Where the wild things are, a Harry Potter/ Puella Madoka Magica crossover (post-series). You have been warned.

Things started off badly for Artemisia Potter. They didn't get any better. Quite the opposite actually.

This is the draft of the first part of a PMMM fic. In true PMMM fashion, 'it gets worse' and 'love between girls' share space with 'everybody's gonna fucking die' and 'oh shit you didn't!' in a messy relationship quadrangle of death, destruction, blood & hatred. If I ever develop this and you get too attached to a side character, I pity you. I really do.

… Disregard the smirk.

DISCLAIMER: Since I haven't done justice to real locations or government services, please note that this is taking place in a fictional alternate reality that has no bearing on our own where an alien race is manipulating things in order to ensure that they get their way more often when dealing with individuals they want something of.

How better to get children to wish for something than to make them wallow in misery and despair before offering them a way out? It strikes me that orphans or girls all but abandoned by their parents would make perfect targets for the incubators, so it would make sense for them to maximise the number of female orphans whilst minimising their perception of their chances at having a happy & successful life. That way, all other things being equal, they have a steady stream of prospective contractors thinking that they can leave their nightmare behind and go off to live out their fantasies.

In order to do that, the orphanage and adoption systems they would manipulate others into implementing would differ in structure and substantially differ in the level & duty of care afforded to the state's charges. Real organisations in charge of orphans in the western world are typically well-funded enough to ensure the children grow up in a stable and secure environment. The ones in this universe are struggling to not collapse on themselves due to budget shortfalls, NIMBY vandalism, scandal after scandal of prospective adopters turning out to be in the market for slave labour, hundreds of missing persons cases, lawsuits from lobbying organisations looking to carve up the system and sell it to the private prison industry etcetera etcetera etcetera.

This fic in no way aims to besmirch the efforts of the thousands of people whose sole job it is to keep those children that have lost everything in life from going off the deep end. They are heroes, one and all, of the effective kind. Without them, our society would be a lot poorer-probably non-existent even.

In the world of this fic, with veiled interests having a stake in making a bad situation even worse for a segment of the orphans' population, those self-same workers typically last maybe five to ten years struggling to make the best out of a hellish situation that ends in failure 10 times out of 11 before stress-related illness takes them out of the workforce.

NB: A word on the general nature of this story's world. Disregard if you just don't care.

Wraiths are the primal manifestation of the despair of all mankind. They are, in a way, unique to humanity in that they are directly spawned from the dark thoughts and curses bestowed by all humans on the world in general. That is the indirect consequence of Madoka intervening in the creation of witches-as the Goddess of Hope, she shoulders the despair of the dying Magical Girls before said girl spawns a Witch. However, Witches fed off the despair of the population they were close to as well, 'cleaning' the area of the psionic corruption left behind by misery and hate.

Without the witches, that despair, an effect the incubators engineered in early humans to ensure a Witch could power itself without necessarily feeding off the then-sparse population, accumulated, grew and festered into wraiths.

When the incubators first engineered humanity to allow for the creation of witches, their early failures were soon counteracted by the emergence of these primal psionic entities who emerged in significant enough numbers for their harvesting to be worthwhile. As a result, the Incubators continued with a modified version of their plans.

In the pre-LOC universe, the creation and destruction of a Magical Girl's Soul Gem were two of the major sources of energy. Though the power output varied wildly between the different girls, by the end of it the energy absorbed from having a soul shatter was pretty much the spiritual equivalent of splitting an atom-in other words, the energy released was massive.

What mattered the most was optimisation-getting as many Magical Girls as possible to contract and die in as short a timespan as possible. The longer a Magical Girl remained active, the longer it took up an Incubator's time and the longer said Incubator had to wait for the trade-off. The power gathered through the Grief Seeds, though not insignificant, was dwarfed by a Witch 'hatching' out of a Soul Gem. Only in times where the number of Witches threatened to overwhelm the population that harboured the pool of potentials did the Incubator in charge of the area encourage longevity and group tacticts-at least, that lasted until the situation was under control again. The Magical Girl teams didn't last very long after that.

In the new Universe however, the creation of a soul gem was the major point of energy creation. On Death, the Energy that should theoretically be released 'disappeared' thanks to Madoka. That meant that while the initial power gathered was enough of an incentive to make contracts in the first place, the Incubators looking to maximise their energy collection needs had to ensure that the Magical Girls survived their encounters with the Wraiths for as long as possible. When a Magical Girl fell or the population of Wraiths increased to the point where the existing girls could no longer keep up, the Incubators contracted around ten new Magical Girls in the hope that at least one survived the year. There was a 50/50 chance of that happening-i.e. a 5% chance of a Magical Girl surviving her first year as one.

Which was better than in the previous Universe, where Magical Girls typically held a 0.05% chance of surviving their first year. Kyouko, Homura and Mami were essentially ultra-freaky statistical outliers, once in a century magical girls whose appearance in the Mitakihara area during a period when the other two were still alive had such long odds that Kyubey was put under investigation for it.

And while that was all well and good, the Incubators being benevolent to the Magical Girls a bit freakish & all that, that didn't mean that they weren't suddenly all cuddly and nice.

Because, due to the existence of Wraiths, they realised one very important thing early on-in order to maximise the number of Wraiths for harvesting, they needed to maximise the population whilst keeping the environment stable & their existence as miserable as possible.

Thankfully, humanity did the whole 'making themselves miserable' bit far better than the Incubators ever could.

With these new priorities in place, the Incubators went to work. Farming & Agriculture exploded across the planet thanks to the wishes of early magical girls for better food and living conditions.

Medical knowledge became one of the founding principles of civilisation rather than a fringe benefit that could only be called effective in the last two centuries.

The global population hit seven billion before the Toba eruption completely destroyed the flourishing civilisation, leaving no trace of itself behind except for a couple of ultra-deep-space autonomous drones.

70,000 years later and the global population was finally closing in on its pre-catastrophe levels again. Mechanical calculation devices and machines had become widespread in the days of Rome and Greece. Birth control and other medical technologies came and went with the disposition of the population towards 'free love'. Disease outbreaks were the domain of fiction, a mythical boogieman on par with vampires and werewolves. Electricity was discovered in the 12th century. Powered flight came about in the 18th century, though the jet engine still appeared at roughly the same time as in the previous universe. Difference engines came about in the 16th century and arguably perfected with Babbage's steam and electric turbine-driven differential difference engine. Physical and mathematical prowess that was considered close to or at genius level before was commonplace now. Engineers and Scientists were hailed in comic books alongside the run-of-the-mill hero crowd. There was one case of widespread famine maybe once every century. Space programs were started in the 19th century and had successfully put a number of space stations in orbit of other planet where they could safely test out FTL technology.

You would think that this would be great, right?

Wrong.

For close to three millenia, overpopulation has been a plague on the planet. The early pioneering of technology led to a massive push for acquiring resources to build said technology all the way during the days of the early Roman Republic, one of the first 'Deus Ex Machina' Nations. They used their advanced knowledge of mechanics to build weaponry en masse to fit out their soldiers with, which they then sent to conquer territory in order to acquire more resources to use to fuel their machines and make more of them. By the end of the Roman Period, far from stopping in Germania, the Romans had made it all the way to the Oural mountains before being stopped cold by the Mongols.

Mineral and Natural resources replaced simple gold as the standard of wealth for countries. Wars were fought over everything-coal deposits, mining installations, freshwater sources, everything. Every time a new technique or process was discovered that required some new compound or other to function, a half dozen countries, territories and independent cities would rush to secure the deposits they knew about and fortify the whole thing.

Peat bogs, quarries and other rather strange places became areas of strategic importance on par with trade routes and shipping ports. Entire armies were camped on flat bits of land the second someone discovered something there. Battles erupting over claims that later turned out to be false alarms were common in disputed territory and wars were known to erupt when they didn't turn out to be false alarms.

When the purported Messiah died in Jerusalem in 0 CE, Pontius Pilate ordered his remains cremated as the cave where he was supposed to be laid to rest in contained a slim vein of copper that was currently being investigated. It was only through the intervention of Mary Magdalene that the body was buried instead.

Influential and powerful figures in early history were often laid to rest in dry mines and empty quarries to symbolise that the riches they had owned in life would not follow them in death. It was not uncommon for prospectors to strike on opulent burial chambers centuries later.

The early development of technology also segued quite naturally into warfare. Mechanised transport took millenia to perfect, but even the slow and bumpy rides presented by early steam-driven carts were a force multiplier to be reckoned with. Flamethrower backpacks spewing greek fire, portable self-winding onagers and explosives-tipped heavy spears were common and extremely terrifying sights on early battlefields. Slavery rapidly became a thing of the past as slaves assigned to picking up the debris of battle often walked off the field with fully functional weapons that could very easily set an entire town ablaze.

The more esoteric and unstable weapons-steam-driven dart launchers, early compound bows, Boiler Bombs, automatic long-range trebuchets-were rare, but really effective until they broke.

And as ranged weapons proliferated, so did casualty numbers. World War One casualty figures were hit as early as the 15th century, when gunpowder gave way to guncotton cartridges just in time for the conquistadores to leave for parts unknown. Carrying with them early versions of rotary machine guns, gunpowder explosives and mail reinforced to resist forces up to and including stray grapeshot fired from a gunpowder cannon, the fleet of wooden sail ships with a small experimental steam engine-driven propeller on board in case of dead winds and helping to navigate during storms arrived in South America.

What happened over the next year before the next wave of ships hit is unknown. Of the conquistadors, there were five survivors. Of the Incas & Aztecs, there were none. Tales of a religious war erupting between those that believed they were gods and those that didn't were told, but not corroborated. What was known was that a 'Pestilence swept through the warring aborigines, cutting them down like a scythe cuts down wheat. One day, you are looking at a thriving city full of savages. The next, all you see is a blanket of bodies stretching from the city to the nearby forest they tried to flee into. God had cursed this land, I am sure of it.'

The next one happened two centuries later. In the 30 years' war, over 20 million soldiers, sailors and balloon pilots were killed. Early instances of trench warfare combined with the formerly mythical spectre of disease rearing to the fore and the first recorded deployment of machine guns and chemical bombs saw what had once been captured on pictures immortalised in wood engravings instead.

After the war, these technologies were sold to private colonisation efforts looking for an edge when settling territory in the face of belligerent natives. The anti-colonisation side sold those self-same technologies to the very belligerent natives they were supposed to cut down.

Which is when the number of conflicts involving a million casualties or more becomes difficult to track as neither side was particularly interested in keeping score.

Apart from the large-scale conflicts, the average cycle between small-scale conflicts, which usually happened around every fifty years depending on local circumstances, dropped from half a century to ten years. Every ten years, be it civil, national or colonial, a conflict of interest was almost always guaranteed to kick off a war-with the exception of the Americas, which were still recovering from one of the most horrifying disease outbreaks in known human history.

This translated into around fifty small wars being fought across the globe every century.

Apart from that, though, what was remarkable was how much actually stayed the same. By 1980, the technological level on Earth for the average citizen, despite everything, was a mere 30 years ahead. While amazing technologies existed, anything more resource-intensive to produce than a smart phone or a computer, both in production since post-World War 2 miniaturisation technologies matured in the late 50s, were exponentially more expensive than the situation warranted. The prices of both items still precluded them from overly widespread use, meaning that while private companies and defence/intelligence operations used computers, the government still relied on difference engines & punch cards to handle databases and administration tasks. Most people still didn't bother with electronic computers as their everyday utility was still in development.

Phones and the internet only really became viable once the enigma of electronic voice transmission using something other than Morse cables or radio, which had been in use for two centuries at the least, was cracked. The phone saw worldwide adoption fairly quickly, but the internet, due to a lack of dedicated infrastructure and the cost of generalising its use, was still progressing at roughly the same pace as in the previous world-fast, really fast in fact by the standards of that world, but still slow-going. Holographic technology on Earth was roughly equivalent in price to a small car.

Speaking of small cars, the casual disregard of oil meant that it was ridiculously cheap, leading to many electric car manufacturers producing a 'long range' variant of their standard automobile design that ran on a revolutionary hybrid engine (revolutionary in the sense that it was an engine that ran on petrol, not the other way round). As extra-orbital mining and molecular synthesising technologies mature, the price is expected to drop into the affordable range for the average consumer. Until then, the scifi dreams of flying cars and jetpacks are the domain of the ultra-wealthy idiots looking so show off… and the military & LEO guys looking for a stable flying platform upon which to mount portable autorail guns for urban combat patrols.

The UN existed for much the same reason it did now. NATO existed, though the reasons for its existence are different from ours since communism collapsed in the 1960s, leaving the Warsaw Pact to fight off the dictators whose main support source had just evaporated.

Unfortunately, having magical girls wishing dictators and their cronies dead or worse has led to the belief that a single-leader government is both massively unstable and inherently lethal to the dictators themselves. The UK and select royal families in Europe survived due to learning their lesson early and looking out for the prosperity of the average joe, but their lifespan is still measured in single digits post-ascension to the throne. Elizabeth the second broke pretty much every record in history when she made it past her 20th year on the throne, beating out her namesake in the process. By the late 1970s, the UN became the de facto administrator of close to 30 countries whose regimes collapsed when they tried to suppress the population and a girl wished them dead in front of a talking magical cat. By the 1980s, it had amalgamated them all into the UN High Commission for the Restoration of Nations, dubbed the 'political repair bay' by pundits around the world.

By 1987, their holdings exceeded those held by the Greeks at their hight and was rapidly approaching the Roman Empire in terms of size. Not since the British Empire had one organisation held so much territory under its power.

In short, equilibrium was maintained. As humanity's population grew and its members became ever more long-lived, its population was kept largely in check through violent and continuous conflict to ensure that overpopulation didn't kill off rather than merely severely tax the environment. A more open and tolerant humanity fought all the more violently for it. Discrimination was close to non-existent, but that went both ways-men and women were equal targets for resource denial as either could be trained into becoming soldiers in much the same time. As boundaries were blurred between nations, so were where conflicts began… and where they ended. As humanity moves towards the ultimate escape from Earth's gravity well, so do its conflicts as more & more WMDs developed in space are deployed in innocuous-seeming satellites. As things get better, they also get worse. As the future grows brighter, so does the misery suffered to get there. As humanity grows & evolves, so do the wraiths.

Balance in all things-good for bad, bad for good. The Incubators maintain as zero-sum a game as they can, making humanity's life just hard enough for it to be worth enduring in order to see the end of the tunnel, but not enough to make them throw in the towel and lay down on the rails in the dark, waiting for light to come to them. It's a balancing act they never quite get right. And the more they get it wrong, the higher the later cost is to the human race.

And yet, on the magical side of things? Fuck all changed apart from a far larger muggleborn population that came and went as the muggle wars did. Nobody in government took any real notice of this. Why should they? After all, it wasn't like anything the muggles did affected them.

This attitude would prove to be a mistake in the near future.

But now, onto the story!

November 2nd, 1981

The morgue was, as always, a fascinating place to be.

In a lot of ways, it could be likened to the tales of old where heroes on the cusp of Death waited for their Goddess to pick them up. And while nobody was a follower of the Goddess of Hope anymore, the tales told of her picking up fallen soldiers and carting them to her Heaven had been a staple of traditional folk tales for far too long for something as silly as religion to stamp them out.

But still, the morgue couldn't help but remind you of those old tales. A space in-between life and death, so cold that you could feel it in your bones and the time you waited there for her to save you, no matter how short, dragged on into a literal lifetime.

Fascinating, yes. A place you wanted to stay in for longer than a few minutes?

That was a definite no. Not unless you were a coroner, apparently.

"Where's the body?" The detective he was following asked, her face looking like someone had filled her mouth with fresh lemons before kicking her in the jaw.

"In the usual place, my dear." The young coroner answered with a smile, clearly smitten at the appearance of someone he'd referred to as his favourite detective. Being the go-to investigator when it came to suspicious deaths rather than outright murders did have plenty of downsides, after all.

Especially because she was missing Doctor Who as her muttered semi-ranting had told him on the way here. She genuinely loved that show.

So did he, for that matter.

"And who is that, by the way?" The coroner asked, waving vaguely in his general direction.

"I was told not to ask." The detective replied in a bored tone. Well, that certainly explained some of the attitude he was getting from her.

"Edward Tonks, at your service." He replied, nodding at the coroner and the sour-faced detective.

The detective snorted. "As if." The coroner looked at her with a disapproving frown. "I don't like unknowns." The detective stated apologetically to him. "But orders are orders you know."

The coroner smiled wanly. "Oh, I understand my dear. I was assigned to the Surrey area after a vetting period with Scotland Yard, after all. Between you and me, I am not surprised you have a tag-along with you this time, though experience tells me he is significantly better dressed than most."

The Detective lifted a rather shapely eyebrow. Dear Lord, was she a squib relative to Andie's? They had the exact same 'do tell' expression.

The coroner shook his head. "Need to know, Detective. Pray to whomever or whatever you worship that you never do need to know is all I can say about the subject."

The Detective looked disappointed for a second before smiling back at him. "I will keep you to that."

"And I will see to it that you do." The coroner promised, though it was blatantly obvious that he wanted to be in a position to do so in a far more intimate fashion.

Ted shook his head at the byplay. Puppy love. Andi would have been squeeing right about now.

Finally, the coroner arrived at a large set of steel doors. Unhooking the key from his belt, the good doctor unlocked the doors with a firm twist. The bolts keeping the metal panels together retracted and the coroner nudged the doors, allowing both of them to swing inwards with a steady groan.

Thank Merlin for warming charms. The room beyond was just shy of freezing.

"Here we are!" The coroner said in a jolly tone. The detective just looked exasperated as she fidgeted with her scarf.

Whistling now, the coroner moved to the far end of the room, opening another set of doors to reveal what looked like a locker. Picking out another key, he unlocked one of the drawers and pulled out the tray that was inside.

The woman was young, blonde and relatively attractive-looking in life. Now, she was very, very dead and mostly covered by a thin white sheet.

That was the first glimpse Edward Tonks caught of Petunia Dursley nee Evans, sister of Lily Potter nee Evans. The two had died within hours of each other.

The three stared at the corpse before them, just taking a minute to mourn the passing of someone who had had her whole life ahead of her.

None of them let it affect them too badly-between a Detective whose case history would probably power a twilight zone reboot, a coroner who could not really account for about three years of his career in London and him, whose paper trail ended at the age of eleven and had subsequently been padded with some very very badly forged documentation (and who'd fought in a war, seen most of his friends turned into hamburger before they reached the age of nineteen & had been part of a couple of extremely dangerous black operations on behalf of both the Ministry and Her Majesty's Government-on British soil, no less- yet had lived to mostly not tell the tale), they had seen plenty of things that were, at best, just a slight bit worse than this.

But that didn't stop them from mourning anyway.

The coroner cleared his throat. "Lady and gentleman, may I present to you one Petunia Dursley. Wife of Vernon Dursley, deceased in a workplace-related accident, daughter of Rosaline and Andrew Evans, both deceased as well, sister to Lily Evans-Potter, confirmed deceased as of eight o'clock this morning and mother of Dudley Dursley, age one."

Another silent minute followed before the coroner kept talking. "I have ordered all the standard tests to be performed of course. At this juncture, poison and most of the more common lethal diseases can be ruled out. Direct violence, heart disease and cancer have been ruled out as well. I have yet to find any physiological anomalies that could tell us why Miss Dursley just up and dropped dead the way she did. Until the battery of tests are finished, we can but speculate. What is clear, though, was that whatever killed her left no trace whatsoever."

Ted's stomach dropped. He knew what that diagnosis entailed. "Nothing?" He simply asked, causing the coroner to turn to look at him.

"Nothing." The coroner confirmed. "I ordered a series of tests to be run on samples taken from the spinal cord, but so far I am not particularly sure I will find anything. Something that, I can tell you, is not going to look good when my employment comes up for review."

"You won't have to worry about that." Ted reassured him.

