Chapter 5: The Simulations and the Limitations

  While Elias was basically recreating Mechani-Kong Versus Gojira, my mission had been to capture and detain Iron Mask.

  Spoiler alert: I died, and it wasn’t even a close fight.

  Iron Mask has been described as many things: Australia’s number one rabble-rouser and malcontent, the Genghis Khan of crime, a real life masked supervillain, a celebrity criminal, a friend to all children, and the number one thorn in the side of the QPS, the AFP, ASIO, ASIS, ADF and the Crystalline Sisters. And on top of that, he was probably the best martial artist since Bruce Lee. Unlike Elias, I had previous dealings with Iron Mask, and knew him to be one of our top threats. I’d had the great misfortune of tangling with him and his mooks on multiple occasions. Even a full squad of Crystalline Sisters couldn’t actually bring him down: it was like none of our magic actually worked against him, and he was strong enough to fight us all at once, once the mooks went down. We’d never collared him, and I always figured he’d gone to ground.

  As soon as I’d entered the building, I pulled the fire alarm to disable any lifts, then began running up the stairs. Big mistake. He caught me, without being able to cast any spells. I tried the same charge tactic I’d used against Detritus, but he just kept hopping back up the stairs with an annoying ease. As I got to an office floor, he punched the umbrella aside, and began laying into me, punching with that strange green energy he could summon, throwing me across the room with ease. He was toying with me and I knew it. He blasted me with the energy, then walked closer, picked me up and threw me out the window, to the concrete below. I screamed, but it was no use. The VR feed cut out, and I took the headset off as Elias kept going with his section of the mission.

  I ripped the headset off and put my hands on my knees, breathing heavily. Simulation or not, I’d been thrown out a seven storey window, and my teeth were chattering. The Major stepped in.

  “What the fuck happened?”

  “He- He killed me, I think.”

  “How? You’re meant to be a magical girl!”

  “It’s Iron Mask, ma’am, and my powers weren’t working, and-“

  The Major stomped over to a nearby computer terminal, reviewing what I figured was the combat footage, before stomping back over, and giving me what I can only assume was an Australian military-style dressing down.

  “That has got to have been the sloppiest CQC I’ve ever seen in my life! Who the ever-loving fuck let you in the Crystalline Sisters!? How do you expect to survive a single day, if you can’t even use your powers, and follow basic orders!?”

  “I’m sorry!”

  “Sorry’s not good enough, you absolute disgrace to the Crystalline Initiative!”

  I hadn’t even noticed Elias crawling out of the cockpit, before he stepped in front of me, like he was trying to fight my battles for me. “That’s enough!”

  “I don’t recall giving you permission to interject, Beltran-“

  My thumb found the jewel on my umbrella, and I transformed. My body felt the rush of energy, and my clothes transformed to my magical girl outfit. I began to float, pointing my umbrella directly at the Major’s skull. She stared at me, almost like she was begging me to pull the trigger.

  “SHUT UP!”, I screamed as I continued to point the umbrella. I’d never felt this kind of anger while being able to transform into the Lovely Guardian Amethyst. Neither Elias nor the Major moved an inch. Everything else fell away. We were all silent, until Elias started talking.

  “Amy, please, put the umbrella down. We can-“

  “NO! This was meant to help me be a magical girl again, but the entire time I’ve known you, Major, you’ve been a fucking bitch! You sent me alone to deal with Iron FUCKING Mask! Even the Crystalline Sisters together couldn’t take him! I even told you that my powers weren’t working! How the FUCK do you not know this, you arrogant FUCK!?”

  “You were meant to-“

  “SHUT UP! I’M NOT A FUCKING SOLDIER, YOU FUCKING BITCH!”

  The umbrella was shaking. I was losing focus. Snot was beginning to dribble out of my nose, and I could feel myself hyperventilating. I couldn’t read the Major’s expression, and I couldn’t tell if Elias was standing tall and confident, or whether he was just too scared to move. But it was enough. I floated back to the floor, closed the umbrella, and began running, not even caring where I was going, until I made it to the surface.

  As I made it out, I began crying. Not just from what the Major had told me, but for everything that had happened. I was crying for the end of my magical girl career. I was crying for the fact that other people were trying to fight my battles for me. I was crying for the friends I’d lost, and I was crying for how weak I’d become.

  I didn’t notice the rain, at first, but it escalated to a strong, driving rain. The bus wouldn’t take me back home for hours, I knew that much. I went to open my umbrella, but my hands were empty.

