"…Aw man," Anath grimaces. "Do I have to? You're no fun to fight."

  "You need to establish a better balance between enjoying a battle and actually winning it," Nanaya chides. "Considering that you have yet to best me, perhaps having a partner will be of some assistance to you."

  Oh boy. Considering how I've seen Anath fight, I don't know if I'll be much help against someone she's apparently never beaten. By my own assessment, I think one of my big weaknesses is offense. I'm good at dodging, I'm good at punching, and my shield is apparently a lot more impressive than the defenses of children, but those defenses are still enough that just hitting them with a fist isn't likely to do very much. Yeah, I punched Anath pretty hard, but it didn't do anything close to the amount of damage that spells seem to dish out. And I guess I can dish out spells, but they are costly. Usually a full percentage point or two. Combat already drains my resources by the second, so that's a big ask.

  Worse, it's relatively easy to be sad when I'm forced to beat up Earth Guardians. I don't think I'm going to get very sad trying to punch this bitch. Annoyance doesn't burn quite as well. But hey, it's not like I can say no.

  "Let's show her what for, Anath!" I declare, shadowboxing the air a little.

  "Your form is terrible," Nanaya says.

  "Whaddya want from me? I'm a robot, not a martial artist. Oh! I wonder if you can upload kung fu into me like The Matrix."

  "Oh my gosh, yeah!" Anath lights up. "That would be so awesome!"

  "I do not believe that is how it works," Nanaya says flatly. "I will use this initial spar to determine what it is you still need to learn, and then I will teach you. Whether your new body will be an asset or a hindrance to this remains to be seen."

  "Hey, you know me baby. I'm all assets. Non-liquid, on your evil accounting sheet. Oooh, maybe I'm tax deductible."

  "I am going to attack now," Nanaya glowers. "I think you will find such banter to be disadvantageous in combat."

  "Are you sure? Cuz like, Spider-Man has this thing where he relies on his spider sense so much in combat that he mostly dodges on reflex and can devote his brainpower to being really funny, and I sort of have a thing like that going on because—"

  I've detected high-velocity mass on trajectory to connect with me. Which like, yeah, of course I have. Nanaya is leaping forward, the three arms on the right side of her body combined into a single fist aimed right at my head. The trajectories calculated, I lean very slightly out of the way.

  "—my—"

  The arm splits up shortly before reaching me, transitioning from a punch to a grapple as different hands reorient to different parts of my body. They're all still fairly tightly grouped, though, so I bring one of my arms up to intercept all three of her grasping limbs, knocking them off-course just below the wrist.

  "—brain—"

  Her initial strike deflected, Nanaya pivots on her forward leg and twists her entire body into a kick. I can already tell that this will have too much force to properly deflect, so I leap into the air, up and over it.

  "—can—"

  Her kick swishes underneath me, my dodge having accounted even for the absurd range of her freakish toes. But before I can land, she aims another grapple at my ankle, and without a solid surface to alter my trajectory I have no way to reposition other than my thrusters. I start to deploy one… no, too slow. She grabs me.

  "—speed—"

  I should have deployed thrusters preemptively the moment I decided to jump in order to account for this weakness. I'll remember that next time. For now, I'm being swung at Anath to presumably force her into the fight, but I weigh a lot and I can probably fuck up Nanaya's balance during the swing. I scrunch up into a ball and grab Nanaya's wrist moments before she tries to throw me.

  "—up—"

  Nanaya is barely fazed, grabbing back onto me the moment I try to reverse the grapple and directing my momentum towards the ground instead of Anath. I impact hard, and though it doesn't do much damage I'm now on the ground directly below her. A followup kick is imminent. I try to push myself up out of the way but I can tell I'll be too slow, so as I shove myself up into the air I prepare to catch her leg with both arms, cushioning the impact as much as I can.

  "—and—"

  It still hits pretty hard, but using the momentum of the strike I can finally allow myself to be knocked away so I have enough distance to get back upright. I watch Nanaya's legs tense, her eyes zeroing in on me like a cat about to pounce, and I realize I didn't account for the possibility that she could dash towards me faster than she knocked me away. But the moment of apparent instinct passes, and Nanaya relaxes again, allowing me to land safely on my feet.

  "—I can just decide everything I want to say really fast right at the beginning and set it to play as an audio file," I finish. "It doesn't take my active attention. Also: holy shit you're fast."

