Chapter 7: Chapter 7 – Dinner Date

"Water Invocation: Bubble Barrage!"

With a sweep of my arms, I let loose an absolute torrent of magical bubbles, forming an ebullient barrier against the hydrone's poisonous breath. 

"Hey Syl?" I ask, an idle thought coming to mind as my spell does its work. 

She twitches.

"You're the biologist here. You know the whole mnemonic, if you die if it bites you, it's venomous, if you die when you bite it, it's poisonous, right?"

Syl twitches twice for a yes.

The gas diffuses easily through the magical water surface of the bubbles, only to become trapped inside the one way membrane. 

"What about breath, or spit? Option one, it's venomous because it comes from the mouth. Option two, it's poisonous because it's absorbed through the skin or lungs or whatever."

Syl twitches twice. Option two.

With a roar of its rotors, the hydrone lashes out ineffectually at the surge of bubbles, biting at them with its numerous cybernetically enhanced serpentine heads and lashing out with its apian stinger. Unfortunately for the chimeric monstrosity, the bubbles were simply too numerous to effectively pop one by one. 

"So between the fangs, stinger and breath, it's both poisonous and venomous."

Two twitches for yes. 

As the bubbles wash over the air intakes for its rotors, the pressure differential pulls them directly into the blades. With a series of satisfying bangs, they explode, dousing the internal mechanisms with poison-saturated gunk. Suddenly destabilised, it spins out with a low-fi hiss, crashing into some expensive-looking machine with a loud bang.

"Which reminds me, did you manage to get the changes to my digestive tract worked out? Cause I'm pretty sure I won't be able to eat th-gaahk!" A series of unnatural pulsing spasms in my oesophagus cut off my airflow momentarily, answering my question. "Great, thanks babe. Time to fix dinner. Frost Invocation: Ice Sickle!" 

A flick of my wrist hurls a crescent blade of ice towards one of the hydrone's necks, cleanly severing it with a glittering spray of frozen blood droplets. Immediately, the creature's unnatural regeneration kicks in, beginning the process of growing two more heads from the stump. A second wrist flick, and another head drops to the laboratory floor. 

Flick, flick, flick. 

Slice, slice, slice. 

Thud, thud, thud. 

I laugh as the ridiculous monster flails about helplessly, weighed down by the increasingly disproportionate number of rapidly growing heads. "Isn't this great, Syl? All you can cleave buffet! How's that for biomass?"

My stomach rumbles, itching rather distractingly.

The mediocre electronic music playing on the laboratory sound system cuts out abruptly, replaced by an exasperated voice. "What is wrong with you? You're just... you're not getting anywhere! You can't defeat my hydrone with cutting attacks! Haven't you ever read Homer?"

"Hesiod," I shout, continuing my attack.

"What?"

"Homer didn't write about the labours of Heracles, Hesiod did! And like, a bunch of other people, but not Homer! Over in this dimension anyway."

"Yeah, whatever, you clearly don't know what you're talking about, because you're still wasting your time with those useless attacks!"

I feel Syl rolling her eye.

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"I think that's enough meat for the night, even for your appetite," I tell Syl casually, ignoring his further ranting. "Water Invocation: Exsiccate." 

With a shrill hiss like a boiling kettle, water vapour forces its way out of monster flesh. As is typical of magical girl spells, the light from the spell circle refracts into a beautiful rainbow in the mist, even as the creature writhes and shrivels into so much jerky. Exsiccate was originally designed as a spell for fighting monster plants. Its alternative uses have since earned it the nickname of 'Water Invocation: Execute' amongst magical girls, with a very strongly worded recommendation not to get caught using it on anyone, and make sure to 'banish' the body afterwards if you do. Better for PR that way.

"You- What did you do to my hydrone?!" the speakers screech.

"It's more of a dehydrone at this point."

Syl gives me a jab of pain in the side for the pun. Still worth it.

His angry ranting at not taking him seriously buys me more than enough time to focus on one of those fundamental magical girl powers that don't actually require an incantation. Cynosure is one of the first techniques every magical girl learns, because executing any more advanced spell requires the focused mental intent developed from practising with cynosure. The Asterism described it as 'following your heart'. Sylvie, when I explained it to her, described it as 'kinda like a magical girl quest marker.' The mental image got stuck in my brain, of course, and my cynosure has manifested as a heart shaped quest marker in my mind's eye ever since. 

Looking around, I spot the heart shaped marker floating on the other side of a nondescript section of wall. Probably some sort of secret door mechanism. "Frost Invocation: Icebreaker!" I shout, leaping at the wall. Magical ice forms into a battleaxe in my hands, just in time for me to bring it down against the wall. The thin layer of sheet metal shears apart with a satisfying cacophony, punctuated by the scientist's ranting devolving into screams. A few more axe blows and I've carved a nice wide hole in the wall.

I try, and fail, to resist the urge to stick my head through with a manic grin. "Here's Hazel!"

The scientist scrambles out of his gamer chair, sending a pile of unfamiliar drink cans clattering across the ground.

A few more axe blows widen the hole enough for me to step through. "Jeez. You live like this? Get yourself together man. Like, come on, your thematic design for the hydrone? All over the place. I'm not a biologist, but I've listened to my girlfriend infodump about eusocial insects enough to be pretty sure that bee drones don't even have stingers. And those mirrored face plates over the eyes might be intimidating, but they've gotta be restricting its peripheral vision. As far as monsters I've fought go, I've gotta give it a C+ at best."

He whimpers from atop the futon in the corner, defensively curled around a body pillow. 

"Actually though, when's the last time you left this place? Got some fresh air? Touched grass? Shit, am I going to have to give you an intervention?" I pick up one of the myriad empty drink cans off the desk to take a look. Their lettering was slightly different from ours, but I can more or less make it out. "I hope you're working on engineering a heart, because these energy drinks are going to give you a heart attack before you're thirty. Like, look at this ingredient list, ridiculous amounts of caffeine, ephedrine..."

I pull the can closer, scrutinising the section below the ingredients. "Why the fuck is there a Feynman diagram on a drink can?"

"R-rift emissions, for, um... taste of space?"

I turn the can over, reading the brand tagline. Huh, there it is. A Taste of Space. More like a Taste of Mutations. "Yeah okay, sure. And you brought these with you through the rift, too?"

He nods, fogged glasses barely visible thanks to the oversized hooded lab coat he was wearing. To be honest, it looks like more of a housecoat than a lab coat, but I reserve my commentary to avoid embarrassing the poor guy further. 

"You've got more still?" I barely wait for the nod, before continuing. "Great, I'm buying it all from you."

"Weren't you just calling it dangerous?"

"To you. Not me." I grin. "Listen, I've got a deal for you. You can keep doing your experiments here, so long as you don't hurt anyone, and I'll turn a blind eye. I'll even help you out with a little, oh, design consulting."

"W-what do you want in return?" he asks, cowering away from me in terror. Can't imagine why.

I rattle the can in reply. "Horrifying energy drinks, as many of them as you can get their hands on. By the pallet full."

He nods emphatically, seemingly relieved.

"Great! Now if you'll excuse me, there's a pile of hydrone jerky with my name on it. Might use some of the ramen flavour packets too. Oh, and by the way, the hydrone might have been a mess, but the way you got the regeneration ability to regrow the cybernetics? And so quickly? Gold star, keep going with that."

As I leave the room, my new digestive system humming audibly with anticipation, I hear him mumbling to himself. "And I thought normal girls were terrifying..."

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