Crack. Thunk. Crack. Crack. Thunk.

  “Again.”

  Crack. Crack. Crack. Thunk. Crack.

  “Worse… again.”

  Thunk crack crack crack thunk thunk crack thunk thunk thunk crack crack thunk--

  “No no no, that’s not how you… ugh, let’s take a break, catch your breath before we start trying again.”

  “I… y-yes ma’am, sorry.”

  Gwyn sighed, resting her eyes for a bit as she slumped over against the wall, sliding down it until she was sitting, her breathing a bit ragged and her fingertips starting to get sore from the constant, irregur flow of magic through them.

  As her instructor checked her phone and wandered off during their break, Gwyn’s gaze shifted to the side some after her tired eyes finally allowed themselves to open once again.

  In the other end of the room sat a singur human-sized target dummy, beaten and well-worn after having been singed and electrocuted and sliced and crushed and all manner of other things innumerable times before, always diligently repaired to a workable state for magical girls here at the Library Magus to practice their abilities on.

  Currently, it stood alone amidst a field of shattered crystalline shards piled around it, the area glittering beautifully with the dust of her missed projectiles littering the pce, noticeably more scratches and dents from her strikes scoring the wall behind and around it than were present on her lightly-damaged target.

  She let her head fall backwards, resting it against the hard wall of the practice room they’d procured for her impromptu training session as she closed her eyes once more, focusing entirely on her own breath moving in and out of her lungs as she tried to ignore the state of all the practice they’d done so far.

  “So like… you got some reason you suddenly felt like calling in for emergency training? Used to you usually not showing up to the group sessions anyways, so not sure why the sudden change of heart.”

  “…no r-real reason. Felt like there was… a-a lot of catching up to do, I-I guess.”

  “Hm, well I can’t argue with that much at least, then. You’ve been at this for what, a few weeks now? Your accuracy should be tons better by this point, but you’re still missing just about every shot on stationary targets still, not to even mention that bad habit you seem to have picked up of just… tossing them out all over the pce aimlessly.”

  “W-Well, covering more area means m-more shots will end up connecting, so--”

  “Maybe once you can start nding single shots more than a third of the time, we can start trying fancier tricks like that. But until then, your fundamentals are, to be frank, still tragically poor. You have to at least be able to handle the basics like this if you want to do any better at capturing people’s hearts while you’re out there working, you know?”

  “I… s-sorry, you’re probably right, y-yeah.”

  “We aren’t here to scold you, Ms. Lapin. We’re here to help you help yourself. For everyone’s benefit.”

  “I-I know, I know.”

  “And you’re the one who requested additional tutege to begin with. Which I was more than happy to provide, as I do truly wish to see you sparkle just as much as those little rocks you’re so good at making.”

  “I know, I know, s-sorry… I caught my breath, w-we can start again.”

  “Good! Let’s try to reign in those reckless impulses some this time too, yes? I want to see nice, clean shots, all hitting their target. Alright?”

  “…y-yeah. I’ll d-do my best.”

  “Wonderful, let’s see another… twenty or so reps, and see if we can’t improve noticeably in that time.”

  Gwyn nodded weakly, pushing herself back to her feet as she slid back up against the wall at her back, not making eye contact with her trainer as she kept her focus locked onto the target dummy across from her.

  She breathed in, and breathed out, steadying her shaky hands as best as she could as she held them out from her, fingers opened and palms outstretched towards her target.

  Her fingers coiled inwards slowly, her own magical energy pouring into and through her limbs like water filling a bowl, letting it just barely start to overflow before snapping her hands wide open once more, the sudden motion disturbing the imaginary vessel enough to loose the water poured into it, the droplets shaken free becoming her crystal bullets, rough-cut and brilliant as they caught the lights around the room, quietly spinning in pce while they hovered in the air around her.

  Gwyn’s focus tightened until the target was all she saw, ignoring the room around her, the incessant, chastising instructions of her teacher, and the countless shattered remains of her earlier failed shots littering the ground between her and the training dummy.