  "You really are a machine," Nanaya hums. "Your reflexes and precision are exceptional, you simply do not know what to do with them. This is a very fixable problem."

  "Woah!" Anath says. "Nanaya, how come you never call me exceptional?"

  "Your audacity is exceptional," Nanaya says.

  "Aw, heck yeah!" Anath grins. "That's good, right?"

  "It has its place," Nanaya says. "Speaking of things that have their place—"

  Hehe. That's me.

  "—talking during combat, if it is truly not distracting to you, can be a viable strategy to bait your opponent off guard or to affect their emotions. However, this is only beneficial if you are careful with how those emotions are affected. It does not benefit you to, for example, annoy a red mage."

  "Yeah, but who else am I gonna annoy?" I ask. "I'm not allowed to talk to Earth Guardians. Melpomene thinks it might get the Preservers too interested in me for my own safety."

  Probably a lie, and definitely a lie in the sense that it's not her primary motivation, but the moment I mentioned one of my restrictions I felt the need to justify it as per my orders. It's only for my own safety! Truly, I am not complaining about anything because I have nothing to complain about.

  "Oh yeah, that makes sense," Anath nods.

  It does!? I pulled that right out of my shiny metal ass. I mean, I guess I have a really good poker face, but still! No, wait. Now that I think about it, the girls here are all probably a little bit… socially stunted? All of them have only had three other people to talk to for years now.

  Oh no. Accidentally getting caught on my lies is going to be a lot harder than I thought. Thea is too innocent and Anath is too stupid!

  "You will join as well now, Anath," Nanaya instructs.

  "Nnnnno! I don't wanna!"

  "Very well, then."

  Nanaya holds her palms face up, her arms outstretched, and red light starts to coalesce within her grasp. In one hand, it forms into the shape of… a violin? No, too big for that. A viola. In the other hand she summons the instrument's bow. The incarnate weapons flash into full solidity, made not of wood but of some shiny, brilliantly pristine white material with lines of pulsing red dancing down their forms. The hair of the viola's bow, as well as the strings of the instrument, are a glowing red energy rather than anything material. It's a remarkably beautiful instrument, lovely and refined in a way that I never expected from Nanaya. I've never been great with the whole violin family, but I'd love to try playing it. I watch as she carefully brings the instrument up to her shoulder, nestling it under her chin as she prepares to begin a piece.

  "Shit!" Anath yelps, leaping forward directly at Nanaya. In response, Nanaya immediately whips the viola out of playing position, swinging it like a club in a terrifying flash of red and white. The bout connects with Anath's cheek dead-on, lifting her off the ground and sending her tumbling across the floor with what would be a caved-in skull for anyone who wasn't half evil monster.

  I don't think I've ever seen a more horrifically offensive use of a viola in my entire life.

  "Don't let her play!" Anath shouts.

  "But now I'm curious," I insist. "Does an instrument abuser even know how?"

  Nanaya's beady red eyes lock onto me in an instant, a furious expression on her face. The arm holding her bow splits apart, one hand still holding on while another draws back on the hair for some fucking insane reason… and a glowing red arrow appears nocked between her fingers.

  Oh my god.

  "That's NOT THAT KIND OF BOW!" I accuse, but I'm forced to dodge bolt after bolt of red magic viola abuse as I charge at her. She brings the body of the instrument back up to her shoulder as she does, spinning around and intercepting another charge from Anath with a kick.

  "It is a weapon," Nanaya says. "Like you. It exists to be used however it is needed."

  Seeing an opening, I deploy the thrusters on my back and launch towards her with a burst of speed, staying low enough to the ground to kick off of it if needed. Anath and I are attacking from opposite sides now, so as Nanaya recovers from her kick, she has her back exposed to me. …Not that I expect this to be enough. I burn the energy needed to keep time feeling as slow as possible, waiting for a single twitch from her body to indicate her response. It comes. She's using the viola as a club again.

  My sensors inform me that taking the attack head-on, even properly blocking it, is a terrible idea. It might be shaped like an instrument, but it's still an incarnate weapon. Summoned by magic, maintained by magic, it will wreak havoc on my shields like a direct hit from a combat spell. So I duck, avoiding her wild backhand swing and aiming a punch directly into her gut. Again, she somehow reacts the moment I commit, taking the force of her body's rotation and putting it into a rising knee to my face.