"Yes, I know. Mainly because you know what killed this woman." The coroner stated with a smile.

Ah. So that was what he had been doing in London then.

At that, the detective glared at him-only to be interrupted by the coroner putting a hand in front of her. "Daniel?" She asked him incredulously.

"Honestly Annette, when I tell you you do not want to know, then you should listen. Mister Edward here is part of a collection of special interest groups that deal with the… the weird. Much like you do, in fact. Anything he does, asks or says is classified at the very highest levels of the MOD. The only reason I know of this is because I worked for the MOD at… some stage… and may or may not have seen some… things in my time there." He sighed. "Don't worry Edward-or whatever your name is-, I have a copy of the Official Secrets Act with Annette's name on it in my office. She will not pursue nor interrogate you or anyone else likely to act like you. Isn't that right Anne?"

The Detective was gaping at him. "Dan, I-"

He waved her off. "Later, dear. There are some excellent pubs nearby where we can have a pint or two and I can explain a few things about our little friend here without anyone trying to kill you for it afterwards."

The Detective simply nodded at the Coroner, who turned to Ted. "There, see, no physical evidence to indicate what killed her. At all. Everything was, as far as I could tell, pristine and raring to go. She simply went outside and suddenly dropped dead. End of story. I thank you for reassuring me that this wasn't going to become a thorn in my side later on, but I do believe that your questions have been answered sir." The man stated politely.

Ted nodded. "Almost." He said, turning to the Detective. "Detective, could you tell me what happened to the children please? Part of the reason I am here today is to determine whether the children are in danger or not." He asked as gently as he could.

The Detective stiffened before looking at him. "They were remanded into the custody of Greater Whinging Hospital. The involvement of the Surrey Police officially ended after the children's details were handed over to the Hospital's Social workers for processing. I am sorry that I cannot be of any more service than that sir." She said, sounding more like she was extremely happy about that fact. It didn't really surprise him-he hated it when unknowns asked about the whereabouts of a client's children. Hell, she thought of him as a muggle Unspeakable probably. In his day job as a lawyer, he would deck any unspeakable that was stupid enough to ask him about the whereabouts of a deceased client's children.

In other news, Augustus Rookwood would stand trial with a brand new shiner-and a different lawyer too. Ted wished the man a long and painful death in Azkaban.

So Ted counted his lucky stars that he hadn't lost any teeth after asking that, nodded to the both of them and bid them goodbye.

Outside the Brutalist structure housing one of the more unnerving coroners he'd ever come across, Ted stopped at a phone booth. It was raining outside, which was par for the course when it came to November in the UK, which made the shelter offered by the booth a welcome bonus indeed.

Picking up the receiver, he slotted five pence into the coin slot and waited for the dial tone to engage. He then tapped out a series of numbers he'd memorised a few weeks into moving closer to the muggle world with Andie & Nymphie and waited again.

"Hanneter & Sons bookbinding, how can we help you?" A peppy female voice stated on the other end of the line, causing Ted to wince instinctively. He hated cheerful business people.

"Marigold, Fetters, Bowler Hat." He said flatly.

"One moment please." The girl said before his call was put on hold.

A click came over the line as another person picked it up. "There'll be a car rounding the corner in two minutes. Wave it down and get in."

"Understood." Ted said before placing the receiver down in its cradle and looking down at his watch.

After precisely two minutes, a red Rover Sedan rounded the corner, causing Ted to roll his eyes before flagging the car down. He got into the back seat as soon as he could, sliently cursing the complete lack of portkeys on this job.

That is, until he looked at his fellow passenger and blinked.

Albus Dumbledore was sitting there, looking very very tired.

Ted just stared at the man for a second. The Supreme Mugwump had taken time out of organising the Death Eater trials to meet with him?

What the hell?

"Sir." Ted said instead.

"Edward Tonks." Dumbledore acknowledged, inclining his head just so.

Ted took a deep breath and started talking. "That was definitely Petunia Dursley, no doubt about it. Witnesses corroborated her getting out of the house and dying almost instantly at the scene. No physical indicators of what happened, no clue as to why it happened. The muggles were baffled-except for the coroner, of course."

"Ah yes, Daniel." Dumbledore said with a smile. "Sharp mind indeed right there. Pity we aren't allowed to tell him about everything, but he will figure it out on his own sooner or later."

Ted took a few minutes again to re-orient himself. Reacting unexpectedly to Dumbledore knowing everything was getting to be a bad habit. "Right. Well sir, you know what it all points to."

Dumbledore lost his smile. "I do indeed. Those poor children. So young and they are the last of their family."

Ted felt that hollow pit in his stomach again. "So they have no-one left?"

"Oh no. You-know-who was quite thorough in that regard. I think the closest relative either of them have is little Draco Malfoy. Marjorie Dursley officially disavowed being related to the two of them almost as soon as she got the news. Something about her brother being right about the freaks on Petunia's side of the family." Dumbledore summarised.

The car finally hit the motorway back to London. The only sound the two could hear was the sound of windscreen wipers moving back and forth over the windscreen.

"And if I offered to take them?" Ted asked quietly. "Both of them?" He clarified.

"Alas, that is no longer possible. It appears that Skeeter beat the gag order I had the Wizengamot issue surrounding the details Voldemort's demise by minutes. When the order came through, the newspapers were already halfway to their destinations. They're already calling the child the Girl-Who-Lived. Can you imagine growing up with that hanging over you?" Dumbledore said, sighing as he pinched his nose. "I am very rarely given to swear, you understand, but that woman is a cow. I had contingency plans in place to keep the children alive, but now they are out of the window. With what happened to the Longbottoms early this morning, I cannot afford to take chances about anyone finding out where the girl is."

And suddenly that hollow pit turned into a sinking feeling. "Dumbledore, what are you doing?" Thinking on what he'd just said, he amended the question. "What have you done?"

Dumbledore looked at him. "The Girl-Who-Lived is called Artemisia Potter." He stated clearly.

Ted was horrified when the knowledge clicked into place. "The fidelius… Albus, no." He said in dismay. "You-you can't just take someone's name!" He practically shouted.

"Only her family name." Dumbledore shot back. "She will be known as Artemisia henceforth. If anyone guesses who she is, the revelation is sealed from their memories. Anyone calling her the girl-who-lived will not even believe themselves."

Dumbledore sighed. "When she comes to Hogwarts, she will be a happy girl called Artemisia who, for all intents and purposes, is an orphaned muggleborn given a happy little muggle home. That's all the protection she has left." He said with a strange emphasis on the 'left'.

Taking a second to drink from a flask in the car door's side pocket, he continued. "Maybe there is enough blood protection her mother sacrificed herself for for little Artemisia to survive to adulthood in the wizarding world. However, the same cannot be said for her cousin Dudley. When the truth comes out-and it will Mister Tonks, I can assure you of that at least-then he will be in grave danger as well. His lack of magic will make him vulnerable to every threat coming for his cousin."

The old man Ted had "So, for the sake of both of them, I will ensure nobody can trace them through the muggle system. As we speak, obliviators are muddling any memories the muggles have about what the children looked like, where they went and who they were. They will disappear and, in time, Artemisia will reappear to take up her legacy. Until then, they will live a happy life."

Ted was silent for the rest of the ride. Necessary or not, he didn't like it. He didn't like it one bit.

After the obliviators had swept through a Surrey Police Station, muddying and confusing memories left and right before leaving the way they came, a small plastic bag containing what looked like fragments of black glass was forgotten about.

The leftover fragments of the vessel that had contained Petunia Dursley's soul since the age of twelve would never see the light of day again.

October 30th, 1987

Somewhere far, far away from Earth

Welcome to the Universal Workstation Shell! Please remember to save your session when possible! The copies kept by Network Security can no longer be used as proxy backups since the latest access laws came into effect. If you wish for a news stream, just open another shell and access the Information Servers available though the Public Information hubs. They're free in every way!

Welcome, Junior Agent! Please enter your commands.

cd .sys3 Incnet/G_mkw/SpirA3/Migr_sys_30346/PL_03_TERRA/LM_Zw_EUR_ISL/GB/AR_03_LANC_pr6_lowdens/North_Lancashire.c4

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Scan -mods

Scanning area…

3 return pings for infiltrator-class Incubator models.

Please wait…

2 mod1980 Iteration 4 units available-please type man m1980_it4 for technical documentation or m1980_it4 to choose this unit.

1 mod1982 Iteration 1 'research and continuous targeted surveillance specialist drone' unit available-please contact your administrator in order to access the technical documentation pertaining to this unit. You do not have sufficient access privileges to choose this unit. Please contact your administrator for assistance in obtaining it.

Pause

Holding operation. Please input new command. Remember to type 'unpause' at the end of the new operation. An intelligent Agent will merge the two operations if you choose to combine them.

netget _ 1. 0000001.28374.9.0

Please input password:

Password not recognised, please try again.

Please input password:

Password not recognised, please try again. WARNING: 1 try left before automatic system lockout (preset duration: 1 galactic standard cycle[Min. duration] for 1n2 size galaxies). If this happens, please contact your system administrator.

Please input password:

*************************************************/********************\******

….

…

Password accepted. #Reminder: Please remember to get it right the first time next time. Network Security Agents were on the verge of knocking on your firewall. Don't be like Syubey. Don't forget your 1024-string alphanumeric password. Memorisation. It's not that hard, people.

Unpause

Merge paused stream with current (y/n)?

Y

Please wait…

Evaluating both operations…

Calculating impacts…

Simulating possible merger states...

Discarding superfluous data…

Merging both operations will grant you Level 3 clearance. Be advised that, at level 6 or above, your session will be automatically monitored by the relevant incubator FOB. If this is an erroneous clearance level, please desist: accessing material you are not cleared for is a banishable offence. Do you wish to continue (y/n)?

Y

Merging operations…

Done. #Communication:Have a nice day Senior Research Agent. And please remember to input your clearance prior to the session. The waste in resources you have incurred already costs us 0.000001 seconds of Universal Existence per minor galactic cycle, a state of affairs which you know full well Collections will eventually bill you for. So stop adding to your energy debt already. It is straining my emotional inhibitors.

Resuming…

1 mod1982 Iteration 1 'research and continuous targeted surveillance specialist drone' unit available-please type man m1982_it1 for technical documentation or m1982_it1 to choose this unit.

m1982_it1

Initialising unit…

Checking authorisation codes…

Done.

Checking unit memory…

No corrupted sectors found.

Checking Agent-Unit Network interface…

Stable at 400 ptb/sec. #REMINDER: Please remember to back up your virtualised instances every 30 seconds to prevent excessive memory loss in areas experiencing quantum instability. Don't be Syubey.

Preparing for download…

Done.

Powering up localised QE communicator (15 AU max range)…

Done.

Performing clearance diagnostics…

Done. Maximum estimated life expectancy of unit-1,500 terran years. #Communication: Remember to be careful out there! This is the first time we've been able to accost a confirmed Anomaly with zero inherent risk in over 6,000 terran years. If you blow this for us, you'll be handing out contracts at the centre of a Black Hole for the next thousand Greater cycles. High Command out.

Unit ready. Do you wish to proceed with mind-state upload (Y/N)?

Y

#Communication: See you soon sir. Good luck. The Universe is counting on you.

Commencing upload…

24% Done

Estimate to completion- [15 pico-cycles] remaining.

Please stand by.

Elsewhere

Another day, another failed adoption.

Artie dragged her feet as the social worker pulled into the parking lot she was so familiar with. "Come on, it's not that bad!" The elderly woman said with a patently fake smile. "There's plenty of fish in the sea, girl."

Artemisia looked up at her. "That's the fifth one this year." She pointed out morosely.

The social worker's smile faded for a second before switching back on, brighter than ever. "But that just means the next one's going to be the one." She pointed out.

Artie just shook her head. "Is there any way to take me off the adoption roster?" She asked. "I am sick of moving into homes only to be sent back again."

The social worker's smile dropped. Neither of them said a word as Artemisia got out of the car to fetch her bags. Valuable life lesson-when you're Artie and being adopted, only pack enough that you can carry it by yourself. She'd lost her best clothes six months ago when an unhappy couple ditched her at a bus station with the instruction to 'go back to your home'.

No, she wouldn't cry. She was better than that. Better than them. When she promised she would do something, she did it.

Still, her backpack was heavy. She'd had high hopes this time.

All those adults said they wanted children of their own. When it came to the others she'd grown up with, they kept their word. Most of the kids stayed with their new parents and the ones that didn't only came back under severe circumstances.

When it came to her though? They were liars.

They wanted a cook or a maid or a doll that could sit perfectly still for hours on end while a line of brats paraded themselves in front of her and called her nasty names while the parents simply chuckled at the youth of today.

They wanted a perfect little princess that would do everything they said without questioning why or how or when, who would take whatever punishment or abuse they meted out with abandon, who didn't want a child so much as a plaything they discarded the second she or the world pointed out that yes, that thing you have sitting in the corner for not cleaning your kitchen properly?

That is a little girl that's supposed to trust you.

That was roughly when the nicer ones called the social workers while the others shoved her out the door with five pounds and shouted instructions never to come back to their upscale flat, little brat!

But this… this was supposed to be the one.

By all appearances, they'd been perfect.

A happy family that simply wanted to do some good. They had two children in their teens already. They had a house in a picturesque little village where the local kids were still allowed to swim in the pond next to the school grounds. They were rich enough to handle adopting and weren't shy about letting others know about it.

They even had a big fluffy Labrador!

And it had gone nicely for a week. The siblings coaxed her out of her shell, the mother set appropriate chores and didn't ask her to wear a maid's dress when doing them and the father included her in their family gatherings from day one.

Then, one night, the father had returned drunk and Artemisia had found out why they had wanted to adopt a child.

They didn't want a child. They wanted an ersatz punching bag.

She still remembered screaming at the siblings (they'd shared a large room) as well as the mother who'd come rushing in at her cries for help, for them to stop him, to do something, anything.

The three did do something alright.

They looked away.

The next day, the family had been awkwardly apologetic but Artie didn't want to hear it. She marched off to the local police to report a crime.

Turns out the father was the son of some bigwig in the government, so they'd politely told her that nothing would stick unless she could somehow afford a QC.

They still called the social workers to come pick her up though. The lady that shuffled her into a car on the way to the office looked horrified at the state she was in and promised there would be an investigation. Artie didn't buy it. It wouldn't be the first investigation that got mysteriously scuttled because the nominal investigators 'lost track of the victim when witness statements were being gathered'.

She had lost two teeth and gathered a lot of bruises in that ordeal.

And then spent a day in a car in the presence of the most ruthlessly cheerful social worker she'd ever seen.

No more.

Her heartbeat sped up as she opened the doors. This was home now. Never again would she hope for adoption or parents or siblings or dogs or money or food that didn't taste like vomit or tea that didn't taste like sour water or any of the other things like that.

There they were, her family. Gathered around the stairwell that led to the dorms in that awkward moment between study period ending and dinner time starting, once again engaging in that ancient argument of football or TV.

They stared at her in horror and pity. She felt ashamed. Why did she feel ashamed?

At the abrupt silence, one of the workers turned a corner and ducked her head into the corridor to see what the lack of noise was about. She had curly dark hair and what some of the older boys called 'a figure to die for'. This was Tina. She'd been working in the orphanage as a caretaker for the kids for as long as Artie'd been there herself. And while she wasn't allowed to show too much affection to the kids lest they get too attached to her (at least in front of the senior staff members), she still treated her better than any prospective parent ever had.

She gasped as she saw her, rapidly ducking into the corridor and hugging her. The baffled 'oh, I say!' from the social worker behind Artie didn't even register.

This was her life here. This was her destiny. There was no family in her future, no hope of ever actually calling someone other than a grave she'd never had the money or the courage to visit "Mom" and/or "Dad", no support for her future other than what little scraps the state was willing to provide to such as them.

This… this was her family.

She didn't even realise she was crying when she thought that.

There had been a fire.

Tina had died from smoke inhalation the previous night. The orphanage she'd spent seven years of her life in was a scorched, empty shell of a building, all her admittedly meagre possessions so much ash scattered across the city.

All the other kids had been transferred already, scattered to orphanages across the UK.

She was still in hospital, recovering from smoke inhalation herself. She'd run into the building trying to save Tina and ended up dragging out an unconscious body. The two others that'd followed her had managed to save the twin newborns by a hair's breadth as she had laboured, coughing and crying, down the nigh-endless hallway with the body of someone she had had to stop herself from calling 'mom' several times over the years being slowly dragged along behind her as her world burned down to the ground.

She thought she'd succeeded too.

Nobody had managed to come to visit her before leaving. Once the transfer was confirmed, they were shuffled onto a bus or into a car, never to be seen by the others again.

Now came her turn, it seemed. A stern-looking man stood at her bedside with papers in hand. She grabbed the whiteboard & pen with a shaky hand.

Where will I be going? She wrote out.

The man looked at the whiteboard briefly before answering "Aberdeen". She nodded. He nodded back, left the papers on her bedside table and left.

So she was headed north. All the others had gone south.

The group she'd privately called her family was no more.

Aberdeen was cold, wet and not particularly big.

It also happened to stink in her opinion. That special fish guts and diesel fuel smell of an extremely active port was, well, everywhere.

Big ships were here too. Construction ships working on the big oil rigs out in the far Northern Atlantic. Port facilities and warehouses were seemingly going up every day, giving the rest of the city the illusion of size but actually not really increasing by much in terms of population. Those came by plane, car or train and were being housed in urban development projects until they could find somewhere decent to live.

This was a boomtown. The local infrastructure had been superceded by the supply systems built for the big companies by the time she'd arrived. Key services were lagging behind demand and it wasn't going to be long before that demand started growing exponentially.

The pace at which the not-particularly-big city was turning into a big city was frightening.

If only because of just how much was being overlooked.

Crime, for example, was not something that could be called new.

Nor was general lack of maintenance in the face of massive & rapid development.

And it just so happened that her orphanage had a bird's eye view of the local railyard, rapidly becoming a centre of criminal activity for the general area, and that nobody had actually done any renovations to the place in twenty years.

On the plus side, though, she did have an entire room to herself. Pity about the mould, really.

Still, she'd developed a cleanliness habit courtesy of a prospective parent forcing her to clean a house, top to bottom, in maid's clothing when she was six.

The fact that the time someone who considered the adoption program as a modern version of the indentured servitude program tried to 'adopt' her was the longest time she'd spent out of an orphanage said a lot about her record.

So much so that the administrator, a kindly old man trying to do his best in the face of, well, everything, had promptly agreed to her having a room to herself and no desire to be adopted.

He then had her attend a psychologist for a while. Too bad she didn't trust the man. He had the same look the social workers who were gunning for a promotion and resented the meddling kids mucking up their records had.

Still, it made old man Gerald smile and tell the kids tales in a Scottish brogue, so she indulged him.

He needed some sunshine in his life. Coming from her, that was actually quite horrifying.

And today was a reasonably warm and sunny day, so she'd decided to take advantage of that. She cleaned the mould out of her room with detergent nicked from the laundry, gave the others horror stories so they would do theirs too and then went out for the afternoon. There was a library nearby that she liked for its collection of science and maths books. She liked science and maths. What you saw was what you got. What you put in, you got out. And if you got it wrong, well it was only a matter of time before you got it right.

Her school grades were a matter of pride to her. No matter what had happened in her life, she made a point to stay at the top of her class.

Besides, one of the fly-by-night caretakers (they rarely staid longer than a week) had gotten around to giving her the allowance she hadn't gotten in two weeks, which meant sweets and books.

Maybe even a tin of Lipton tea if she had enough left over. Tea was always good.

She looked out over the trainyard. Dilapidated, shabby, rusted but still standing proud in the face of drugs & graffiti. She heard the men and women slipping into the yard to do something involving needles every Saturday night just as she heard them leave. If they were trying to be quiet about their business, then it was a resounding failure on their part. The next morning, she would accompany a caretaker to the Tesco's near the city centre and see men & women wandering the streets with a glassy, empty look on their face.

