Chapter 5: From On High // 1.05

The scuffle ended fast, from the sound of it. I saw none of it myself; I only knew things were coming to a close when someone yowled and the arguing resumed again. Hopefully, Hina wasn’t about to come in here and cause more of a fuss.

“How do any of them have time for this?”

VNTs, and even the Vaetna themselves, tended to be stretched fairly thin. Magic was too flexible and powerful to do without, and there was always more work to be done.

“It’s a holiday.”

It was? I checked my phone—February 12th—but Ebi beat me to it.

“Kenkoku kinen no hi, the day Japan was founded. They get national holidays off, aside from emergencies.”

That hadn’t come up during my bout of research—why would it have? It occurred to me that I should find a vlog or something to catch up on these little details; my ignorance was embarrassing, and would only become more so with time. I resolved to not get distracted next time.

“Just holidays?”

“And Sundays. So no promotions, press conferences, general peacekeeping…they’re still ready for an earthquake or flamefall.”

“That’s why Heliotrope is out in the Gulf.”

“Actually, no, she’s there voluntarily. They’re only obligated to respond to things that directly affect Japan.”

Right, right, the facts were coming back to me now, yanked from the bottom of the drawer where I kept political knowledge, things I already knew but hadn’t gotten to in my research. Todai was lower-intervention than the Spire by a substantial margin; one of the videos had mentioned friction between them and the Japanese government regarding showing their face in the South China Sea.

“Voluntarily?”

“She’s a grad student in life sciences, you know. She couldn’t stand by while an oil spill goes full Dubai, even if that’s way outside our usual domain.”

Ai had implicitly framed Heliotrope as more ‘mahou shoujo’ than some of her teammates—apparently this was part of that. Speaking of whom—the Emerald Radiance re-entered the room, looking more tired than ever. I realized she was using her day off to help take care of me. She bowed. “I am so, so sorry for my friends’ behavior.”

“Um—it’s fine, don’t worry. Ebi was telling me it wasn’t that serious?”

She nodded. “It wasn’t…we can be done for today.”

“You’re leaving the foot attached?”

“Yes. Ebi-tan will be with you, so you can try to stand and maybe walk a little if you feel like it. We’ll meet again tomorrow if I can find the time. Otherwise, your physical therapy will be with her. Ebi-tan, take him to his room?”

I raised my hand. Ai had a sort of authority figure energy, somewhere between teacherly and motherly. I supposed that was fitting, if I was reading her relationship with Ebi correctly. “How would my…training actually work? If I stay?”

Ebi’s turn. “All the Radiances will be helping with your recovery and training. Ai just has the most to do at the moment since for now your prosthetic has to come first.”

I considered this. “I’m having a hard time picturing Hina giving lessons.”

I hadn’t quite intended it to be a joke, but the two women laughed and had a brief back-and-forth in Japanese, which sounded from the tone like:

“He’s not wrong.”

“It’ll be fine, probably.”

Ebi switched back to English. “Don’t worry about her for now. They just gave her a pretty thorough thrashing, I think. If you don’t have any more questions, I’m taking you to your actual room, not the medical ward. After that, no more bed for you.”

Three cheers for medical magic. “Wheelchair?”

“For now. We’ll make some more interim upgrades tomorrow that might let you walk.” Ebi frowned. “Pending Sapphire’s cooperation.”

What did she have to do with that? Then a more mundane, large-scale worry than fear of the hyena. “Will…I have to pay for all this?”

I didn’t know anything about the Japanese healthcare system; I envisioned a bill with so many zeroes on the end that I would lose track, a relic of my experiences in American hospitals before they had sent me back to the UK. Ultimately, inferno recovery programs had footed the bill that time, but things might work differently here. Ai frowned and did some rapid back-and-forth with Ebi, who eventually turned back to me.

“Not your problem. Opal thinks you’d be a meaningful enough return on investment that we’re happy to cover all your costs of living and give you a stipend, the way we do for the Radiances. The foot and tattoo are entirely on the house even if you don’t stick around.”

What did you even say to that? “Thanks” didn’t cover it, really—with what they were offering, I simply wouldn’t have to think about money. No more scraping the edge of the poverty line. The cynic in me wondered if making me feel indebted to their generosity was another carrot to get me to stay. Still—carrot was a whole lot better than stick. I ventured to confirm.

“So I’m not, er, contractually bound to join up?”

Ai’s turn. “No, absolutely not. We would never. For guarantee—once your paperwork goes through, you’ll go on the…” She needed a moment to make sure the translation was correct. “National Flamebearer Register? After that, the Vaetna will definitely know you’re here; they might send somebody to check on you, because of how you got here.”

She muttered something about “Hina-san” after that, so perhaps that situation would wind up being fraught. Still, it was good to hear—if it came to that, I could probably leave regardless of any obstructions Todai tried to put between me and the Spire. In that sense, I wasn’t a prisoner.

“Um. I still need to think about it.”

One more major concern; Ebi had recommended I ask.

“If I do stay…what would I…do? Do I have to become a Radiance?”

I still wasn’t sure what that even entailed, and there was no way I was bringing up the trans theory—way, way too invasive. Ai looked genuinely confused as it was. “Why would you?”

“Er—Sapphire said I wouldn’t be the first male one.”

Ai actually put her face in her hands at that.“That’s—ugh. She’s so—” she collapsed into Japanese for a moment, mostly directed at Ebi, who rubbed her shoulders and set about redoing her ponytail. “—classified. It’s classified. No, you don’t have to join. I’m sorry if Hina-san made that unclear.”

“Alright. That’s—a relief.” I could live with not thinking about that mysterious offer, although I didn’t miss how she seemed to know exactly what was up where Ebi didn’t. “So I’d just…do research? With you and the others?”