  Thing is, I don't really have to protect my face. It's not only shielded, but my neck is one of the most flexible parts of my body, so a lot of the direct force of the impact can just be bled off by letting my head snap back. I definitely wouldn't like it if the relatively fragile sensory equipment inside gets damaged, but again, that's what the shielding is for, and even if that fails I can still fight without my entire head.

  I take the blow on the chin and drive my fist into Nanaya's stomach, hitting mostly crystal. If I was human, I would have ripped a huge hole in my own hand, but my metallic fingers hold and instead the force of my blow is concentrated into the base of where the crystal grows. Nanaya grunts in pain—the only music she's performed so far, and all for the low low price of two percent power reserves. I'm happy to hurt my captor for two percent power reserves.

  …Which I guess is technically a problem. I'm honestly kind of having fun here, getting to beat up Nanaya. I mean, this is the first time I've actually successfully hit her, but nothing she does in return can hurt me so I'm okay with it. Taking advantage of my unnatural durability seems like a good way to catch Nanaya off guard.

  "R?????? B??s?," Nanaya growls through gritted teeth.

  A red sphere of power erupts from Nanaya's body, knocking me away and catching Anath as she tries to attack from behind like I did. We're both flung back against the outside walls of the room, smashing into them but not hard enough to crack the strange stone that the castle is made of. That… was weird. With the degree of time acceleration I had going on, I should have had plenty of time to react before Nanaya finished speaking the first syllable. Sometimes I manage to cut people off during their casts, but sometimes I don't.

  "Does casting magic fuck with time?" I ask.

  "R???????s D????."

  "What, is this not a safe space to ask questions, orrrrrfffffshkt—"

  My speech fizzles and glitches out as Nanaya brings her instrument into a perfect playing position so quickly that it seems as if she could have done it at any time. She draws the bow across the strings, and from the very first note the spell overwhelms me. I should have known better than to brag about not feeling pain.

  The agony is overwhelming, stabbing into my soul with a disturbingly personal sort of fury, as if I had committed some unforgivable sin and every iota of my suffering is entirely deserved. No matter how much I am tortured, I feel as though I should be the one apologizing for making it all necessary. But on instinct, or perhaps some pre-programmed routine, I retract my thrusters and slam my external plating shut, cutting the feeling off immediately.

  "Ow," I crackle, my awareness flickering with a quick reset to purge any lingering influence. The spell batters against my shields, slowly draining my reserves as the song tries to worm its way back inside me. But just as my plates block my own emotions from getting out, it seems they deny any foreign emotions from getting in.

  A scream reminds me that I'm still in a fight, Anath clamping her hands around her ears as she thrashes on the ground. I should probably stop letting Nanaya do that. Rushing towards her as quickly as I can without deploying my thrusters, I focus on her legs, anticipating a kick. If she tries to hit me with her viola again, that'll probably prevent her from playing it and that's my main objective right now. But of course, her insane arms split apart in front of me, freeing four additional limbs for me to worry about. They're freakishly spindly when separated, but I don't think it's safe to assume they're weak.

  I double down on my low focus anyway, going for a leg sweep to try and force her to jump. She does so, leaping backwards to try and stay safe, but I spring into a full-body shoulder tackle to catch her landing. It's not a big hit, but it's enough to make her misplay a note, a screech of the viola marking the end of her spell.

  "...Interesting," Nanaya hums, and I let her talk because I'm not a fucking barbarian. "I wasn't expecting that level of resistance. I suppose I will have to train your emotional resilience another way."

  Anath whines from the ground, shuddering from the song.

  "Do you take constructive criticism on your teaching methods?" I ask.

  "Only from those who may have something of value to say," Nanaya answers.

  "Sheesh. Can't do anything by yourself, huh?"

  "...It may be good that you cannot speak outside these walls," Nanaya growls. "You would have a dangerous weakness to Red mages."

  "Look, I have two months of stored up words to say and an entire life of unhealthy coping mechanisms causing my manual emotion control to drive me to mania. Which remains awesome. So much better than depression."

  "I know, right!?" Anath agrees from the floor. "I don't care how stupid I get, I just wanna not be freaking depressed!"

  "Which is why, in the absence of medication, we must rely on training and focused effort to improve your decision-making capacity and emotional stability," Nanaya says flatly. "But you, Luna, do not have a major cyclothymic disorder. You should not be artificially inducing yourself with one. Although… when you say 'manual emotion control,' what do you mean exactly?"