  Her mind as clear as she could force it to be, she pushed her outstretched limbs forwards, directing the summoned stones levitating around her to fire off one by one, concentrating on controlling them while they awaited instruction more than on the subject they were being directed towards.

  The first of them rocketed forwards, spiraling like a bullet through a rifled chamber as it barreled towards the target, tracing the invisible path she’d set it on as it--

  Thunk.

  --squarely hit home, striking hard against the left shoulder of the dummy, Gwyn allowing herself the tiniest of smiles as she connected the first shot.

  A second fired off quickly after, the girl focusing as she directed it upon the same flight path, letting it sail in the tested trajectory--

  Crack.

  --and missing entirely, flying clear past the target and crashing against the wall behind before shattering on impact, Gwyn grimacing as she realized slightly too te that she’d fired it at the same angle despite having it originate from her opposite side.

  She rolled her shoulders, realigning herself before letting the third shot loose, this one closer to the mark than the previous one but still narrowly missing, barely grazing where its ear would have been before cracking itself against the wall again and joining the littered debris slowly filling up the far side of the room.

  The final two she’d manifested in this batch quickly snapped off one after the other, the first thudding against the lifeless mannequin's right shoulder, spinning it to the side as the second hit dead on into the now exposed fnk, the impact hard enough on the already destabilized target to send it tipping back before finally falling over.

  Gwyn couldn’t keep herself from a tiny fist bump, a little pride returning to her body as she looked over to her instructor, meeting with her less-than-enthused expression.

  “Three out of five shots is… passable, I suppose. But even then, most of them were still scattered with no shared target point between them, they cked any kind of rhythm to being fired, and at the end you, once again, fell back into that terrible little habit. Still lots to improve upon, even if you are finally improving.”

  Her shoulders slumped some, the tiny well of pride that had started to refill draining once more as she was chastised for still not being good enough.

  “Eh, it all looked pretty damn good from here. She hit the thing hard enough to put it on its ass, seems like good shooting to me.”

  The two present in the room both turned with a start towards the third voice, a certain scrawny woman leaning in the doorway as she watched the practice session the two of them worked on.

  “…Alice!~”

  “Yo. Just thought I’d stop in again, check the pce out some. Didn’t really get to look around much st time. And this room sounded loud as shit, so I peeked in and, well, here I am.”

  She showed herself in, peering around the wide open chamber currently littered with glitter debris at the far end, hands shoved into her jacket pockets as she wandered.

  “…ah, Ms. Decaras, welcome. Based on your… exceptionally less damaged form compared to yesterday’s pictures of you, I suppose your regeneration abilities really are just as good as my brother described.”

  The other woman met Alice halfway into the roof, pushing a hand out towards her, expectantly awaiting a handshake from their uninvited guest.

  Alice quizzically accepted the proffered handshake, her brain rattling around in her skull as she tried to put a name to the face in front of her, the woman seeming at least vaguely familiar.

  “Oh, uh, thanks. Have we…?”

  “Met? We have, though I suppose I can’t bme me for not recognizing me out of my typical work attire, aha. Ashley Bora, Burn Free. We met yesterday before your… vehicur excursion.”

  Her handshake was equally nguid as her brother’s had been before, the woman smiling politely before pulling her hand free again from Alice’s significantly stronger grip, checking her watch as she did.

  “Ms. Lapin here had just stopped in for a bit of requested personal training, a service I am more than happy to provide for all of our promising young recruits, but I believe we were just wrapping up. Pces to be and whatnot.”

  “Oh, w-were we stopping here? I-I hadn’t realized how te it was…”

  “I do apologize, but I do keep myself quite busy. I will say that you showed… at least some minor improvement, I’m sure that with a bit more practice you’ll be able to manage basic projectile spells much better than you have up till this point.”