“Yes. To be honest, we haven’t quite thought that far ahead, but it would be something like that. There’s definitely a place for you here. You could do a lot of good with us.”

She said it almost thoughtfully. It was so gratifying to be acknowledged, for my talents to be recognized by someone I felt was an equal. I tried to put it into words.

“Thanks. Um—” I tried again. “This is—what I’ve always…wanted…”

I trailed off into a mumble, because it wasn’t exactly true; I wished I was at the Spire instead. At least I had enough tact to not say that out loud. As it was, this was the next best thing and surely better than being in the clutches of the PCTF, for all Hina had apparently taken it upon herself to stalk me. That element was unnerving—doubly so for the faint thrill it inspired in me.

We once again were left in an awkward lurch where neither of us really knew how to end the conversation. Ai rubbed her wrist and looked down at the spell circle; my eyes ventured up to look at the nest of tentacular grippers stowed against the ceiling. Ebi rescued us.

“Well, if that’s all—I’m taking him back up. You should come with. Get out of your labs.”

Ai waved her creation off, already fiddling with something on her mobile workstation—it had apparently crossed the hall with her. “I want to get the stabilizer done tonight. I’ll try to be up for dinner, but…”

They did a little more back-and-forth in Japanese. Even without translation, the meaning was clear: the workaholic Radiance was committed to whatever project she was currently working on for now and would probably miss dinner. I had been guilty of the same many, many times. Eventually, Ebi sighed and turned to me, jerking her head at the door.

“She’s incorrigible, you know. Let’s go.”

—

The hallway was a bit of a wreck. Never a dull moment, so far.

The walls were gouged, scorched, and outright smashed in a few places. There were already a bunch of people in hi-vis with clipboards and measuring tapes marking what needed repair or replacement; good thing they were right next to Ai’s workshop. Opal and Amethyst had gone, but—Sapphire was still here. She looked decidedly ruffled, though not injured, and had evidently been waiting for me. The puppy’s metaphorical tail was decidedly not between her legs despite the tongue-lashing I had overheard. She bounced toward me. At least she wasn’t obviously in predator-mode—I still had the urge to call for Ai, suppressed only by residual awkwardness and a rather silly desire to not make a scene.

“Hey, Ez!”

I flinched internally. She didn’t have the right to call me that. Ebi physically interposed herself between myself and the Radiance. “Sapphire. Leave my patient alone.”

She stopped, pouting. “I didn’t mean to scare him!”

Both of us stared at her. After a moment, she flinched under the pressure. “Okay, I did, but—no hard feelings, right? You’re still staying?”

“I—you didn’t make it sound like I had much choice.”

She actually looked almost guilty at that, but recovered quickly. “Mm. We did sorta maybe a little bit kidnap you—but this is where you should be! Look at you! You’re so…good at glyphs! Alice really wants you here.”

Alice being…Opal, right. I found my voice, encouraged by the confirmation from Ai. “I’m—not—” come on, spit it out, I can do it—“becoming a Radiance.”

She took that with a surprising amount of equanimity. A worrying amount, frankly. She waved her hand. “Yeah, yeah. You’ll come around. I haven’t even made my pitch yet!”

The wind of defiance left my sails. She was still warming up? Ebi’s voice was dry. “He’s not going to stay at all if you keep pushing him.”

Hina entirely ignored that. Her eyes alighted on my arm. “Hey, she redid the binding. Nice color! Way cleaner lattice, too! No more blood?”

I shook my head, the motion jerky with the tension of fear. Her shoulders slumped.

“Aw.”

The robot shooed her with both hands. “Get out of here. Shoo. Begone. Don’t make me get the spray bottle. Or the cold iron.”

Sorry, the what? What the hell was she? I assumed that was a joke—stowed it for later. My thoughts turned instead to the connection I had made earlier. I had resolved to put a bit more stock in her character, as hard as she was making it right now. She had pushed me to get the binding—I attempted to muster my courage again, leaning around Ebi to make…well, not quite eye contact with Hina. Her eyes were too blue. I wound up looking at her chest, then lips, then gave up and just looked up at a space over her head where a wrecked light fixture was sparking a bit.

“You helped her.”

“Hm?”

“Ai. My spear.”

Not the most eloquent, but in my defense, it was a hard thing to say. I was far outside my comfort zone with this kind of comment. Thankfully, she got the message—and was surprised, fixing her hair a bit. Maybe she hadn’t been expecting me to pick up on that?

“Um. She’s just…barely been sleeping, and nothing really helps unless she’s working with Amane, so I figured…”

“Didn’t tell her.”

I’m not entirely sure why I said that—but it was somehow the right thing to say, and she smiled at me. I’d have liked to smile back, if only I wasn’t so overwhelmed by the strange moment. Nonetheless, some kind of understanding passed between us, a camaraderie in subterfuge, helping people behind their backs. This puppy-hyena—or fairy, according to Ebi?—had layers. So did I, maybe. Ai had said we were alike—maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing? Well—no, that was entirely a bridge too far, she still evoked a primal terror in me that set my heart pounding and made me tense with the need to defend myself, but…there was something there, undeniably. Ebi reminded us she was still here.

“I appreciate it too, if that counts for anything.”

The moment should have broken—and perhaps it did, but those sapphire pools remained staring right at me even as she replied. “Yeah, but that’s just how you are! Ezzen’s an unknown!”

I flinched again at the use of my online name in person. She’d used it before, when we first met—I’d had higher priorities at the time. Now I had the wherewithal to realize how much it bothered me, especially considering how, coming from Ai, it hadn’t. The name was a compartmentalisation between the shell of who I had been before magic had come to the world and the magic-obsessed teenager I had become since…but I had never been brave enough to take it outside the digital, and it felt like a bit of a violation for her to have made that decision for me. Yet I still couldn’t bring myself to object.