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  "I mean, it's what it says on the tin," I answer dutifully. "Emotions are quantifiable. I can choose how much of all of them I'm expending at any given time. I need some amount of constant burn to accommodate for upkeep costs, since I'm basically always running low on power, but I get to choose how much of what and I'm optimized for sadness anyway."

  "You choose exact values?" Nanaya presses. "Numerically?"

  "Yeah, that's what I said," I confirm.

  "Mmm. How much power do you currently have stored?"

  "My power reserves are currently at twenty-three percent," I report.

  "Twenty-three percent of what?" Nanaya asks.

  "Of my total power reserves," I answer. "I… don't actually know how much that is, percent total power reserves is just my current baseline magical energy unit. Which is actually kind of weird, now that I think about it. I have a ton of sensors for detecting stuff like the density and momentum of magical energy, you'd think that my brain would have some sort of standard Antipathy magical energy unit. But instead I just have Pyulors."

  "…What are Pyulors?"

  "It's currently four hundred and ten point five degrees Pyulor," I answer dutifully. "Which is fifty-nine point two degrees Fahrenheit, or fifteen point one degrees Celcius if you're unamerican. Which, like, based."

  Nanaya blinks.

  "Based on what?"

  "Oh my god she said it!" I cheer, pumping my arms into the air. "She said the thing!"

  "…I don't get it," Anath says.

  "Holy crap that's right, none of you have the internet," I realize. "None of you know memes."

  "What, like doge?" Anath asks. "I liked that funny dog."

  "Oh my god."

  A screeching note erupts from Nanaya's viola as she furiously strikes the strings, glowering at both of us.

  "Let us remain focused on training the discipline both of you so clearly need," she orders. "Luna. From what you describe, the way you interact with your magic is very different to that of current and former Earth Guardians. Consciously choosing which emotions and how much of each to use is a skill that must be developed in the rest of us, but we can clearly skip that with you. Likewise, you function as one of the Guardians whose circumstances necessitate or heavily encourage a permanent incarnate transformation. You must constantly maintain a magical drain to continue existing in your current state, possibly to a degree even more urgent than others in such a situation."

  "Urgent how?" I ask.

  "Unless a Guardian's true body has suffered a lethal wound, the only consequence of being forced out of incarnate form outside of battle is simply having to exist outside of incarnate form. But without power, you might immediately fall unconscious. And if you are unconscious, how would you generate power?"

  "Oh yeah, that sounds bad," I agree.

  "Ideally, you should be kept close to completely full reserves as much as possible," Nanaya says.

  "I mean, yeah, but the highest amount I've ever actually achieved so far was thirty-four percent," I say. "It drains pretty darn fast when I'm in a fight, and it feels like I'm almost always in a fight or about to be."

  "Mmm," Nanaya nods. "It is an occupational hazard. In that case—"

  "I don't think it's technically an occupational hazard unless—"

  "In that case—"

  "—we get paid for doing it," I finish. Nanaya glowers at me.

  "In. That. Case. We will focus on meditative exercises for inducing specific emotional states of mind, and combat exercises with an emphasis on improving the efficiency of your power expenditure. For the latter, you may require techniques entirely unique to you, but I will share what I can while we learn your strengths and weaknesses."

  "Great, where do we start?"

  "How quickly will you run out of power if you stop burning anything?" Nanaya asks.

  "About fourteen hours," I answer immediately.

  "Acceptable," Nanaya says. "I want you to do so."

  "…What?" I ask. "You want me to run out of power?"

  "No, but I want you to experience the full weight of your emotional state for at least a little while. I want you to remind yourself what it feels like."

  "I'm pretty fucking sure I remember what it feels like," I protest.

  "Do it," she orders, and I have no good reason not to comply. Suddenly, it's a lot harder not to focus on how much that matters.

  What the hell am I doing here? I mean, I don't really have a choice in the matter, but just kind of happily going along with How To Train Your Weapon when I know what kind of shit these skills are going to be used for is kind of morally reprehensible? Even if I don't have a choice in the matter, I shouldn't be enjoying this. I'm being trained to beat up children so that Nanaya can sell more weapons on the black market. I should feel bad. I deserve to feel bad.

  Ha. Hahahaha. 'I deserve to feel bad.' I've never gone to therapy but even I can tell that's a red flag thought. I want to say something like 'shit, I really used to live like this?' but I already know that I did. I've spent the last two months repeatedly reliving my own memories with as high a fidelity as possible. I'm a complete fucking mess. It's absurd to expect me to avoid self-medicating when I literally can't take medication anymore. …Not that I used to take medication for this, but I at least now know that I needed to!

