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To Right What Once Went Wrong
Magical Girl Edie and Emily smite Walta's Nazi Germany
Permalink Mark Unread

There is a bar.

It is a good bar, which provides tasty things and a nifty time-pausing effect.

The tasty things are very tasty. Bar is really good at recommendations.

This is all really weird, but magical girls need to be good at handling weird stuff.

Permalink Mark Unread

Someone comes through the door who does not look to be in the best of shape, physically. Ragged hair, kind of thin and gaunt, ratty clothes. She looks back through her door confusedly (to what appears to be a very very spartan bedroom), then stares at the exploding stars in wonder for a bit.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hi! Welcome to Milliways."

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She subconsciously goes into a sort of ready-to-run posture and does a glance over of them, looking for weapons. They're neither guards nor other workers.

"...Hi. What is Milliways besides should-be-impossible?"

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She observes this stance change!

"Milliways is an interdimensional bar that stops time in universes that have people from them here."

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"Well, as far as I know 'interdimensional' theory, travelling between the things let alone a stable portal ought to be flat impossible. But it's not like impossible things haven't happened before, and here I am."

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"Yeah, this is magic."

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"No such thing, I feel obliged to say. Only the laws of physics and chemistry and our own wits to work with."

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"Huh. That's...probably less crazy than it sounds to me."

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"I mean, the laws of physics can get up to some pretty impressive stuff. But still. What does one do in Milliways?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Depends on a lot of stuff. The Bar sells things from all the universes, and there's the time stop effect..."

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She scowls briefly. "Well. What if you don't have money?"

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"You can run up a tab. Bar is apparently metaphysically obligated to charge for things but not to not extend infinite credit and she doesn't actually care if you pay. There's superstitions that a large tab will make you less likely to find another Milliways door but as far as I can tell no actual evidence for that. Also, the first drink's free."

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"Well I am going to have to take advantage of that because I could really use some caffeine. Hi, I'm Walta." And if I've finally snapped and this is a hallucination it's a pretty good one.

She stays near the wall as she walks over to the bar and starts reading the introduction napkins. The introduction napkins are a little alarming.

"On second thought, let's have some hearty ale instead of some coffee."

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"You can also take advantage of the time-stopping effect and get a room upstairs, or just crash on one of the couches by the fireplace, if you're really tired."

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She gulps the booze impressively fast, but it's a big cup. She only gets a quarter of it before she says, "Rooms? Good news. I'd need to buy or make a fold-up airplane, ballistic shield, and lightning blocker to go back out."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That sounds like a story."

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"Maybe I don't want to tell it quite yet because I'm not sure if... I'm not sure."

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"...Okay. You seem pretty clearly not alright, is there anything that we could do that would be unambiguously helpful whether or not the thing you're not sure of is true?"

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"...Tell me about cool tech you've heard of? Nothing weapony."

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"What year are you from? Your clothes look like you're probably from an Earth, but without the year I'm not sure if I should be saying, like, 'combustion engines' or 'cell phones'."

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"We have combustion engines. We have calculators. We have airplanes and zeppelins. Never heard of cell phones."

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"We actually mostly don't do zeppelins anymore, they're generally considered obsolete. Um, do you have non-cell telephones?

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"They're new and expensive, but a few places do. It's mostly telegraphs."

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"Well, boosting your communications infrastructure by a few decades mostly isn't weaponizeable at all! I don't happen to recall how the various transitions happened but we can borrow books from Bar."

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"That'd be neat. Radio waves? I wonder how the Darwinists do it."

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"Darwinists? And I think it's not actually radio, it involves satellites--hm, might be easier than I thought to weaponize, I don't think you can do satellites without rockets, maybe I should pick something else..."

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"Rockets kind of have a tendency to blow up a lot rather than get where they're meant to go. Darwinists, you know, they use critters for everything instead of mechanisms."

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"Our world doesn't have that."

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"Huh. I always thought it was a bit creepy. But yeah, they use created animals and plants extensively in places like France and Britain."