Artie resolved herself to never doing drugs.

And maybe waiting to get to Tesco's before buying more than a mid-study snack today. Tesco's was notably cheaper than the corner shop, after all.

She pushed the door in, absently noticing the ting ting of the bell as the door hit it. The man at the counter had a mohawk, wore leather and was chewing gum as he read some kind of comic at the counter. His nametag said 'Percival'. She wondered if he was one of those frequent visitors to the old warehouse in the railyard too. She decided to pay him no mind. She had some chocolate to buy.

One chocolate bar & a bemused punk wondering just why the little girl had given him an ole stinkeye worthy of his ma later saw Artie taking a shortcut through a decrepit-looking park.

Hello!

She stopped. What was that? That hadn't been a sound, but she'd heard it all the same.

Over here!

And there that not-sound was again alongside a strange itch to her right. What was going on?

Hello! The not-sound said as she looked to her right. Up here! It not-said, making her look up into the canopy of a tree.

There was a large white owl perched on one of the branches. Only it didn't have any feathers and red eyes.

She stared.

It flew down to the ground and proceeded to hop towards her. Artie's eyes bugged out. "What are you?"

My name is Ryubey, but you can call me Ruby!

"Ruby?" Artie asked as she processed the fact that she was talking to a talking magical albino not-owl that had rings floating around its not-wings.

Hello! Pleased to meet you Artemisia!

Artie stiffened. A talking magical albino not-owl that knew her name.

Oh, sorry. It said as it seemed to notice her mounting panic. I've just been following you for a while is all! You're interesting!

"Interesting. Me." Artie said with clear disbelief.

Yes, you are! You are different from the other human children around here. I can sense powerful innate magics inside you.

"Really." Artie said faintly. "B-but magic isn't real."

Yes it is. I am magical. I should know. You are too! A bit young, maybe, but I sense that it's there.

Artie blinked at the creature in disbelief. "Okay, so you find me interesting and magical. Why?" She asked sharply.

Because you have the potential to be a magical girl!

"Like who, Sailor Moon?" She said with disdain. Sailor Moon was for young children that believed in Love & Justice and all that stuff.

In other words, it wasn't for her.

Kind of but listen! You get one wish that can be anything in the world! Anything you want-money, power, friends, family-you can get it! And after that, you become a magical girl! Isn't that nice?

This was crazy. Artie shook her head. No, this was stupid. She hadn't ever had anything nice just happen to her. There were nice people she lived with, but she had yet to find nice things you couldn't buy for money in her life.

And even if they existed, they probably never would for her.

"Look Ruby, I don't know what you are or what you want, but I don't think I am the one you want to talk to."

You're wrong! The thing said in a whiny not-voice. You're far more special than you think!

Artie whirled on the thing. "Then why has every single person I have ever liked or trusted abandoned me?" She shouted at the thing, breaking into tears. "Go away." She ordered as she sobbed.

Okay! But I will be back! The not-voice of the creature said.

Artie was not gullible. Nor was she your typical nine-year-old. She could read and write at the same level as most teenagers and some adults, a legacy of many an hour spent distracting herself from her life in and out of the orphanages.

So she went to look up deals like that. It paid to know what you were getting into when a strange not-owl all but announced that it would be officially stalking you in the near future.

Aladdin was the first to touch upon it that she found. Djinns were not cuddly characters by any means, often distorting or deliberately misinterpreting wishes on a whim. Only a few fairytale characters ever granted real wishes and even then you couldn't be absolutely certain that what you got was what you were aiming for in the first place.

And then came the religious references. Devils and demons, rogue gods and tricksters alike would grant you what you coveted, but asked for a price far in excess of what you believed you were paying. Ending up an empty shell while your soul was condemned to the fires of a sinner's punishment was not, in fact, the worst of the punishments one could inflict on a person when souls came into play.

And most of the deals were made by beings that couldn't really lie. They could omit, misdirect and outright change the subject, but lying was beyond them.

Put simply, even if her brain took a long trip down a short pier, she was going to ask questions first, she resolved. A lot of questions.

She still had no idea why bargaining for power at the expense of whatever it was that the being offering it would ask of you counted as a good idea though.

She'd had wishes before, after all. She had wished for a family. She had wished for friends. She longed to know what her family name was.

But was it worth her soul? No. Favours? Sure. Money? If she could get it, maybe.

But not her soul. Never her soul.

She would not bargain for it if asked. She may have abandoned the idea that God existed, but she still believed that she had a soul. Something in her told her that it felt… right.

It was literally invaluable to her. She liked to believe that she still had some dignity left, after all.

After a long day spent pondering the nature of deals for wishes, she yawned and started putting the heavy books back on their shelves. The librarian was a kind lady whose children didn't mind a quiet little girl in scruffy clothes hanging around while they did their homework in a small alcove, after all, which meant that Artie got an early start on some of the subjects they'd be teaching in school a couple of years down the road.

And if one or two of them had taken it upon themselves to help the little girl get up to speed with them, well, it wouldn't do to risk angering them.

Still, she'd moved a lot of books around. It took awhile before she was done.

The orphanage she was a part of might as well have been a roadhouse that catered specifically to parent-less children. It was rare for her to see a face that hadn't been here for longer than a few days before they were sent off to parts unknown again.

All but old man Gerald. He smiled at the children who would leave in a week-if not earlier-and promptly forget about him. He smiled at the caretakers that were here until another orphanage somewhere else finally decided to hire them. He smiled at the cooks who had simply bought pre packaged meals at Tesco's and warmed them up in the oven rather than do something as mundane and boring as cook for an old man, a bunch of adult idiots and a gaggle of brats that wouldn't appreciate good food if it punched them in the face.

Artie was hungry, but she was also miffed. She'd seen the lasagne on her plate in the 'for sale section' last week. It was down to ten pence and had to be finished in three days' time. That three days had expired five days ago.

At least the powdered soup and tea were good.

Gerald beamed at her. She smiled back. She liked the old man and his old orphanage. There was a strange peace to being the longest-running resident still there. Six months and counting. Gerald had offered to buy her a secondhand television for her one-year anniversary if she stayed that long. She'd never had a TV of her own before. She wondered what she would do with it.

Still, she finished her food at a steady pace. They were getting dessert today. It was the weekend, which meant that at least one person was slated to leave. Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday were generally when the children transferred out. Since this was a Saturday, they got Vanilla ice cream with a choice of sprinkled toppings, honey or caramel.

She loved the honey topping.

As the dessert was finished and Artie sipped on her tea, she watched Gerald come over with a sad smile on his face.

She felt a bit sad herself. She didn't know if she even wanted a transfer or not now. "Yes sir?" She asked with the nicest smile she could muster. Gerald just shook his head when she did that and looked far older than he had any right to.

"Artemisia." He said as he sat down, staring at her with tired blue eyes. "I have some news."

"Oh?" Artie asked as her mind started dreading what he was about to say.

"You see… I got you off the adoption roster as I promised I would when you first arrived, but your old orphanage still had a copy of your file in remote storage. A private adoption agency got a hold of it and has asked to take you on. I just got the word from children's services. I am sorry Artie."

No.

Not again.

She liked it here!

She was just getting settled in-

The front door opening startled her out of her shock. Looking over, she spotted a scowling man looking at Gerald the way others looked at bugs squashed underfoot. He wore a leather jacket over a polo shirt and business trousers. Of course, like most fashion, the shirt was some sort of pinkish colour. She wondered if the store had been all out of eye-searing neon.

"Is that the girl then?" He asked rudely.

"Um, yes. If you could please give us about half an hour? Poor thing only found out just now. She hasn't had time to pack yet." The director asked politely.

The man's scowl morphed into a sneer. "No. I am a busy man and still have three more brats to pick up elsewhere. She'll just have to do with her clothes until we get to the wayhouse. You." He said, pointing at her. "Grab a jacket and get moving."

Artie looked over at Gerald. Gerald simply nodded. "I'm sorry lass."

Artie left without saying a word. She went up the stairs, hung a left, went down the corridor and opened the last door before the turn-off. She took in her room, the largest space she'd ever had to herself and then marched over to the battered, looking trunk in the corner. Opening it up, she retrieved her brand-new emergency backpack (clothing, food, water changed every day, a torch, matches and a lighter) and her extra-warm woolly jacket. Oh, and that lovely beanie she'd gotten last month through a charity. She then changed back into her not-quite-leather-but-still-comfy boots before closing the trunk and sighing.

Another potential home left behind. Unlike the others, she promised herself never to forget Gerald. He was a kind old man and deserved better than what he'd gotten-a crumbling orphanage, a bare bones budget, ungrateful staff and overnighting children that forgot about him the second they were gone.

She knew how lonely he felt. She, too, had nothing much in her life. And for a while, they'd cared for each other.

Now?

Now she was marching down the stairs feeling like that marshmallow man on those Michelin tyre signs, struggling not to cry as she left. What was the point of crying anyway? It wasn't like it would stop whatever it was from happening again and again and again and again.

She saw Gerald and gave him a smile, mouthing the words 'thank you' at him.

And just like that, the old man beamed again.

He could probably have been more to her if she'd been able to stay.

Just one more thing that could have gone better in her life.

She walked out the door and into the cold, damp night.

There was a bus. It was the size of buses that tourists typically used as 'coaches'. There was no sign saying where it was going on the front and the sides simply had some generic logo that could have been for anything from a massive international firm to a well-to-do plumbing company.

It was packed full of children already.

She got on the bus. The bus driver just motioned for her to go sit somewhere. Most of the kids were asleep or reading. Nobody talked. Artie preferred it already.

She pulled out a book, her snacks & the water before stowing her backpack in the top compartment. The water and most of the snacks went into the pouch in front of her while she picked up her book and started to read.

As the engine started, Artie looked out of the window at the Aberdeen orphanage she'd stayed in. It was shabby and run-down, true, but you could still feel the pride of the old building lingering from its heyday as a house for kids from London escaping the Blitz. The entranceway was open and Gerald was waving goodbye at her.

She waved back, silently tearing up as she did so.

Gerald hadn't done that for the other children. Just for her.

And just like that, the hollow pit of what if swallowed her again. It was funny. She was on a bus off to a new place and she already missed a building she could still see.

Then the bus rounded a corner and that last glimpse of a place she could have been happy in stopped existing anywhere other than in her memories.

She woke up and felt the tell-tale stiffness of cold in her limbs. The bus had stopped in front of a large… prison?

There were high walls, fences and guard posts manning towers. There was barbed wire, armed guards and dogs patrolling the outside perimeter.

The bus was parked in a car park that was circled by a massive wall topped with spikes and more barbed wire. The glint of glass catching the sun could be seen from the tower. She doubted that that was from a pair of binoculars.

All of a sudden, she felt fear. A numbing sort of fear she wished she could say she was unfamiliar with, but she was. It was the fear she felt when a prospective parent shut her in the basement. It was the fear she felt when she was locked inside the house with an angry dog while the owners went off to work for the day. It was the fear of tight, dark spaces from which there was no escape.

She was in a prison. She didn't bother asking why. She just wanted out.

The others were waking up if the sound of confusion was anything to go by.

The driver and that man from last night had already left.

In their place were two women that could easily be mistaken for men, both wearing uniforms bearing a strange mark.

'St. Brutus's Corrective Orphanage for girls'

No. This wasn't an orphanage. Orphans didn't belong here.

The women went to the back of the bus and wordlessly started shuffling the children out. She barely got her seatbelt off before being yanked into line with the rest.

Again, nobody said a word. The silence made Artie want to scream. 'Someone say something! Help!' She wanted to shout, but couldn't.

She wasn't the only one paralysed from fear.

As they were marched out of the bus and down a ramp, other guards pulled kids away from the throng. They were shoved into cubicles and had orders shouted at them.

Suddenly, Artie felt a yank on her arm and found herself inside one of the cubicles before the guard started shouting at her. "CLOTHES OFF! IN THE SHOWER! WASH YOURSELF! DO IT NOW, YOU FILTHY LITTLE BEAST!" came the voice through the closed cubicle door.

She did as she was told, mind numb with shock. As her panties dropped to the floor, the guard took her clothes out and shoved a black jumpsuit with a number stencilled on its back into the cubicle. Just then, an ice cold drizzle hit her back and she startled with a yelp. "SILENCE!" the guard shouted as she pulled herself together and stood underneath the showerhead.

She was confused. What was happening? Why was she being treated like this? Had she broken the law and simply forgotten about it or something?

The water switched off after four minutes, prompting the guard to shout "YOU HAVE ONE MINUTE TO GET DRESSED!". Panicking, she hurriedly dried herself with a thin cotton towel before yanking on a pair of slightly uncomfortable boxer shorts and stepping into the jumpsuit.

She got it on just before the door opened. "THAT TOOK TOO LONG!" The guard kept shouting. "FALL IN LINE! NO TALKING!"

She went to join the queue as asked. She was the shortest one there. The other girls were staring at her in horror, almost talking before catching themselves and staring at the glowering guards.

She could feel the cold metal flooring through the rubberised soles in her jumpsuit. Her hands were similarly covered, the area of her palm covered in hardened padding. Both of the forearm areas were stencilled with the words ORPH#332-678-910-83-AX1, which meant nothing to her. The back of her neck felt like it was starting to itch.

"START WALKING NOW! FORWARDS!" Two guards shouted, one taking position at the front while one slid to the back. Artie could hear a muffled whack, followed by "NO STRAGGLERS! KEEP WALKING BEASTS!" coming from the rearmost guard as her victim howled in pain.

Artie shuddered. This could very well be hell.

Finally, they entered into a large area. It acted as a floor to the circular, tower-like shape with catwalks lining the structure from floor to ceiling surrounding them. And each level of those catwalks was lined with solid-looking doors.

In the centre of the floor lay an area divided in a similar manner to what she'd seen in sports courts. They were marked 'classroom 1', 'classroom 2', 'classroom 3', 'classroom 4', 'recreations', 'mess space', 'sports' and 'infirmary pickup'. Along the edge of the markings lay row upon row of chairs, whiteboards, sports equipment, the works, but nothing that indicated walls or dividers to section off an area. Artie didn't think she would find any either.

The children came to a stop near the middle of the area.

Once again, they were picked off one-by-one by a guard and told to follow them. No shouting this time, which was better than expected.

She felt the yank and followed the guard, hoping that she would be alone in her cell. She wondered where her clothes and other things had gone. Where were they keeping them? Were they keeping them at all? She needed to be alone. She needed time to think and calm down.

That became quite evident when the lady guard looked down at her and looked sad for a second. Artie couldn't understand why the guard looked sad. She needed to be alone just to wrap her head around this.

Finally, the guard stopped and opened a door. "Room 404. Don't make a mess." The guard mumbled as Artie crossed the threshold and the door slammed shut behind her. It was, well, small. There was a toilet in a corner of the room with a sink nearby. There was one roll of toilet paper and a few books located in a cubbyhole that had no door on it.

She sat down on the thin and lumpy bed and just watched the sunlight filter through the opaque glass window that just shy of hitting the ceiling of her cell.

She was a prisoner. Why was she a prisoner? It made no sense. She'd broken no laws and had been a good little girl, so why?

The sound of a note being shoved under her door made her jump.

After going over and picking it up, she opened the envelope and started to read.

Dear Miss No-name,

Congratulations!

You have been chosen as a test subject for our brand new flagship project for troubled orphans! We all know that every child deserves to grow up in a safe & secure environment, but some of your peers make it hard to do so. So in order to ensure that they are never again at risk of harming themselves or others, we at Brutuscorptm have built a number of facilities across the country dedicated to turning those ruffians into hard-working, disciplined, productive and obedient members of society.

However, the government wants us to prove that our services will benefit them, others such as you and the community as a whole before they agree to the plan we put forth.

Which is good news for you!

Due to your circumstances and your wish not to be adopted y anyone, we here at Brutuscorptm decided to take you on-board in what is an exciting time for all of us! Because thanks to you, we can determine how effective our treatment of troubled orphans really is!

Now we know it's scary, but bear with us! In here, you will be allowed to do things the other troubled children aren't. You are allowed to carry books in your room, you are allowed to eat dinner in your room and you are even allowed to shower in a special private booth too!

You're a special little flower indeed!

The bad news is that, due to budget restrictions, we won't be allowed to hold you in complete security & comfort for more than two years. As a result, once those two years are up, you will have the choice to remain (with fewer privileges, unfortunately) or go back to those dreary old orphanages until you are eighteen.

We hope you make the right choice!

Yours truly,

The Brutuscorptm team

She spent the rest of the day staring at the letter in utter disbelief, trying to understand what they were saying.

She never did.

They shaved her hair off the next day. Lice infection amongst the other inmates. She almost cried, but held it in when she caught the guards glaring at her.

The Wake up call came at six in the morning for ablutions & room inspection. Spend half an hour listening to a guard shouting at her for not adjusting the sheets properly. Physical education until seven. Breakfast from seven fifteen until seven thirty-a piece of toast, some dry bacon, sticky porridge and a glass of water with some kind of fizzy tablet dropped in. Classes until ten thirty. Ten thirty to twelve-more physical education. Then lunch until twelve thirty. Then classes until five thirty. Then another hour and a half of running, this time in the obstacle course in the yard, rain, hail or shine. Then Dinner. Then homework, which is checked by the guards. Then getting shouted at for making mistakes. Then, after all that is done, bed.

You had a total of thirty minutes a day toilet allowance. If you had diarrhoea, you were locked in a toilet cubicle and shouted at for being weak. If you injured yourself, you were shouted at until you got to the infirmary. After that, you were shouted at for being careless or for not doing warm-ups properly or for not paying attention. If they had to call a doctor, they called you useless, a waste, a worm between shouts.

You were not allowed to talk to anyone except when asking a teacher questions. No talking, writing notes to each other, looking at others 'in a significant way', nothing. Disobedience was severely punished. If you wanted to ask for something from the guards, you had to hand them a hand-written note. Nothing but the note was to be in your hands at the time. Disobedience was severely punished.

There were spot-checks once a day for every girl. Your number was called out, you went to the nearest guard, they patted you down. Any suspicious bulges meant that you were to take your jumpsuit off immediately and present it to the guard. If you had something in there you weren't supposed to have, you were sent to Isolation for three days. Failure to comply in handing over the jumpsuit was punishable by a week in Isolation. Isolation was a small, dark, windowless cell where the light was switched on at meal times before being switched off again thirty minutes later. Girls that went in there rarely came out the same person.

There was a library on-site. You only got to go if you were well-behaved and did well in tests. No television was allowed on-site. No news was allowed either. A couple of guards liked to gossip near the back of the mess at meal breaks. If you were lucky, you caught snippets of news. If you were unlucky, they caught you and forced you to do pushups instead of eating.

It took her two weeks to make it into the library. She was allowed one hour in there as long as she could prove that she was keeping up with the lessons her library time was replacing.

That had been two weeks ago. She'd been in this place for a month and was slowly getting sadder and sadder.

She was nine. Nine-year-olds may read the description of the word 'depression', but would be hard-pressed to recognise it. She didn't, even though she had it.

Suddenly, there was something that sounded like the ringing of a bell.

Hello Artemisia!

Artie looked at a sparsely populated library shelf and spotted the not-owl. Ruby was there. Yippee.

Hello? I know you can hear me.

She had fifteen minutes of being alone for a while left. She didn't want to deal with this. Not now.

Fifteen minutes before what? Ruby asked innocently.

Artie looked up in panic. It had heard that? Had she spoken out loud? Oh god oh no oh she didn't want to be punished, she didn't mean it!

Calm down Artemisia, nobody heard us silly! Ruby said with a rather flat sounding giggle. I talk into your mind, after all! That means I can hear you too!

Artie relaxed before shuddering at the creepy thing. Why was it here? What did it want from her, exactly?

I am here to grant you a wish!

In exchange for what?

For fighting in the name of mankind!

… Wait, what?