Ebi said something in Japanese, and Hina tittered back at her, but the hyena’s eyes remained locked on me. Savoring my discomfort? I felt like a piece of meat; the kinship had vanished utterly. Ebi made to shoo her away again—

She moved past the robot in a way that made no sense—

She was in my face. Her finger traced down my chest, her voice a playful whisper in my ear.

“It’s a real choice, you know.”

She smelled good. Then she winked at me and bounced down the hall, past the repairmen who had momentarily stopped working to observe the exchange. She turned back once as she reached the end of the hall.

“I’m going out. Don’t want curry. Back before midnight to help with Ai’s thing.”

Space folded wrong, twisting with a bang-crunch as the air protested the distortion. She vanished. Only then did Ebi move from her protective position.

“Can she—”

“Yes.”

That exit didn’t have as much impact on me as it probably should have, because I was staring down at the prosthetic. Then at the tattoo, then my old burns, then at where Hina had been standing. I knew she didn’t mean whether to stay at Lighthouse, or whether to become a Radiance.

I pulled out my phone.

ezzen: Sapphire keeps calling me Ezzen.

ezzen: Instead of my actual name.

ezzen: And I don’t know how to feel about it.

_twilitt: :ooo

ezzen: She also teleported but one thing at a time.

_twilitt: thats big for you isnt it

_twilitt: hows it feel

starstar97: lmfao yeah she does that

starstar97: but holy shit e that rocks

ezzen: Good?

ezzen: Bad coming from her specifically?

ezzen: Like it feels like it should be good but

skychicken: my fault

skychicken: sorry for leaking

I wasn’t sure how upset to be. Star chose for me.

starstar97: sky??

starstar97: what the hell?

skychicken: circumstances demanded it

skychicken: ez was in danger, saph wouldnt have gone out of her way for a random flamebearer outside of japan unless i told her that she was rescuing “ezzen from the forums”

skychicken: otherwise she would have let the vaetna sort it out

ezzen: ??? and why didn’t you let them?

ezzen: Why send me here?

skychicken: because i didn’t know!

skychicken: im not omniscient, believe it or not

skychicken: i didn’t know whether the vaetna would make it to you in time, and I didn’t know how well you’d succeed at stalling, or any of that

skychicken: i just knew my friend was in danger and called in the favor i could

skychicken: i didn’t ask sapphire to abduct you

I had known skychicken for years, practically since the forums’ inception. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe him. It was all too convenient, especially given Ebi’s avoidance earlier.

ebi-furai: i want to ditto this

starstar97: wait

ebi-furai: lighthouse really had no clue what was going on until saph brought you back

starstar97: “ABDUCT”?????????

ezzen: So I had the chance to go to the Spire

ezzen: Which you KNOW is all I’ve ever fucking WANTED

_twilitt: ez…

ezzen: And you grabbed the craziest VNT you could find and had her abduct me to the other side of the planet for

skychicken: you’d rather be dead?

And—that was the rub, wasn’t it? My suspicions were baseless; he couldn’t have known, he wasn’t—I didn’t have the right to be angry.

skychicken: im sorry, ez.

skychicken: i wish i could have called the spire. its where you should be

ezzen: Yeah I’m uh

ezzen: Need a bit of a break. Gonna lurk

starstar97: :(

skychicken: sorry

ebi-furai: i realize this sorta casts me in a suspicious light

starstar97: e inviting you is kinda a legit point in favor of the whole situation i think

starstar97: unless it was coerced but like. cmon. its lighthouse

_twilitt: ezzen is okay! id take that over the alternative

“Pretty fucked up, huh.”

I didn’t respond, just watched the chat scroll.

starstar97: okay, topic change bc thats all really fuckin bleh

starstar97: ebi your english is really good

skychicken: yeah

skychicken: very chatroom fluent, feels like

ebi-furai: well my mom speaks it so i grew up with it

ebi-furai: im a bit following your leads on syntax here

It was sort of impressive how she was passing off her undoubtedly weird childhood as that of a human. Like me, she seemed more comfortable being genuine online—but then, she was a machine. I didn’t have an excuse. We entered the elevator.

I shouldn’t have exploded at Sky. I did owe him—possibly my life, certainly my freedom. But something was still just rubbing me the wrong way about the whole thing. How had he known? It felt ridiculous to accuse my friend of some kind of…what, conspiracy? I didn’t even know how to categorize it, but there were threads here I couldn’t see, and it bothered me. I resolved to at least apologize to him later, once I had cooled down more. The lights above the elevator’s door ticked up and up, 16, 17—we passed the 18th floor and kept going.

“Wait, where are we headed?”

“Your room. Opal’s gonna make her pitch.”

“Opal?”

I had thought we were seeing Amethyst. She just grinned at me. Great, another Radiance. I could only hope she was an Ai and not a Hina—either way, I’d probably manage to make it awkward, but that was beyond my control.

The elevator stopped.

The 19th floor—and the 20th, apparently—had been converted to one enormous penthouse apartment. A set of stairs to the second level were to our right. There was a large kitchen, the island covered in scattered mostly empty dishes. Beanbag chairs and controllers were scattered around a large TV with a PS5 sitting on the cabinet below it. By the window sat an easel with a half-complete painting of the skyline. Over on the right of the common space was a glass wall with the Lighthouse symbol on it. A large round table lay within, bearing an intimidating landscape of paperwork and flanked by whiteboards crammed with Japanese characters. Most strikingly, I could see another room adjacent to it that looked like a dojo.

I had seen this cavernous common space in a few videos—I snapped a pic and sent it to Star. Seeing this would probably kill her. The square footage…it was too big to eyeball reliably. 30,000? 40,000? It was honestly an impractical amount of space for five people, no matter how important or busy. My phone began to buzz angrily.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

“I’m. Uh. Living with them?”