  God, this is awful. I hate this. Having the contrast of feeling good for a while makes it so much worse. Whenever I think about how fucked up my current situation is and the terrifying degree of control Melpomene and by extension Nanaya hold over me, I always used to go 'well, at least they can only force my actions, not my feelings.' But I guess that's not even true! I can apparently be ordered to burn or not burn certain amounts of emotion, so if they key into that I can kiss my already-limited self-determination goodbye! Feeling bad about all the crimes against humanity I have to commit? No I'm not! Repress that shit right into the battery and just have fun! God, fuck, maybe I did need to feel bad for a little while. I don't think about this shit if I'm not worried about it. I need to chill out about annoying Nanaya and not give her a reason to mess with my head! I need to placate these people, it's my only real defense.

  "…Kinda creepy how she just stops moving," Anath comments.

  "I'm still here, you know," I say. "I don't stop listening."

  "Oh! Right, sorry. Well, it's kinda creepy how you just stop moving."

  "Sorry, I guess."

  "It's okay!"

  "I assume you can feel the difference?" Nanaya asks.

  "Intimately," I grumble.

  "Good. Now in your natural state, I want you to focus on attempting to emphasize different emotions on purpose. Do not burn any of them; simply attempt to find ways to bring yourself deeper into depression, then induce yourself into fury, then focus on nurturing your joy, and finally find thoughts that reliably move you to terror. Over the next four hours, I want you to cycle your emotions this way, spending time on each as equally as possible. If you find the exercise too easy, you may add in the secondary emotions, or alternate the order so that you move from sadness to joy and from anger to fear, or vice versa."

  "I understand," I acknowledge.

  "Open your outer shell, so that we may monitor your emotional state."

  I do as ordered, because I don't have a choice. Emphasizing depression is certainly going to be easy. Getting deeper and deeper into a doom spiral is one of my greatest skills. Honestly, I have a king's bounty of choices about exactly what to freak out over. The whole beating up children thing kind of feels old hat anyway. Let's find something new to despair over, like how I've apparently been lying on a table with my chest open for the past two months. I haven't gotten a proper shot at that because I have been oh-so-wrongly making myself not feel like shit ever since I woke up.

  So. The school semester's over. It must be… almost July? Man, stupid Antipathy didn't even install a calendar app. How many days are in May again? Whatever. The point is, enough time has passed that any hypothetical attempt to find me would have long since petered out even ignoring the fact that there's somebody wearing my fucking skin. I didn't even like that skin, but you still need to ask for permission, bitch! I don't care if you are the real me! Oh wait, yes I absolutely do! That's terrifying!

  Which means I need to think about something else, because I'm trying to become more sad. I'm supposed to do terror later. So. Depressing things. Depressing things that actually make me even more depressed than I already am.

  Bean. I don't get to talk to Bean.

  If my body is the real me, then she's almost certainly still in contact with our only friend. So Bean doesn't know about me. Bean doesn't know I miss them. Even if I did figure out enough of how the internet works to log on and say hello, I wouldn't be able to because I'm not supposed to talk to people on Earth. But even if I could, Bean would just think I'm a crazy person. Their friend still exists. Nobody would believe that I'm a robot clone of her.

  But maybe that body isn't me. Maybe there's some Antipathy or Preserver soul hanging out in my brain, using it for who knows what. Would they even talk to Bean, in that case? The changeling has my thumbprint, so it can get into my phone. When it reads the messages from Bean, what does it say back? Anything? Can it even read? Melpomene said that it wasn't doing anything suspicious, so it must at least have access to some of my memories in order to convincingly live a human life. So what would someone trying to pretend to be me say to my best friend? I guess Bean doesn't know where I live or what my legal name is, so the changeling could just safely ghost them. It doesn't matter if Bean finds them strange, because that can't actually be reasonably connected to my body.

  Is that how Bean has been living for the last two months? Thinking their best friend doesn't care about them anymore and not knowing why?

  "Good," Nanaya nods. "Now do anger."

  Well. That's easy enough. I have plenty of that. You. Nanaya. You insane fucking bitch. No, that's the worst part, isn't it? You're not insane. Melpomene is insane, Melpomene is fucked up in the head beyond all recognition, but you? You're just a very practical woman. And it's very practical indeed to keep a goddamned slave.