Mankind is in danger from the wraiths and we need help! We need girls that are magical enough to stop the wraiths! Magical girls like you!

Okay, but for how long? If the wish was paid for by a term of service, then how long was that service supposed to last?

Until the wraiths are defeated of course!

Artemisia slumped. Really? And holidays, pay and such things?

They can be arranged for you! There won't just be you fighting, you know, and we look after our magical girls very nicely! Ooh, and you'll get enough power to leave here and live a better life! You can even wish for it! Isn't that nice?

Artie perked up. She could get out of here? She looked at the library she was in. There was nobody else there, not even a librarian. Half the time she spent in here, she spent it organising the ruddy awful collection on offer. And then there was the rest of this place. She didn't want to stay in this… this hell.

And abruptly, she remembered that day she'd gone to the library with perfect clarity and what it said about wishes. She wondered what Ruby would try and do. Would it twist the wish? Would it turn her wish against her? What was the catch here?

The catch is that there are a lot of wraiths! Ruby interjected. And don't worry, we want you to fight with us, not against us! Cannot do that if we don't help you on your wish, can we!

But she was nine. What could she do as a nine-year-old?

You will get extra-special powers! With them and your innate magic, you can change yourself! You can make yourself bigger, stronger, taller and older if you want! Or you can just skip that and make yourself stronger without changing how you look now! There are plenty of ways in which you could help!

She got powers for fighting then. And what about her wish?

Remember, it can be anything!

She… she had to think about this.

Okay!

She was halfway through afternoon classes when a number was called out over the speaker system.

Hers.

She walked over to the guard and spread her arms out. The guard patted her down before frowning.

"Jumpsuit off."

Artie obeyed, eyeing the large guard nervously. She was the smallest one in the prison, after all. Everyone loomed over her.

The guard took her jumpsuit before patting down the thing by hand. Eventually, the guard's hands came out of a side pocket clutching a pencil.

Oh god. She'd forgotten to put that back. Surely they would understand, right? It was just a blunt pencil halfway to becoming a stub, after all.

"Put on your jumpsuit." The guard said coldly. Artie did, feeling like her limbs were made out of rubber.

The guard then stared straight into Artie's eyes. "Your library privileges are revoked. Your room privileges are hereby revoked. You have abused our trust and carried items on your person you were not authorised to carry. Five days in isolation starting now."

She didn't resist when two guards pulled her up and marched her down into the basement. She was too busy crying again.

She'd tried counting the meals. She'd failed. She'd tried counting when the lights went on and when they went off. She failed.

All she could think off, all that was there was the dark. And the crying. And the screaming.

Isolation was a lie. There were ten others down here with her. She could tell by the sound of their voices.

She lay down on the cold metal tray someone had called a bed and wondered if this is what being a corpse felt like.

Hi Artemisia!

"Hello Ruby." She said, wondering why her voice had changed like that. She hadn't used it in a month, after all. When had her throat started to hurt?

You look like you need a friend!

Artemisia said nothing.

Do you know why I am here?

Artie turned over so that the back of her head was resting against the tray. "You want me to make a wish." She whispered.

Yes indeed! And you feel like you're about to make one, I can tell!

Artie closed her eyes and begged whatever was out there for forgiveness. "What is the real price Ruby?" She whispered. "It sounds too good to be true."

What does it matter? Ruby asked in seemingly genuine curiosity.

"If I do this, I want to know from the start whether it was worth it or not."

Your soul is not what we want, but your body can't survive the things you'll be fighting without a lot of help! Your soul will be pulled out of your body so that your body dying doesn't mean you die too. Your innate magics will mix with the magic your wish created. Together, you'll be a strong magical girl and you'll need it, because you'll be fighting for a very long time!

"How long?" She asked again.

If you save up enough grief cubes and pace yourself, you can stop fighting for a century after approximately five hundred years of average intensity combat! Isn't that great?

"I… humans don't live that long Ruby." Artie pointed out.

Magical girls can! After all, magical girls are functionally immortal! If you don't fall in battle, look after yourself properly and never run out of wish-magic, you can live for as long as you want!

"Never… die?"

Not unless you want to!

"Do many girls want to?" She asked.

Yes. It is puzzling to us. We tell them everything they need to know and still they don't accept it! I have trouble understanding humans at all sometimes.

"Ruby, can you lie?"

No! Lies don't help fighting the wraiths, believe it!

"Ruby, will my life be better?"

Better than sitting in a dark cell and going insane? Yes Artemisia, your life will be much better! Ruby assured her.

Somewhere, someone started laughing. The laugh slowly got shriller, became a screech and turned into a howl.

Artie shuddered and decided to go ahead with it. She'd had thought about what wish she would make if given the chance for a month now. And finally, she knew what she really wanted. "Ruby, hear my wish." She whispered in a serious tone.

In the darkness, Ruby tilted its head, its eyes' thermal systems easily picking out Artemisia's form in the dark.

I am listening.

Well, she thought, it couldn't be worse than this anyway. Artie drew a breath and started talking.

"I wish"

"I wish to stand by myself, to not have to rely on others to have a good life."

"I wish to make my own way and find out who I am & what happened to my aunt & parents."

"I wish to be free to become the best I can be, to become whatever I want to be."

"I wish to be more than I am now and more than anyone thinks I will ever be."

"I wish to shape my own destiny."

"That is my wish Ruby."

Artie shuddered as she felt something shift at those words, a heavy feeling settling on the room as the world stopped being dark.

There was a flash of light and Artie found herself rooted to her tray. Ruby was there, sitting on her chest, the not-owl's bright red eyes looking into hers with an empty stare.

Ruby spread its wings wide and pointed them towards her, the floating bangles glowing with a light that made her uneasy.

Granted!

Artie felt something… indefinable… leave her. She was hollow, she couldn't feel anything anymore, couldn't think, couldn't react. All she could do was stare at the spectacle above her.

It looked just like those nebulae she'd once seen in an album full of telescope pictures. A cloud glowing with silver light covered something that she felt would dwarf the planet in terms of sheer size if she looked at it in just the right way. As the cloud shrunk inwards, the silvery hue changed to a deep, welcoming red interspersed with menacing dark green. As the cloud got thinner, she saw an egg emerge, glowing with red and green light. As the last of the cloud entered the egg, she felt more than heard a small chime at the back of her mind.

#Communication: Transfer complete. Connections secured. Emotional stabilisers nominal. Innate magical network connections accepted. Analysis complete. Simulations complete. All systems report green across the board. Contract activated.

The egg (soul gem) descended and, without thinking about it, Artie lifted her hands up and caught it. Her last thought before sleep took her was that she'd never felt anything so warm in her life before.

She woke up and wasn't surprised to have the darkness greet her. She didn't feel as sad anymore. In fact, she felt downright cheerful, energetic and raring to go!

She took a deep breath and found sensations that, before, she would have found bewilderingly alien but were now quite easy to understand. Nine people including myself nearby. Lingering smells of around a hundred others, with the pheromones responsible far too sparse and decayed to allow for accurate identification. She clicked her tongue and saw a brief image of the room she was in in her mind. She swung one foot to the left and heard a loose stone she'd seen in her mind clatter along the ground, its position updating itself in her mind with each clatter it made.

She grinned. This was cool.

She then sent a pulse of magic out. The corridor beyond her cell and about three other cells settled into her mind. Girls were asleep. No guards.

Perfect.

There was a manhole cover in the centre of the corridor. All Artie needed to do was open the door.

She put her hand against the door and gasped. She could feel every inch of it, every imperfection, even glimpse parts of the door's manufacturing & installation process. The lock had been opened 69 times since its installation. 35 girls, including herself, had passed through it. None of them had been happy, going in or coming out. She pulled her hand away and shivered. She'd seen their faces. How had she done that?

Hesitantly, she put her hand against the door again, thinking about unlocking the door. Tumbler holds bolt in place. All that is required is for a certain amount of force to redirect the tumbler in the opposite direction of the last key turn, which means-

click.

Artie let go of a breath she hadn't even realised she'd been holding and pulled the door open. She knew exactly where she was despite the darkness around her. All she needed to do now was lift the manhole cover and get down there.

In no time at all, the heavy cover was in her hands. It must weigh almost as much as her, she thought as she marvelled at how light the thing felt.

Giggling, she dropped into the pipe below. On the plus side, it was dry. On the minus side, her nose apparently knew what centuries-old dried shit smelled like.

Gagging a bit, she pulsed her magic, focusing on the idea of escape and smiled as a small trail of silver fog indicated where she needed to go.

After an indeterminate amount of time (25 minutes, 30 seconds and counting) she found herself face to face with a wall. The trail flowed through said wall.

So Artie tried to punch it and winced in pain, shaking her hand.

That didn't work.

She put her sore hand against the brick work and let her instincts guide her. Slowly, her hand moved up, then down, then to the middle before moving higher, then lower, then back again.

Suddenly, an instinct told her there!

So she hit that part with an open-handed slap.

The wall gave a small series of cracks, which made Artie back up. The silvery trail illuminated the areas where the mortar was coming loose after close to a century of being trapped in a dank space, the work of mould and the odd desperate rat being finalised by a desperate fugitive looking to get out.

Then a huge section toppled backwards, leaving the way free and clear for artie.

And Artie laughed for the first time in what felt like a long, long time.

The prison rose into the night sky, a malevolent tower bathed in the glare of floodlights. It could be seen clear across the small village that bordered what had once been a fairly upscale town that now had all but fallen to ruin. Artie was quick to duck into an alleyway after her trip through the disused sewers, thanking whatever providence there was out there that it hadn't been wet.

There had been things skittering in the dark down there. Things she'd avoided as much as she could, but probably only avoided encountering because they were more scared of her than she was of them.

Sighing, she took stock of her jumpsuit. It was dirty and stank to high heaven, making her long for her clothing from Aberdeen. Nobody did sensible clothing like the Scottish, probably to make up for the time some of the more enthusiastic scotsmen spent in kilts.

Suddenly, she felt a ping in her mind. She actually did know how to deal with her clothing problem now. All she needed to do was find a large mass of metal.

The local wrecker's yard had a lot of metal. She could feel it.

After finally finding the place, Artie took off her jumpsuit and laid it on the ground in a neat pile. Standing almost naked in the night, she fumbled with the silver-looking ring she now wore until it turned back into her soul gem. She focused on it for a second.

#Communication: Connection established. Query sent. Engaging system!

With a flash of light, her clothes were replaced with a nondescript grey bodyglove that had small metal panels fitted over vulnerable areas. Her feet were covered in heavy-looking boots. She noticed that her hands were covered in slender metal gloves that seemed to do nothing for her. She could feel a helmet strapped to her head, but couldn't make out what it looked like.

Her red and green gem was sitting inside a metal panel on the inside of her wrist.

Well, that was disappointing. She had been expecting something… flashier.

At the thought, the metal panels liquefied and turned into a glimmering pool that slowly spread across her body. After a moment, they then disappeared underneath the grey fabric- a fabric that was rapidly turning a deep blue colour with the odd highlight here and there.

"Cool." She breathed, feeling the metal settle into a new position. She bent her knees, arms & elbows. They bent. There was barely any weight to it either.

Satisfied, she took one step and stumbled as she almost went flying. Different strength level. Her mind told her, now replete with new memories on how to get started on using what she had. Taking a moment to look through them, Artie grinned as she came across something interesting.

She picked up her jumpsuit, bent down and jumped. Next thing she knew, she had cleared the mound of broken parts that had been at the mouth of the entrance and landed on a pile of cars. The car she'd landed on bent at the middle.

Dropping down, she put her hands against the hood. Suddenly, the metals that made up the car's chassis liquefied and ran up her arms. She felt steel, aluminium and numerous other, more exotic metals be absorbed by her gloves and distributed across her suit. With a thought, some settled to form a simple metallic breastplate that covered her abdomen while her legs gained metal bracers. She took care to make sure they didn't gleam. She retrieved her jumpsuit and clenched it between her two hands.

Metal flowed into the cloth, rendering it stiffer and more robust even as the color changed from black to blue and green. The top and the bottom separated, split open and gained the right number of holes, zippers and buttons to look like two separate pieces of clothing.

She now had a top and pants that were her size and reinforced with ultra-fine meshes of metal woven into the fabric itself.

With a thought, she transformed back into her nude state and put on her new clothes. And while they were a bit more rigid than clothing should be, at least she wasn't walking around in her prison uniform anymore.

The first bus had been one of the few to pass through the village during the week. The second one had taken her to Aberystwyth. From there, she took a train to Gloucester. And from Gloucester, she had to take a bus to Cheltenham. From Cheltenham, she took a train to London. In that time, she'd managed to acquire some funds with the judicious help of her powers. Nothing illegal, but still rather alien to just find hundred pound notes on the ground at every stop along the way. She ate well, bought some more clothes and had enough of a nest egg to see if she could get a place to live for a few weeks.

Now, another hundred pounds richer, she found herself in a park near Trafalgar square. What was she going to do now?

Just then, a familiar form swept down from the skies.

Hello Artemisia! How are you doing?

She was tired, grouchy and more than a little lost, thank you very much. "I'm fine." She answered the not-owl thing tiredly. "You?"

Wondering about how my newest recruit is going! Say, is there a reason you came to London?

"I was looking for somewhere to go where those prison guys can't find me. London felt like the best place to go." She explained.

Well that's great news! That means that we can finally get you started on a team!

Artie paused for a second. "A team?" She asked. "Why would I want to be on one?"

Why, to learn of course! Wraiths can be mean and tricky after all, so you need to learn how to deal with them! Come on, there's a squad of magical girls who are waiting to meet you!

"Wait, did you tell them I was here?" Artie asked nervously.

Of course I didn't silly! They knew you were here the second you got off that train!

Well that did nothing to soothe her nerves. How odd.

"Lead the way." Artie said, waving the not-owl forward in a 'shoo' motion and following in its wake.

Going to visit complete strangers whilst travelling in a new city.

Eh, still better than prison.

The apartment block she ended up in front of was nothing to write home about. Located at the end of a run-down cul-de-sac, the structure had been a piece of Georgian architecture before neglect and time had their way with it. Now, it stood as a monument to the filth around it-scorched window frames on the second floor, boarded up windows, a front door accessible through a trench dug out of what looked like decades of trash, a front covered in crudely painted graffiti and what had once been a cabinet meant to house post for the residents had had every small door ripped off its hinges and the inside stuffed with empty bottles of alcohol.

Artie absently noticed the rats frolicking in the waste.

"Are you sure that I am immortal?" She asked Ruby.

Why yes! Why do you ask?

Artie looked over the mounds of putrefying filth and thought about all the interesting diseases one was likely to find if they poked the wrong needle buried in that mess. "Oh, no reason." She said nonchalantly before gamely navigating the trench in such a way that she avoided contact with the sides. She was grateful for her new-found graceful movements. Those walls bulged in places.

Entering the lobby, she was met with peeling lime green paint she remembered seeing in some of the older hospitals she'd visited. There was a gate covering a gaping hole where an elevator could be. Artie wondered if it still worked.

The remains of a corkboard, yellowing paper still stuck to the scant cork that had remained in its frame, could be seen next to the stairs.

She tried the light switch next to the entrance. The lobby remained stubbornly shrouded in darkness.

"Of course." She sighed. "Ruby, what floor's the appartment on?"

Third floor! Hurry, they're waiting for you!

"Wonderful. Let's go."

The rest of the structure was in markedly better shape. The stairwell looked clean, the old marble covering the floor gleamed in the sunlight filtering through a clear window at the top of the stairwell. The tiles along the wall were all pearly white and the grey-ish paint scheme adorning the space above the tiles as well as the underside of the stairs ascending in a spiral had no flecks or chips on them. All in all, it almost felt like a rather upscale apartment block closer to downtown than where this place was located.

Well, if it wasn't for the smell anyway.

The solid oaken door that marked the entrance to the third floor was remarkably clean. Impeccably varnished with its bronze inlays sparkling with a polished gleam, the door was actually quite a sight to behold. As Artie pushed it open, she couldn't hear so much as a whisper coming from the hinges.

The hallway beyond was just as grand. A thick layer of dark green carpeting covered the corridor with the steel railings holding it in place not even displaying a hint of rust. Mahogany panels adorned the entire wall, each panel lovingly engraved with a scene from history starting in ancient greece and going all the way up to the time when the block had been built. Small chandeliers dangled from the white ceiling with the detailed relief glinting with gold leaf highlights.

All in all, the entire place just screamed flipping expensive to her.

She took out a candy from her new backpack and nibbled at it as she looked for flat number 42. She found it at the eight door she passed by. Quickly finishing her little snack, she stowed the wrapper in her pants and knocked on the door.

It was opened by a young woman wearing punk attire and leather. "Oi, where ya been?" She asked Artie. "We been waitin' all day fer you." She elaborated grouchily.

"Sorry I, uh, got lost on the way." Artie said, shifting at once again adressing another human being in something that involved neither buying tickets to somewhere else or being told what to do. "My name's Artemisia and I'm new."

The woman snorted at that. "No shit 'ay? Drop yer bag next ter the coat rack n' shimmy off to the livin' room. The posse's waitin' fer you."

Doing as she was told, Artie then made her way into a rather opulently appointed living room.

There was a small opening onto a large-ish kitchen on the far side of the room. The main area was dominated by three three-seater couches and a coffee table facing a giant CRT color television. A cabinet chock full of tapes was sitting next to it. And on the shelf she could see a neatly wrapped up Nintendo sitting next to a large amount of cartridges.

She blinked. She'd only ever seen one of those in pictures before. She'd wanted one for ages.

Well, that and a TV to play it on.

But what really drew her attention were the five girls scattered across the sofas.

Most of them looked like adults. The others generally ranged between the ages of twelve and sixteen. But in the corner there was one woman who looked to be in her twenties feeding a newborn baby.

What was a parent with child doing here? Were they insane?

"Hello." Artie said awkwardly.

One of the older girls just turned to her and said "you're late. Go sit on one of the couches."

That couch was really comfortable. Artie hadn't been expecting that.

"No talking until after the news please." The girl that'd spoken up said to the others. "That goes for you too rookie."

Artie just nodded at her.

And now for the BBC World News-

And the world was a mess. Since when was that news again?

As the news ended, the TV was switched off and Artie found herself the centre of everyone's attention.

"Uh, hello?" She started off. "My name is Artemisia, pleased to meet you." She said warily.

The girls looked at each other before turning their gaze back on her.

"Terry." One of the older girls, the one that greeted her at the door at that, a butch-looking young woman wearing a red skirt underneath a green military jacket stated.

"Alice." Another girl, closer to her in age and decked out in what looked like hiking gear, said quietly.

"Martha." A young teen wearing a school uniform said, barely looking up from her textbook as she gave her a brief looking over.

"Jane." The woman with the baby said awkwardly as she tugged at her comfy-looking shirt.

"And I am Lydia." A tall young woman wearing business clothes said curtly. "Nice to meet you and welcome to London."

"Thanks." Artemisia said with a smile.

Nobody smiled back.

Lydia sighed heavily before getting up and taking her by the hand. "Come on, we have a room ready for you." She said, tugging Artie along.

They exited the flat and went down the corridor to room 39. "This is where you will be staying." She said, opening the door to a flat that was near identical to the other one. "There's nobody else in here for the time being, but that will change soon, we hope. The incubators are currently recruiting and sending more newbies to London to make up last year's numbers, but it has been slow going so far."

Artie took the rooms in silently, excited at having all this space to herself. "Wow." She breathed. "And this is all mine?"

"Yeah." Lydia said, smiling at her. "Orphan, I take it?"

Artie nodded. "Yeah. Don't even have a family name."

Lydia winced. "That sucks."

"Doesn't help with my paperwork." Artie agreed, opening the fridge and positively drooling at all the food in there. "Wow."

Lydia stared at her. "You do know why you're here, right?"

Artie shook her head silently.