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"Where're you? Milliways does translation, so I can't even guess based on your language, except that it's either English or something I don't speak."

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"Weimar Republic? Or the German-Austrian Union. Or whatever they're calling it now, I don't exactly get newspapers."

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"...You didn't actually mention the year, what year is it?"

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"Thirty-nine? Yeah, it's March-ish of 1939... My little piece of history is a pile of shit isn't it? Can't say that's unexpected, considering." That giant mug of ale has gotten to her pretty fast. She's not slurring, at least, just obviously a bit warmer.

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"1939--what month, World War II started in September 1939 in our world."

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"It's probably March, I'm going by weather, we don't get newspapers."

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Emily glances at the cuff on her ankle. "The Nazis have been in power for six years--where are you--" she sounds genuinely terrified.

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"I don't know where I am out there. I've been where I am for two and a half years. I know tools and how to use a walker so I got the choice of execution or indenture when, um, when I snuck into a landship bay because I was curious. They said I'll be released after two years. Then they changed it to three... The fold-up plane I mentioned is to get out. The ballistic shield is for bullets. The lightning stopper is for the tesla cannons."

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"I don't think we have Tesla cannons. Or fold-up planes, for that matter."

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"...And the Holocaust didn't actually start until 1942."

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"I think I need some future history right about now please."

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"If you're Jewish, male homosexual, Romani, handicapped, or a political opponent of the Nazis, starting in 1942 in our universe they throw you in a death camp to starve or be worked to death or die in a poison gas chamber or die of typhoid or get shot on a guard's whim.

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"The damn ID cards aren't fucking bad enough already, eh? ...How do I stop it? Help the French win when round two comes swinging?"

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"In our world they surrender next year. I have no idea how Darwinism is likely to affect things.

I'm not actually sure this is as good an idea as it feels right now but you could let us in and we could fix it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You're right that it feels like a good idea. No damn idea if you're strong enough to make an actual difference. Or if you know what to knock over."

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"We should definitely do research first--and you should be aware of our abilities. So, where we're from, magic does exist. If you want to say that magic is just another level of physics, I won't argue, but magic is the name everyone uses for it. There are three kinds of magic: sorcery, artifacts, and magical girls. We're magical girls."

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"How descriptive."

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"Even less so than you'd think! Magical girls aren't even always girls. Magical girls are people who have the ability to transform into an alternate form that can cast spells. Every magical girl has their own set of spells; getting more is highly doable but not always easy. Should I demonstrate?"

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"Probably. Give me an idea of whether the army will squish you flat."

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She places the first two fingers of her right hand against her temple, props the left one on her hip, and exclaims, "Truth and Beauty of a Magical Mind, Activate! Fervor and Will of an Impassioned Soul, Come Forth!" Her body is enveloped in the shimmering lights, she lifts up off the ground, and spins in place while waves of stronger light pass over her body, leaving garbed in her magical girl outfit. The lights vanish, and she drops to the floor in a crouch, before rising to her feet and pointing imperiously at nothing in particular. "In the name of Love and Equity, I arrive to right the wrongs of a distorted heart! The Psychic Maiden, Cerebella is here!"

She looks mostly the same, but her ordinary clothes have been replaced by a pretty, if slightly ridiculous under the circumstances, blue and purple dress that goes down to just above her knees, a pair of long purple gloves with thin blue rods stuck to the backs of the forearms, and blue boots with purple laces, and some sort of circlet thing that curves down so the largest gem is on her forehead.

Permalink Mark Unread

A costume change, neat. She awaits a display of actual power.

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"If you want to see the serious firepower we should go out to the backyard so we don't damage anything in here." She nods to the door and starts heading towards it.

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She follows, stumbling a bit on the way up. "I am probably more worried about what the other side's serious firepower can do to you. They're cooking up some really nasty stuff from what I overhear."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The other side isn't one of the Darwinist nations you mentioned, right? So their stuff would be mostly metal?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes, most Clanker tech will rely on metal in one way or another."

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"My magical girl name is Iron Maiden Magnetar."

