There will be no Maidens chapter on the 6th of June; Maidens will resume as normal on the 13th of June!

This is an unplanned, irregular interruption; my apologies for that. I’m fine, I’ll be back soon as I can, nothing to worry about. If you want more details, I’ve written a little patreon post about it over here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/160083664

Content Warnings

Internalised homophobia

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My truce with Grimgrave holds steady through one full day and two quiet nights, brittle but unbroken, unfamiliar yet not unwelcome. We settle in to wait for the meeting; Grimgrave resumes the erratic routine of her life up here in Plato Base, while I repair my prosthetic arm.

‘Truce’ is perhaps unkind, unfair, inaccurate, inadequate. Grimgrave has done more than pledge her natural loyalty, she has proven it beyond even my propensity for doubt. She has promised to protect me from Willow, to come running if I scream, to furnish me with arms and allies. She has forgiven the worst behaviour of which I can conceive, accepted my wilted apologies, and then handed me a loaded gun. She has shown me the grave of her dead girlfriend, and put aside the weight of her own grief, in favour of the living. She’s got my back. She’s not lying.

But I dare not tread beyond truce. More than mere understanding has passed between us; how could it be otherwise, when I’ve had her back on my bed and my knee against her cunt? She should be wary of me, yet she isn’t, and I remain keenly susceptible to the more arduous aspects of her behaviour. So we are still short of explicit alliance, let alone a pact, a sisterhood, or more.

Grimgrave doesn’t think of it that way. She believes we are all in this together, we magical girls. All for one and one for all.

I fall short of such radical optimism. Twenty years in England, ten years trapped in Willow’s dreams, have left me incapable. Maybe exposure to Bright and Signal has coloured me too far; they came to my rescue on that hospital rooftop, but mostly for their own reasons. Or maybe it was the graveyard, all those dead girls in lunar soil. Our inevitable end.

Grimmy is on my side. But where exactly is ‘our side’?

And while Grimgrave may be trusted, she is still a challenge to endure. She simply cannot help herself.

We spend those forty-eight hours living in the Big Room, retiring only for sleep, surrounded by zoogs and the ever-present background chatter of the quad-screen television setup. At first I consider an honourable retreat to my bedroom, for the simple privacy to think, but realisation strikes swift — I don’t want to be alone. Ten years of false memories full of splendid isolation, with the single exception of Willow; always by myself, always preferring it that way, always such a struggle to make new friends. All to keep me hungry and vulnerable, all for Willow.

Grimmy’s jokes are stupid and irritating and spiced with repetitious profanity. But she is here, she is alive, within arm’s reach, and tomorrow we might both be dead.

So I stay, fingers tapping away at my laptop keyboard, fans whirring inside the 3D printers as I set them to work, on long print-cycles to build the necessary components for my arm. For the remains of the first day I tinker with CAD files, tack toward the more gritty design questions, while the CFRN of my replacement foot shell anneals in a filament dryer. After the gun, the graveyard, and Grimmy’s regard, I feel focused enough to work. By that evening the shell is ready, a beautiful wedge of matte black. I fill the inside with appropriate foam padding cut to shape, work my foot into place, and then walk circuits of the Big Room, trailed by a gang of curious zoogs.

Only a prototype, but my stride is even and my gait is correct. No pain in my hip, no awkward angle to my knee. And no need to bother with shoes, no more grotesquery of fake flesh to conceal from mundane eyes.

“Robot upgrade, yo!” Grimgrave laughs, heading up my zoog audience. “You should put like, a steel toecap on it. Hobnails. Horns!”

“I’d rather retain the capacity to wear shoes, at least outdoors. And it’s not a robot leg, it’s a prosthetic. I’m not a cyborg.”

“Sure you are! It’s cool as shit! Cyber-Occy!”

“Cyber-Octavia,” I echo with a sigh, “is going to put her cyber-foot up your cyber-backside. Grimgrave, stop calling me that.”

She giggles and goggles and dances away, scooping up a zoog. She does stop, but only for an hour. Then it’s ‘Robo-tavia’ and ‘Octo-foot’, until I am forced to glare, to which Grimgrave is stoutly immune.

The next day it’s all CAD files, preliminary prints started early, on the hunt for replacement wires among Signal’s cast-off parts. Every component must be accounted for, prepared in advance, measured twice, written down. After that, hours of internal debate — how much extra weight can my right arm bear? Scarlet’s sword severed the limb like empty air, because carbon fibre and foam do not make for good armour. But reinforcing it to turn aside a blade — let alone that particular blade — is likely impossible, not without compromises to function. Design, discard, redesign, over and over and over again. Ceramic ballistic plates weigh a ton, even if I could source them. Steel outer layers are too heavy, but what about a thin metal core, hard enough to catch a sword? Or what if I make the carbon fibre shell thinner, layer kevlar beneath it? What about the elbow and the upper arm, am I going to replace those too? When did a repair turn into a full overhaul? Since when was this my plan? Why am I losing control?

Because I can’t transform. Can’t protect myself.

The wall reveals itself that second day, but I resist the urge to slump back and scowl at unfinished designs, despite the mounting pain in my phantom limb; frustration sets missing flesh to ache and throb, acutely aware that its mechanical replacement is currently elsewhere. I cannot afford petulance, not with an unknown time limit. Sooner or later Burning Bright may decide to remove the object of her sister’s frustrated fascination. At any moment, Willow might step in through the front entrance of Plato Base. The weight of Grimgrave’s borrowed pistol in the pocket of my robe does offer some reassurance, but bullets will not put down a Dreamer for good, not even magical girl bullets. I need my arm. I need to be complete.

Instead of stomping off or alt-tabbing away, I watch Grimgrave.

On that second day she wears sheer white leggings beneath a frilled white skirt, flaring out and fluttering whenever she moves, a pixie dressed in a snowflake. Her top half is a cacophony of white lace and skintight sleeves, hair up in a ponytail. Sitting on the sofa, laughing at cartoons with the zoogs; lying on her front, reading a book, feet swaying in the air; playing video games while zoogs cheer and hiss, her teeth clenched, concentration tight.

In the corner of my eye I watch her smile, watch her flex and twist her lithe and slender limbs, watch her flick her ponytail, watch her spot me watching and shoot me a grin in reply, and then she gets up and canters over to bother me for a few minutes. About which, I am not truly bothered.

Refocus, refine intention, resist scope creep. Back to work.