  “…oy, I think she’s done a pretty damn good job of it so far. She’s punched the legs off a bunch of those shitty little bugs that keep popping up, at least.”

  Alice raised her eyebrows a hair, already seeing the annoying little simirities Ashley seemed to share with her brother popping to the surface.

  Ashley in turn looked back at her with the face a grade school teacher would give a student who’d repeatedly failed the exact same problem at least a dozen times, a sense of polite exasperation readily apparent in her eyes.

  “Well, perhaps with more practiced shooting, she could have taken them out entirely on her own, rather than simply inflicting some surface-level damage on them. Though I do suppose she handled them without making quite as much of a mess of herself as some others did.”

  Alice shrugged off the barbed retort, hands still firmly pnted in her pockets.

  “S’pose I should let you handle your own mess next time then…? You seem great at letting other people do your job for you, I’m sure the little squid shit from yesterday appreciated all the posing as they booked it out of there.”

  You could almost hear the sound of grinding enamel as her jaw clenched down, held back by that same polite expression holding on for dear life as she tried to ignore the cocky little upstart in front of her.

  “…well, I’m sure our indestructible little new recruit would have surely been able to rescue each and every one of those endangered civilians herself, had you not simply run off like a dog chasing after a car at the earliest provocation. But delegation of duties is important in such dire circumstances, so I must echo the thanks of the entire Library Magus for your… swift response, and for allowing more qualified magical girls to handle rescue operations. A role which Ms. Lapin handled passably well, I may add.”

  “…o-oh, um, I did help get a few people out, y-yeah! Though I m-mostly just helped with clearing rubble off of them, m-more than anything. B-But I did help!”

  “See? A little humility does a world of good, perhaps you could try it yourself sometime, Ms. Decaras.”

  “…weren’t you te to a meeting or something?”

  “Ah, of course, wouldn’t want to hold myself up too long now, would I? Now do try to work on your technique sometime Ms. Lapin, I’m sure you’ll be able to get that technique under control before you know it. But for now, I’m afraid I’ll be taking my leave. Take care you two, and try to avoid causing too much of a mess if you can help it.”

  With that, she strode towards the door, stepping out into the hallway without as much as a gnce back, entirely out of sight a moment ter.

  “…damn, guess being a prick runs in the family.”

  “You could at least make an attempt to not verbally accost everyone you encounter.”

  “Hey, I don’t do it with everyone, just the annoying ones. There’s just a lot of annoying ones, yeah?”

  “You would describe most everyone we have met since I joined to you as ‘annoying’, would you not…?”

  “Uuuuhhhh… nah, the old dy’s mostly fine. And Gwyn’s a damn angel comparatively.”

  Gwyn, who had been trying to tend to collecting and clearing up her own mineral debris from around the target range, had her face warm up as Alice conversed with Sclera aloud without even noticing she was doing so, looking away from the duo as she suppressed a tiny smile.

  Eventually Alice noticed the other girl attempting to clean up the space all by herself, rushing over and grabbing at handfuls of shattered crystal to try and gather them all up again.

  “So, uh… those two always the ones doing the practice stuff like this?”

  “Hm? Oh, n-no, there are other trainers, they just o-only handle the rge scale sessions with lots of m-magical girls training at once. B-But Ms. Ashley and Mr. Willow do oversee individual training with a-anyone they think has potential!”

  “Huh. Amazed a pair as stuck up as them would bother making time for anyone else like that”

  “Ms. Ashley was a-actually the one that first invited me to the Library… s-she told me she saw a d-diamond in the rough after I had first made my pact, ehehe…”

  Gwyn slowed down gathering the broken shards of crystal from below her, gaze hanging on the floor below, unfocused on anything there.

  “…she’s… s-she’s definitely rough on me sometimes, but… I r-really do need to try better, for her sake j-just as much as mine. I don’t w-want her to just… have been wrong to b-bring me here.”

  She was snapped back to reality by a hard smack striking hard against her upper back, Alice cpping her between the shoulders reassuringly as she’d scooted over to squat down next to her.