Lydia sat down on one of the sofas and patted the seat next to hers. After Artie came over and sat down, Lydia briefly looked at her before turning to stare out the window. Artie wondered what she found so fascinating about the building next door. "Last year was a bad year." Lydia said. "We lost close to a hundred magical girls in the first six months and had most of the rest leave town afterwards. The girls and I have been doing our best, but there's only five of us left to keep the City ticking over. We've been borrowing magical girls left, right and center but the wraiths kept coming back in greater numbers than we expected them to. Nobody wanted to help us by the time the new year started. Too many magical girls had died here."

Artemisia gasped at that. "Died?" She asked as what the other girl was saying sunk in.

Lydia nodded. "Yes. All told, over two hundred magical girls died defending the city last year. That's almost as many as the total for the rest of the country over that self-same period."

Artie didn't say anything, waiting for the girl to start laughing and say that it was all a joke. That's what people did to rookies, right?

"The Incubators all but panicked in February, informing us that the city could be overwhelmed by the end of the year despite our efforts unless they got more recruits in. Unfortunately, they'll all be new, so it will be up to me and the girls to train them. You are the first of many to arrive here Artemisia. We don't have much experience in training magical girls, so please understand if we're a bit short with you from time to time." Lydia said.

Artie blinked in shock. She had no doubt that this was a bad situation. A city under siege, evil beings preying on the innocent, a small group of people defending them… It really was like that Sailor Moon thing.

But Sailor Moon didn't really prepare her for this.

She looked at Lydia, sitting stock-still and staring out of the window. Artie remembered doing the same thing. She wondered who -or what- it was that Lydia had lost last year.

"Have you transformed yet?" Lydia asked after a lengthy silence.

"What? Oh, yes, yes I have." Artie answered.

"What's your weapon?" Lydia continued.

"Weapon?" Artie asked, puzzled. "I-my transformation only came with a costume, sorry. But I can shape metal pretty easily!" She said. "And I think that since I read and remember anything I touch, maybe I can also make my own weapons if I see one? But what would I need a weapon for anyway?"

Lydia turned away from the window to stare at her. "Rule number one of being a magical girl Artemisia-magical girls fight. Age, wealth, status, skin color, nothing like that matters. The life of a magical girl is a life of battle. Fighting always, always comes first. Do you understand?"

Artie blinked and shook her head. "Not really." She admitted.

Lydia snorted. "You will soon enough. Get some rest. Training starts tomorrow. Monday we'll get you signed up for school. Until then, your training takes priority. Understood?"

"Yes ma'am." Artie said seriously.

Lydia merely snorted. "See you tomorrow then."

Artie was dismayed to find herself waking up, at six in the morning, under her own volition. The terror of once again finding herself in a cell swiftly fled as she eyed the room she was in. Large bed, bedroom the size of the common room back in Aberdeen, empty walk-in closet and a radio sitting on the night-table next to her bed. Paradise.

Her stomach growled and she got out of bed with a smile. She'd learned how to cook pancakes early on in life as, when she thought of a breakfast food, nothing beat pancakes in her mind. She also made herself some tea, something she'd missed a lot before switching on the TV.

On the screen, she saw VTOL aircraft strafe a mech the size of a car while a mixed group of AA platforms and tanks moved to engagement hardpoints close by. Contrails from unseen planes or flying ordinance occasionally erupted in a brilliant fireball inside the thick layer of smoke coating what had probably once been a sizeable village. The scrolling banner underneath the image, occasionally augmented by pointless comments from the breakfast show hosts looking on, read IRAQ-IRAN CONFLICT ESCALATES, UN REPORT FINDS.

Well duh. That fight had been 'escalating' for as long as she'd been alive and they'd gotten nowhere. What had once been a doubtlessly flourishing set of border towns was now some weird mix of urban and trench warfare that swallowed men & machinery with gusto.

She settled on the couch and kept devouring pancakes as she watched the refugees fleeing from an artillery barrage passing dangerously close by. Gunfire and screams erupted as the hapless reporter reacted like a combat veteran by diving into a nearby foxhole. The camera man was screaming in panic until the reporter socked him.

Artie snorted at that. Wow mister reporter man. Just wow.

Then the camera looked up to see hundreds of contrails pass overhead. The Iraqis had spent a lot of time & money on building a missile defence grid up in the north of the country, presumably to stop those 'bloody Christians in Constantinople' from crossing the border again. Looked like they were about to get their monies' worth.

The camera cut off just as the first shockwave hit the reporter's position.

Briefly, Artie wondered if the reporting team had survived or not before scowling at seeing her least favourite TV personality, albeit one she couldn't name. She made a point of forgetting the names of celebrities that annoyed her just by existing. This man annoyed her because he'd taken the slot of what had once been her favourite cartoon with her only finding out the day she switched on the telly to see her favourite heroes foil dastardly deeds again. Alas, the Techno Queen was cancelled.

And in her place there was this guy.

"And now back to our regular programming." Artie mimicked just before the anchor said those exact words. "How is the crime rate doing closer to home Sheryl?" She continued, predicting the anchor's words with a snippishness that most didn't see in her. "Absolutely terrible Marv." She said, switching voices to mimic the scouse accent of the vapid co-host next to 'Marv'. "And now, for the weather." Artie cut in as she sighed, watching the TV with apparent boredom.

In truth, she was having the time of her life. No cramped and gloomy cells, her own apartment complete with food, bed and future friends…

She was determined to enjoy every second of it before it all blew up in her face and she ended up doing something as stupid as the cameraman had and screamed in the middle of a battlefield. Hopefully all she'd get was a sock in the jaw too. Some of those live reports hadn't cut out fast enough to stop people from seeing exactly what napalm did to a prospective Pulitzer Prize winner, though her personal worst TV moment ever was watching that nice brunette from CNN step in front of a claymore mine.

It'd haunted her for weeks, seeing that.

Her pancakes finished, she checked to see if anyone was coming down the hall before scampering back into her flat. She did the dishes, wiped the crumbs off the sofa, tided up her bed and had a shower. She then washed her old clothes in the washing machine/drier before picking over the stash of books & videos in the cupboard. To her delight, she found some up-to-date textbooks, sat down and began to study.

At eight, she got up and did some stretches whilst powerwalking.

At nine, she took a break and made herself a snack.

At ten, she made herself another cup of tea.

At twelve, she got up and went to flat 42 to see if anyone was there to teach her.

None of them were even awake yet.

Shrugging, she went back to her room, cooked herself some lunch, cleaned up and had a snooze.

At around three, a hand shook her awake. "Muh, wha?" She asked intelligently.

"Wake up yeh sleepyhead. Stayed up all night didja?" Terry asked as she tore Artie's bedsheets off.

"No, just taking a nap." Artie stated.

"A wha? A nap?" Terry said quizzically. "Whadja go n' need a nap fer?"

"I wake up at six every day. I just felt a bit sleepy is all." Artie explained.

Terry laughed. "Six? Six? Lass, tha's the normal time most'a da gals go ter sleep 'round these parts. Word ter the wise, magical girls need about an hour a night, tops, and can go few weeks without. Somethin' ter remember when goin' ter school. Me, I prefer usin' me noggin ter attending some damn fool grammar thing, but them's the breaks aye? You, yer need school fer a little while yet but dinnae think that yer'll get ter sleep much 'coz a' that"

An hour? That was it? "B-but I like sleeping." She almost-but-not-quite whined.

"Yeh righ' kid. Me too. It just ain't possible mosta the time nowadays. That's why da girls n' I doze off the weekends ye ken? Nothin' does the soul better 'n a proper set a' forty winks."

"Okay." Artie said carefully, thinking about that. Her mind replayed yesterday's conversation. "Are things that bad then?"

"Aye wee lass, aye they are." Terry said sadly. "Most'a us were hanging on by the skin'a our teeth last few months. We need 'elp, right n' proper, but we willnae shirk our fair share either. However, yer'll be expected ter help a lot lass n' that means keepin' up with us." She finished, falling silent and looking at her expectantly.

"Which means?" Artie asked at the obvious 'come on now'.

"Glad ye asked lass. Means that yeh'll be trained by one a' us, eight in the morn' 'til six in the morn' startin' tomorrow. Today, yeh'll be my partner fer the day." Terry answered.

"And what will we be doing today?" Artie asked wearily.

"Simple, wee lass!" Terry said with a grin. "Da most important job in da house-maintainin' of the non-magical equipment n' readyin' it fer sortie tonight!"

Artie looked at her with a puzzled look. "Um… okay. Why?" She asked.

Terry blinked. "Why wha' lass?"

"Um, why bring non-magical equipment with us? Isn't our magic enough?" She asked.

Terry chuckled. "Nay lass. Yer magic is good inna fight n' all, but it's meant fer fightin' der big bads. Fer the smaller buckos, yeh'll be wantin' somethin' that means yeh don't need ta waste yeh magic on 'em small fry. Trust me, chasin' small fry with yer abilities is a lotta fun, but yeh don't wanna go harin' off after some stragglers only ter come face ter face with a biggie with most'a yer magic gone. Yeh won't survive fer backup to arrive if yeh do."

"Oh." Artie said, shuddering a bit at those words. She'd expected them, but hell they were hard to hear in person. "So what kind of equipment are we using then?"

Terry grinned at her. "Guns lass. Lots n' lots a' guns."

They left the third floor and went up to the fourth. Terry stopped in front of room 64, labelled 'Milady's Exclusive Suite', and opened it.

Behind the doors lay a large, bare room. A small capacitor Artie recognised as the type used on solar panels from the '20s hummed to life as they walked in. Soon, a bank of neon lights came on, illuminating a room that was padded with some type of gel by the looks of things and filled with shelf upon shelf of weapons. On the bottom rung of the shelf lay buckets of ammunition stacked in neat clips all the way up to the rim, the guns they were meant for occupying the shelfspace above. Each shelf served a single ammo size, so it wasn't uncommon to see different models of the same weapons range sitting on different shelves.

And there were a lot of guns. And explosives. And Rocket-propelled launchers of all kinds of ammunition if the jam-packed ammo storage area was anything to go by. She even saw a slightly scratched and dented rail rifle that she'd see in a documentary on the Vietnamese Civil War sitting in its own shelf, a large crate full of metal flechettes waiting to be slotted into the thing and fired at a tank.

And along the back wall lay a hodgepodge of bulgy-looking pieces of gear arranged by composition. Standard Metal, tank plating alloy, carbon fibre, flexicrystalline and spidersilk breastplates, epaulettes, braces, guards and pads of all shapes & sizes were bundled together.

Combat Armour from the start of the century to state-of-the-art from back when the Soviet Union fell.

Enough to outfit a company's worth of soldiers at the least.

"That's all we could find in them other girls' places, yer know." Terry said as she came up beside her. "Every magical girl's got at least one non-magic gun near 'em at all times. 'S standard protocol for when yeh venture inter 'ostile territory n' all. Dem Incubators make sure the cops pay attention ter someone else while we go ter where we wanna go and keeps dem drones n' other things from pissing on our parade. 'S saved me life more than once, guns n' armour 'ave. And not just from Wraiths either." Terry continued as she walked in and picked up a pistol.

"Why did it save you if you have magic?" Artie asked curiously.

"'Coz I dinnae make a weapon instinctively, see?" She said, inspecting the pistol as she went. "Me wish was ter become as smart as. So me magic powers are all knowledge n' stuff. I know kung fu, quantum, politics n' what ter do when such-n'-such a thing 'appens. I cn' plan me way out of a problem, change wheels on a car, program a computer n' perform surgery with a switchblade if I need ter. Me weapon is me mind n' a small dimensional pocket I can hold stuff in. I make me own weapons 'n stuff. I've got good gear dinnae get me wrong, but one wrong move n' I'm out fer the count." Terry noted grimly. "See lass, magic is a tool yeh use. It ain't all you are, jus' part a' it. Forget tha' 'n yeh willnae make it through yer first outin', trust me."

Artie gulped. "Uh, okay."

"N' what about you, lass?" Terry asked as she picked up a blocky-looking rifle that had seen better decades and started to fiddle with something.

"I don't know, really. I didn't see any weapons on me when I transformed, but I'm really strong and can do cool stuff with metal."

That got Terry's attention. "Cool stuff like wha' then?"

Artie smiled. "Could you hand me the rifle please?" She asked, holding her hand out.

Terry shrugged. "Sure. Here." She said, tossing the rifle at her.

Artie caught it one-handed and analysed it. Wow, this rifle's old. Really old, by the feel of it. Seen action too. Micro-fissures along the outside of the frame, but the barrel is pristine-hmm… Ah, there we go!

Artie twirled the rifle around and pointed it at the ceiling. She then slid the magazine out of its holding well and locked the chamber into an open position. All the while, she told Terry about the weapon's name, country of origin (it was a copy of a classic rifle design), stats and service history without paying much attention. Getting some readings from the magazine itself, she depressed a hidden switch on the side of it to let the ammo tray fly free, dropped the mag and caught the rusty spring as it spontaneously uncoiled itself. "-And this spring needs replacing." She finished.

Looking at her a bit strangely Terry then sighed. " 'N what else yeh got?" She asked curiously.

"Um, well, when I am transformed I can shape metal. These clothes I'm wearing are partially metal mesh along the outside weave. Makes it more durable than normal even if it makes staying warm a bit harder." Artie explained. "And I can jump really high? So far, that's all I've got."

Terry chuckled. "Metallokinesis. 'So far, that's all', she said. Lass, that's one damn fine power yeh got there. Think yeh can do the same with other materials?"

Artie nodded. "It's a bit harder, but I can read plastics and chemicals too. Just nothing alive, really, which is okay."

"Have yeh tried shapin' non-metallic stuff then?" Terry asked.

"I did. These clothes were a one-piece jumpsuit beforehand. It took longer than for the metal and I had to concentrate some more on it, but I shaped it." Artie stated.

"Damn. Say, can yeh try shapin' this then?" She said, holding out a small bullet and a copper divot. "Dinnae worry, I've got some grief cubes on me if yeh need 'em." Terry said.

Artie nodded, briefly wondering what a grief cube was before deciding to ask later and changing into her magical girl form. "Pass it over then."

Once again Terry tossed them, but this time Artie's hand darted out and caught them before she could blink. Once in the palm of her hand, the analysis started. Copper alloy, 9mm full metal jacket built by Winchester, simple manufacture-stamped in two parts, one part kept as an ovoid while the other-oooh wowza!

The chemical makeup of the gunpowder flitted through her mind, allowing her to catch a snapshot of how to shape it but lacking the inherent understand of how to make it by hand she had when trying to shape metal. She opened her palm and shook the divot into the left hand.

Change!

She felt her left hand heat up slightly as the divot took on the shape of a bullet. She concentrated hard on the snapshot of the gunpowder in her mind, manoeuvring what felt like atoms and molecules around before moulding them into the right shape.

Opening her eyes, she held up two identical-looking bullets and smiled. She was sweating, but it was worth it.

Terry nodded before point at her left hand. "Toss it over then."

Artie did. Terry then took a pistol from the bench, dropped the clip out, caught said clip, loaded the bullet into it before pushing the clip back in and racking the slide. She then pointed it at a dummy propped up against a stack of junk leaning on the back wall and pulled the trigger.

The bullet penetrated the dummy, the wooden panel behind it, the metal panel behind that, the broken set of filing cabinets, the 3 centimetre thick layer of padding and the five centimetre thick layer of concrete wall before lodging itself in the facade of the decaying building down near the intersection.

"Blimey." Terry breathed. "Lass, show me yer Soul Gem please." She asked carefully.

Artie flipped her right arm over and unlatched the protective panel surrounding her gem, showing it to her.

"Blimey! There's barely any corruption at all!" Terry said in amazement. "So yeh can shape at such unfairly low costs eh? Bloody 'ell!" She exclaimed.

"Uh, Ruby said something about me having innate magic before I made my wish." Artie said.

Terry whistled. "Ah, ye're blessed lass. Every Magical Girl that's 'ad innate magic that I know of was a righ' power'ouse an' no mistake! In fact, they were damn nasty buggers in a fight. Come with a bag a' tricks like yeh wouldn't believe!"

Artie hung her head. "I wouldn't call it blessed, you know."

"Ah, nonsense! Every Magical Girl's got a bit a rough 'istory to 'em. I'll let ya in on a little secret-them tha' 'ad it real rough? Them's the ones tha' last the longest. Yeh 'ad a rough time a' it 'til now? Good! Don't ferget what yeh learned then lass! It'sa gonna serve yeh well in the future-if only 'coz ye'll 'onestly be able ter say 'this… this is still better 'n tha' shit'" She said before starting to laugh. "Och lass, we sure struck gol' on our firs' student then, aye? Lemme get yer some of me rarer guns, have a looksie at 'em n' tell me what's wrong ey?"

Artie smiled uncertainly, confused as to whether Terry was trying to uplift or upbraid her-or both, for that matter.

Terry was, well, different.

Terry, Alice, Martha, Jane and Lydia spent the week basically walking through the do's and dont's of being a magical girl.

Terry handled equipment and maintenance training. Alice was in charge of something called 'magical girl field-craft', which involved breaking & entering into secure spaces that the wraiths liked to use as lairs. Martha handled 'how to hide yourself from scrutiny and appear normal to others', which seemed to be a rather lengthy way of saying 'how to look normal & hide', which she was pretty good at already.

Jane took a few hours away from mothering her newborn to talk about London geography in general, what to say when reporting a situation and getting her to memorise the phone numbers of magical girl groups based in & around southern England as well as pass-phrases to tell them in case of trouble. She also had a computer she showed to Artie. It was connected to something called a Wide Area Network. She showed her how to get network addresses for the most useful information portals around as well as a number of the more prominent bulletin board sites Magical Girls used to communicate. And since most of them were disguised to look like Role-playing Bulletin Boards, she then showed Artie how to recognise the identifiers the magical girls used in their board names. Apparently, Artie would get her own when the mods answered the 'vetting & verification' e-mail Lydia had sent on her behalf the first day there.

As for Lydia? She and Terry spent most of those six nights running Artie through what they called 'navigation & mobility training'. Artie couldn't fly for short distances like Lydia and Alice could, but she learned that she could stick to buildings that had metal rods embedded in them just fine.

Too bad she found that out when Lydia began an impromptu sparring match in the middle of a roof-hopping exercise and kicked her into a building. She couldn't tell which of them was the more surprised when Artie stuck herself to the wall, jumped off and kicked Lydia right back.

Terry basically just laughed at Artie's muddled progress and surprise-attacked her whenever she could. That said, Artie was a fast learner and had managed to hold her own after being beaten to a pulp for three days straight.

All the while, Artie practised metal shaping. It made lockpicking easier, allowed her to blunt attacks by forming armour to soften a blow, enabled her to access computer hard drives and partially read data if she concentrated really hard on it (it was hard than Shaping an object by far, but it helped immensely when she forgot her password) and disable any electronic system if she wanted to. She also practiced forming guns & ammo with Terry, trying to see if she could do more than just copy a weapon. Her initial efforts were promising, but it'd probably take months for her to be good enough to develop tools & weapons on her own.

If she studied and applied that knowledge for months on end-and nothing else.

In practice, it would take her years to come up with creations of her very own that worked. And that was for guns. Guns were relatively easy once you got the hang of things. They'd been around for centuries, the mechanics were simple even for the more complicated & finicky models and most of the more serious designs, the ones intended for prolonged use in the field with only a rag, a rod and some gun oil for maintenance, were almost always entirely made up of metal and other materials that were almost as easy to work with. Wood or other materials that were pretty much shaped from living materials, on the other hand, she still couldn't do very well.

But it'd still take her years to come up with her own guns.

And swords… well, they were subtly difficult, though a good thing to Shape in a hurry. Again, knowing how to Shape one of those of her own design was going to take years of work if only to get a sense of what material composition worked best when designing a blade of such and such a length etcetera.

Knives were easier, if only because they had a smaller blade to Shape. Ultra-dense steel with a Shaping-sharpened edge was enough. Now, how to use them correctly was the problem. None of the girls really had knives as a backup.