A voice came from behind us. “That’s the intent.”

I twisted to look. Where the space before us had no second level, the area behind me did. The stairs led up to a glass-and-metal balcony that went from one wall until it met the elevator shaft that was the building’s spine, a great rectangular block in the center which disrupted the otherwise-open floor plan on both levels. Leaning over the balcony’s railing was Radiance Opal.

She was easily the most visually striking of the five in her human form, despite Amethyst’s prostheses. For one, her hair was white, pearlescent, and styled in a short bob cut. She was dressed in a way my fashion-unacquainted mind was hesitantly calling “athleisure,” not much more than a black sports bra, unzipped white jacket, and leggings. She had a distinctly half-something look to her features, not fully Japanese—Brazilian? Star would know. She had a faintly English accent, more London than mine.

What really set her apart, though, was the tail. It was a sinuous, reptilian appendage, huge and as thick as her torso, almost as long as her legs. It was adorned with white scales that glimmered like her hair as she trotted down the stairs, weightless as Hina or Ebi. Her slitted eyes were another hint of her nature, red with brilliant oranges glimmering within like a fire opal, a sunset caught in amber. Her real name was Alice Takehara, and she was Todai’s dragon.

She embodied both aspects that gave the Frozen Flame its name. She was literally hot, prone to destructive one-offs more reminiscent of blood magic than woven spellcraft. Like the rest of us Flamebearers, she was a nuclear weapon stitched to a person—but one applied with all the precision of a scalpel, famously calculating and cool under pressure. As a result, she was—ostensibly—the leader of the team. In practice, she shared the role with Sapphire, being more the organizational head where Hina thrived taking point on the ground. In my Vaetna-based conceptualization of these things, that made her the Sani to Hina’s Heung. She stopped in front of us with a half-bow and a smile.

“Good afternoon. I’m Radiance Opal. You’re Dalton Colliot.”

Was I? It’s a real choice, Hina whispered.

I blinked. Dalton was a nobody. It wasn’t the name that really belonged in this world of magic, the name behind a fair chunk of the modern magical theory that was available to the public.

“Ezzen.”

“Ah. Your online name?”

“Um. Yeah. Could—could you call me that instead?”

Uncharacteristically bold of me—Hina was rubbing off on me, maybe. That conjured the idea of her rubbing—nope. Why, brain? None of that, especially not in front of her teammate. I attempted to refocus on Opal, who acquiesced to the request without missing a beat, sticking her hand out.

“Of course. Ezzen-san, youkoso, Toudai e.”

I shook it. It was a firm, practiced handshake, a result of probably thousands of meetings with various officials and fans. I scrambled for a bit of Japanese that Star had attempted to teach me last year. Really should have practiced this, in hindsight. “Um—yoroshiku onegaishamisu?”

Ebi grinned. “Close. Yoroshiku onegaishimasu.”

It occurred to me that she definitely could have given me a crash course on the greeting protocol on the way up rather than letting me humiliate myself. Opal took her hand back, bowed her head, and said the phrase herself, seemingly satisfied with my attempt. I looked around the cavernous space again, blushing at my fumble. It occurred to me to put away my phone. That was the polite thing to do, right?

“Sorry, why am I here exactly?”

Ebi took on a mock-doctorly tone. “Cohabitation is proven to enhance team cohesion.”

Opal bowed again, this time a formal, straight-backed motion much more serious than Hina’s dip of the head earlier.

“I’m—very sorry for Sapphire’s behavior. It was a terrible first impression, and I believe it has fundamentally misrepresented the nature of your presence here and what we’re offering you.”

Ebi cut in. “She apologized to us directly.”

I looked up at her. Had she? Ebi’s head bounced a bit, acknowledging that Hina really hadn’t. However, she had given me something in that conversation. I was still working out how grateful I should be. Opal saw the exchange.

“My point exactly. This was…a kidnapping, yes. I want to be as up-front as possible about that. That’s no way for a magical girl to behave, and it’d be a stain on our reputation if that went public. And if the Vaetna come knocking, that puts us in a tough spot, so we do have an interest in at least keeping you happy and healthy. Not a prisoner.”

I thought I heard something like a rumble under her voice. Was she like Hina after all? Ai had intimated as much in our first conversation. She went on.

“That being said…Toudai is actively looking to recruit, and you’re quite the catch, the circumstances of how you got here aside. I understand you’d prefer to be at the Spire instead?”

“Um—yeah.” It was too embarrassing to say out loud that I wished to be a Vaetna; it felt almost childlike against her professionalism, exacerbating the asymmetry I already felt with me bedridden versus her on her feet. “But I know they’re not recruiting, so it’d just be a research role, and you’re offering me the Radiance thing instead—which I’m not really sure about—and the replacement for my foot means I should stay here for a while anyway and…”

I trailed off lamely. I had been chewing on this series of facts all day. I pulled out my phone again almost reflexively, responding to Star’s jealousy with some obligatory smugness that I wasn’t really feeling at all. Opal’s response was a bit uncertain.

“Um—yes.”

I seemed to have ruined her script. Oops. She found her footing again after a moment.

“The Spire would give you sanctuary, but not a future. I hate to sell us as the second-best, but we are indeed second-best, and we could make something of you in a way the Spire would not. That’s your carrot. But—we don’t want to rush you, and ideally we’d like you to be fully recovered before asking you to commit or not. I understand this living situation might feel like it runs counter to that, but this would be best for both your recovery and your training…”

I looked up as she trailed off. She looked uncomfortable—she thought I wasn’t paying attention, staring at my phone as I was. Damn it. I put it away again.

“Uh, sorry. I can, uh…I don’t know about living…here. It’s a lot.”

She seemed rather thoroughly off-track by now, but forged ahead.