Tissy keeps us fed and supplies me with plentiful coffee, though I’m convinced she switches to decaf mid-afternoon. Food appears evenings, lunchtimes, breakfasts, plentiful but plain. Grimgrave and I eat together at the big metal table, or she on the sofa and me at my laptop, though she still samples the chow at zoog feeding time. The first day’s dinner is curry, vegetables and chicken in vast quantities, mild and soft and filling, cooked so long it melts in the mouth, tempts you to eat more than you should; intentional, one suspects, because a full belly makes it impossible to keep working late, sends Grimgrave into a zoog-draped doze on the sofa, my head nodding before my laptop. We drag ourselves to bed sometime around eleven, wandering down the corridor together.

But not to the same room. Grimgrave uses jokes to gesture in that direction, stops just short of inviting me over the pink-painted threshold of her bedroom, throws me winks and grins and doesn’t mean half of them.

Or maybe she does. If she took me by the hand and led me inside, I would be powerless to resist, but she might not like the result. Neither of us would. I would fly to pieces. She would be ill-used.

The bolt on my door has been fixed, bed remade with clean linen. Sleep is long and easy and almost dreamless, both nights, despite the lingering phantom pain at my side. Willow lurks at the edge of nightmares, but I’m too focused to let her in. I have too much work to be interrupted by bad dreams.

Both mornings, Grimgrave greets me by probing my open wounds.

“Did Jack and Jill go up the hill and fuck the pail of water yet? Come on, Occy, you know what I’m talking about! Did you get in there and—”, “—you gotta do it, you gotta do it, you gotta do yourself—”, “—it ain’t gonna give you another heart attack—”, “Unjammed your clam? Strangled your juice-box? Flicked the bean and skateboarded the—”, “Maybe you do need to make a vibe!”, “Lemme see your browser history, come on! I bet you’ve been getting some good sluts in there—”, “Come oooonnnnn, you gotta, you gotta, Occy, don’t be a—”

Her maniac grin and vulgar gestures say she’s teasing; her persistence says she’s helping. She achieves neither.

I answer with silent glares or not at all. Try not to snap, do not even dream of violence against her. Don’t have the heart to say I simply don’t feel like it; I tried again the first night, tucked up alone in bed, hand between my legs, but nothing happened. The mood did not take me, so I did not take myself in hand.

Hands, that’s the problem. I’m focused now, on fixing my right. Once I have both back, then I can think about the rest of my body. For now I am still a corpse, scattered in pieces, animated only by Grimgrave’s borrowed spark.

Over those forty-eight hours I come to know Grimgrave more than I did, simply by observing her moods, her patterns, her habits, though two days is a very mean amount of time to know anybody.

When not following me around like a puppy, she’s all over the place — playing with or tending to the zoogs, watching television, playing video games, slumped on the sofa with an endless parade of dog-eared books, typing away on her phone keyboard, zooming off into the depths of Plato Base for one unfathomable reason or another. I am simply one additional stop on her manic circuit, as she bounces over to the table and shoves something at me. Hey Occy, this zoog wants to know what your arm is made of. Hey Occy, have you seen this game, this bit with the guy doing the thing with the stuff? Hey Occy, what do you think of this anime girl picture on my phone, would you suck those titties? Hey Occy, did you know whale cocks are ten feet long?!

On the afternoon of that second day, in the lull after the zoogs have been fed, Grimgrave sits down on a patch of empty concrete floor and spends a quiet hour cleaning and oiling her shotgun. She strips it barely looking, lays all the pieces out, tends it with incredible care. Doesn’t even look up. Doesn’t seem to know I’m watching.

Her long waterfall of permanently messy hair, the dark purple birthmark on her throat and cheek, her rotating selection of white-on-white outfits, the irrepressible bounce of mania behind her eyes. I can’t stop watching. Can’t help myself.

Despite all her kind words and her dog-like loyalty, I cannot forget the way she wriggled and writhed beneath me.

She’s backed off that for now, but would she do it again? If I rose from my laptop and threw her down on the sofa, would that break our truce? Or are we already skirmishing over my non-existent masturbation habits? Is she inviting another battle?

Late that second evening she puts on an anime series about animal girls trapped in a vast empty safari park. The animation is terrible, but apparently it’s a zoog favourite. They trickle in from all over Plato Base to swell the audience, hissing along with memorable lines, cheering certain sequences, hiding behind the sofas and chairs during a scary part. Grimgrave invites me to join. After a few episodes, I take the risk, perched awkwardly in an armchair, zoogs around my ankles. Grimgrave laughs and points, glances at me. I manage a smile, but I’m mostly watching her.

We spot Bright once or twice, but she doesn’t talk to us, doesn’t linger. She slinks off, eats meals in her room, shut away in private vigil for her sister.

I keep up a secret vigil of my own, carefully concealed from Grimgrave. One eye on magibooru, waiting for ‘4en4’.

Every hour or two I refresh the pages, check my re-uploads, hoping for a comment. Halfway through that second day somebody files take-down requests on both images; I receive automatic notifications, but the requests cannot be enforced. 4en4 has not posted those illustrations of me to anywhere else, so no ownership can be claimed.

“Nice try, Scarlet,” I murmur to the screen, heart fluttering; perhaps it really is her. “But you’ll have to come closer than that.”

Mid-afternoon on that day, it rains. Big heavy droplets like hammers tap-tap-tap on the concrete roof of Plato Base, great runnels of water sluicing down the mountainside above. Surprised, bewildered, I head to the front entrance and peer out across the Lunar landscape. Vast cloud-banks swirl and roil, the colour of mercury and pearl, flicker-flashing across black skies in stutter-step motion. Raindrops shimmer as they fall, each one a tiny inverted rainbow in black and white.

Grimgrave steps out, opens her mouth to catch the rain. Comes back in with hair and shoulders damp. Finds a towel, makes her hair a bigger mess.

Once the storm has passed, we hear croaking voices on the settled air, speaking no human tongue. Grimgrave says those are the moon-crows we saw earlier, temping prey to the moist surface soil.

Back to work on my arm. I spend most of that second day finalising the outer shell segments, leaving most potential reinforcements for the future; just get the arm back on, I can add a tungsten core later. My own hair gets in the way of work, longer than it should be, by far the strangest side-effect of magical girl-hood, so I tie it up as well, a ponytail I haven’t worn since I was child. The zoogs serve as excellent rubber ducks, good listeners for any plan, any question, any mad idea. They absorb and regurgitate novel words, looking up at me with their beady black eyes and floppy ears going from side to side. Toward the evening I have some of them repeating ‘tensile strength!’ before mock-ambushing each other around my ankles.