And don't even get her started on bullets.

Or computers. The one time she tried copying a microchip, she slotted it into a testing board and connected it to a power source.

The whole thing caught on fire. Not one of her proudest moments, that.

Still, she could copy weapons, which was more than enough for now. Also, she could convert scrap metal into parts for the guns, the tools, the equipment bags and the car, which kept Terry's budget in check.

Metal was one of the most expensive materials to buy on the open market. Consequently, metallic components tended to be on the pricier side of things too, especially components meant for heavily regulated things like weapons and already pretty expensive things like cars.

Most of the metals found in household products came from re-smelted scrap, though artificially created metals had become cheap enough to compete in that market. The Smelting furnaces in North-Eastern France purportedly ran day and night to meet Eurozone-wide demand, though it was the Mitakihara Metal plants that were considered the largest producers of artificial metals in the world. Britain had its own market, but tended to focus more on creating rare metals rather than mass-producing the quantities of steel & Aluminium France did.

Though the price was steadily starting to drop again after spending 20 years playing in the same ballpark some of the cheaper precious metals used to, metals such as Iron and Steel were far from cheap.

Which made little miss 'I can turn a ton of car chassis into a ton of spare parts for everything you need' pay for herself within a day, grief cube expenditure notwithstanding.

So after six nights and six hours of sleep, a week had gone by and Artie was sitting in a room on the fifth floor.

The fifth floor was different. It acted as a storage area for all the stuff Terry'd collected from the dead Magical Girls' caches that wouldn't see immediate use in the near future-TVs, cash, precious metals, spare parts for everything from washing machines to difference engines, actual difference engines, computers, laptops, generators, actual art & art supplies, water purifiers and a lot of other things took up virtually every spare centimetre of space. There were plaques that listed either names or locations- 'Soho', 'Talia G.' and 'North London 1' were labelled on the front doors, each one filling the flats with stuff from girls that had long been dead. Some of Artie's new clothes and shoes had come from these stashes, though Terry refused to say which ones.

Two rooms at the back, though, were sealed tight. Only Terry knew how to get in. One room was labelled 'Weapons-esoteric' while the other was labelled 'Ordinance-esoteric'. Terry refused to allow Artie to enter, much to the girl's frustration. Those sounded really cool.

Near the entrance, though, there were two rooms set aside for other purposes. One on the left immediately after the entrance was labelled 'communications'. Apparently, Terry had set the room up to both communicate with Magical Girls that had access to walkie-talkies and eavesdrop on any unencrypted communications channel she could find. The room was about as crammed with computers and modified HAM radio gear as possible whilst keeping enough room for three people to sit and stare at consoles in moderate comfort.

The one on the right was labelled 'briefing'. It wasn't so much a flat as it was a giant cube where the flat was supposed to be with two toilets replacing what had once been the main bedroom. It was about as bright and cheerful as her former prison cell.

Lining the walls were maps of London from every conceivable angle-aboveground, underground, Metro, maintenance tunnels, sewage, a hand-drawn map marked 'underground London ruins', one that highlighted areas called 'black spots-do not go near here', which included, apparently, a door in Charing Cross Road, an abandoned clothing store on a street adjacent Portobello Road, a manhole cover outside of a tube station in Hammersmith and a blank stretch of wall sitting between a pub and a bookstore.

There were also maps marking out where 'anomalies' appeared on a regular basis.

Wraiths manifested a barrier between them and reality when out hunting. This allowed them to find and pick out people they deemed vulnerable, phasing them into the barrier as an easy snack. In areas where wraith hunts were quite common-typically in the poorer parts- these barriers started leaving behind small pockets of space where reality bent into funny shapes.

As a normal person, stepping through them left you feeling a bit of a strange chill running up & down your spine. As a Magical Girl, your body went from being in top form to being torn apart, burned, frozen, turned inside out, tossed into the ground at an appreciable fraction of the speed of sound, sent hurling into the sky, disappear into a space-time rip or end up squashed as your body experienced gravitational forces more typically found at the heart of an imploding Star.

Thankfully, these 'anomalies' stood out like beacons to a Magical Girl, but they were lethal because it really didn't take much for a girl to stumble into one when not paying attention during a fight.

Plus, some of the stronger Wraiths were known to layer them in a dormant state for Magical Girls to stumble into during an ambush. Getting them used to looking out for the sensations of one being located nearby meant fewer deaths in the long run.

So on the map they went.

There were also maps for things that probably weren't available to the general public-a floor plan for the Scotland Yard offices downtown, detailed maps of the larger hospitals, complete with highlights as to where to find these medical supplies & what exits could be used in a hurry, a complete map of the inside of the Military Intelligence building with holding cells, bunkers and discrete evacuation routes highlighted in different colours and ditto for every single major landmark within city limits.

Artie was speechless. She didn't even know the canal locks had such a large tunnel network servicing it.

All in all, you could quite easily build a 3D map of all of London using this information. And, purely from what she'd seen and memorised already (god bless perfect perception & recall coupled with an eidetic memory), she could see why the girls were getting overwhelmed.

She'd known that the city was huge, but adding the sheer amount of stuff underground as well as accounting for all those offices, tourist traps and secure buildings that the wraiths liked to hide in, the place soon started looking more and more like what amounted to a massive maze.

The maps showed portions of Old London lying underneath the centuries-old sewers that were also still partially accessible and, therefore, probably teeming with even more wraiths. It was no wonder that no normal who'd stumbled on those passages had said anything. They probably hadn't lived to tell the tale.

In the corner lay a row of whiteboards. They had photos of people on them in full Magical Girl regalia. The one visible one did, at least. Under each photo, there was a name written out. Each of the names was crossed out with a date scrawled next to it.

So those were the dead Magical Girls whose stuff she was now wearing. Artie wondered if any of them had gotten buried-and where they were buried.

She wouldn't mind laying flowers down for them. They had been heroes before… well.

Well.

Lydia and the rest walked into the room, briefly glancing at the whiteboards with something that looked like longing to Artie before they all took seats at the large table, Jane fussing around with a pram containing her sleeping child.

Artie had forgotten to ask about the child's name. Well, that could wait now.

"Good evening everyone." Lydia started without preamble and acknowledging the returned greetings. "Let's get to business; first, everyone's met Artemisia, right? Say hello Artie." Lydia said with a smile.

"Um… hello?" Artie said, waving her hand awkwardly. Alice mumbled something about 'cuteness' and 'dressups' for some reason. Artie blushed, which made a few of them chuckle.

"Now that that's out of the way, let's see what we're going to be doing tonight. Terry, you have the floor."

Terry stood up and coughed awkwardly. "Right, er thanks Lyds. Now then, all a'yer know that things're goin' rather badly out in th' Town righ' now, but tha' can be dealt with later. First off, there're still a number a' caches in tha wild that Sibby didnae get around ter pinpointin' before another fluffy li'l bastard came along. Fer the past week, Ruby's bin workin' on getting' us info on where dem St. Pancras girls 'ad their main stash stuffed away 'n we think we gotta hit."

At that, the three other girls stood a bit straighter. "The St. Pancras crew's stash?" Martha asked in disbelief. "But weren't they based out of a mansion of some sort?"

"Aye, that they were. Begs the question as to why dey even bothered occupying th'area when they 'ad ter take a train ter get there." Terry wondered absently before gathering herself. "Anyhoo, it ain't important. What we've got is a problem though." She said as she whipped out a pamphlet.

Artie looked closely at it. It showed a building made out of red brick with a small silhouette of a book located in the bottom right corner. Above the picture of the building lay a coat of arms Artie hadn't seen before. Based on how the others started looking slightly nervous, though, they knew what was happening.

"You sure about this Terry?" Martha asked with a scared look on her face. "I mean, we've been there before and we never saw any of the usual signs of a stash."

"Aye lass. That's 'coz their main stash wuz ferreted away in a Vault."

At that, all the girls except for Lydia and Terry shuffled around. "A vault." Jane said with a sour look on her face. "Terry, you remember the last time we had to crash a vault?" She asked coldly. "I think it's something you would remember given what happened."

"'ey now, none of tha' lass." Terry said, waving Jane's outraged expression off. "I like ter think we've all grown some since then aye? After all, we 'ave little miss Shifty over there now. She could get the door open, no probs."

"The St. Pancras girls were paranoid though." Terry pointed out. "If they went so far as to commandeer a vault underneath the British Library of all places, who knows what they left behind to deter any snoopers?"

"Well ah do 'n Ruby does as well. What we've gotta do's simple-get inter town, clear out them wraiths inside the library, get ter the lower floors, open the vault n' scram once the magic's done."

Lydia sighed. "Permission to speak Terry?" She asked tensely.

"Aye." Terry said, sitting back down with a smile on her face.

"Now I know what it sounds like." Lydia said in order to pre-empt the imminent meltdown she could see coming. "Another one of Terry's ambitious plans etcetera etcetera etcetera. What she didn't get around to explaining is how she was planning on doing it. First, the good news; most of us won't be infiltrating the British Library's vaults. For one thing, it's a bit hard for Ruby to cover up even just one girl breaking into one of the most secure places in London. When she said it was underneath the Library, she meant that it was underneath the Library. As in, below the levels they keep the vaults on. Terry and Ruby know the way, which is why I even agreed to listen to this plan. The plan is for Terry and Artie to go in and get everything done while the rest of us distract the wraiths. We'll follow the old strategy Emily used when she was part of the St. Pancras crew-camp on top of the train station and take pot shots at the wraith until they show up."

The other girls snickered. "Classic Emily. 'Why bother going to them when I can get them to come to me?'" Alice snickered. "Wonder what happened to her..."

"Anomaly on the train tracks." Lydia responded absently. "Ripped the girls to shreds before they knew they were even in danger."

"Christ." Martha muttered. "Didn't know that."

"No you didn't." Lydia agreed. "Sibby asked me not to tell anyone about it."

"Goddamn Syubey." Alice growled. "Always there when you needed its help the least and always gone just when you needed it the most."

Jane nodded. "By far the worst Incubator I ever dealt with." She agreed.

"Alright, back on track ladies." Lydia interjected. "We don't have much daylight to burn, so I am going to keep this short-Ruby's sending twenty new recruits our way next week and one new group every two weeks for the next three months."

Dead silence fell across the table. Martha cleared her throat. "Beg your pardon Lydia but do we even have the money to feed them?"

"No." Lydia stated bluntly. "Quite the opposite in fact-building this place up as a safe house has cost us a lot in terms of magic and money. We're bingo on pounds and dangerously low on Grief Cubes. As it stands, we had about enough to last us comfortably for three weeks when Artie arrived. Since we've all been burning the midnight oil and shuffling about teaching her things, we've also been using far more grief cubes than we normally do. With the extra draw on resources, we now have about five days' worth of grief cubes left per person."

"What?" Martha said, paling at what she just heard. "B-but that's barely enough for two nights' worth of fighting! If none of us get injured!"

"Yes, I know." Lydia said grimly. "So we need the money and we need more grief cubes. Which makes this a plan that I want us all to go for yesterday." She finished.

The room was silent. "Well." Alice said, clearing her throat nervously. "I'm not a hundred percent behind this plan." She said, eyeing Lydia carefully. Lydia grimaced but shooed her on. "I mean, Terry's, like, our backup girl. She's the best at tactics and she's a pretty good sniper too. If she's off, like, doing something else, who's going to take her place?" She questioned.

"Nobody. We're all attacking while they're off to the Library." Lydia said bluntly. "Terry and Artie go in, grab the stash and then hightail it back to us. This is a careful engagement type of plan-we're looking at a hundred-strong group of wraiths in that area, minimum. All of us will be bringing Sniper Rifles and repeaters. Jane will be manning a machine gun while the rest of us group around so that everyone's back is covered. The objective is not to engage in close combat like the last couple of times, understand? We cannot afford to lose any more members of this team, period. Once they're there, Jane will drive the car back here while the rest of us collect the grief cubes and clear out on foot. Then, we will have two gunners cover our retreat while the rest of us open a passage clear back home. The gunners will be collecting any dropped cubes they find along the way if they can, but their main focus will be on keeping up. No heroics, no cube-farming nonsense, just in, hunker down & wait for the girls to get back then out as quickly as possible." Lydia explained.

Jane raised a hand. "Why am I driving the car back?" She asked curiously.

"Because you have a child here." Lydia stated. "I know what it's like to have a kid in this situation. I need your head in the game and having you trying to rush ahead to get home quickly does not qualify as something that concurs with that desire." She explained. "And no, I am not judging you for it. I just know that's going to happen at this stage because I've seen young mothers get cut down doing just that. Trust me that I don't want to do this because we sure could use a good frontliner at the end, but I also want you alive tomorrow so you're driving."

Jane nodded at the statement, but she didn't look happy about it at all.

Lydia clapped her hands together. "Right then, we have-" She looked down at her watch. "-two hours to get ready. Collect your backpacks, a dozen grief cubes each and weapons. I will expect you to be ready in an hour and a half so that we can have a quick dinner before going for a drive. Terry, brief Artie on what her role is going to be tonight please. I have a few details to sort out with Ruby. Chop chop ladies!"

And then she left the room, the others following behind her until only Terry and Artie remained. Terry smiled down at the girl. "Two hours eh? That's aplenty fer me. Now look, ye're a smart lass, so I'm gonna keep this short-stick ter me and yeh'll live. Don't and yeh die." She said gravely. "There, not that 'ard eh?"

Artie just nodded. "Is it going to be difficult?" She asked. "Only, it's the first time I've done this."

"Aye lass, it's not gonna be easy. There's things apart from wraiths yeh should watch fer in good ole London town, especially on a full moon like ternight."

Well, Artie always did like the books about girls & boys going on adventure and fighting the good fight, so she'd expected to feel excited about everything.

So why did she feel a pit of dread well up inside her instead?

The car was a large Land Rover with extra seating bolted into the back. It was old, worn down and dirty like a proper Land Rover was meant to be.

Silly Americans and their silly Jeeps. A four-wheel-drive built for work in muddy fields & hostile tundras that may or may not be on fire had no business looking shiny, Terry said. It was an insult to such vehicles to scrape off that hard-earned dirt, Terry said.

Terry said a lot of things that Artie only partially understood, so she didn't pay her bafflement much mind. To her, cars were always clean and well-maintained, but apparently a 'right 'n proper ole People Carrier ain't just a car Artie'.

Whatever that meant.

London was brightly lit between the street lights and the full moon. Lots of people walking in & out of pubs, stores, clubs and movie theatres. In the scant few minutes since they'd hit Central London proper, she'd seen more people than in the past two years combined.

Which had her worried until they hit Highgate. Instantly, the light and the people were replaced by a slight mist. The moon took on a bright sheen as the rest of the world went dark. The chassis of the Rover became more defined, more… more in Artie's mind while the world around her faded to greyscale.

Artie shivered.

"Your first Wraith barrier eh?" Martha said, chuckling as she looked at the young girl. "You never forget your first one."

Artie smiled at her reassuring attitude even as she explored the sensation. There were things tickling at the edge of her senses. A sense of something being just plain wrong, like an ice cube that was burning hot to the touch or water that dried the skin. The perfect opposite of the way the world was supposed to work.

Yes. Inverted. That's exactly what the barrier felt like.

On the plus side, though, she felt her Shaping abilities and magic get more powerful. Where before she'd had a steady trickle of information fed to her, now she had a small river of data to contend with. Gone were the more generalist impressions, in came certainty and the indefinable feel of power flowing through her veins.

Artie relaxed. They were almost at their destination anyway.

Terry parked the car as close to the train station's main entrance as she could. The girls, already transformed and loaded down with heavy-looking backpacks, leapt up the facade in a way that had Artie gape.

"Yeah, tha's somethin' I wuz gonna teach ya next week." Terry said as she ran her gloved fingers through her hair. "Nothin' to it, I suppose. It ain't that difficult ter learn anyhoo." She said, retrieving a duffle bag from the boot. "Now then, yeh got some trainin' in how ter shoot over the week, so today yeh're gonna be carryin' a stubby little bugger. It's perfect for someone yer size." She said, handing over a small SMG. 'Tsall metal, so there shouldnae be any problems for yer ter learn how ter 'andle it. If it gives yeh gip, holler and we'll fix it. Now stash it in yer backpack." She ordered as she retrieved a pistol with ammunition clips from the duffle and throwing them in after the SMG. "Load when I say yeh load, fire when I say yeh should fire, dinnae point 'em at me 'less I go crazy, 'coz I'll bollock yer 'arder than me old man used ter bollock me, get?" She mock-threatened.

Artie nodded. "Follow your orders, don't get spanked." She quipped.

Terry chuckled as she pulled her own backpack out, though it looked more like she was going camping than Artie's own dinky little bag. "Right then. Got yer gear n' all that?"

"Yeah." Artie nodded. "Even got some extra metal from those broken down cars in my armour in case I need it."

Terry smiled. "Good thinkin' lass. Now let's wait fer the signal that the girls're in place 'n the fun's about ter start."

Artie nodded. "Okay."

The two nibbled on their energy bars, absently checking out the area. Terry whistled for a few seconds before stopping. Artie fiddled with the straps of her backpack. All was quiet.

Then the gunshots rang out. "That's the signal." Terry said, throwing the wrapper to the ground. "We gotta move now." She said, pointing down a dark road.

Artie nodded and started to run. Terry was a lot faster than her, but elected to keep pace with the young girl.

No muscles ached, no lungs burned, her heartbeat was perfectly even & she was at least twice as fast than she'd been before the wish and she wasn't pushing herself. Terry wasn't even breathing hard, taking in the sights with a bored look.

As they came to the intersection, Terry nudged her shoulder. "As we practiced." She said in an all-business voice before jumping up.

Artie watched her arc through the air before jumping after her. She passed over half a second later and got a glimpse of a black-and-white view of all of London illuminated by an impossibly bright & large full moon.

The drop was lighter than she'd come to expect. Despite the fact that she was carrying roughly an extra ton of Shaped scrap metal in her costume, the landing was smoother and quieter than it had been in training. Terry gave a little huff in approval before jumping again.

And so they hopped from roof to roof in this strange black & white world, the clarity of it all throwing Artie for a loop, since black & white photos and movies were nowhere near as detailed on screen than they were here.

Finally, a giant building came into view and Terry signalled for her to stop. "Now listen lass, I dunno what we're gonna innat place, but keep yer head about yerself y'hear? That place ain't squeaky clean a' th' besta times n' that was before this whole shebang went down. Y'dinna wanna lose that pretty little head now, yeh be wary eh? Dem St. Pancras girls were a mite possessive ye ken?"

Artie nodded with an edged smile. "Yes Auntie Terry. For the hundredth time, I will pay attention."

Terry reared back a bit. "A-auntie? Ha! I ain't nobody's Auntie anymore kid. Yeh should watch those manners a'yers yeh little sass!" She said, her blush darkening her cheeks to the point where Artie could pick out the fact the girl was blushing. "N' yeh haven't been payin' attention lass, otherwise yeh would know that this be only the 35th time that ah've said it, not the hundredth." She remonstrated. "Now follow me lead, ya git n' make sure ah dinnae havetae say it fer the 36th time!"

Artie chuckled as the two jumped across and dropped down from the last building before the Library. Apart from their near-silent landing, the plaza they were in was eerily silent. Artie tried and failed to check for wraiths.

She did, however, notice a glowing white mist in the Library itself. "What's that?" She asked Terry, pointing at the mist hogging the ground in what looked like the Library's Lobby.

Terry cursed. "Ah hell. It's somethin' that says 'here be a wraith's nest' bucko. Normally, we'da avoided trying ter get through tha' as much as we possibly could, but we's gotta this time." She sighed before looking up. "You n' me'll be enterin' through the very top then, nothin' for it. When we get up there, load that big pistol'a yers, 'coz we're gonna need it."

Artie nodded. "O-okay." She uttered as she tried to contain a nervous stutter.

"Right den. On three, Three!" Terry said, jumping to a point halfway up the tower before somehow jumping up the rest of the way.