  “I can’t really speak for most of the time you’ve been here, but for as long as I’ve known you, you’ve definitely gotten better at this stuff. Hell, you’ve covered for my ass plenty already in the st couple days.”

  A smile slowly returned to Gwyn’s somber expression, shaking her head a bit to clear her thoughts before returning to scooping up broken rocks, Alice helping as best as she could, the pair slowly chipping away at the piled glittery dust and debris.

  Eventually the mess grew smaller and smaller, more and more handfuls of loose, shiny powder tossed into the unassuming trash can stuck in the corner, Alice taking one of the st rge chunks of crystal and rolling it over in her palm a few times instead of tossing it out.

  “So… why rocks, anyways?”

  “Hm…? O-Oh, um… these are all I’ve ever been able to make, s-something about an elemental affinity, I-I think?”

  “Correct. All magical girls have some manner of innate aspect they’re most suited towards, which is affected by the type of magical ability granted to them by the one granting them the pact to begin with. Such as life magics, in my case.”

  Sclera spoke up from behind their closed eyepatch, voice muffled until Alice saw fit to pull it up and to the side, letting their mouth free for the first time since they’d both gotten here.

  “R-Right, yeah, that’s kinda h-how they expined it to me… something about it being from my pact originating in p-protection magic.”

  “That sounds sensible, stone is a fairly common facet of protective magics from my understanding, though crystal like this is definitely a decidedly unique manifestation. Though the usage is a bit… off for abilities based in protection.”

  “What, something wrong with tossing rocks? It seems pretty damn useful.”

  “Do not misunderstand me, I wholeheartedly agree with its usefulness. However, there are other schools of magic more suited to such things. The geological nature isn’t the issue, it’s protection magic being used primarily for purposes which are, well, not particurly protective in nature.”

  Gwyn ughed lightly before sighing, having tossed the st handfuls of her broken crystals away as she finally stood upright again.

  “Heh, I-I guess it makes sense you’d figure that out so fast… y-yeah, I… I’m a bit of a coward, s-so I haven’t really been able to get anything actually p-protective to work at all yet. It was Ms. Ashley who suggested trying p-projectile stuff like she does, and… w-well, I’m getting better at that at least…!”

  “Oy, Gwyn, you’re not… look, you’re not a coward just because you don’t barrel straight at everything, dumbass.”

  “I-I… I wanna believe that, I really do. But… you always do that, you know? I-I’ve only known you a few days, and you’ve never seemed afraid of a-any of this at all.”

  “…that’s different. I’m already dead, it’s not like any of that shit’s gonna hurt me or anything… er, I guess it does hurt a lot, actually, but… look, I’m a lot more fucking durable than I should be, is all.”

  “But w-what about that first time, then? Y-You weren’t even a magical girl then, but you still just… y-you just jumped in to save me, a-and that kid… why didn’t that scare you…?!”

  Alice scratched at the back of her head, knowing she’d never really been good with expining things like this or helping cheer people up, trying her best to put any words together that sounded like more than just empty excuses and ptitudes.

  “Shit, I dunno, I… I saw a couple of idiots in trouble and just… I dunno, I’d just plowed straight into that thing before I really thought about why, I guess. Never really been great at thinking things out beforehand, more of a leaper than a looker.”

  Gwyn smiled, nodding slowly at no one in particur, pacing restlessly back and forth around the clean, empty room.

  “It was the f-first incident since I’d actually j-joined the library that I’d been close to… I-I didn’t even mean for it to happen either, I was just… passing through. S-So I thought I’d try to r-respond before anyone else had to… but then I saw it, a-and I just… started running away as f-fast as I could. S-Some magical girl I am, huh?”

  She was snapped back to attention by a finger flicking hard into the back of her head, eliciting a surprised yelp, rubbing the back of her head as she turned her attention back towards the room’s other occupant.

