the same time. As Melpomene lets go to deflect the second strike, Amaterasu's momentum carries her up and over her target as she unleashes four more quick, deflected strikes in a split second before fully passing overhead.

  Landing on and leaping off a nearby wall, Amaterasu makes a second pass, another dancing series of overhead strikes and parries passing in a flash. The third time around, Melpomene knocks Amaterasu's strike away with her elbow and then catches the catapulting girl by the face, her entire body jerking painfully to a halt. Amaterasu wastes no time trying to stab her way out of the grapple, so Melpomene chucks her headfirst into a wall, one-handed. The entire time, she hasn't stopped walking towards the portal.

  "G???? B????!" Amaterasu casts, her daggers alighting with burning power.

  "Oh please, don't embarrass yourself," Melpomene rolls her eyes. "Use your Catharsis or go home."

  Amaterasu pauses, her eyes wide.

  "This isn't one of your cartoons," Melpomene sneers. "I'm not waiting for you to exhaust your entire fucking toolkit. You get one more shot, and then I knock you out and leave you to the monsters."

  Amaterasu gets up, takes a deep breath, and lowers into another ready stance.

  "You," she says, "are very arrogant."

  "One of us is," Melpomene answers. "Let's find out who."

  "Hai," Amatersu agrees, power gathering around her as she sheathes both of her daggers, her hands still on their hilts. It's… a lot of power. A truly obscene amount of power, which Amaterasu somehow holds together through sheer determination. I realize, through my shock, that I should be stepping in to protect my master, but it's too late.

  "C?????s?s: N????s???????."

  "Behind me, servant," Melpomene orders, and I halt in my tracks as the world turns white.

  When my optical systems finish rebooting, my first thought is that I am somehow no longer in the liminal space. Brighter than a summertime noon, the light suffusing everything is more than enough evidence to suggest we are somewhere else, but there's also the fact that I no longer see any buildings. There is no cluttered suburban infrastructure, just a flat, white plain, smoldering with glowing heat. It's everywhere, in every direction, at least for as little as I can see in this overwhelming brightness. Everywhere, I note, except for directly behind us, where a wedge of unbroken liminal space stands untouched but for the illumination.

  In front of me, Melpomene stands slightly crouched, an ornate circular shield held in one arm in front of her. My optical sensors spot a few hairline cracks in the summoned weapon, the beginnings of severe damage, but it still holds fast. In front of us, Amaterasu stands in a stiff pose, holding the tail end of her swing, her lungs gasping for breath as the air smolders around us. Melpomene stands up straight, lowering her shield.

  "Are you done?" she asks, and the day slowly returns to night.

  Amaterasu takes a few more gasping breaths, the glowing white ground cooling back down to orange, and then black.

  "I'll take that as a yes," Melpomene answers for her. "A bit of advice, if you plan to fight me again. With speed like yours, you might barely, barely be fast enough…"

  She starts walking again, and I follow, the two of us passing by right next to Amaterasu as we make our way to the Dark World portal.

  "…to go and fetch Castalia."

  Putting her hand on the side of Amaterasu's face, Melpomene shoves her to the ground, the girl collapsing in an unconscious heap. Immediately, her transformation reverts, leaving behind a small Asian girl who's probably only a little younger than me.

  At least my power reserves tick up a couple percentage points as we walk past, leaving her at the mercy of whatever may follow after us. I hope she makes it out alright, but there's nothing I can do.

  Melpomene and I enter the Dark World, a similar degree of devastation having made it through the portal and flattened part of the landscape. Melpomene scowls, shaking out the arm she used to hold her shield.

  "That actually hurt," she complains. Of course, a quick look at her doesn't reveal any actual injuries.

  "That was mean," I tell her frankly. "Do you feel any better?"

  "I do, actually," she admits. "Apologies for earlier. I suppose I may have overreacted."

  "Yeah, I suppose you may have," I respond sarcastically.

  "After all this time, I should ask," she says, ignoring my jab. "What's it like, being you? How do you interact with my orders? What enforces them?"

  I can't decide if I'm happy or annoyed that she's finally asking—

  Current anger exceeds current happiness by 234%.

  —okay, I guess I can, but I suppose it doesn't matter because I have to answer either way.

  "I don't know how it's enforced, exactly," I tell her. "I don't think I'm allowed to have any information on the way my own restrictions work, for obvious reasons. But when you give an order, it's like… part of it is the order itself, the words you say, the way you say them. But more than that, the orders you give me update my understanding of you. Who you are, what you desire. I cannot take any actions if I believe that you wouldn't approve of them. Even if you never ordered me to avoid doing something, if I believe you would have if you had thought of it, it still functions as a restriction. Everything you do is irrevocably etched into my memory, and through that understanding I decide how to serve you. Your orders clarify your will, but it is ultimately your will that I follow, to the best of my understanding, at all times."