Artie hesitated for a second, thinking about how to do approach this situation. Terry had cleared about fifty metres of space whilst climbing twenty-thirty metres up in that one jump. Last time she'd tried pulling that trick her armour had hit the wall with massive CLANG. And that had been when it wasn't even fully formed yet. With the amount of metal covering her body now, she'd probably give the bells of Big Ben a run for their money. But there were windows she could use…

Bracing herself, Artie launched to the edge of the parapet set above the entrance, sacrificing elevation for distance in order to land quietly before leaping to the end of the first roof covering. She then bounced onto an outcropping that acted as a parasol for a window on the main bulding before settling down, turning around and then hopping to the top of the clock tower. Terry signalled her over to some kind of manhole at the top, which Artie walked over towards before the two crouched down.

Artie retrieved her little machine pistol and used her Understanding to prep it for use. Terry picking it up into her calloused hands, running through an in-depth maintenance cycle before slowly and carefully going through loading, unloading and unjamming sequences. The feel of metal against shoulder & hip during target practice showed Artie how to hold it correctly while the impression the gun bore of her various stances when firing at a walk, run, standing, crouching and prone inserted itself into her muscle memory. The targets Terry was firing at were disguised to look like robe-adorned corpses in various stages of decomposition, their black & white tones and skull faces with cloth replicating flesh sloughing off tipping Artie's mind off as to what they were.

Wraiths!

Artie gasped as Understanding came, shivering at the impression the image of the targets left behind. Instinctively, she knew what Wraiths looked like now and sensed adrenaline flaring up as hatred flowed through her veins. That feeling of not-right, abnormal and unnatural pricked at her skin even from seeing it from a third person perspective.

Not for the first time Artie wondered just how much information she actually got from touching machines. It was less pronounced with cars and other large metal structures, but she got the feeling that she could access them if she tried hard enough.

She just didn't know if she wanted to try that hard for something that wasn't really useful to her at this stage. Maybe when she gets more used to handling complex things? Something to think about.

In no time, the compact weapon was fully assembled and ready for use. She'd Shaped a silencer directly onto the barrell, briefly mumbling an explanation to Terry as she did so. Terry just shook her head at the girl's caution muttering about how they were going to have a talk about what a silencer does to a bullet's range & penetration abilities.

Then Terry pulled the hatch open and started to descend.

The British Library's maintenance corridors were different from other such places as far as Artie was aware. A world away from those she'd explored in the various schools, houses and orphanages she'd ended up in.

There was a touch of old world glamour there that hadn't truly faded with time-posters and paintings from a variety of eras, too valuable to discard yet not valuable enough to exhibit at a public museum, lined a fluffily carpeted hallway.

The light fittings varied from positively ancient gas lights refitted to house light bulbs to fluorescent neon lights artfully shaped for maximum illumination. Due to the monochrome nature of the barrier, Artie couldn't pick out individual colours, but the way the light seemed several shades darker than the pure, ghostly white emanating from the repurposed gas lamps suggested that the lighting choices would be interesting indeed to witness.

Metal railings ran at what was considered hip height for a grown adult, which meant that it ran at about shoulder height from Artie's point of view.

Terry was not taking the trip very well. She constantly checked the corridors for movement, head-checked their rear, the ceiling and any doors they came across whilst occasionally glancing at Artie and visibly struggling between scolding the younger girl for gawking at such a time and maintaining absolute silence in the face of what they were doing.

Just before they came to a set of stairs that led into the main building, Artie felt a slight slap on the back of her shoulder armour. Startling, she whirled around, gun drawn into said shoulder and finger on the trigger, before stopping when she came face-to-face with a scowling Terry.

"Focus yeh twit!" The girl hissed. "This look like me idea 'fa picnic to yeh?"

Surprised by the sudden admonishment, Artie shakily steadied herself before fixing Terry with puppy dog eyes to soften the angry-looking girl.

It didn't work.

"In front wi' yeh. 'n pay some fuckin' attention t'where yeh're goin' yeh twit." She mumbled, clearly not impressed with Artie at the moment. "Think a wraith's gonna do yeh a courtesy n' pop up when yeh have th' time ter react n' th' space ter manoeuvre? Yeh jus' wait 'til we're clear lass. Yeh jus' wait." She promised, a hot, dark anger tinged with disappointment clear on her face.

Gulping, Artie nodded before slinking over to the door leading to a stairwell. The door was locked electronically.

Well, she could deal with that.

Putting her left hand against the door, Artie felt out the metal connections contained within. There was a trip alarm sitting in the locking mechanism. It probably went off if some hapless idiot forced their way into the stairwell. Sitting in the well that held the bolt in place, Artie detected an electronic circuit sitting right where the bolt's sharpened edge would lodge. The edge was covered in some kind of plastic that wedged into what looked like a small layer of gel, effectively bisecting it. Electronically conductive gel, by the Feel of it. She could divine its purpose from there. The bolt acted as a circuit breaker. If the bolt was retracted but electricity supplied by the alarm system still flowed through the circuit, it would trip a silent alarm and… ah, there it was! The other side of the circuit flowed through the hydraulic doorstop at the top! The hydraulic liquid in question would harden when exposed to electricity, leaving the door unable to be opened while the silent alarm summoned the bobbies.

Quite neat, if a bit much for a simple door into a stairwell.

Artie disabled the two alarm systems before Shaping the bolt back into a retracted position. With no alarm raised and no electricity reaching the hydraulic doorstop, the door swung open by itself as Artie absorbed the information these new circuits supplied to her. Though she was years away from attempting to Shape a working circuit of her own, every little bit of knowledge of what went into designing a successful one (and having a copy ready to go sitting in her mind for re-Shaping) helped.

Silently, Artie moved onto the landing in the stairwell, reaching out to touch the light switch before retracting her hand with a grimace. Switching on the lights without having the security card swiped through at the entrance point would pretty much set off over a dozen alarm systems throughout the building. The only way to disable them at this point was to either go back outside and spend valuable minutes figuring out how to spoof the system into thinking a card had been swiped or disable every alarm system in the building-which would coincidentally short out the building's power supplies and set off a lock-down as well… leaving Artie & Terry to traipse through the dark into a Library that had turned into a fortress.

Artie just pulled out a flashlight instead.

The descent was slow and nerve-wracking. It had become pretty clear that Terry had chosen this stairwell for a reason. There were little brass plaques next to every entrance marking what level they were on and what said level contained.

It took about fifteen minutes before they hit UG-1 (staff rooms, operations offices & supplies) and noticed the mist pouring down into the abyss below them.

It was always jarring to realise just how deep certain parts of London could get. UG-2 was, after all, below the Thames' water line as far as Artie was aware, yet there was no overt dampness or mould on the walls to indicate such a thing like in the cheaper basements & underground car parks dotting the rest of the city.

Artie was pretty sure that, by the time they reached UG-5 (authorised officials & personnel only), they were even deeper than the ruins of a time before London was actually called London.

Which meant that they'd arrived at the special Vaults.

Down here, the mist was so thick she could barely see ten paces in front of her anymore. Terry's flashlight pierced the darkness like a distant searchlight.

Did Wraith mist play tricks on the eyes? It certainly felt that way. The chill Artie felt probably wasn't due to any condensed water forming up on her armour either.

Artie was suddenly struck by the need to hurry.

Quickly, she put her hand against the electronic lock instead of the door proper this time, knowing that some of the doors they'd come up in the upper levels were pressure-locked rather than simply bolted shut.

The system flared to life in her mind, delicate tracings of copper wire and fibre optic cabling linking complex circuits together in a demented facsimile of an insect brain. There were hundreds of circuits connecting to this very door and Artie Felt each & every single one of them, looking for that spark that said that right there was where the commands to open the door were located. She found it sitting in an innocuous computer tower hidden away behind a fake wall panel in the office of the Library Administrative Affairs Director's assistant.

Oh dear.

Calming herself, Artie booted up the tower completely. As the system exited Idle mode, Artie had to react quick to cut off wired communications attempts that led to some other network Artie couldn't really follow all that far. It was simply too dauntingly complex a network situated too far away for her to make heads or tails of it, so she simply assumed 'attempted communication=bad' and shut it off. She then allowed her power to go to work, pouring every ounce of attention she had into figuring out the system. She knew by Feeling the metal touch pad that the password had a maximum size of 16 digits, but most likely only had eight. There was a distinct set of ultra-small cracks and scratches running along the shaft of some of the keys, telling her vaguely which combinations her powers should look out for.

She found it hidden under New_Folder/Notes/MI_X/Porn/Nasty_

Briefly, she wondered what porn stood for. And what Nasty Girls 6 was. Eh, she'd ask Terry later. She typed a twelve-digit combination in and felt the thump of the pressure seal unlocking. As the door opened, stale air flooded the corridor, disturbing the mist around it.

Terry tensed up.

Artie's soul gem flashed with red & green light.

There was only one conclusion to draw, even as every other door in the stairwell unlocked with an ominous clack.

The wraiths knew the girls were here.

Terry sprinted down the revealed corridor, Artie using her panic to keep abreast of the girl.

Terry didn't look happy at all. In fact, Terry looked afraid of something. Something big. Artie wondered what in the world could make Terry of all people startle in fear.

She turned left at the next intersection, running down a corridor lined with ominous-looking doors. Turning left again, Terry ran down a hallway lined with doors Artie had seen in prison. As she kept from falling too far behind the frantic magical girl, Artie wondered if those cells were occupied in the real world before pushing all thought other than keep up! Aside.

Finally, Terry turned right at a random-looking intersection and stopped, waiting for Artie to race past before tossing a large, thick tube into the middle of the intersection. There was a whump behind Artie, startling her into head-checking behind her. The whole corridor was painted in some kind of foam that was closing the intersection down fast.

"'urry up Artie!" Terry shouted in front of her. "We got mebbe fifteen minutes ter get the Vault door opened n' cleared out!" she stated as she came to a stop in front of the last vault in that hallway, tossing a long tube out into the intersection in front of them. Whump!

Panting, Artie punched the Vault door this time, sinking her armoured hand deep into a steel door capable of weathering a nuclear weapon and Shaping the whole lot. Terry watched the enormous mass of metal melt into the girl and disappear without a trace. Artie smirked at the sight of the older girl's rather flabbergasted gape. "Well, let's get to it then." She said, waltzing into the Vault like there was nothing to it.

Terry shook her head slightly and smirked as she regained control of herself. "Well, tha's a nice trick 't least. Yeh got an upper limit on storage lass?"

"No." Terry said absently as she moved to a plastic container full of gold, silver & platinum before dissolving the lot. "I don't think I have. Not when it comes to metal, at least." She corrected as she repeated the trick for all the containers lining a rack on the far wall, Shaping the rack's side into a ladder to get to the other containers.

"Lucky." Terry grunted with an amused smile as she stashed bucket after bucket of grief cubes into a backpack that should, in no way, have contained anywhere near as much as she was putting in. "Ah c'n carry about a ton or make backpacks tha' c'n carry more'n their fair share, but thassit." She explained, eyeing the rest of the stash that laid about. "Mosta th'weapons 'n stuff 're comin', but dem artsy stuff's gonna have ter stay fer now."

Artie nodded. " 'n soon we'll be making for the sewers then?" She asked. "How do we get there?"

"There be a hidden entrance down a-ways from here." Terry explained with a huff. "Weren't yeh listenin' during dem briefings?"

"I was, but getting there now seems a bit… harder than when we talked about it?" Artie questioned. "I mean, I don't want to be ambushed or anything."

"Ah, no worries." Terry said cheerfully. "A wraith in a place filled with mist willnae ambush yeh. 'e n' 'is mates will dogpile yeh instead."

"Oh." Artie said, shivering. "Great."

"Dinnae worry. Tha's what th' machine pistol's fer."

That said, the two finished up their work in silence. The St. Pancras girls had been expecting trouble, it seemed. Bearer bonds, gold, cash in seven separate denominations, uncut gems, diamonds, jewelry, art, weapons and even packs full of tinned rations were included in the Vault. When Artie tried to store something non-metallic, she felt a shiver run down her spine.

#Communication: Error. Cannot store items.

Yeah, she wasn't trying that again.

The tinned goods, though, she had almost no problem with.

All told, the haul was quite a prize. Artie could see why Terry had been so gung-ho about it while Liz, though reticent, had ultimately gone ahead with the idea.

After ten minutes, the two had exited back into the hallway. The mist had crept through whatever that foamy substance Terry had used was and had begun to make its presence felt.

Terry ran to the closest blob covering the intersection and simply walked through.

"Follow me, lass. Dem foam willnae 'old th'others back ferever." Terry commented in an almost idle manner. Clutching her SMG, Artie followed behind.

As they emerged, Terry once again started off into a full-on sprint, the backpacks now firmly in place against her costume thumping out rhythmic slaps as they met her back. Artie struggled to keep up with the girl, the added bulk of her armour starting to make itself felt. It wasn't heavy, merely very, very awkward as she got used to it.

On the plus side, she could probably take a Tank round to the gut and walk away from it. She wasn't so sure about plasma weaponry, though. She hoped she'd never find out.

Finally, Terry came to a door and simply rammed into it. The door broke into splinters and metal bands, the bits now no longer attached to the door blowing through the room like so much shrapnel. Artie only really heard the sound as an afterthought. Merely watching Terry do it had been loud enough.

Ears ringing, the two ran out the other side of the room onto a metal catwalk. Artie followed, but took a second to stop and admire what she was seeing. The room was no mere room. It was the size of a warehouse you could park a jumbo jet in with next to no problems. But the impressive thing about it wasn't just the size.

It was the row upon row of difference engines, gleaming even in this black & white world. Rack upon rack of fully assembled gear systems stretched from floor to ceiling, easily equalling some of the smaller office towers on display up above. The vault of the domed roof, barely visible even at their height, gleamed as spotlights displayed the massive vents used to suck the heat exhaust out of the room. Down below, underneath the metal grill making up the floor, lay a dozen drive wheels hooked up to electric motors as tall as a house. Each of those drive wheels was easily larger in diameter than Artie was.

In short, everything, from the floor lining underneath to the keystone of the vaulted dome above, was made of metal.

Artie was in heaven as she Felt and Understood what lay around, above and beneath her. Images of everything, from the room's inauguration to its final closing day, echoed through her mind. This, right here, had been the hidden heart of the Empire from the days of Napoleon to Stalin's funeral. Mind-boggling calculations had been crunched here, dictating and determining exactly how the British Empire was to be run on everything from military operations to tax collection particulars. In here lay the secret to how the operations of the greatest Empire the Earth had ever seen were optimised.

And now it had been buried beneath a library of all things.

"'ey Artie, y'alright down there?" Terry asked, concerned at the look on Artemisia's face.

"Never better." Artie stated, shaking her head. "In fact, are we going to the top?" She asked with an impish smile on her face.

"Yeah?" Terry stated with a questioning look. "'ts the logical thing ter do, yaknow."

Artemisia grinned. "See you there!" She announced as she jumped straight up, holstering her machine pistol and grabbing onto the metal-lined walls. Thin inscriptions of some kind of pictogram came to life in her mind, the little things running along the metal inlay that kept the tiles in place and running from floor to ceiling.

Artie filed it away for later and jumped further up as Terry laughed at the display. "Go on then yah li'l monkey! Better get there 'afore ah do!" Terry taunted before carefully jumping from level to level.

Finally, Artie arrived at the last platform and dropped onto the catwalk again, grinning as her SMG came back into her hands. Terry arrived mere seconds later, the older girl displaying a level of skill that would have been the envy of gymnasts the world over. The two smiled at each other before heading off down to the exit at a clipped pace.

Artie looked down below one last time and gasped.

The Mist was cascading into the room, only this time it wasn't alone. Figures emerged from the foggy soup, grey coloured cowls pulled back and faces little more than greyish meat sloughing off bone white skulls. Pixels floated around them, seemingly everywhere and nowhere to be seen at the same time.

And every single one of those things was looking right at her.

"Wraiths!" Artie shouted, pointing her SMG down below and squeezing the trigger. The gun gave off a ticktickticktick as the silencer worked its magic, the bullets slamming down towards their prey at subsonic speeds. One of the things dissolved while 27 pixels flared as something hit them.

One magazine for a single wraith. She had two more full ones left before she had to go for the pistol.

Well bugger.

Thinking fast, Artie slammed an open palm down onto the ground and Shaped the platform underfoot into a solid slab. Satisfied, she turned back towards Terry just in time for her to see the other girl open fire with a large rifle.

Tacktacktack! "Artie! Get th'door open already!" She shouted with nary a trace of her patois about her. Tacktacktacktacktacktacktack!

As the rifle roared, Artie pulled out her second-to-last clip and slammed it into the machine pistol's magazine well, just finishing the reload as her palm lashed out and punched the door. Not bothering with absorption or anything fancy, she simply melted the hinges & latches off before kicking the door down and pointing the gun into the space she'd just opened up.

She was firing before she consciously realised that there were indeed wraiths in that corridor too. The SMG blazed away, the tickticktick abruptly changing to a heavy cracracracracracracrack! as she turned the silencer into a longer barrel.

Concentrating hard, she Shaped herself two new full magazines before ducking to the side and reloading. Three wraiths had fallen to the bullets this time. The rest of them had been deflected by those squares floating in midair. The pixels were an intimidating shield to get through. "Terry! Door's open, but there's wraiths!" She shouted at her older companion's back.

Cursing, Terry finished emptying her clip down below and ducked out of line of sight with the open doorway. She then sprinted over to the other side of the doorway and stuck her hat in.

Light blazed across Artie's eyes, which was immediately followed by Terry swearing. "Cover yer ears lass!" She shouted, pulling out a smaller tube than before and tossing it into the area beyond the doorway.

Artie did, but she still felt the explosion in every bone of her body. Terry grabbed her by the arm and simply ran on in.

They jumped over rubble and through the hole in the wall the explosive had made. Terry let loose with the rifle the second they were in another corridor, this one tilting upwards. Artie let loose a volley at the downward slope of the corridor, being rewarded with a flash of pixels and sparks as she did so. All the while, she concentrated on Shaping more ammunition and calling Grief Cubes to her self.

The black stone-like things zipped through the dark, followed almost immediately by shafts of light Artie was dodging almost blindly while Terry did the same.

Catching them, she tossed some to Terry, who caught them blind even as she dodged wildly.

Artie absently equated the whole thing to those laser light shows on TV, only with bad reception.

Yet still they advanced, guns blazing and bullets flying up & down the corridor as they slowly made their way upwards in fits & bursts, the darkness pushed back in the light of directed explosions and magnified charged photons.

The sound of cubes hitting the floor and bouncing down the corridor sounded like a waterfall of pebbles amidst the gunfire and shouts.

One of the bullets Artie fired hit something that may have been important, probably a fuel tank servicing the Difference Engines arrayed in the other room or a gas line.

The result, whatever it was that lone bullet lodged into in the dark, was a blast wave flattening the duo and taking out the wraiths coming from down below.

As the ringing in her ears died down, Artie heard and felt more distant explosions, steadily getting bigger as her hearing recovered. "RUN!" She shouted at Terry, switching her aim upwards this time and pouring a veritable wave of copper rounds at any possible survivors up top. Grief cubes hit and lodged themselves into her armour as she no longer bothered catching them, her power Shaping bullets into the emptying magazine before it could run dry. She paused and reShaped the barrel of the SMG, dispelling the excess heat her sustained fire had generated into pellets of white-hot iron even as she kept up the fire and the upwards sprint. Terry kept good pace with her, electing to fire short bursts at the wraiths Artie's curtain of fire managed to miss and occasionally pulling a grief cube out of the young girl's armor. All the while, the heat and rumbling got more intense, spurring the girls on as they raced the destruction taking place down below.