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"So you have magnetism 'magic'. Maybe it can crush walker-legs, bend gun barrels, and crumple tesla coils from a distance? Good stuff, unless they ambush you."

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"It gives sensory feedback!"

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"Hm, what kind of range? The big tesla cannons have ranges measured in kilometers, and the big slug-throwers get tens of kilometers."

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"...I have a really good reaction time, so I'm less worried about the slug-throwers...maybe I should have a faraday cage?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Faraday cage is a good start but it'd have to be a big one to shield you from the plasma flash... Ferric chaff in the air would help there but still it's better to not be shot at probably."

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"I think I need to learn more things about these weapons."

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"Ironically enough you are talking to exactly the right person for that. They had me build tesla cannons for eight months. If it's any defense I didn't point out any of the obvious flaws I saw."

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"Excellent."

Pause.

"How badly would you say you want this to work?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, a lot. Revenge and justice and saving lives in one tidy package. Not sure if you can put numbers on it or anything, hahaHAHA..." She wavers. "I think the lack of sleep is gaining on me."

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"I ask because the way one becomes a magical girl in my universe is basically 'want power for altruistic reasons really hard and hope whatever it is that hands the powers out notices.' Wanna step through our door for a bit, give it a shot?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It sounds kind of permanent."

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"I mean, it is, but it's also possible to just never transform and live exactly as though you had never become one--your choice, it just seems like it might help. For that matter, we should probably fetch more people from our world to help, it probably wouldn't even be difficult to get volunteers."

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"Then I will totally grasp for altruistic power."

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"Okay. I'll hold the door, you can step through and focus on the task at hand and Edie can round up some help."

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"Let's do this! Even if I can't become a magical girl I can help dismantle the evil government anyway."

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"Definitely."

She opens the door.

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Edie darts through and starts making phone calls.

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She steps through and closes her eyes and thinks about all the bad things the Nazis have already done, and how they keep getting worse. How other histories say 'worse' is an understatement. How she personally has suffered and seen people suffer under the evils of a sadistic, racist, uncaring government.

How she is going to do her damnedest to stop it once and for all. If she has to do it without power. If she gets to do it with power. If she dies trying. Maybe the her from two years ago wouldn't have been able to muster this kind of determination... But now, she knows almost any price will be worth it to turn the tide on evil tyrants.

Permalink Mark Unread

To begin with, it's less like something happening and more like the moment when the lines on a blueprint click together to form a coherent whole in one's head.

She is surrounded by a sphere of cogs, each one whirring along with its neighbor in perfect harmony, to perform some grand ineffable task.

She sees herself, dismantling a Tesla cannon before it can fire.

She sees the tools of horror smelted, leaving their despotic wielders helpless to inflict harm upon the innocent.

She sees toxic or tyrannic systems, in Germany and elsewhere, interrupted, disrupted, destroyed.

She is offered a choice.

She can have this power. Will she?

Permalink Mark Unread

Yes. She will.

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Power floods through her, filling her up like an empty vessel, and it's so obvious how to use it--

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So the dramatic intro is part of it. She puts one foot forward and points at nothing in particular... "Grand Design converging on a sacred task! The gears of the universe spin freely. I will arrange them to bring about perfect justice!"

She looks toward the ground and crosses her arms to her shoulders as shining brass that seems to glow from within flows down her body like rivulets of water, sorting itself into elaborate patterns and dragging a black dress under the metal. A pair of butterfly wings made of the same stuff fold out behind her. "The Clockwork Artist, Engineer of Perfection, is here to render useless the tools of evil!" She reaches out to grab a staff-sized object styled like an elaborate wind-up key, the kind used on old clockwork, that wasn't there a moment ago. 

"...Cool!"

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"Congratulations!"

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"Thanks! It's good that whatever decides who gets magic in your world likes me. And oh, I feel so light on my feet!"

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"What spell didja get?"

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"Gears of Change!"