  “Sounds like you still did something, even if it was just getting the thing’s attention. And you’re the one that ended up getting that kid out of there, dumbass. You really gotta stop kicking your own ass so much, or I’m gonna have to start being the one doing it for you, yeah?”

  “B-But…”

  Alice already had her finger reared back once more, aimed squarely at Gwyn’s forehead as she prepared to fire.

  “Buuuuut…?”

  “…o-okay, okay, point taken…”

  Alice let her hand fall back to her side, shoving it right back into the pocket of her azure jacket.

  “Thaaaat’s better. We’ll have to work on that confidence some more, but I’m sure we’ll get ya there.”

  She offered her a warming, off-center smile, her facial features still a bit misshapen and slightly out of pce as she still worked at adjusting everything back like it’d been before her vehicur incident had briefly reduced her to a thick paste.

  “Now then, seeing as you’re busy, I better let you get back to your practice, don’t let me hold you up--”

  “...ahem. You seem to be conveniently forgetting something…? I believe we came here with business for Ms. Lapin, did we not…?”

  “…ugh, can’t you try having worse memory?”

  Sclera slowly dragged their host back into the room, not letting her wander off before getting to the reason they’d forced her to return this morning.

  “Hmm? Business with m-me…?”

  “It’s, uh… I’m sure you’re busy with practice and whatnot, so I don’t wanna impose or anything, so don’t let us keep you, ehe…”

  “Ugh, I cannot begin to understand why you are so opposed to this, it’s deeply important and will make both of our jobs significantly easier going forwards!”

  “Look, I’m managing just fine so far, I don’t need to… I’m fine, is all!”

  “You are most certainly not doing just fine, you are being dragged off in progressively worse-off states every single time you try to do anything!”

  The two of them bickered incessantly back and forth, Gwyn left too confused and overwhelmed by it all to remain in her drowned in her depressed slump as she tried to decipher what either of them was talking about.

  “U-Um… if there’s something I can help with, I-I’d be happy to help, even if there’s n-not all that much I can really do…!”

  “Ah, wonderful! See, I told you she would be more than happy to provide assistance, your excuses were wholly invalid to begin with.”

  “Oy, that’s not fair, you can’t just… ugh, whatever, fine, there’s no arguing with you, fucking stubborn old eye…”

  Sclera hmph’d at her, Alice exhaling sharply as she felt her arguments being fully overruled by the mage sharing her body, their mouth twisting into an approximation of a victorious smile as they succeeded in getting through her impossibly thick skull.

  “Now then, Ms. Lapin… or, should I call you Gwyn as well? I don’t believe I’ve asked before now, I apologize.”

  “O-Oh, um, either is fine, I don’t mind.”

  “…yes, sorry, right then. I believe you had previously expressed an interest in assisting my unruly vessel here with the process of transformation…? You yourself seem very capable at it already from your existing time working here, so your tutege should prove invaluable.”

  Gwyn’s face remained bnk for a long few moments, taking a brief pause to process the request before it correctly registered in her brain, her features rapidly lighting up like a row of streetmps all flickering on one by one, her earlier mencholy burning away to make room for excitedly realizing she could absolutely be of use this time.

  “…o-oh, yeah yeah! I’d love to, I-I’m not great at a lot of magical girl stuff but I got my own t-transformation down super fast, I-I’d be happy to teach you how it’s done, it’s s-super easy, trust me!”

  She’d already grabbed Alice by the arm, eagerly and excitedly tugging her along as she rushed for the exit, Alice barely having time to pull Sclera’s eyepatch back down as she was all but dragged along behind the taller girl.

  “Hey, hey, slow down, I-- look we don’t have to do the frilly outfit stuff, c’mon, I’m sure it’s not-- hey, listen to me dumbass, slow down…!!”

  Her st minute pleas fell of wholly deaf ears, stumbling along behind her excitable captor as she was forcibly dragged deeper into her hell of becoming a proper magical girl.