I work, I build, I try not to think about the future or anything else. This is not the shape of my life to come, not yet. I am adrift in a liminal space between, only to take shape once I’m whole again. A corpse, sewing herself back together, praying she will come alive once the work is complete.

I focus on my arm, on Factory-Oh when I can’t. And on Grimmy, from the corner of my eye, when I cannot resist.

~~~~~~~

On the morning of the meeting, our divine patron finally wakes up.

Nerys has spent days in that animal bed, with no motion beyond breathing. No food, no water, no apparent bodily functions. But then she is Dream-God, her body isn’t entirely real. She rouses herself in slow stages, snuffling and shuffling, clambering to her paws, peering out of her basket, black muzzle dripping ghostly ooze onto the tabletop, blinking her little obsidian eyes clear of sticky sleep.

She doesn’t speak much, but she does greet me, speaking in her usual slow rasp. “Octavia! Working hard, mmhmm? How very human of you.”

“I should hope so. I’m not entirely zoog-brained, not yet.”

“Haaaaaaa,” she purrs. “You will be.”

“Nerys, what happened to you? Your wounds, this fight you had, who was it with?”

“Later,” she rasps. “Repeating myself is such a bore. And I am still knackered. Later, later.”

The zoogs treat her as a war hero, licking her ragged scars, nibbling her ears, forming a constant honour-guard around her ginger tread. She requests to be placed on the floor, then returned to the table again, then back to the floor, then back to the table, all of which Grimgrave obliges without complaint, so Nerys can go amongst her kind, licking faces and sniffing fur.

“For a species that supposedly hates cats,” I say, “you certainly do act like them sometimes.”

That earns me a hissing rebuke from three dozen zoogs, and an abortive attack on my right ankle, deflected with a frown and a tut. I am forced to raise a hand, mouth an apology I don’t really mean. They are cat-like, like it or not.

About half an hour before the appointed time for the meeting, Tissy sets out late lunch. I spy a hint of glowing blue vanishing behind a pillar, a trail of silken sapphire slipping down a distant passageway; perhaps she’s too curious to sustain perfect stealth. Sandwiches, smoked salmon, a small landslide of sushi, great pitchers of fruit juice, and a fresh pot of coffee to lure me away from the culmination of my work. The biggest pieces of my prosthetic arm are annealing in the dryers. I’ve completed all the wiring, stripped down the damaged parts, everything is ready to be replaced. A few more hours and I’ll be done. But hot coffee and the scent of soy sauce is too sharp a temptation, especially when Grimgrave starts stuffing her face and feeding bits of fish to Nerys. Other zoogs have been summarily banished to the floor, apparently by Tissy, since I didn’t see Grimgrave move them. Nerys no longer requires her honour guard, perfectly capable of plodding up and down by herself.

Grimgrave sits on the edge of the table, apparently allergic to using chairs properly. When I sit nearby, I struggle to keep my eyes off her bare thighs and the way her buttocks pillow against the metal. She’s in white shorts and a tank top today, legs wiggling over the side of the table as she eats.

Bright shuffles into the Big Room a few minutes later. She drags herself past the domesticated corner and slumps down in a chair at the metal table, a nice safe distance from both me and Grimgrave. She stares at the food for a long, long, long moment, in danger of falling asleep, though she does seem a touch less exhausted than during our brief altercation. She glances at me with glacial slowness, half-frown half-squint, blank with easy contempt, as if confused to find me still alive. Then she grunts, drags a plate in front of herself, and starts slowly chewing her way through a sandwich.

“What’s the occasion?” she mutters around a bite.

“The meeting?!” Grimgrave laughs. “Fuck, you didn’t even know? Just came out here ‘cos of the smell, like?”

Bright scowls, then seems to decide the expression isn’t worth the effort. “Tissy left a note. Yeah, meeting, whatever. Signal’s thing.”

At least she’s relatively clean; Bright appears to have showered sometime in the last two days, though it’s a mystery how she didn’t drown herself. The longer side of her hair could do with a proper comb, but it’s not quite so greasy. She still sags in her chair, eyes ringed by dark bags, slow as mud inside her own skin. She’s swapped her clothes out for a pair of black pajama bottoms and a baggy old t-shirt, long sleeves with holes in ragged cuffs.

Why not drag her off and dress her in a big comfy sweater? New socks and a fluffy dressing gown? A hat to keep her head warm? Because she’d bite my other hand off if I tried, no matter how badly she needs it.

Signal appears at precisely five minutes to three, heralded by a quartet of grey-boned moon-skeletons tromping through the main entrance. Camera lens eyes stop and scan. Component-stuffed ribcages bulge with processors and wires and screens. Two skeletons head for Signal’s computer station, plugging themselves in via half a dozen cables. The other two take up station by the door. Signal herself follows, backed by a second quartet of towering grey skeleton-machines. The real Signal, her ‘core’, doesn’t spare even a glance at us, eyes focused somewhere past the walls, ears covered by massive headphones, still wearing the same heavy black hoodie as before, covered in pockets and pouches and sprouting with wires. Her fingers are already flying across the keyboard on the miniature computer strapped to her right arm.

She wanders over to her computer desk, steps out of her big boots, slips into her massive chair. Screens flicker to life before her, hundreds of camera views from inside Plato Base and beyond, dozens of different angles of our faces, of the food on the table, of Nerys, of me, of herself.

One of her escort skeletons squats down to pet some zoogs. Two more detach and come over to the table; one starts loading up a plate with sushi, the other has a rib-mounted screen already aglow with an emote.

(*ΦωΦ*)

“Oh my gosh!” Signal says, voice bouncing and bubbling from skeleton-mounted speakers, Scottish accent firmly in place, motherly warmth tuned just for us. “Everybody’s here, already? I really didn’t expect this, girls. I didn’t! Well done!”

“Heya Siggy-Sigs!” Grimgrave waves a slice of smoked salmon, eating with her fingers. “Tissy’s put on a fucking buffet, yo!”

“I can see, and I’ll be having some of that sushi, for sure. Nerys, good to see you up and about. You too, Octavia, and I’m glad the arm repair is coming along. You’ll have to show me the details, lass. And Bright! You’re actually here. Blow me down with a feather. Thank you, really, I mean it.”

