View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
Bella's on her way to kill a witch.
It usually hits Port Angeles, inspires arson, and then if allowed spins off a familiar that does the same in Forks. She's tracked it back far enough that she can reliably head it off before it makes that fellow set that apartment building on fire as long as she hops in the car without doing her hospital exit paperwork. If she's lucky, this time she's early enough to nab it before it lights up the bakery, too.
...The fuck is that? It's not usually there.
+ Show First Post
onceandforall
onceandforall
She'll happily listen to and take notes on that. And follow him around to continue being close enough to hear.
A lot of it isn't especially comprehensible, but she learns lots of clever uses for the joiner, cutter, and reshaper. He doesn't let her follow into the reactor room, or the armory.
onceandforall
That seems reasonable enough. He's known her less than a day.
Enough time passes that Nick starts to feel tired. "It's close to bedtime for me. You're probably on a different sleep schedule. You want to be dropped off anywhere? The autopilot will just keep scanning if I don't interrupt it."
onceandforall
"Put me by my car," she says. "I'll go home and be nice to my dad this month."
"As you like." They're currently over India - it'll take about two hours to get there.
Once they arrive, Nick's ship flies off as soon as she's clear of the area. It's a lot louder from the outside.
Once they arrive, Nick's ship flies off as soon as she's clear of the area. It's a lot louder from the outside.
onceandforall
And she gets in her car and changes back into her normal clothes and drives home.
She has a script for why she disappeared from the hospital that will usually get her dad off her back. It doesn't work as well as usual - he has heard about the spaceship; it's got him on edge - but she says it wasn't there when she first drove by (true; she first drove by resets ago) and that on her way back it was already a police cordon (also true). She makes dinner. They eat. She goes to the library and gets some books she hasn't read and reads them all evening.
She has a script for why she disappeared from the hospital that will usually get her dad off her back. It doesn't work as well as usual - he has heard about the spaceship; it's got him on edge - but she says it wasn't there when she first drove by (true; she first drove by resets ago) and that on her way back it was already a police cordon (also true). She makes dinner. They eat. She goes to the library and gets some books she hasn't read and reads them all evening.
The news continues to report excitedly on the spaceship, especially the fact that it seems to be moving in a search pattern.
Unless she contacts him first, the next time she hears from Nick is in two days. "I got the witch-battle-scanner to work."
Unless she contacts him first, the next time she hears from Nick is in two days. "I got the witch-battle-scanner to work."
"Not yet. I found some of the precursors, but not every critical material. To use a metaphor, you can't make bronze without tin, and I'm missing the tin. I'll deliver you the scanner, but I need you to duplicate more deutritium cells, running my sublight engines this hot burns through fuel really fast."
onceandforall
"Sure. Can you find me by this communicator if I drive out someplace unobserved?"
"Yeah, because it's transmitting I already know where you are. I can't track it if the battery dies, though."
onceandforall
"I won't take too long. Advantages to living in the middle of nowhere."
And the spaceship lands somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Washington state, picks someone up, and goes back to scanning the arctic ocean.
onceandforall
And the someone produces more deuterium and copies the witch scanner. "What this will be good for," she says, "is finding more puella magi. I know a few in the area, but if you can finagle me a vehicle I could find more of them and maybe pull off some kind of massive team-up."
"I'll work on the vehicle. Made some progress, but it's not good enough yet. And by the way, that thing only has a range of, hm, 250 miles and only scans in a 180 degree cone from the front. I had to make some compromises to get it small enough for your shield."
He looks uncertain for a moment, then says, "I really don't like selling weapons. But I want to know if my weapons might be effective against a witch. Would you like a ray gun in exchange for some more silver?"
"As far as my sensors can tell, witches are not a living thing. So the ray gun will have lots of very fancy computerized safeties that make it not capable of firing at any living thing larger than, like, a blade of grass, unless it's attacking you. Trying to remove the safeties will slag it. It takes the same power sources as the scanners, and the power dial goes from 1 to 8. One is 'stun,' two is 'singed,' and so on right up to eight which is 'burned to a crisp'."
onceandforall
"Do your sensors," Bella wonders, "think that I am definitely a living thing?"
He points a few sensors at her. "Yes."
"How so?"
onceandforall
"My mind no longer actually runs on my brain. My whole body is being operated from my soul gem. Part of being a puella magi."