She stabs the floor, and her turnkey-staff sinks ethereally into it. She turns it. Various glowy-brass pieces seep out of the area, a bit slowly. Springs, cogs, levers. Bits peel off of her costume, too, without diminishing it. They whiz around, attaching to each other and arranging themselves. She makes a little toy car over about thirty seconds. The floor is undamaged. The car zips around, under her control.

"The brass I'm making is not permanent, I think. It's probably faster on anything real, but I didn't want to mess with your stuff. And I had to pay attention, just, not as much as if I was putting it together by hand. I love it."

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"That's really cool."

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"Yeah! I'm gonna use it to build a bunch of little gadgets. Already, lots of ideas."

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"Magical girls tend to get powers that're suited in some way."

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"I always was a tinker, mechanic before- Getting locked up. Agh. I forgot about the whole point for a minute there, I'm not taking this seriously enough."

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"It's fine to take time to decompress, your world's paused until you go back and it'll take time for the backup my sister's calling in to get here."

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"Right, yeah... Does your advanced technology or magical-girl-ness have anything on slow poisoning and malnutrition and built-up stress an' fear besides 'stop getting poisoned more,' 'nutritious grub,' 'take a break in a safe place'? Also... I feel like the turnkey staff can do something else, how reliable are these sort of vague feelings?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Pretty damn reliable. And I can't do much more than 'take a break in a safe place' for stress, unless you also want, like, soothing music recommendations or something, but I've got a healing spell."

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"I would like a healing spell. I definitely have at least two varieties of slow poison. The asbestos usually only makes problems over decades but a panel of insulation got shredded in my face. And the mercury was from a chemical leak. They're... Not great about workplace safety. It's pretty much the exact opposite of what's intended after all."

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"Eugh. Well, Edie's already transformed, and my transformation sequence would interfere heavily with holding the door, and those are both slow poisons, so I'm just gonna call her over when she's done her current phone call."

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"I'll sit at the bar and eat something and try to figure out what the turnkey is trying to tell me. Thanks for everything so far and everything coming up, by the way."

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"My dad's parents were Holocaust survivors."

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"I don't know how to react to that."

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"It's--not that I wouldn't have done this just for your sake, that's what magical girls do, is we help people--but it's not just for your sake. It's for theirs, and anyone like them--and it's for us, too, we're Jewish, if we'd been there--" she cuts off and shakes her head. "It just--feels weird, having you thank us without knowing that."

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"I waaas not really good at social even before I went to prison, um. So try to let me know if I say this weird? I understand better now. It actually feels a lot better that you have a personal reason to help that isn't related to me, or abstractly to helping people. Because I'm going to have a hard time trusting people to be what they look like after my former best friend left me to get caught by the gestapo to keep himself out of jail."

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"You didn't say it weird. I mean, the content is horrifying, but that's not a you thing, it's a your-ex-best-friend thing."

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"I guess... We understand each other a little better now, horray."

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"Normally getting to know people is less depressing."

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"Yeah, I'd hope so... I'm gonna go eat something yummy bar gives me and think about magical-girl-ness which I really should have done more of before I went and got it. But here we are."

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"Here we are. Enjoy your food, Bar does fantastic recommendations."

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She eats. It's delicious, but that and Bar's sympathies only help so much. She plays with magically-produced gyroscopes and springs idly.

"What. A. Day. And it's going to get more exciting before it gets less."

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"Well, time-pausing effect, we don't actually have to do this today."

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"It's a week's worth of planning minimum anyway. Oh, I think I figured out what the turnkey can do. It should be fun. I think I can stop reflexively hitting myself for having fun. You can fly with magnetism, right?"

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"Yeah, although I also have a spell for flying and it's usually easier to use that."

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"I have mechanically themed wings on my costume, and a magic turnkey. I didn't realize it until a minute ago, but putting it on my back and winding it up will make them work. Want to go flying?"

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"That sounds great!"

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"I wonder how fast I can get!"

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"We can find out!"

Edie has finished a round of phone calls and can be called upon to hold the door for a while. Emily transforms, her outfit rather like her sister's but pink where Edie's is blue and golden where Edie's is purple.