Bright gives Signal a lazy middle finger.

“Signal,” I say, chasing a sip of hot coffee. “I’m using your 3D printers. I hope you don’t mind. There wasn’t exactly a way to ask you.” Except talking to the open air of Plato Base, within sight of your million hidden cameras. But let’s not say that out loud. Let’s all pretend to be human.

One skeleton departs with a plate of food for Signal’s core; the other turns to me with a new emote.

(*^ ‿ <*)♡

“Oh, don’t even mention it, of course I don’t mind, lass,” she says. “If I minded, I could have remotely disabled everything. But no, of course not, you’re more than welcome to use what you need, as long as you don’t touch my main setup. How are the repairs going, anyway? Smoothly, I hope? Found everything you need? I can always source more parts, if there’s anything specific you’re after. Just let me know.”

“It’s … going.” I awkwardly raise my coffee mug. No idea what I’m toasting. “Thank you for the use of your machines. They’re very high quality.”

“Awww, you’re such a sweetheart, Octavia!” Bubble bubble, put your head in mummy’s lap. No thank you, Signal.

“At some point I would like to pick your brains about the skeletons,” I say. “The material used to make them, mostly. Would that be acceptable?”

A moment’s pause. “Of course, of course! I’d be delighted. Not like I get a chance to talk much about it with these two.” A light little giggle, bouncing and tripping from the speakers.

A glance over at the real Signal shows me a slice of her panopticon. My face on one screen, seen from every possible angle, even the back of my head.

You see everything, don’t you, Signal? But not the inside of my mind. Not like Willow.

“So, hey, Siggy!” Grimgrave hops off the table, swaying from side to side, claps her hands in front of the skeleton. “What’s going down, yeah? We gonna blow some shit up? Kidnap some MPs? Take down a magical girl?! What’s this big plan from the Opposition?”

（>﹏<）

“Grimmy, my dear girl, do give me a moment. I’ve had a hell of a time these last few days. And I do want to sample this wonderful looking sushi.”

“Yeah, sure, like, but I wanna hear what we’re gonna explode!”

Nerys waddles down the table, goes up on her hind legs, and sniffs at the moon-skeleton. The chest-mounted screen flickers through a sequence of emotes and numbers to fast for humans to read. Nerys plops back down, peels back her lips with approval, and trundles off again. Grimgrave puffs and pouts, but Nerys offers nothing, so eventually Grimgrave flops into a seat next to me, wiggling her bare legs with impatience.

For a few minutes the Big Room echoes softly to the sounds of eating. I sip my coffee, pick at a sandwich, mentally recalculate how much time is left on the final 3D print jobs. Bright slowly munches through her food, eyes elsewhere, half-slumped in her seat. Grimgrave gets up again, giggles with the zoogs, feeds them stolen sushi. Signal eats at her desk, with a fork, fingers of one hand always on her keyboard, tapping away at high speed. Nerys munches on little titbits of smoked salmon, obsidian eyes heavy with the weight of lingering wounds. She sits herself down next to her basket, watching her magical girls.

Eventually one of Signal’s skeletons walks to the head of the table, a grey-faced machine with dark lenses for eyeballs. The rib-screen on the front lights up.

¯\_ʘᗜʘ_/¯

“Ladies,” Signal says, voice crackling from the speakers. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you this, but our debut in the waking world has been a huge success. We’ve changed everything. The ripples of our reveal are yet to subside. I’m sure some of you have been keeping an eye on the news, but if you haven’t, then you really should. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but Britain is never going to be the same again. The world will never be the same. Millions of people — no, billions of people — watched us duel three of the most famous magical girls in the world, and witnessed Grimgrave shoot a Dreamer—”

“Woo, yeah!” Grimgrave cheers, throws her arms up. “Encore, let her do it again! Let that clown fuckin’ cook!”

Signal’s skeleton inclines a hand toward Grimmy. “We can hope,” she says with a little laugh. “We’ve changed everything, ladies. Where we go from here, that’s up to us, and that’s what I want to talk about today. Though I think something of a debriefing is also in order—”

“Ahhhhhh,” Bright growls. “Shut up.” She straightens in her chair, blinking as if woken from a bad nap. “Signal, what are you doing? Who made you … ” Bright trails off, brow scrunched hard.

“Chairwoman?” I suggest.

Bright scowls at me, then at the skeleton. “Yeah. That. Who made you chairwoman, Signal? If you’re gonna make speeches, then I’m going back to bed.”

The emote vanishes from the skeleton-screen.

“Very well, Bright,” says Signal, with no loss of bounce, no slip into robotic tone. “I yield the floor. It’s yours. Take it away, please, be my guest.” The skeleton gestures wide with one bony hand.

b(￣▽￣*)

Bright stares, squints harder, as if fighting exhaustion. Zoogs over in the domesticated corner begin to hiss with the low rasping chatter of zoog laughter. Bright folds her arms, looks away.

“Yo yo yo!” Grimgrave drums on the edge of the table, pushes her chair back, gets to her feet. “Bright’s kinda got a point, Siggy. What’s this op, hey!? I’m on the edge of my fuckin’ seat here, I’m gonna pop!” She glances at me with a big wink. “If you know what I mean!”

Roll my eyes. Don’t engage. Don’t smile. Difficult.

“Geegee,” Signal says, gentle warning in her voice. “First things first. We’ve got a lot to talk about, haven’t we?”

“Awwww, come on! You told Nerys already! You’re doing this on purpose, like!”

ଘ(੭*ˊᵕˋ)੭* ̀ˋ

“I most certainly am,” Signal says, a brazen tease in her voice. “And do you know why, my dear Geegee? Because the moment I explain something as exciting as an operation down in Britain, you are going to be bouncing off the walls, and you won’t pay attention to anything else I say. You can learn a little restraint for once. I’ll get to it when I get to it.”

Grimgrave rolls her eyes, slumps her shoulders, lets out the prototypical groan of an impatient teenager. “Uuughhhh. Fiiiiiiiine. Are we there yet?”

“Seems like an odd reason,” I say out loud. A lie, perhaps, though I can’t see why.

“Now, Octavia,” Signal goes right on, ignoring my implied question. “It’s so very good to see you doing better, lass. It’s great that you’re up and around and on the mend. Before we say anything else, I want to formally apologise to you, for missing the dream-parasite in your head.”

A cold shiver brushes the back of my neck. “I … uh … ”