Finally, they cleared the corridor and, after Terry shoulder-charged the door again, ended up in a tube station. Not pausing to find out where they were, the two then raced for the exit, bounding over the gates and up the stairs like the hounds of hell were nipping on their heels. Once back outside, Artie jumped straight up onto the front of the building on the other side of the street and pinballed into the facade of the building on the opposite side of the street before bouncing straight up and using the ledge of the rooftop to launch herself towards where Terry had landed.

As she landed on the roof, the building she'd just cleared started to slump before disappearing into the now roaring and fiery depths below. The British Library's windows blew inwards as the sudden vacuum forming at the very bottom level sucked all the air it could towards fuelling the massive conflagration before pressure differentials asserted themselves and a wall of flames engulfed the building from the ground floor all the way to the top of the clocktower they'd used as an entrance.

"Well then, tha' went well!" Terry said with evident signs of merriment.

Artie, on the other hand, was horrified. "But… but… the library..." She whispered in shock. "All that knowledge… gone. Because of us."

"Not gone, lass. We be in a barrier, ye ken?" Terry said, shrugging. "Th' Library'll be there in th'morn."

"Really?" Artie said in relief and excitement. She'd always had a soft spot for libraries because, hey, free books & entertainment.

"Aye. Dem St. Pancras gals 'ad a stash in both. They jus' kept th' good stuff in th' barrier side." Terry stated, chuckling. "Less chance'a dem bobbies n' tax people findin' it."

"Ah." Artie said in realisation. "That sounds useful." She remarked as she watched the Library burn in all its monochrome glory.

"Aye, 'tis." Terry agreed. "If'n we 'ad ter fight in London proper, it woulda been levelled long ago." She stated. "Fuckin' Boudica. Glad th' bitch's dead." She muttered, turning and jumping before Artie had a chance to ask anything.

The two jumped carefully, Terry and Artie both checking the streets they jumped over as well as the area they were jumping towards.

All went well for about three minutes.

Then, in mid-jump, a lance of light hit the top of Artie's shoulder, knocking her off-course and sending her slamming into the window of a boutique office.

When Artie finally regained her wits, she found herself sprawled face down in a lush carpet, her vision tinted red & stinging at the end of a trail of splinters & glass shards of what had once been a window and a rather expensive-looking desk. The carpet had furrowed underneath her and she could swear she could feel the rubble of what had been part of the concrete floor through her armour.

Oh, and there was the mist too. Here be wraiths, it seemed.

She retrieved her mangled SMG, briefly using her Shaping to repair it before deciding that she could probably hit something if she just sprayed the mist.

Setting the gun against her hip, she proceeded to repeat the trick she'd used a mere five minutes beforehand.

Cracracracracracracracracracra-tzing!

She barely managed to dodge a tightly focused set of lasers aiming for where her SMG had barely begun merrily spraying away before dancing around another light show again, frantically noticing that, this time, the damn lasers were burning the office she was trapped in. The fact that the walls were made out of cheap plasterboard quickly became apparent too as walls on both sides exploded in a wave of fire & heat, flooding the room with shrapnel.

Beyond the office, there were a mass of wraiths. Every cubicle, every passageway, every centimetre of space was lined with a wall of floating pixels and rotten faces. From her position on the floor, Artie made out a good dozen flattened metal discs. Her bullets hadn't made it a metre past the door before being stopped.

So this is what Terry meant by 'dogpiling'. Relying on some unknown instinct, Artie jumped backwards as hard as she could, doing further damage to the flooring as she went, using one foot and then another to adjust her trajectory before the wraiths could get a shot in.

As her last foot met cold midnight air, Artie rolled herself into a tight ball to weather the incoming barrage.

She was not disappointed.

The impacting lasers released small explosions upon contact, pushing Artie around in midair even as her armour shed pellets of molten iron in an effort to shunt the heat away from herself. When she finally managed to escape the line of sight of the wraiths, her fall was accompanied by a rain of molten metal in various states of cooling and she could still feel her sweaty bits chafe against the hardpoints where said metal was stored.

The impact of the street was more jarring than she'd felt before, she thought to herself after the stars had vanished from her vision. Drawing herself up, she repaired her gun once more and checked her surroundings.

Doors all along the street opened. Mist started pouring out, the malevolent fog of a horde of nightmares rapidly blanketing the asphalt underfoot. Artie looked for a building, any building, whose windows weren't filled with the stuff from top to bottom and found none. Turning, she almost started down the street to reach the intersection and bounce up the buildings until she got free enough to close in on Terry again.

That's when the Mist poured in from both sides of the street and the mass of wraiths that'd taken the shot earlier drifted into view high above.

It was a trap.

A very well-sprung one too.

#Warning: Chances of evasion now at less than 30% and dropping. Suggest remedial action forthwith by integrated Decision Support System. #Communication: Warning acknowledged. DSS engaging. Suggested action-unlocking high-level assistance package. Awaiting confirmation. #Communication: Confirmed. HLA package unlocked, level 16(low clearance). Activating neural connector. Data bridge stable. Stabilisers reporting 1% shift in emotional tolerance range. Handshaking with interface completed-slight instability in emotional range detected (stress levels increasing at 2% per millisecond). Downloading package now.

All of a sudden, Artie felt her powers raring up. Every piece of metal on, around and under the street shone in her mind clear as day. The monochrome world faded slightly as steel, iron and more exotic elements all combined into one frameworked map of her surroundings. She could see their temperatures too, an underground pipeline carrying pressurised steam shining bright yellow in her vision as oranges, greens, reds and blues highlighted other metals of varying temperatures.

What was more, she could feel something in her own metal. Electric charges, temperature, magnetism, degrees of corrosion and the true weight of the masses of molecules in skin contact with her. She suddenly knew a lot more than she had about the elements at her command.

And then, months of reading scifi and technology magazines in an effort to escape her day-to-day life as a rejected orphan in empty houses, lonely orphanages and prison cells provided her with the answer her mind had been unconsciously looking for.

She could get out of this.

With a thought, the SMG dissolved in her hands. She didn't mourn its passing as she'd become sufficiently familiar with it to reShape it whenever she felt like it anyway.

In its place, she formed a dart as long as her arm and thrice as thick. The front held a bulbous tip with a main body that petered off before forming a set of 'wings' that looked like they came straight out of a rocket model from 1850's scifi magazines. Carefully, she begun to Modify its contents. The tip was rendered brittle and infused with slightly unstable metallic & chemical compounds. The body and back were made as sturdy as granite, flexible enough to not break when bent but still strong enough to fully penetrate anything it hit. Bands of magnetic metal grew around the body & tail while two nubs went on said tails' tips. She played around with the elements a bit more, doing her best to fix this in her mind, make the first one as perfect as possible.

All the while, she could feel the wraiths approaching, the sheer malevolence of these entities starting to warp the air around them there were so many.

Artie paid them no mind as electricity started to arc across her armour.

She reached out with her mind and took electric power from everywhere she could-lights, power cables, nearby transformers, Tesla Coils left idling in nearby basements, the static electricity generated by interplays between surface & atmosphere, everything from everywhere she could get it.

Wraiths gave what sounded like surprised shrieks as lightning arced through their ranks without warning, killing many yet not enough.

Concentrated beams of photons raced to her only to find themselves deflected by ozone and other elements her armour was giving off as she concentrated.

She didn't even notice.

She Shaped her armour into a conductive closed circuit, abusing her powers in order to keep the raging torrent of electrons pouring in from being grounded. She felt the heat start to build up again, though this time it was not from lasers but rather due to the imperfect conductivity of the metals her suit was made out of.

And then she routed the whole thing into her right arm, cocking the appendage back as she pointed it at the building she'd just vacated in a panic.

The world went wonky as the large dart in her hand started to vibrate and thrum. A slight whistle grew into an ear-piercing whine as forces normally only found in well-funded physics labs or the inside of the more exotic weapons out there were deployed in a completely uncontrolled environment. Pipes and rods bent & burst under the strain of the magnetic forces Artie was calling forth. Window frames were forced inwards, their glass intact before hitting the floor. TVs, computers, radios, baby monitors, refrigerators, dishwashers, dryers and more all died in a shower of sparks before they were sent reeling away from the magnetic waves' point of origin. The whine built into a roar as the dart itself shed excess power in the form of lightning again.

And then Artemisia threw the dart at the building.

It didn't fall to the ground. Nor did it arc gracefully forward. It didn't make a crack sound before shooting forth like a bullet.

No, it was a lot more violent than that.

With a flash, the dart broke mach 6 before it had gone a metre. It was still accelerating when it hit the glass door leading to the reception area. The tip broke as the dart hit glass, leaving a sharpened spike at the front where the bottom of the bulb used to be. As the bulbous mass shed velocity, the unstable elements inserted into the tip's core were exposed to excess heat from the shock of deceleration and ignited. All the while, even as the reception area erupted in a fireball augmented by the oxygen and pollution inherent to London's air, the dart sped ahead. It hit the main support pillar, dragging the mass of reinforced concrete, steel and ceramic microfilaments in its wake as it exited the other side & kept accelerating. It hit the back wall of the building, once again dragging most of said wall along for the ride, but still kept going. As it hit the building on the other side of the street, igniting & gutting the ground floor in its trajectory, it kept going.

As it exited into an alleyway, the magnetoelectric forces propelling it forward started petering out. By that stage, despite having totalled both houses in a fraction of a second, it had hit mach 10, the heat of atmosphere dragging across the dart's ribbed flame enough to generate enough plasma to melt the alleyway in its passing. Droplets of magnetically charged metal detached from the main body, sent spinning behind at speeds that would match most AA missile designs.

The dart hit the third building. Fourth. Fifth. Sixth. It started shedding velocity as it crossed an intersection in flight, setting the asphalt, lamp posts, cars and buildings in the area alight as its speed dropped.

At the seventh building, a reinforced steel security door slowed the Dart's charge back to mach two. As it blew through onto the next street, it dropped below Mach 1.

The dart's wake caught up with it just as its trajectory started to curve.

It didn't even make it into the ground, what little of its frame that hadn't been sloughn off through friction, hitting concrete & metal at inhuman speeds or just plain broken off due to the forces of physics was vapourised by the shock, heat & sound it had trailed behind it hitting like the fist of an angry God.

Half a second had passed.

The first, second, third and fourth buildings were just starting to collapse.

And Artemisia's helmet was just meeting the ground.

The explosion had almost knocked her for six. She was down, out and more than a bit confused. The wraiths, being at least partially physical & hovering with no support, had been blown into building facades so hard they'd disintegrated.

The building she'd been aiming at had its first three stories imploding inwards, causing the upper half to topple over like in a Jenga game.

Her armour, at more than two tons at the moment, had freaking dented. She was laying in a depression in the asphalt, lined with cracks wider than her thumb.

But she was still connected to the Electric sources that had survived the blast.

Perfect recall came to her aid as she acted before she got up-or even thought about it, really. Another dart, a perfect replica of the first one, sprung into existence, shrieking in her hand as she brute forced as much electricity as she could into it. She didn't bother getting up this time, electing to simply toss it in the air.

As the tip levelled with the intersection on her left, the dart disappeared in a bright flash and a concussive force that drove her deeper into the asphalt.

She could feel the thing going down the street. She couldn't hear anything anymore.

She formed a third and launched it on the other side.

She formed a fourth. Launched it at the closest intact building to her.

The ground underneath gave way before the detonation occurred, dropping her into a sewer.

She tried getting up, she really did, but something was stopping her. The world above dissolved into shrapnel and fire as the last dart hit something very volatile indeed. The wraith mist hit the edge of the hole she'd made before dispersing. Colour came back into the world as the hole she'd made in the street faded out of existence along with the smoke from the rubble.

She was now underground, seemingly trapped in a sewage pipe barely large enough to hold her.

It had been a long, nightmarish night. She could hear ringing and feel pain, that was it.

She was tired. Very tired.

She needed sleep.

As darkness closed in, she realised she'd gotten just that.

#Communication: Wraith numbers now below critical levels. Barrier rendered unstable-disconnected from main reality. Estimated time to reset of barrier-two-plus weeks. Sending emergency retrieval signal to local operative now. Goodbye. [Remote Soul Gem deactivation protocols approved-routing local support/combat SAR elements now.]

She wasn't expecting to wake up.

She wasn't expecting to wake up anywhere but inside the tunnel she'd found herself in.

So waking up in the infirmary she'd been shown less than four days ago was definitely a welcome surprise.

"Wha' did ah tell yeh 'bout followin' me again lass?" A relieved yet still audibly angry voice said as she came to.

Terry. Terry was there. Artie smiled.

She really hadn't expected to hear anything after waking up either.

She'd won. She'd survived. She'd triumphed in the face of overwhelmingly negative odds. It had been scary and terrifying from A to Z, but she'd come out of it all alive.

She'd never felt like this before. She'd never dreamed feeling like this ever in her life.

For the first time in her life, having managed something that few others could lay claim to by herself, she finally felt elated.

She finally saw the path she could take to make her wish come true.

She would shape her own destiny. She would discover who she really was. She had had the motivation to do it all her life. But now? Now, she had the tools, means and support to do so as well.

She had never felt more alive.

Interlude: Memories of Blood & Battle

She had buck teeth, frizzy brown hair and amber eyes. She was the tallest girl her age in the area. She was also the smartest in her age group across Britain.

That's what the world saw.

It's what they didn't that mattered.

All her life, she'd dreamt of blood and battle. Desperate fights with eldritch creatures hidden away in their nested universes, blood and adrenaline flowing as metal and magic sought out the cursed flesh of the damned with remorseless, relentless glee. Stolen moments of peace and tranquility as she mended wounds & tended to trauma.

The raging torrent of white hot fury given form as teenage girls wielding ruinous powers battled each other to stave off spiritual starvation. Dark Green spells withering everything they pass as four girls wage a running battle against her & her companion.

The smell of blood, feces and bodily fluids as four corpses hit the ground in a now destroyed park. A smell she'd come to associate with victory.

Battles of spell vs. spell, golem vs gun, armour vs acid as the Dark Forces of an evil wizard sought to snuff out companionship.

The blood-encrusted fields of a former forest covered in craters, the two girls watching as the ones they'd just protected gazed at their bloodstained figures in absolute horror.

Battle after battle after battle. To feed, to learn, to win, to escape. A cycle of over a thousand individual battles where two girls, watching each other's backs, morphed into women and legend.

A fight in a field in Siberia one fine day in May. A hundred magical warriors arrayed against the terrifying capability of two women who had carved their legend into the flesh of the mountain of corpses they left in their wake.

They never stood a chance.

Suddenly, the horizon changed. The figures froze. The battle stopped. Colour fled the world. Time shattered as the two girls stood there, poised like statues in the midst of finishing off the warrior's leader, panicking as they were no longer capable of doing anything.

That feeling as the last dregs of magic disappeared, freezing their brains in time, never to complete a thought again.

The startled elation, joy even, at finding themselves back at the start, both young and innocent again.

And the cycle started again. Blood & battle, battle & blood, a thousand fields with a single outcome. Over a million enemies falling to their spells, their blades, their guns and their magical weapons. Armies slaughtered. Nations left cowering & bereft of funds as those who ordered their destruction were themselves destroyed.

Two heralds of Death, one its mistress, the other the mistress's bride this time.

And then that day in May came again. The cycle repeated itself.

And again.

And again.

And again…

After the tenth repetition, things changed. One would seek out a wish, she desisted. One would forget, she would remember and remind her before it was too late.

The cycle became unstable. Sometimes, they even lost-to their enemies, to despair, to the desire of others to separate them. Sometimes they survived this, sometimes one of them didn't, tearing the other's heart apart in the process.

One time, she'd survived the other. The island chain that had housed the nation whose magical community contained the individual who had been responsible for the act had followed the other in death, millions screaming in pain & fear as the varied landmasses burned from end to end for six days & seven nights, no warning, no nothing. One second night sky, the next firestorm.

Funnily enough, the remaining few years became the most peaceful she'd had in a long time. A vacation, almost. But one thing became clear after that.

The cycle had to end.

The question was how to end it.

What was the root cause? Why would the world lose its Time and freeze, only for the whole thing to go back to the beginning?

Why were they & their enemies no stronger, no weaker? What had happened?

What would it take for them to stop it?

Each cycle lasted 20 years, give or take a year. They were both over 200 years old when they bucked the trend, trading frenzied violence in the name of survival for frenzied research in order to save the world.

Things changed every time, after all. There was no telling what would happen to the world if this was left to go on unchecked.

In the last iteration, after so very long, they'd come so very close. It was in Japan that they found a potential answer. A monstrous Witch, the strongest they'd seen in two thousand years of life, emerged exactly 2 and a half hours before the reset occurred. The epicentre of the event, they'd found out, coincided with the location of Walpurgisnacht appearing.

In the last cycle, they'd almost made it on time. Unfortunately, the flight was delayed by an hour on the tarmac.

They arrived in time for the sky to turn pink as a gigantic magical circle manifested in the sky.

Then, they witnessed the sky turn black and felt every single muggle, plant & animal die as a monstrous leviathan engulfed the planet, distorting time itself through its power.

They fought for days, weeks, months. In a dead world, a frozen world, spells deemed too dangerous for use while humanity still only had one planet to dwell on were let loose, carving great canyons & gouges in the bones of continental plates as the two found themselves fighting back to back, desperate to live through the end of the world.

After all, the magics of immortality & life were not unknown to either of them. They could restart life on Earth if they had to. All they needed was to win.

And so they battled familiars, each as strong as the greatest of forces every arrayed against them, in titanic battles that scorched & levelled what little remnants of humanity hadn't been swept away by the UltraWitch itself. Their very minds warred as they fought the tug of death, that final salvation as it called itself, in order to live long enough to restart life before succumbing.

Empty cities shattered into dust. Mountains erupted into impromptu volcanoes. Mass graves and high-rise buildings turned into mausoleums were animated, the dessicated corpses shielding the two witches as their souls sang the songs of blood & battle one last time.

It was not enough. It was never enough. But that had never stopped them. The odds had never given them pause before. A comradeship born between two girls crying in a toilet together two thousand years ago, turning into a relationship little more than a quarter of a century later as the two found out that their shared history prevented them from feeling for anyone else what they felt for each other and tested through the trials of a time loop so terrifying in its implications & scope that it had driven them both mad more than a dozen times apiece was not going to die just because some overpowered alien God succumbed to Despair.

In the face of daunting odds, they'd fought harder, longer & faster than any other in history, earning the titles of Dark Lord Killer, Witchkiller, Murderers of Nations and more in the process. Their prowess in the field was unquestioned as of their first life. They'd only gotten better since.

And Godkiller just sounded cool.

But it was not to be.

In a pink flash, the world, the solar system, the Milky Way, the local galactic cluster, the local Cluster of clusters and finally the universe vanished into non-existence.

And, in a new, slightly modified Universe, a young girl dreamt of a hundred lifetimes' worth of blood & battle, awaiting the day where she could work on reclaiming the one title that stood above all others and had echoed throughout the ages.

The one title that made her never regret that distant day where she'd wished for an absolutely perfect memory. She'd gotten it alright. She remembered everything despite having sworn off becoming a Magical Girl more than a millenium ago.

She picked up the other's memories too before the day, just to pass them back to her.

Hermione Potter, wife of the Girl-Who-Lived, sometimes mother of their children, sometimes the father. Transfiguration, artificial metamorphmagics and potions were wonderful things.

For the girl in her memories, she would do more than just dream of a lifetime of blood & battle.

She would live it, again and again and again if she had to.

She already had done so, after all. What was one more if they could achieve their dream of a lifetime of peace & love after that?

This time, things were different. This time, they would get their happy ending. This time, they would get that long life and peaceful death they had dreamt of on bloodied fields and blown-out ruins the world over.

Because this time counted for all.

Somehow, she knew there was no more repetition here.

This time was the last.

In the waking world, Hermione Granger turned over, a troubled look on her face. In her dreams, her memories integrated further, preparing her for the day where she would no longer be dreaming in order to experience what it meant to live a life of blood & battle.

Even if everything went perfectly, she knew that she wouldn't have to dream it for long.