“It is a lot, and I’m sorry we’re putting the decision on you now. What are your concerns?”

“You’re…all girls.”

I felt a little stupid saying it loud, but after Hina, I had to. I was terrified of the prospect of sharing a space with five gorgeous women.

“Is that a problem? You’d have your own room and bathroom, so you’d have privacy. We’re good roommates, I promise.”

Was that a joke? I couldn’t tell. “I mean—that’s good. But I really meant that, uh, Sapphire said…”

How was I to explain the discomfort she made me feel, or the implication that I could eventually become one of them? I had already internally decided against becoming a Radiance, and told Hina as much—but with this living situation, it felt like there was almost a threat of…I didn’t know how to categorize it. Osmosis?

I heard it again, a rumbling noise. I initially thought it might have been construction—but as she sighed with exasperation, it occurred to me that I might be somehow detecting traces of her mantle, her frustration manifest in her magic.

“I’m sorry about Hina, again. She’s made a real mess of this. She can be made to respect boundaries, I promise.”

That didn’t quite convince my latent prey instincts that the danger had passed, but it was nonetheless relieving to hear. “Um—good. You’re all okay with having me here?”

I wasn’t actually sure what I had meant to imply about myself by saying that, if anything—Opal just nodded.

“No objections from us. Hina is…well, too eager to have you here, maybe, but we’ll work on that—but otherwise it’s a good arrangement, I think. You need language practice, and immersion is great for that.”

It hadn’t actually quite hit me that I was in Japan now—everyone so far had spoken essentially fluent English. She went on.

“I’m told that proximity to Ebi and Ai is also a must for your recovery, so it’s here or the 18th floor for now.”

That made the decision for me. Go back to that desolate, lonely maze of empty rooms? Absolutely not. Sure, it would be a change—but this was a ludicrously nice living space.

“I—sure. Okay.”

She nodded understandingly.

“Once your recovery has progressed a bit further, if it doesn’t feel like it’d work out, it’d be easy enough to transfer—”

The rumbling’s origin made itself apparent. The Radiance reddened.

“Opal.” Ebi finally spoke up. “How long has it been since you had a real meal?”

She replied in Japanese, and I heard something whiny in her voice, a sharp contrast from the crisp and level way she had been speaking to me. They argued back and forth for a moment. Eventually, Ebi turned to me.

“We’re going to your room. Opal will catch up once she’s eaten something.”

Opal protested again in Japanese—then switched to English, carrying that whine with her. “I’ll just—”

She almost stomped over to the kitchen, tail lashing. I supposed that Ebi would be the supreme authority among the six when it came to their health. The robot stage-whispered to me.

“She doesn’t eat as much as she should.”

On account of the tail, I had to assume. Opal barked back at us as she rummaged through the fridge.

“I can hear you!”

Or at least that’s what she probably said. She asked something after that, and Ebi replied with what I was coming to recognize as “yeah” or similar. Then she returned, bearing what I recognized to be some sort of rice ball. Actually, two. She offered it to me—I assumed that’s what she had asked Ebi. I wasn’t that hungry, and was going to wave it off, but the doctor-bot plucked it from her grasp and handed it to me.

“You’ve been under eightfold healing for seventeen hours. You could use the calories.”

Fair enough. I wasn’t sure how to free it from the plastic wrapper—Ebi visibly suppressed a sigh and took it back. Her suite of emotional displays was really quite thorough.

“Watch.”

She undid the wrapper with precision, a multi-step process involving peeling back one strip of plastic and then pulling the corners of the triangle apart. I peered at the onigiri freed from its multilayered sheath of plastic.

“Seems involved.”

“Keeps the seaweed dry.”

Opal, for her part, had already inhaled half of hers, tail waving with what I took to be satisfaction, or embarrassment. It was adorable—and decidedly unlike the professionalism she had exuded just a minute prior. Maybe she was a Hina, but just the puppy? That was optimistic. I bit into my own snack and got only rice and a bit of seaweed. Weren’t these supposed to have fillings? I showed it to Ebi.

“A little deeper. This one is pickled plum. You’ll know it when you get to it.”

I took another bite—ah. There it was, surprisingly juicy and crunchy. The sourness was refreshing, but I wasn’t sure I’d have picked this flavor, given the choice. Nevertheless, my empathy insisted that the obviously-ravenous-and-embarrassed-about-it Radiance not be the only one eating, so I kept going. It was edible, at least, and Ebi seemed to approve of us meat-beings getting our requisite nutrition. She glanced at Opal.

“You really should have just talked to him over tea and snacks. You could have avoided this whole thing.”

Opal turned bright red. She was hilariously framed: her pearl hair gave her flushed face a striking resemblance to the Japanese flag visible behind her in the meeting room, and over her other shoulder was the Todai symbol on the glass as though labeling her—it took everything in my power to not start laughing with a mouthful of rice. She didn’t dignify it with a response and just kept eating, although the tip of her tail snapped against the tile floor once, a surprisingly resonant sound, like tapping the edge of a glass with a fork. Were her scales gems? They certainly looked like it.

A matching ringing noise resounded from upstairs. Opal’s tail clicked a few more times, and she got a few more responses. Then I heard footsteps on the stairs and turned to look.

Amethyst’s mantle was, in a word, mecha. Where the other girls’ mantles were more or less their own bodies in impractical-looking ribbons and fancy hairdos, hers was enormous, crystalline and faceted, standing three meters tall. Her legs were like bony stalactites, although with digitigrade geometry impossible for any such rock formation. The skeletal resemblance continued to her torso, which looked a bit more humanoid, calling to mind a Gundam or an EVA unit, although my familiarity with mecha was no better than my knowledge of magical girls. I was well and truly out of my genre.