“I missed it,” she goes on. “Nerys missed it.” Nerys lets out a soft little rasp, drags her tail across the metal tabletop. “Despite all our combined expertise. We failed you, Octavia, and because of that we nearly lost you, before we even had a chance to get to know you.”

Bright mutters, “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Hey!” Grimgrave slaps the table, blazes at Bright. “Shut the fuck up, drag-on-deeze-nuts! You fuckin’ let her go down there—”

“We all let her go down there,” Signal says, volume up. “We’re all responsible. Nerys included.” Signal drops her volume back to normal. “We misread your behaviour, Octavia. We attributed it to shock, to confusion, to denial. A Dreamer is a powerful thing, and she hid that parasitic control well enough to escape the notice of even a Dream-God. But that’s no real excuse, we shouldn’t have taken your behaviour for granted. Let me extend an apology, from all of us.”

Grimgrave doesn’t need to apologise; she came after me when nobody else did. Nerys did her best to keep me here and keep me safe, even if her methods were incomprehensible. Signal and Bright, you two showed me the door to the scaffold.

“Apology accepted,” I say.

“Thank you,” Signal says. “And it’s good that you’re here now. It’s good to see you up and about. Good you’re with us, lass.”

One lie is enough, the next truth spills from my lips. “What am I supposed to say in response to that? It’s good to be here? Well, it’s not. My life for the last ten years is gone, revealed as a lie. My … best friend was a Dreamer, and I was her pet. Last week I was preparing for university, and now I’m an exile on the moon, living with a bunch of magical girl terrorists and revolutionaries. No offence, seeing as I’m one of you now.”

Grimgrave snorts. Bright looks at me, dull but curious. Signal freezes.

“But,” I add with a sigh. “It’s infinitely better than being a chew toy for a Dreamer. Thank you for fighting for me.” A glance at Bright. “Even you.”

Bright tightens with contempt, looks away.

(´∀｀) “If there’s anything we can do for you in the meantime, to help with your transformation—” Signal starts to say, but I raise my left hand.

“Just let me fix my arm. I can’t think about much else. Not about the future. Not yet.” Except Grimmy, who won’t leave my head.

“I understand completely,” Signal says, her voice oh-so warm and motherly. “There’s just one thing I do need from you, when you’re feeling up to it. I’d like to ask you about that woman you met. Winter, was it? Going by name alone, she’s part of my extended network of informants and sources. She’s on the periphery of the Opposition, but nobody’s ever met her in person before. I only know her through remote contact. I’m very curious to learn what she was doing.”

A shrug. “Okay. Not like I have much to tell you. She was an occultist, that’s about it.”

“We’ll talk about it later,” Signal purrs. “For now, we need to—”

“Actually,” I say, “I have a question for you, Signal. For you and Nerys. And it’s more important to me than anything we’re going to talk about at this meeting.”

Grimgrave bounces on the balls of her feet, one hand in the air, then pointing at me. “Oh yeah, shit, yeah! Occy’s got important shit, for real!”

Signal’s skeleton shifts emotes: (•ิ_•ิ)?

I take a long sip from my coffee. Lukewarm now, sliding down my throat like engine oil in sunlight. A moment to brace.

“Willow,” I say her name. “My … the Dreamer. The Dreamer I … ”

“The Lucid Dreamer,” Signal says, so very gently, wrapping me in cotton wool. “Yes, I’ve been thinking about her for the last few days. Asking around my network of contacts, trying to figure out what happened, what we were up against. You must understand, lass, we’ve had plenty of contact with Dreamers, though almost all of them have been embryonic. Almost everything you’ve been taught about Dreamers down on Earth is false. Most of them want nothing more than to leave, to depart for the Dreamlands as soon as they change. We’ve helped plenty of them evade Dream Control—”

“No,” I try to say. “Signal. That’s not what I mean. I mean she was—”

“I know, I know,” Signal carries right on. “A full-blown mature Dreamer still present in the waking world. It shouldn’t be possible. Our debut on the world stage wasn’t the only paradigm shift. From everything we’ve learned, she’s working for Dream Control, for the British Government, somehow, whatever that means. We don’t have enough information to go on yet, but this changes everything, we need a way to deal with her, or find out what she represents, if there’s more like her, if—”

“Nah, not that!” Grimgrave squawks. “Siggy, listen, yo! Listen to Occy!”

“Yes, quite,” I say. “Not that. She … Willow, she … she was … my … ”

“Occy’s psycho bitch ex!” says Grimmy.

(-_-;)・・・ “Ah,” says Signal. “Certainly. How could I be so dense?”

My dark look bounces off Grimgrave’s forehead. She flashes me a grin: aren’t I helping, Occy?

Deep breath, another sip of coffee, a difficult swallow. “My question. Can Willow reach Luna? Can she infiltrate Plato Base? Can she just walk in through the front door? I already asked Grimgrave, but she said she didn’t know, not for sure. Now I’m asking you, Signal. You as well, Nerys. Is Luna proof against a Lucid Dreamer?”

More coffee, left hand shaking ever so slightly. Grip harder, don’t let anybody see. Quick glances at the concrete corridor mouths, but no Willow strides through at the culmination of the question. Very glad I didn’t pick a seat that puts my back toward the main entrance of the Big Room. I will not be ambushed. I will not be caged again.

More coffee. Breathe steady.

Signal goes quiet for a long moment, the emote-screen on her skeleton blinking to empty, though I can hear her fingers flying across her keyboard. Nerys raises her snout and tilts her head to look at me with one glossy black eye.

Bright grunts. “Scared?”

“What do you think?” I hiss. “Of course I’m scared. What an idiotic question.”

“Maybe we should hand you back to her.”

Grimmy explodes, slams both hands on the table, ready to vault up and over and put a foot in Bright’s face. “Fuck your piss-hole, smeg-breath! Don’t even joke about—”

“Joke?” Bright rasps. “Thought jokes were your department, chuckles. Go on. Joke.”

Grimmy braces for a pounce.

I grab a fistful of Grimgrave’s hip, half shorts and half bare skin. She squeaks in surprise, stumbles and rebounds, leap aborted by two of my fingers hooked into her waistband, fabric bunched tight between her thighs. She totters two awkward half-steps back toward me, half-laughing, half-shocked.

My coffee mug has fallen casualty to my quick reaction, toppled over on the table. Dregs form a little dark brown puddle against the metal.

