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Grendyne groans and starts pulling on her boots when the alarm goes off. Again. She quick-marches to the broom hangar, sits on her machine and is handed a plethora of loaded weapons by attentive corporals.
"Two flyers in one day? They're getting way too common."
"It's worse," the commander informs them, "South Karlsland got hit with three at once. We're taking Lytee's express and sleeping there. You can sit out if you absolutely need to, but Freya's still recovering so we could use you as a comms relay."
"No, I'll come. I just reserve the right to complain about it."
The 42nd United Forces Witch Wing takes off, bracing to fight yet another city-destroying monster, and assembles into a perfect synchronized formation as Lytee charges her teleport power.
...This is not South Karlsland wilderness.
Near the Golden Coven capital, in Aurum
Near Savarasse, in Thilanushinyel
Near Whately Academy
With Unbitwise
witchwatcher
witchwatcher
"Apparently so. I hope I can return at some point, I might as well be twenty different Witches so of all the people to get stranded losing me hurts the UDF the most."
luminous_regnant
"Unfortunately, we don't have interdimensional travel available, and you're at least on the wrong planet - itself not trivial to fix - and probably in the wrong world altogether. The latter's likelier, since you're speaking something mutually intelligible with English."
witchwatcher
"At least I'm used to moving from place to place by now. Lived in Greece when the Neuroi first hit it, moved homes half a dozen times since then."
witchwatcher
"Good. They're terrible and honestly I'm pretty tired of sortieing to fight them nearly every day."
luminous_regnant
"At any rate, I'm Empress Isabella Cullen, this is my husband Edward, you've met our daughter Elspeth, and the other people who happen to be in the room at the moment are Alice, Jasper, Renata, Santiago, and Emmett."
witchwatcher
She starts and gives a little bow. "Your majesty. I am Grendyne Nylund, Witch Second Class, 42nd Witch Wing, United Defense Force. I did not realize I was in the presence of royalty, and I swear that I have no violent intentions to you or yours."
luminous_regnant
"...Yes, I know, my husband reads minds and you landed in his range. If you had violent intentions I wouldn't have sent Elspeth. You may be slightly misinterpreting my title, though. I don't rule a territory per se; I run the global vampire shadow government."
witchwatcher
"Ah. That was a reflex. Most nobles take it badly if we neglect etiquette, even if they can't actually do much to the UDF. Vampires?"
luminous_regnant
"Vampires are a sort of creature with assorted superhuman powers. We happen when vampire venom is applied to a human. I also claim jurisdiction over hybrids, like Elspeth, and werewolves."
witchwatcher
"What a lovely fantasy world I seem to have landed in. I should probably ignore all my mythology. Though... I guess you could call a Witch superhuman as well, so who am I to talk?"
luminous_regnant
"Funnily enough, 'witch' is also the English word for people like, say, Edward, who have extra supernatural powers, whether they're vampires or humans or hybrids or for that matter wolves."
witchwatcher
"Interesting. In my world, witches... Let's call them Strike Witches, after my unit's nickname. Strike witches can fly with the right tools, we can put up shields and launch energy blasts and make ourselves temporarily stronger. And each gets one 'special'. Mine is copying... I think I can copy your kind of witch, but it'll probably take sitting down and staring at one for ten minutes. They're dry and slippery. Oh, only girls are strike witches, and our powers come in when we hit puberty and they decay with age, or sometimes go away if you get hurt badly."
luminous_regnant
"Witches here only get 'specials'. Idiosyncratic personality-suited powers. ...We have a witch who copies other witches, but I'm not at all sure I want to introduce her to you. She's a little difficult to keep well-behaved."
witchwatcher
"I think it'd be fascinating to talk to another copier. Nobody I've ever met understands what copying is like, the sense of trying something new. They keep me too busy to really play with magic. The little stuff I manage to keep permanently eventually adds up to having a dozen specials, so it feels like I end up doing a dozen times the work."
luminous_regnant
"...Well, I can't say she wouldn't want to play with magic with you, but most people don't find her particularly pleasing company and I'm worried she'd go out of control if she managed to keep something from you that turned into a power multiplier. She's sometimes better at using things she copies than the people she copies them from."
"People's choices can throw me off and she's not bad at exploiting that, and I have blind spots that Addy sometimes has legitimate reasons to pass through."
witchwatcher
"Fair enough. Though it leaves the question of what the hell I ought to do with myself."
She starts trying to copy the mindreader. It's sure to be an interesting conversation if she manages it.
She starts trying to copy the mindreader. It's sure to be an interesting conversation if she manages it.
honey_twining
"Some of the people nearby are only all right with me reading their minds because they know me personally," the mindreader remarks.
witchwatcher
"I usually get weaker versions of whatever I manage to grab. Still, fair enough."
She tries the bodyguard, instead. This one comes fairly quick, since it feels vaguely similar to the standard strike witch shields. It's a lot less expensive than a sphere of mana-shield would be, though. "Aha. I can copy your witches. This shield is very nice."
She tries the bodyguard, instead. This one comes fairly quick, since it feels vaguely similar to the standard strike witch shields. It's a lot less expensive than a sphere of mana-shield would be, though. "Aha. I can copy your witches. This shield is very nice."
luminous_regnant
Renata smiles vaguely.
"If you want something to do with yourself, and your copied versions aren't too inferior to the originals, the person we most consistently need duplicated is Alec, who makes anyone in an area insensate. He does anaesthesia for people turning into vampires, which is ordinarily excruciating."
"If you want something to do with yourself, and your copied versions aren't too inferior to the originals, the person we most consistently need duplicated is Alec, who makes anyone in an area insensate. He does anaesthesia for people turning into vampires, which is ordinarily excruciating."
witchwatcher
"I can certainly try to copy him. My primary limit is mana - using too much magic at once will knock me down, and using too much in one day makes me literally not able to do any more. How long I can do anesthetize people depends largely on how expensive it ends up being."
luminous_regnant
"Even if all you can do is give him a break so he doesn't have to stand in one place for three days straight every time we turn a batch, it'd be very useful. Addy can do that too, but she's useful elsewhere too."