Her head was small for the frame of her body, a long forward-facing spike with outgrowths radiating along the sides to a V-point. A pair of additional spikes—maybe ‘blades’ was more accurate—flared out from the sides, recalling fins. It was thoroughly inhuman, faceless and mechanized.

She retained some of the magical girl elements that unified all their mantles despite the physical differences, like the shoulder-ribbons and embellishments at the knees and elbows that matched the trim on the others’ uniforms. But she certainly wasn’t an anime girl—though her proportions did hint at femininity, even ‘monstergirl’ was inadequate. She really did resemble a mecha made of crystal more than anything else. The marketing and merch tended to make her look a bit—no, a lot more humanoid.

She had a kind of grace, like her more humanoid counterparts, but exacerbated by her departure from flesh. The gems almost flowed as she moved, only crystallizing when she stood still. It reminded me of the Spire’s dermis, oddly nostalgic and familiar. It was most visible in her arms—too long and reinforced at the joints—as she gesticulated, her fingers seeming like at any moment they could splash off into little flowing droplets. It belied the fact that she was, as far as anybody knew, completely invincible, a stark contrast against the sickly and pared-away meat of her real body. According to the rumors, she had suffered grievous injuries in PCTF captivity and during her subsequent escape. The facts were that those injuries, whatever their origin, didn’t bother her as long as she was mantled.

She almost warbled a greeting to Ebi before turning to me. Those ringing sounds had been her voice, apparently.

“Hello. Nice—to meet you.”

Oh. She barely spoke English? I could at least match that.

“Yoroshiku onegaishimasu?” I said it right this time.

A rush of wind, a burst of motion—and suddenly she was in my face, looming over me, chattering excitedly in ringing tones. I flinched at how quickly she had moved; Vaetna-like, again, but the effect was far more visceral in person, and she was a whole lot bigger than Hina and just as inhuman. At least the intimidation of her size was undercut by the way her voice sounded like wind chimes, but that had still been a momentary reminder of how scary the Radiances could be purely as a function of being mantled. Ebi almost hauled her off of me, barely half her height, presumably explaining the language barrier. Amethyst didn’t have facial expressions per se, but she did slump a bit as she replied. Ebi translated.

“She’s really happy to meet you, and—‘your escape was so cool. How’s your foot?’”

Ebi knew exactly how good my foot was, but I supposed Amethyst wanted to hear it from me. “It’s…good.” Come on, Ez, a bit more. “Ai’s work is—incredible.” That came from the heart, at least.

Amethyst nodded excitedly at that once Ebi translated. Opal had finished eating and cut in as she walked over to her teammate. “She’s a big fan of yours.”

Oh, right, I had almost forgotten. New additions to the chatroom or people getting excited when I showed up in YouTube comments were one thing, now familiar, but I had discovered with the guy in the hallway that I really didn’t know how to do this in person. The language barrier wasn’t helping.

“Um, please tell her that I think her mantle is…cool. I don’t, um, know much about mecha, but I like how it moves.”

Opal translated, and Amethyst rang back at her, clapping excitedly. She was bouncier than Hina, and also moved in a way that was too lightweight for her size, but since she was so much bigger, everything she did came off as a bit looming.

“You have no idea how much that means to her. A lot of the design came from your research on LM. Specifically your paper on—ripple divergence in third-order chains? She used that to cut down on her mantle ripple by a lot.”

What did I say? “You’re welcome?” I was a bit paralyzed; it felt sort of wrong that my research was actually being used by big-name VNTs. Especially when said research was now out of date. I started to almost mumble to myself, having pulled out my phone once more. I’d really have to kick that habit. On top of that, the dermis connection was making me ramble a bit.

“I—er, need to revise that. If you’re using an orange link there, Bri said on stream today—uh, yesterday—that the first-gen displays didn’t play well with high ripple, because of orange third. My guess is that the specific problem was with {MANIFEST}, and they switched to blue for second-gen because it’s so much better for indicating LM ripple even though it’s worse for almost everything else at super-3. So since your transformations are LM, you’d probably get better reduction with the same trick? But these days they’re using pink third, and I don’t know if that’s specifically for the Spire’s internals since they don’t care as much about LM ripple compared to other types these days or—”

I stopped when Ebi poked my cheek. “Save it for Ai. Amethyst isn’t getting a word of this.”

I had again completely forgotten about the language barrier—but now I wasn’t about to let that stop me. I surveyed the huge space around us, looking for somewhere to write.

“I need a whiteboard.”

—

That’s how we ended up in the meeting room, diagramming third-order spell chains. Ebi had helped me limp from my bed to a chair, actually nominally Amethyst’s for when she was out of mantle, which meant that it was both exceedingly comfortable and had a few nice features that let me maneuver around the room, almost a wheelchair. She had then disappeared to retrieve my actual wheelchair from upstairs—that had been intended for later—and again to get proper dinner once it became clear that we’d be here a while.

The whiteboard markers were magic, with full color-selection like the tattoo gun earlier, which helped me get across my point about the color coding. I had actually taken one apart to figure out the glyphs, peering at the substrates; just {DIFFERENTIATE}-{REFRACT}, as expected, but the form factor for the physical glyph that the magic had been woven around was impressively miniaturized. It was actually relevant to the conversation, too, because the very lattice displays in question were fundamentally one of a few permutations on a similar template. The color order and selection we had been discussing was a shorthand for tension within the weave to modulate different ripples, rather than intrinsic properties of the glyphs themselves. Because that color-coding was universal, Amethyst had no problem following along.

It was incredible how complete of a conversation about high-level magical theory we were managing to have through symbology, although occasionally Opal would have to translate. Amethyst picked up what I had been trying to explain pretty fast once I started drawing. A lot of the terms like LM were borrowed directly from English in Japanese, and I was getting a crash course myself in some of the ones that weren’t: ripple, for instance, was hibiki, 響き. The concept was slightly different between the languages; it meant ‘echo’ rather than ripple. High ripple was therefore koukyou, 高響, low ripple was teikyou, 低響, and so on. Ebi said not to worry about being able to write the kanji for now, although I figured that if my memory for them was half as good as it was for glyphs, I’d probably get the hang of it fast.