Nobody speaks. Bright stares at me, blank with effortless aggression. Don’t push me again, dragon girl. You want me to kick your knees out from under you a second time? But she doesn’t turn aside or look away, just stares with eyes heavy-lidded by exhaustion, breathing the slow and clotted breaths of a terminal patient, mucus rattling in her throat and lungs.

“If you try that,” I say slowly, “I’ll think of something interesting I can do with your sister. Then I’ll film it and put it on the internet.”

Bright’s stare turns rancid.

“Ahem,” says Signal. “Bright, Geegee, no fighting at the table, please. Let’s not have a repeat of last time. Tissy will be very upset.”

“Who’s fighting?” Bright rasps. “Not me. How about you, chuckles?”

Grimgrave opens her mouth to bark; I squeeze her hip. She jerks, let out a squeak, subsides. Then she grins at Bright. “Yeah, no fighting, Bright!”

Bright drags her eyes from Grimgrave to me, then back again. “You and chuckles, huh? You move on fast, Patience.”

Fully expecting Grimgrave to break from my grip and pull Bright’s face off, I tighten my fingers. But Grimmy just shrinks away, turns aside. I let go. She busies herself petting Nerys.

“To answer your question, lass,” Signal says, emote shifting. (￣～￣;) “Can Willow breach Luna? I’m very sorry to say this, but I don’t know either. I’ve been thinking about that since we returned from the hospital rooftop, and the simple answer is that we just don’t know. Dreamers can visit Luna, that’s true, but the only ones who do so all used to be magical girls, and they come from the deep dream now, none of them are remotely human anymore.” Skeleton-speakers emit a soft sigh. “But Willow Finch, if that is even her real name, is the first confirmed example of a Lucid Dreamer. We need more data. I’m sorry.”

No more coffee. Nothing to grip to contain the shiver in my guts. I pick up the fallen mug and set it right. I’d rather be fixing my arm. Or under my bedsheets, not thinking of Willow.

“Nerys?” I say.

Nerys sways her snout from side to side, dripping black ooze onto the tabletop, each droplet vanishing into nothing. She blinks slowly, squinting beneath Grimgrave’s hands.

“Mmmmmmmm,” she purrs, a low raspy sound in her throat. “A human Dreamer. On Luna? Weak, weak, weak. Up here, in my house, she would be playing by my rules. Weakened.”

Grimgrave lights up. “No shit?”

“Nerys?” Signal says. “You know that for a fact?”

“Mmmmmhmmmm,” Nerys purrs again. She shows her teeth, lips peeling back along her snout. “Luna is no human dream. Never was. Can’t be made one. Luna belongs to Moon Beasts, to slugs beneath the rocks, to zoogs, to me. Our dreams rule here. Interlopers will find it hard to breathe.”

“You’re sure?” I ask.

Nerys grins. She rolls her head, indicating the Big Room, or all of Plato Base. “All mine.”

“So, if she does come after me, she’ll be weakened? How much? By what measure?”

Nerys does a little zoog shrug.

“Great. Thank you for such specificity. Very reassuring.”

Signal clears her throat, a little crackling sound down the speakers. “In my professional opinion — which sometimes doesn’t count for much, I know — if Willow was going to try for Plato Base, she would already have done so. She doesn’t know what she’d find up here, or how many of us there are, or where we spend our time. Remember, lass, magical girls are the one thing that can reliably and consistently combat a Dreamer. She’s vulnerable to us. If she’s not willing to run, we can kill her.”

“Yeah!” Grimgrave says. “Occy, for serious, if she tries shit, we’ll kill her stone fucking dead!”

Bright snorts. “Dream trash.”

Can’t quite bring a thank you to my lips, since none of this makes anything better. But I dip my head, bare acknowledgement best I can do. Slip my left hand into the pocket of my robe, check that Grimgrave’s gun is still there, solid, real, and loaded.

“I’ll try to keep that in mind,” I say. “Until I can transform.”

Signal’s emote changes again: <(￣︶￣)> “And that is one of the many things we need to discuss. Right then, ladies, if we’re all done with the preliminaries—”

Grimgrave vaults up onto the table, followed by her mane of hair, white socks on bare metal. Puffs out her chest, thumps her breastbone with a fist, then throws it up high.

“I’ve got an announcement!”

Signal’s skeleton eye-lenses swivel to me; I reply with a shrug, as lost as anybody. Nerys peers up, curious and quiet. Bright just blinks.

Grimgrave sweeps one hand wide, indicates me. “Last time we was all here, I told you all that Occy, she ain’t no homo-sex-you-al! Well guess what?! I fuckin’ lied, whoops!”

My face turns to ice, then hot as molten iron. My teeth creak. Sweat on my brow, a shiver in my throat. My right fist, a phantom sensation against my prosthetic thigh, tightens so hard I feel ghostly nails dig into long-dead skin.

“See, I was wrong, right!?” Grimgrave grins wide, lost to total mania, catching every eye, even the zoogs. “Occy here, she’s just like us. She’s one of us! She’s gay as all fuck!”

Grimgrave ends on a cheer. Nobody joins in. Even the zoogs know better; perhaps they can sense the pressure vessel of my rage.

Bright stares, empty faced, uncaring. Nerys lets out a soft rasp, tail slithering back and forth against the metal. Signal shifts her emote: X_X “Geegee,” she says with a sigh. “First, get down off the table. Second, I think you’re going to have to apologise for—”

But then I’m on my feet. Not sure how I got there. Breath pounds in and out of my lungs like a bellows. Electricity crackles up my phantom limb, cramp and tension spreading outward from my stump, up my neck, into the side of my chest, reaching for my heart, tendrils of heat in my head, my brains, behind my eyes, pulsing hot as molten iron.

“Must you!?” I hiss, teeth clenched. “Must you do this, you—” Patience. “I thought you understood. I thought we— you and I—”

Grimgrave rounds on me, face split in utter delight. “Yo, Occy, hey, I told you, this is how I am!”

A furnace at breaking point in my chest, with nowhere to pour the molten slag. Fires pushing inside my phantom arm, burning and aching and twitching in my stump.

How could she? Tears of rage and humiliation spring into the corners of my eyes. After everything we shared, after I trusted her, she resorts back to this same base mockery.

So easy to forget what Grimgrave is.

“And it’s true, ain’t it?” Grimgrave says, no guile in her face, nothing but genuine joy. “Ain’t no fuckin’ joke! You’re a big fat bitch dyke with the rest of us, yo! Chin up high, eyes front, all that shit! I ain’t mocking you, Occy! One of us!” She starts to stamp, thumping her chest in time with the beat. “One! Of! Us! One! Of Us!”

Grimgrave is on my side. She isn’t lying. Just insufferable.