  You seem to care about people, but that's not a point in your favor. I can tell you constantly worry about Anath, but what good is that when your idea of helping is to leave her thrashing and screaming on the floor? You talk so high and mighty about emotional control, but I've never met anyone with less emotional intelligence. You're a fucking sociopath, using pain and fear and torment to get your way because power is the only thing you understand. You are, more than any of the hordes of the Dark World, a monster.

  "Good," Nanaya says again. "Now do joy."

  And now we get to the hard part. Now do joy. Just take the thing that everyone searches for their entire fucking lives and pull it out of your ass on command. But of course, an order is an order. I have to do it anyway.

  Castalia is a yellow mage. I wonder how she does it.

  I imagine it involves reliving some happy memory, but I don't have a lot of those. The happiest I can remember being right now is speaking my first words after today's operation, just a little while ago. What little I can remember of my childhood wasn't particularly happy—an understatement if I've ever made one—and most of the happiness I've found as a robot has clearly been artificially induced, the consequence of extremely effective repression tactics rather than anything truly worth celebrating. There's nothing to be happy about with Nanaya or Melpomene, and while Anath can be funny I certainly have a lingering first impression of her that isn't the best. The only uncomplicated good in this place is Thea.

  Thea is innocent in a way the rest of the Dark Rebellion doesn't deserve. I need to ask her sometime about what she thinks her so-called friends actually do, because with my understanding of how little she leaves the castle and how completely different Melpomene acts when she's around, I'm not sure if her understanding of reality matches up with the truth. I guess I couldn't tell her the truth if it doesn't, but I still want to know. I can't understand how someone like her could show so much love for people like this.

  "You are wavering," Nanaya says. "This is expected. As a blue mage, you will naturally struggle with joy."

  "I don't exactly have a lot of happy memories to work with," I snap.

  "Then imagine a happy fantasy. Stories are one of the most powerful methods of inducing emotion."

  Fantasy, huh? I don't have a lot of happy fantasies either, but I could try to think of one. A future that I would actually enjoy ironically seems a little more possible than it did before this whole mess. Thea is interested in giving me back my free will, and if she succeeds I'll be able to keep everything I like about this new body without being tied to a madwoman. That would be nice, but then what happens? I have to hide from the Preservers forever? I can't exactly go back to college as a solid metal woman with no birth certificate.

  "You are descending towards blue again," Nanaya says calmly.

  "I'm not good at the happy fantasy thing either, okay?" I grumble. "Reality keeps getting in the way and I'm not the type to ignore it."

  "Does anything else make you happy?" Nanaya asks. "Is there anything you would do to cheer yourself up when sad?"

  "I don't know," I say. "Music, I guess?"

  "Then think about music."

  Well, I guess I could. I have a new sound system, after all. Maybe I can try listening to some of the pieces I was composing in my operation fugue? Hearing them out loud could be good. I convert the idea of all the sounds I wanted into an actual sound file and play it.

  Ha, wow, this sounds terrible. But in kind of a retro way? I don't exactly have a MIDI instrument library in here, so I'm just slapping together pulse waves for the melodies and other basic bitch sound waves like triangles to try and approximate what a final composition would sound like. It's not good, but it's nowhere near as bad as I was expecting, because even if the instruments sound 8-bit as hell, I'm not actually limited in the number of simultaneous tracks I can play like old 8-bit games, so I can still make pretty complicated stuff. Maybe I shouldn't, though? There's an appeal in sticking to the old NES style.

  I start tweaking the music as I play it, cutting out unnecessary elements to focus on a strong, upbeat melody composed primarily of single notes rather than chords. It's very Mega Man, which is incredibly fitting. The intense reliance on the melody kind of forces me to find a melody that's actually good, though, which is a bit of a challenge but I think I'm improving as I go. If it's a video game style piece, it should probably have a lot of repetition baked into it; lyrical songs like to do verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, but video games like to do a lot of section A, repeat, section B, repeat, and so on. A A B B C C rather than A B A B. Though I guess if you really want to get into it, songs do a lot of A A B B A A B B but now we're just exposing how many musical theory classes I haven't actually taken yet. I don't really know how to make music, I just like doing it anyway by parroting people who are actually talented.

  "You're starting to waver a little, but that was good," Nanaya says, breaking me from my thoughts and cutting off the current section of the piece I've been playing. "This seems to work for you. Ideally, we will get you to a stage where you do not have to play the music out loud, but this is an acceptable first step. Now do fear."