Opal was mostly content to sit back and let us work. She would occasionally cut in with an insight of her own, but seemed to be enjoying my engagement with her rock-mecha teammate. She was visibly delighted when Ebi returned with two trays of food, effortlessly balancing them like a veteran waitress. The robot distributed dishes with some comments to the Radiances before turning to me. I inspected the contents of my bowl, my pair of training chopsticks and a spoon already resting at the sauce’s edge as though soaking in a hot spring.

“Curry?”

“Yeah. Sauce, rice, some stewed beef, veggies. The fried thing is a chicken cutlet.”

“I know. I’m, uh, not good with spice.”

Opal actually laughed at that through a mouthful of noodles. “It’s Japan-spicy, you’ll be fine.”

Said noodles were too thick to be ramen, and her soup bore a remarkable resemblance to the curry in front of me, other than the viscosity. The bowl was impressively big. She pointed at it with her chopsticks in response to my inquisitive glance.

“Curry udon.”

She also had some fried bits, although they were on the side. She was evidently in her happy place, apparently unashamed about the quantity she was eating now that she had dispensed with the professional airs. Next to her, Amethyst had something similar, minus the noodles and in a smaller portion, but it wasn’t clear how the giant rock-woman would eat—

Until she dropped her mantle. The crystalline, faceted forms of the mecha folded in on themselves, sort of rotating like Ebi’s hand had earlier, and the air hissed as it rushed to fill the now-vacant space. Then there was a whump as Amethyst’s true body popped out of wherever it had been…stored, presumably. The actual mechanism was a well-kept secret, though I had my suspicions and educated guesses.

Amane Ishikawa’s hair was brown, although darker than the borderline-red of Hina’s, and fell in a straight, well-maintained curtain all around her head. Star had once explained that it was something of a point of pride for her, described in interviews as a reminder that she was still a magical girl, for all the time she spent with a construct for a body. She wasn’t nearly as tall as her mantled form, of course, but she was still the tallest Radiance by a noticeable margin—although that wasn’t saying much, as the team as a whole skewed short; I still had an inch on her. She was wearing earrings, something pale that might have been pearl—or opal. Freckles were splattered across her face, interrupted on her right side by faint crisscrossed scars coming up from her cheek, some wrapping around to her temple where others disappeared under the eyepatch covering that side.

The first thing she did was emit a choking gasp, achingly familiar. Ebi was by her side, soothing and seemingly applying some kind of analgesic. Opal held her right hand, her flesh one, but I could still see how the taller woman was trembling. She took a few deep breaths and seemed to steady herself, then her eyes flicked to me. Or rather, her eye did. Her left eye was whole, a vivid green on par with Hina’s blue that made me entertain the idea that she should have been Emerald. After a moment, the patch covering her right lit up. It was a digital screen like Ebi’s face, and the projected ‘eye’ moved in sync with her physical one. It wasn’t quite seamless and didn’t sell the illusion of being the real thing, the way a sufficiently intricate LM construct might. I was sure she owned fancier ones for outside the comfort of her home—since like Hina’s teeth or the bags under Ai’s eyes, my memory of Amane’s face was unblemished in videos and even live streams, sanitized of her mortality.

In person, her pain was apparent. Even through whatever painkillers Ebi had applied, her jaw was clenched and her shoulders were hunched, visible through the well-practiced smile of greeting she turned on me. It made my heart hurt, remembering the long months of recovery from the first time everything had changed for me, seven years prior. And she had it worse than me, by all accounts: even if I were to include my hand’s burns, my blood prices paled in comparison to what I knew of her injuries, though couldn’t see most of it here due to the baggy hoodie she wore and her legs being hidden under the table. The only sign other than the eye was her free hand emerging from the sleeve, an intricate white-and-purple construct that moved like flesh, holding the spoon. Ai’s masterwork, self-animated by Amane’s own lattices. The resemblances to Ebi’s own chassis were obvious, but this looked even more high-tech.

I spoke without thinking. “Are you alright?”

That was a stupid question, of course, since the answer was both yes and no. No, since she was clearly in pain—yes, because it was familiar pain, a simple fact of her life for years now. Ebi glared at me a little, but the way Opal’s eyes flicked to me without reprimand suggested that the empathy was what counted. Amane herself nodded and gave me a thumbs-up with the prosthetic hand—some things transcended language—squeezed her eyes shut, and took a deep breath. Then she reopened her eyes and began to eat. Ebi left her side after a moment, but Opal kept holding her other hand, the flesh one, as they ate. I got the sense that this was something of a ritual for the three, or perhaps the team as a whole. My phone buzzed.

ebi-furai: amethyst can take care of herself

ebi-furai: be respectful, shes not made of glass

ezzen: gotcha, sorry

I understood; I figured Opal holding her hand was an exception. I looked down at my own hand under the table, examining the familiar patchwork of scarring, moving the fingers. I had mostly full mobility, since they had spared no expense in the wake of such a horrible and tragic disaster, an entire year of skin grafts and cutting-edge treatments aided by magic still in its infancy. “Nobody should have to go through that, what a nightmare, how was I holding up”—I had long since become inured to the well-wishes. Sometimes, horrible things just happen, and the scars aren’t symbols of bravery or valor, just pain.