  Shit. My umbrella was gone. I couldn’t just go back in there, but without it, I couldn’t transform. I’d literally thrown away the one thing I loved, all because I couldn’t face the Major. I wailed like an infant.

  The rain was soaking my clothing, and I barely noticed when somebody arrived. I looked up. Goddamn Elias was holding my umbrella. Good luck, I thought. Not good management.

  “I’m not going to say anything, Amy. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t hurt, or dead.”

  “Well I’m not. Sorry to disappoint you. So leave me alone.”

  “Well let me at least give you back your umbrella. It’s pouring out here.”

  He extended it over me, as I took it from him, and started walking. I managed to blurt out “You’re both right, you know.”

  “About what?”

  “About everything. I’m a shit excuse for a magical girl, Sebastian really was gay and cheating on me the whole relationship, and I’m a disgrace to my best friends. I don’t deserve to have my powers. I give up: shoot me.”

  “Amy, you’re clearly inexperienced in CQC, and you weren’t given the tools you needed to succeed. Of course you got wrecked in the simulator. Sending you in there like that is like telling an infantryman to storm a building without a gun or grenades: It’s just not going to work.”

  My breathing was slowing, and I shook my head. “So, how the hell am I meant to go back?”

  “Do you want me to talk to the Major for you?”

  “I’m a grown woman. I fight my own battles. And why bother? I’m fired anyway.”

  “I don’t think so. The Major would then need to find a way to replace you. Remember what she was saying about Pearl and the rest?”

  “Yeah?”

  Elias bit his lip, and looked off in the distance. “Means she was already looking, and failed three times. The Major hates failure in others, but she definitely won’t accept it in herself. Trust me: She was my old CO, back in the Staaldier Initiative. I should have prepared you better. And I’m sorry. I figured she’d be a bitch to me, but I figured she maybe wouldn’t extend that to you.”

  I snorted, wiping the snot from my face with my hand. “So what do I do?”

  “I’m not going to tell you what to do. Personally, if you want to let her eat static for a bit, I’d say that’s justified. But there’ll come a point where you have to decide: Are you going to walk away? Or are you going to stand up to her, and show her what a magical girl is really capable of?”

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  I let the rain continue to fall, as Elias tried to squeeze under the umbrella, really unsubtly. “I don’t understand. Why is it that I can’t transform if you’re not near me?”

  “No clue. But maybe it’s something we just have to work into the strategy. Planes and tanks need fuel and ammo. Silverback and Puma One need to power up before they can fight. Maybe this is your fuel. And if you need me to be your fuel, then so be it.”

  My teeth began to chatter as I rose to my feet, wiped the tears and the snot away from my face, and then began walking back to the base. Looking back at Elias, I couldn’t recognize him at all, from the man who’d thought it would be okay to make me sign a business deal in a strip club, and the boy who I’d heard so many times over open radio channels.

  The second I saw the Major, my eyes narrowed. “I want a rematch.”

  “Rack off. You’re fired anyway. Fuckin’ timewaster.”

  “You forgot to configure magic on your setup, and I know for a fact that you’ve failed so far in finding or creating new magical girls. Now shut up, jack me in, and let me show you what magical girls are really made of.”

  I pulled the VR goggles on, waiting for the simulator to load. It wasn’t long before it did.

  The first enemies approached: A group of alien soldiers. I still couldn’t use my magic, but I had an idea.

  “Alright. Silverback, you’re up! Blast ‘em!”

  “Roger that, Amethyst, danger close, over.”

  Silverback fired a trio of missiles, and blew up their vehicle, blasting the enemy to pieces too. Once we were done there, Elias pointed out Iron Mask’s location. I nodded and ran into the building where he was. Now, I had a plan.

  I wasn’t going to start with the fire alarm this time. Rather, I’d try the elevator to get the drop on him. I rode all the way up to the 20th floor, stretching, getting my blood flowing. Once I got in, I swiped a box cutter from the reception desk, then entered the office.

  I had a new tactic. As soon as I entered the office, I kept my umbrella up, letting Iron Mask’s energy blasts hit my umbrella shield. I then charged, slicing at him with the box cutter and keeping up the pressure as best I could. I dodged his blasts and let him grab the arm with the umbrella, before following up with the boxcutter to the wrists, and then lodging it in his neck. He slumped and I looked at my bloodied hands. I tore the famous Iron Mask off, and it was just some generic looking white guy: the type you might see in a stock image.

  I frowned. This had been easy: Too easy, in fact. Whoever designed this thing had vastly underestimated Iron Mask’s capabilities. I stared out the window as Silverback fought something tall, blue and vaguely humanoid.