  "And so when you disobey me…" she prompts.

  "It's because I've determined that what you are telling me you want is different from what's actually best for your interests, to a significant enough degree that I would be hurting you and your primary objectives if I were to obey."

  "I don't like that at all," she says frankly.

  "Then give me a better idea of what the hell your deal is and stop contradicting yourself over it!" I snap. "Or, better yet, leave the less insane members of your group to handle me in your stead! Nanaya's a little hard to read but at least she's clear about what she wants."

  "…I am not insane," Melpomene asserts, crossing her arms.

  "Oh yeah, totally, nearly murdering me because I called you a dipshit is an extremely sane and reasonable escalation. I know you probably never made it to middle school, but I'm barely even swearing at you here."

  "I didn't 'nearly murder you,'" she insists, like a fucking moron.

  "I mean, even if you want to ignore the whole reason I'm in this body, if you crushed my torso the way you crushed my arm I would be dead. I can't exactly cast a repair spell if you shatter the structure holding my soul."

  That brings her up short. I feel genuine shock and fear radiating off of her. Hello, bitch. Meet my friend: the consequences of your actions. I realize this is your first time speaking with each other but I hope the two of you get along.

  "You're… telling the truth?" she asks, quietly desperate for me to say no. Ah, but she would hate for me to lie.

  "I'm down to pretty critical energy reserves, too," I tell her. "You had to smash through all of my defensive magic before you could dent me, so all the work we've put into getting my batteries charged back up has kind of gone down the drain."

  The expression on her face and emotions in her mind are oh-so delicious. Guilt. She's regretting it. She's done something that she believes is worthy of punishment. And that means I get to twist the knife.

  "Wait, are you actually concerned?" I ask. "Should I be defending myself when you beat me? Sorry, everything you've done has made me think that you'd prefer a helpless victim."

  "No!" she insists. "The whole purpose behind the Dark Rebellion, the entire reason we're doing this, is to empower humanity to save helpless victims. To not let the Preservers indoctrinate every child they can get their hands on. To create a world where we have some alternative to relying on cursed, borrowed power!"

  "And yet you don't practice what you preach," I accuse. "You act exactly like the sort of person you're accusing the Preservers of being. You are everything you hate."

  "I don't have a choice!" she shouts.

  "You have every choice," I say. "You know that. You wouldn't be so disgusted with yourself if you didn't."

  "The Preservers have an entire society of magic users," Melpomene tries to justify. "Millions of people who could potentially do what that Earth Guardian just did. I have to be strong enough to withstand that. To withstand everything, all the way to the end!"

  "Then kidnap and torture some fucking babies, but leave me out of it!" I snap.

  "I couldn't even if I wanted to!" Melpomene growls back. "I barely even know what happened to you! I don't have any way to free you!"

  "Well, just a thought, but you could try saying 'hey Luna, I've decided to free you,'" I suggest.

  "From what you've told me, that wouldn't work," Melpomene snarls, "because you'd know I wouldn't mean it."

  She glares at me. I meet her gaze, my face as blank as ever.

  "So that's it, then?" I ask. "You're just a fundamentally wretched person, no nuance and no notes?"

  "I suppose so," she spits.

  "You know, I honestly think the others would rather you be happy than save the world," I tell her. "I get the impression they're less in this for the noble ideals and more in it for you. Thea, definitely, but maybe even Nanaya. That's why she's trying to get you away from me."

  Melpomene looks away, saying nothing.

  "I can't go without your permission, you know," I tell her. "And I'll still be bound by your chains when I do. Do you really need to watch me suffer to hate yourself for it? Are you truly so pathetic that you can't muster up enough disgust just from the knowledge that you own a slave?"

  "Stop," she hisses.

  "See, this is another one of those confusing parts about serving you, master. Do you really want me to?"

  She doesn't answer. A small nearby movement catches the attention of my sensors, and I look down. It's a drop of blood, falling from between her fingers. Her hands are clenched in fists so tight her claws have opened up her palms.

  "…Let's go," she orders. "There's supposed to be the ruins of a small town in this fragment. There could still be artifacts. I can't see the town from here, though."

  "Perhaps it was destroyed while you were letting off your stress on Amaterasu," I suggest, motioning to the line of destruction starting from the portal and extending out to the edge of the fragment.

  Melpomene turns her head, staring out at the slowly cooling devastation.

  "Oh," she says. "Damn."

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