  Oh. Right. The fucked up forcing-myself-to-feel-things training. I forgot this was happening, but I suppose I probably wouldn't have been very successful at being happy if I didn't. Fear is easy enough; I was falling into it a few times earlier already, so just heading back to my older thoughts and continuing down some of those roads is more than enough to end up at Panic Attack City, population: me. Nanaya nods approvingly as I have a silent existential breakdown, and before I know it we're back to sadness.

  Hours pass that way, Anath sitting on the floor and doing the exercises alongside me. I'm surprised by her patience, but I suppose Nanaya can be very convincing. Before I know it, though, we're done, a break necessitated by the flimsy organic need to eat food and pee and stuff. My own power reserves have been steadily dropping the entire time, so I interpret the break as permission to resume burning emotional energy to stay active.

  All of a sudden, though, I'm really not sure how much of what things I want to burn.

  Without sadness, fear, or anger, I don't particularly have much self-preservation. I need fear to worry about the future. I need sadness to regret the past. I need anger to push me to stand up for myself. Joy is by far the most pleasant emotion, I suppose by definition. But is it the emotion that I need to feel right now?

  To some degree, lamenting my choices is necessary to learn from them. But I don't really need to focus all of my energy on that regret; burning most of my sadness is still probably safe given how much of it I have. With just a bit of it in the background, my failures won't completely slip my mind but they won't overwhelm me either. With just a bit of fear, I can stay focused on avoiding pitfalls in the future without getting so obsessed with everything that could go wrong that I fail to act on it properly. With just a bit of anger… well.

  I think I'll keep my anger. I've earned it. But together with my joy, what little of it I can scrounge up, I will hopefully avoid losing myself to it, obsessing over it even when there's nothing I can do to make it satisfied. I am angry at Melpomene and Nanaya, but I don't want to waste my time focusing on some sort of revenge. I just want to get out of here. I just want to be free. I think that should remain my foremost goal, so not letting my anger get too high is still important. But I shouldn't let it get low. I shouldn't forget the things I deserve but do not have. I shouldn't forget who the enemy is.

  "You look like you're doing a little better," Anath comments, her mouth full of microwaved chicken tenders.

  "I guess I understand things a little better now, yeah," I nod.

  "That is the purpose of teaching you," Nanaya rumbles, cooking her own food on the stove. "Whatever you think of me, I do wish for you to learn. If you can refrain from flippancy, you are welcome and encouraged to discuss what you do and do not understand, as well as what is and isn't working in terms of reaching that understanding."

  "I'll keep that in mind," I reply neutrally. "Though really, I'm not sure why you have so much against flippancy. I'm sure there's plenty you can do with an extra source of free anger."

  "If there is one thing I can promise you, it is that I will never suffer a deficiency of anger," Nanaya answers coldly. "Not until the day we win, and perhaps not even then. You do not make me angrier, weapon. You merely turn some of my anger towards you. This is not a situation that I think either of us will find desirable."

  "Quit calling me that," I demand. "My name is Luna."

  And I can make this demand. Calling me 'weapon' gives the game away. Melpomene wouldn't want that.

  "I know you can say it," I continue. "You have said it. But you revert whenever you start finding me annoying. Don't do it again. I'm your weapon out on Earth, but here? I'm Luna. That's a line I can't tolerate being crossed."

  "If you wish for respect, you should show some."

  "Right back at you," I snap. "Or are you seriously going to tell me that being flippant is on par with treating me like an object?"

  "Woah, woah," Anath butts in, glancing between both of us. "Let's calm down a little. Luna, don't push her so much."

  Seriously? She's going to take her side for this? Oh who am I kidding, of course she is. I'm the outsider here. I'm not their friend, no matter how friendly Anath likes to act. Why would I ever expect any of them to side with me against each other?

  "She's right, Anath," Nanaya grunts. Huh? "I apologize, Luna. I will be more careful with my words."

  Oh. Well, okay then.

  "…I'll try not to push you too much," I say. I'll definitely still be pushing you a little, but if she's backing down first I guess it's only right to reciprocate. I don't actually benefit from pissing her off outside of how amusing it is, and I need to at least try to play nice.

  "Mmm."

  "Everything all right in here?" Melpomene asks, sticking her head into the room.

  "It is," Nanaya says, at the exact same time I say "Yes mom."

  "Good," Melpomene says, a huge grin on her face. "Because I've figured out our next move."

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