The worst of true rage — the wounded pride, the need for respect or fear or worse — subsides in a few deep breaths. Grimmy is just being Grimmy; I knew she was like this, what did I expect? And she is telling the truth. I am a lesbian, we all know it, we’re all the same, up here in our grand and desolate exile. She isn’t mocking; in her own bizarre way, this is congratulatory celebration.

But I’m still incandescent, at least on the surface. I wish she would not do this.

“Get down,” I hiss.

Grimmy sticks out her tongue. “Make me!”

Deep breath. Do not rise to that taunt, because once you start you won’t stop. Grimmy does not know what she asks for, to be pulled off the table by force and shoved to the ground, my hand around her cunt to make her behave. Angry flush turns to hidden blush, because I cannot think these thoughts, I cannot discipline Grimgrave, or we will fly past every boundary and off the edge of the waking world.

“When I have my arm back,” I say, though I shouldn’t, “I will … I … ”

Grimgrave flicks her hips out to one side and slaps her own right buttock. “Spank me? Punish me for being a bad girl?! All I’m doing is telling the truth, Occy!”

Wrestle you into submission and finish what we started.

“Perhaps,” I say, “I’ll put a leash on you.”

Grimmy goes wide-eyed, wide-mouthed, grinning with shock and delight. I stay stone-faced, force myself to sit. Should not have said that, should not have given in. I will ruin and destroy her if she lets me, or else she will break down whatever remains of the old Octavia Carter in a furnace that I cannot hope to control.

“Down, off the table,” I repeat. My voice should shake, but it doesn’t. “We’re already drifting miles off the original purpose for this meeting, and I want to get back to repairing my arm. Grimmy, down. Now.”

Grimgrave cackles. “Occy, Occy, yo! You gotta warn me next time before you—”

“Down!” I snap.

Not too hard, not gentle either. Heart racing in my chest, pulse pounding in my throat. What am I doing? What has come over me?

To my utter amazement, Grimgrave obeys. She laughs again, then hops down off the side of the table, right next to me. Biting her bottom lip, eyes aglow, looking like she wants to throw her arms around me.

“ … what?” I say.

“Nooooothing,” she croons. “Nuthin’! Just, you know. If you’re gonna start it, you gotta finish it, yo! Leaving me waiting. Come ooonnnn.”

A frown, dark and craggy, is all I can muster. My strange courage is all dribbled away, afraid of what she might mean. “Stop it. That’s enough.”

“Pfffffffffft.” Grimgrave pouts and shrugs and turns away, as if I’ve somehow disappointed her.

“Huh.” Bright grunts. “She’s got you whipped, chuckles.”

Bright, however, is not totally immune to my stare. She stares back again, neither of us crack, but she is at least forced to respond. Right back where we started.

“My girrrrrrrls,” Nerys rasps, ending with a tried huff, a little zoog noise of satisfaction. “You’re all perfect. You know that, don’t you?”

Bright wrinkles her nose at Nerys. I sigh, shaking my head. Grimgrave cracks a big shit-eating grin, bumps her hips against the back of my chair, springs away beyond range of retaliation. Signal changes her emote: LL_LL

“Right,” Signal says, voice bouncing with false lightness. Her emote switches again. (￣□￣」) “If we’ve quite finished marking our territory and establishing our boundaries? Yes? All done? Thank you. Because we have quite the agenda to get through, ladies. And I’m sure Octavia here has plenty of questions.”

Signal’s right. From my own half-finished transformation to the nature of Nerys’ wounds, from the limits of the Lunar Revolutionaries to the uncertain shape of our future plans; though I do not know what I will do with the answers to those questions. What am I trying to rebuild, up here on the moon, beyond my own right arm?

“Anyway,” Signal says before I can speak. “I’ve organised it for us, to make things easier.”

The big central ribcage-mounted screen on the skeleton at the head of the table flickers into lines of tight-typed black in tiny print. A bullet-pointed list. A literal agenda. Too small to read.

Bright groans, rolls her eyes, sags further in her seat. “Fuck’s sake, Signal.”

Grimgrave laughs. “Awww, come on! You can’t be serious, Siggy!”

The constant sound of Signal’s typing briefly pauses. The skeleton-speakers say, somewhat more robotic: “Logistics and bureaucracy are important. You all know that. If we’re not all on the same page then we’re going to trip over each other’s feet. Geegee, you especially do not have room to complain, not after going off on your own and bombing a crowd by accident. This is necessary.”

“We’re not like, fuckin, I dunno, in a boardroom!” Grimmy howls with laughter. “Gotta put on suits, get some line graphs!? I can’t fuckin’ believe it, you’ve done it again!”

“She’s done this before?” I murmur. Bright sighs, nods.

“But there’s so much to cover!” Signal snaps, voice a robotic blur. “Everything that happened last week, the implications, the Trio, Octavia’s transformation, all of it. How can we hope to—”

Grimgrave throws her hands in the air. “You told us the Opposition are gonna do some heavy shit! Don’t use it as fuckin’ bait to make us sit through a powerpoint!”

“Yeah,” Bright grunts. “Signal, just tell us. What are we blowing up?”

“And this is gonna be the first time we do shit after our big debut!” Grimgrave goes on. “I’m hype, I’m horned up, I’m ready to rock and roll! Come on, Siggy! Come on!”

Signal’s emote changes: (⇀‸↼‶) “Octavia requires—”

“The things I require,” I interrupt, “are beyond us. Signal, I want to know what this plan is as well. My concerns about the future are only getting worse. We can talk about the rest anytime. And I’d rather not sit through hours of a meeting when I could be repairing my arm.”

“Yeah!” Grimgrave shouts. She starts slapping the table, in time with her words. “Tell us the plan! Tell us the plan! Tell us the plan!”

Bright raises one lazy fist and joins in, thumping the tabletop. Half a dozen zoogs start stamping and stomping, the wave spreading outward. I raise my prosthetic heel and clack it against the floor, but we let Grimmy do the shouting.

“Plan! Plan! Plan! Plan!”

ヽ༼ ಠ益ಠ ༽ﾉ

“Oh for crying out fucking loud!” Signal shouts. “Fine! Have it your way, we’ll skip to the end. But don’t any of you three dare come crying to me if you get confused later. For pity’s sake, you’re all as bad as each other. Octavia, I expected better of you. Geegee’s a bad influence.”

“Yaaaaaay!” Grimgrave punches the air. “Love you too, Siggy!” She blows air-kisses. “Mwah, mwah!”

“I just want to get back to repairing my arm,” I say. “No offence meant.”