  Eventually, the simulator cut out. I ripped off the headset. The Major snorted.

  “Still the worst CQC demo I’ve ever seen.”

  “How many knife fights were you getting into, Major? I thought the Army issued guns?”

  “The Army issues guns, you numpty. You won’t have any.”

  “So fix your damn VR simulator so I can use magic. Anyway, I won.”

  “In an actual firefight, you get one shot-”

  “In case you forgot, Major, I actually used to be a magical girl. I was fighting monsters not long after I turned eleven. So don’t come at me, with how a fight works. I know.”

  The Major glowered, but said nothing. Eventually, she broke the silence. “Fine. This is still going on your HR file. And you’re both on thin ice.”

  I nodded, and Elias looked like he wanted to say something, but didn’t.

  None of us were in a good space for training, so we called it there, got set up with our lockers, and finished touring what the base had, as I turned back into my normal form. The gears of my mind were turning. Something had to be wrong, but I couldn’t put my fingers on it.

  There was a long-distance bus home, a red-eye: there was no way I was staying out here overnight. In the morning, I’d made a very specific point of not sitting next to Elias, but on the way back to Port Moonstone, the bus was packed with seniors and people napping, so I didn’t have much choice.

  I looked out the window, as the vast black nothingness rolled past. The lights had been dimmed so everyone could go to sleep, but my mind was full of questions. “Tell me something.”

  “We’ve got hours until Port Moonstone. I really don’t want to wake everyone else, and I’m dog tired. Can I sleep?”

  “I just wanted to know what made you grow up. I mean, I remember-“

  “It was years ago, Amy. People change. We can’t always be the same people we were when we were seventeen. Now please, let me rest.”

  He drifted off, as the bus rolled through the inky black night. We’d changed. Had he changed for the better, or had I changed for the worse? I couldn’t tell, and that scared me. In all my years as a magical girl, I’d never thought to use my powers on another ordinary human being, Iron Mask and his mooks excepted. This was a new low for me. I’d been genuinely idealistic once: I’d been a protector of Port Moonstone, a heroine. I’d saved people from monsters, rescued them from certain death. But today, I’d threatened someone with the full force of the Crystal Guardian’s power, not to save someone, not in self-defence, purely because she’d pissed me off. Younger me would have beaten the shit out of the person I’d let myself become. I’d come this close to letting down everybody who’d ever given a damn about me, and I couldn’t let that happen again.

  But Elias had changed too.

  Let me explain why I’d never liked Elias when I was younger. Firstly, when the Crystalline Sisters used to patch into the Staaldier Initiative’s radio chatter, the kind of language they were using at the time was pretty disgusting. Seriously, it was like an old Call of Duty lobby in there. I genuinely didn’t know how the rest of the team actually put up with him.

  The second reason, was that back in high school, my boyfriend was a guy called Sebastian. He was sensitive, philosophical, artistic, and looked like he could play literally every elf in Lord of The Rings, Lady Galadriel included. Scratch that: Lady Galadriel especially: Cate Blanchett had nothing on this boy. Sebastian had perfected the “Long silver-haired Bishōnen” look that JRPG’s were into at the time. I spent half of that relationship defending him from people who thought he was gay. I would give these great speeches about gender roles, and harmful stereotypes, and he seemed to appreciate it, all suave and genteel.

  So when Elias showed up at my formal, accusing him of cheating with another guy, I told Elias that he didn’t know what he was talking about, and to fuck off. He and Sebastian kept arguing, and ended up getting into a full-on brawl in front of the entire school, like it was UFC. The strange thing is that Elias didn’t seem to know who I was at the time, but to be fair, Elias and I did actually go to two different schools.

  At the time, I’d been proud of Sebastian for standing up for himself. So you can imagine how humiliated I felt to catch Sebastian sending thirst traps to Port Moonstone State High’s very male school captain, on my laptop. And you can imagine how infuriating it was to know that Elias had been right about him, for the entirety of our relationship. In retrospect, there was a lot of red flags: the Halloween party where he had me dress as James so he could be Jessie, and the fact that he seemed to flirt more with the other guys than he ever did with me. But I was young, and I was in love, and that made me stupid.

  So I was torn. I knew the kind of guy Elias was: a toxic loudmouth out to prove himself, with all the emotional sensitivity of a teaspoon. But would a guy like that have followed me into the rain? Could a guy like that have said the words he’d come out with?

  My eyelids began to droop, and I didn’t bother fighting it. Even I had to admit that I was exhausted. Sleep couldn’t come soon enough.