In light of that—what could I do to “be respectful” here, given the language barrier? There was only one thing that readily came to mind, the only thing I was really good at. I stood, returning to the whiteboard. Amethyst had drawn out a decent portion of her mantle’s lattice for me, although much of it was shorthand and getting all the details would need me to actually boot up the program on my laptop to properly keep track of everything. But this was my comfort zone, my one real talent, and so I had been able to tabulate ripple values on-the-fly with formulas I knew by heart as we sketched different configurations. I picked up a smaller whiteboard leaning against the main one’s ledge. I could tell there was a lattice in it, and just from feel and context—

“This what I think it is?”

“Yes, just tug.”

I did—magically, not physically—and the larger board’s contents copied themselves onto the smaller one. I brought it over, putting it between us on the table. I began to draw in a new chunk, {ICE}-{TRANSPOSE}, linked in orange to the main {MANIFEST} chunk, on the high-pulse side. I drew in a little stick figure version of Amethyst and circled the legs, then put a big question mark next to it. My gut was telling me the resemblance to the Spire’s skin was more than superficial.

Opal caught my eye as I passed the marker to Amane, and nodded. I took that as a sign that this was the right way to treat her, based on what Ebi had said. Amane’s good arm—the mechanical one—grabbed the marker, and she gave my addition a once-over, before going over my question mark with a check mark, confirming my guess. It didn’t tremble the way her flesh-arm did. Then she wrote something in kanji next to it, reading the label aloud.

“Karada no ugoki.”

Her voice was tight with pain, but controlled. She passed the marker to Opal, who labeled the chunk with “BODY MOVEMENT.” Then Amane switched the marker to blue and drew over the orange connection point and jotted a question mark of her own next to the change before passing it back to me. I nodded and shoveled some more curry into my mouth, having made the executive decision to forego my chopsticks for the spoon. I added a second line parallel to the blue one in pink.

“One of these two. We should really run it in…GWalk? Do you guys use that?”

“Emerald has her own version. But—”

She asked Amane something, who nodded.

“We’ll just test it later. Amane’s intuition is better than the computer.”

That made sense. “I’d love to see the full diagram, but…that’s probably classified?”

Opal nodded. “Very. We’d need you to commit to joining first.”

The two Radiances looked over the whole diagram again.

“When Sapphire first brought you in and said you were the Ezzen, we had our doubts. Nothing against you—it was just hard to verify, and she’s refusing to tell us how she knew. So, full disclosure, this was a test, if more fun and impromptu than I had been expecting. I’m so happy you two are getting along.”

Her thumb rubbed the back of Amane’s hand. I was happy too—didn’t know if I should comment on it. Opal went on.

“This really is top-level stuff. This is hard to do by eye, even for us. And your passion shines. Apologies for making this an interview, but—what got you into magic? Other than your general proclivity for the Vaetna.”

I had been blushing, unused to face-to-face compliments—I sobered. Hadn’t they read my file?

“My father died in the firestorms.”

I saw something flicker across both their faces; they had been flametouched not long after that. That period had been defined by death for all of us, probably. She didn’t offer any condolences; we were all long since past that point.

“And you wanted to—forgive any presumptions—prevent that from happening to somebody else?”

That was part of it, but there was more. I had talked about this many times before online, to friends, but never out loud or publicly. “I wanted to understand. To—make sense of it? The Vaetna proved it’s more than just a natural disaster, that it could be controlled. Glyphs make sense.”

Amane said something to Opal, words I recognised. “Ao hibana mitai.”

Opal squeezed her hand. “How much do you know about the Blue Spark Incident?”

I didn’t follow the leap. “Uh—inferno control. Non-Flamefall source.”

“Do you know how it started?”

“Blood magic that went too far, right? Necromancy.”

“She was a Sun’s Blessing member gone radical. They believe that everyone who died in the firestorms had their souls incorporated into the Frozen Flame. She was trying to get her husband back.”

It hadn’t worked. Something else had come through, and the sky above Tokyo still had the scar to remember it by. Now I understood the accusation.

“I’m—I don’t want to bring my dad back, if that’s what you’re implying. I love glyphs, the Spire, not blood magic.”

Ai’s words rang in my ears. Sacrifice.

“So it has to be the Spire?”

“Well—no, but they get it. The ripple, the flame. It’s so…beautiful.” I knew how that sounded. “And they use it for something that matters. The Spire Stands.”

Both girls nodded at the familiar catchphrase, so iconic it wasn’t embarrassing to say aloud, even for me. It symbolized the will to weave a better world.

“Todai understands that. That’s the calling, in part.”

“The calling?”

“Mahou shoujo. The purpose of being a magical girl. Light in the dark. That matters.”

She said it with a conviction behind her eyes, those gloaming gems as hard as the Spire’s dermis. We understood that about each other, at least.

“That’s to say—this is why we think there’s a place for you here.”

She leaned forward. Amane doodled something in a free space on the whiteboard.

“We’d love for you to join us. We all see your potential as a Radiance. But—if it’s magic itself you care about? Weaving LM structures, optimizing static glyph chains, ripple management? That’s the basis for our magic, for our transformations. You don’t have to join the team for us to see the value in teaching you those, not with your skillset. I’m happy to leave that optional if it’ll get you on board. There’s plenty of time for you to change your mind.”

Amane showed me the whiteboard. She had drawn the Spire’s symbol and an arrow from it to the spinal component of the diagram of her lattice. The arrow was labeled “LM.” Opal went on, gesturing at the drawing.

“I called us second-best earlier. But when it comes to those aspects? We’re just as good as they are.”

This was the real pitch, divorced from what Hina had said about becoming a Radiance.

“You want to know how it actually works? The way our mantles are woven, the actual mechanics of transformation? You were already on the right track with the diagram.”

Her eyes glittered, and for a moment, Todai’s Dragon looked like her namesake, prideful and regal.

“We reinvented the LM structures of dermis for our transformations, and have only taken them further since. If you join, we’ll show you how.”

And in the end, that was all it took.

“I’m in.”