Signal lets out a crackly noise, some kind of grumble. “Alright. Fine. Now, pay attention.”

The central screen on the skeleton’s chest flickers black. The bullet-pointed agenda vanishes, replaced by a high-quality satellite picture — an irregular lump of round-ish island surrounded by deep blue sea. Mottled dark, brown and rocky, patches of green spreading like hardy mould. In the east centre of the island a series of grey rectangles have been stamped across the landscape, wired together by ribbons of road.

“This is the Isle of Rum,” Signal says. “In the Inner Hebrides. I’m not being uncharitable when I doubt you three have ever heard of it.”

Nerys rasps, “I have.”

“To be expected,” Signal says. “Thank you, Nerys.”

The satellite image flickers out, replaced by a closer shot of the structures.

Asphalt lakes, squat blocky buildings in dark concrete, concentric squares and rectangles of razor-wire and high walls and armoured checkpoints. Bunkers bristle with anti-aircraft equipment and protected radar domes.

“This,” Signal explains. “Is an I&O facility, believe it or not.”

“Bit much for one of those,” Bright mutters, her eyes a focused squint.

“Yeah, shit,” Grimgrave says. “What the fuck? That’s a lot for a prison, ain’t it? Fucking missiles and shit? Never heard of an I&O up there. Have I?”

“You wouldn’t have, it’s secret,” Signal says. “This is I&O Facility Seventeen. They don’t give it a name, just as extra precaution. That’s why it’s built on an island. Harder to escape.”

Bright sits up, draws a deep breath, blinks hard. “This is more than just an I&O breakout job, right?”

“Correct,” Signal says. “I&O Seventeen is some kind of research site. They’ve got Dream Institute people working in there. Only three hundred inmates, but each one is contained inside a specialised cell. Leading theories are they’ve got mature Dreamers imprisoned, or perhaps Dreamers who they feel they can use somehow, ones Dream Control didn’t execute. We know for a fact they’re performing experiments on the inmates, we’ve got images and footage smuggled out, but it’s doubtful that’ll cause much reaction. These are Dreamers, after all, or close to it. Hard to make the public care.”

“We?” I echo. “Who is we? Theories from who?”

“The Opposition,” Signal says. “They’ve been working this place for a while. They’ve got about half a dozen moles on the inside, and two of the facility directors compromised, one with blackmail, the other with a member of his family held hostage.”

“Hostage? The Opposition do that? You do that? We do that?”

Bright growls, deep down in her throat, a little taste of the dragon beneath her surface. “Better than they deserve,” she says. “Whole place should be burned to the ground. Signal, tell me we’re gonna burn it.”

“Not right away,” Signal says. The satellite image fills with arrows and notes and angles of movement. “The Opposition are going to hit I&O Facility Seventeen three months from today, on November 21st. They still have people and equipment to get into place. This is the biggest operation they’ve ever planned, and they intend it as their declaration of war. No more passive resistance, not after we lot revealed ourselves to the world. They’re going to crack that place open to free the inmates, and then deal with the people responsible. Probably field executions. They think they can get in and out in under four hours, and they’ve got ways to disrupt the response.”

My stomach goes cold. Field executions?

“They want us to deal with the Dreamers,” Bright drawls. “In case any of them bite.”

“Not quite,” Signal says. “The Opposition’s plan is solid, I helped with the details. They’re confident they can pull this off before the government responds. You are right, they need us on hand to deal with any Dreamers who might be … well, you know, complicated, you know what I mean. But they need us for something else first, otherwise none of this can go ahead.”

The picture shifts again — a grainy image of concrete and metal under fluorescent lights, heavy shadows in the background, cramped quarters, buttons and switches and glowing panels deep in the belly of some dark and horrible place.

“Before they can launch the raid,” Signal explains. “They need us to disable this, it’s the facility’s failsafe.”

“Eh?” Grimgrave tilts her head one way, then the other. “Fuck is it?”

“This,” Signal says with great care, “is a nuclear warhead.”

A beat of silence; then everybody starts shouting.

Grimgrave with wild laughter, Bright with an incredulous, difficult, effortful frown. Even Nerys, lips peeled and eyes wide, incensed in some obscure Dream-God way. Several dozen zoogs all a-chatter at once. Signal with the volume up, pleading for quiet so she can explain, please, everybody, just shut up, let me explain.

All except me.

Because I realise, with cold disappointment I had never anticipated, that whatever madness we are preparing to commit, there is no we.

A daring raid, an I&O secret research lab, the Opposition unmasked and unleashed, and now a live nuclear weapon to be disarmed or displaced by powers beyond the mundane. But without my transformation, I will not be going, I will not be assisting, I will be worse than useless. My place is here, huddled in lunar exile, hiding from Willow, from Dream Control, from England, from all the horrors of the waking world. My place is to shiver in crippled exhaustion, having crawled only inches beyond the bars of my broken cage.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

A magical meeting for magical girls to come up with magical solutions to magical problems; nuclear bombs count as a kind of magic, right?

There’s a surprisingly large amount of stuff going on in this here chapter, from Octavia settling into Plato Base, to Grimgrave proving she is genuinely just that insufferable even when she’s your friend. Bright is unhappy, her default state, but at least Signal is helping??? For a given value of help.

Anyway! Two more chapters until the end of arc 4. Storms (nuclear firestorms?!) a-brewing on the horizon? Or is Octavia just going to be left home while the real magical girls do all the work? I don’t think she’ll settle for that, no way.

Meanwhile, if you want more Maidens right away, you can always:

Subscribe on Patreon!

Right now my patrons have access to three chapters ahead! For the moment I’m going to try to keep it as three; in the future I hope to push this out to more.

And thank you! Thank you so much for being here and reading my little story, dear readers. It is a delight to know that so many readers are enjoying this ride, with these lunatic girls and their strange scrungly patron. Thank you for all your support; Maidens is for you!

Next chapter, it’s time to discuss the benefits of atomic power.