"I'll wait to get my wings out 'till we're outside."

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"You guys have all the same theme. Is it 'cause you're sisters?"

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"Sort of! Magical girls do connected 'teams' sometimes--we're on a team together because we're twins, but you don't have to be siblings to be a team."

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"...I'm really curious what kind of research has gone into the whole phenomenon."

They walk outside.

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"There's been, like, observational statistics, but no one can figure out how to do anything more than that, and the phenomenon's only been around a few decades."

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"Maybe I should have... Asked it questions. Unless that would be asking myself questions, if it's reflective or something. Can't rule it out."

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"People have tried asking it questions before. So far no one's reported getting any answers."

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"I will look at the observational statistics. Later. Now, flying." Walta hands Emily the turnkey staff and turns around. "My magic likes the windup theme I guess."

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"It's cool." She winds her.

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The wings contort in unlikely ways, shifting hidden pieces around to look more like bird wings than butterfly ones, and emit clicks.

After a few turns, she flies. "Wheeee!~"

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"Stormwing Flight!" Emily calls. Wings feathered in steel sprout from her back, and she flaps, joining Walta in the air.

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"This is not like using a plane at all! Even less like using a zeppelin!"

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"I know!"

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Wheeee~

She keeps to relatively tame flying, timing down how long the wings keep working. Soon they start clicking back into their original configuration. At least she has time to land.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Want me to wind you up again?"

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"Yeah. Two full rotations this time, I'm timing it."

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She winds it accordingly.

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And Walta flies for about five minutes on two full turns.

She keeps flying until she feels suddenly tired and nauseous, and lands shakily and detransforms. "Ick. So how about that healing spell?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Right."

She pokes Walta in the forehead, and says, "Si Vales Valeo," leaving behind a silver dot. After a moment she shudders, and Walta feels much better.

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"Ohhhh that feels better." She rubs her hands together. "Wow, I'd lost more feeling than I thought I did... You okay?"

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"Yeah, I'm fine. It's sympathetic healing, so I was feeling it for a moment, but it passed quickly."

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"That can't have been fun. I don't even know the full list of what was wrong. Let's keep flying! I could probably fly for hours now!"

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"Okay!"

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So they fly for hours, with intermittent breaks to wind up Walta's wings.

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"I'm starving," Emily says eventually.

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"Then let's go eat and drink, since we've already been merry."

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"I like the way you think!"

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"Why thank you. I like the way your magic works and Milliways and our grand plan and you. Bit early to tell about Edie yet."

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"Fair."

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She stays transformed to walk back in. "Heady feeling, being magic magic magic, eh?"

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"Kinda, yeah. You get used to it some."

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"Where does it keep the stuff? The clothes, my turnkey, your wings, my brass. Does it make them and then delete? Does it have them stored somewhere? If I tear the costume does it come back fixed?"

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"It does come back fixed. It's...not normal stuff, exactly. It's inherently magical, a temporary construct."

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"So many experiments to do when this is all settled."

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"There's been stuff published about it, probably best to read that first."

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"Yep, that's science for you. Read what's already been done, other people did most of the work for you... Speaking of which I still owe you an explanation of. Tesla cannons. But that can wait a bit longer."

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"Yeah."

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"...Guhhh I had to go and ruin the good mood let's go eat something already."

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"Hey, trust me, it's totally reasonable for you to be periodically depressing after what you've been through."

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"Reasonable? Sure. A good thing, no."

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"I suppose. Anyway, yes, food."

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Walta orders ice cream. Chocolate. "I ate not too long ago."

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"Hence deliciousness over quantity. Very sensible."

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"Damn right it's sensible. I'm long overdue on a good dose of deliciousness. Alcohol too, but I already covered that."

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"How old are you?"

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"Twenty one, now."

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"Oh. Huh. You're really lucky, then, new magical girls almost never activate that late."

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"So whatever is handing out reasonably vast power not only prefers women... It prefers teenagers. That sure sounds responsible. Not that there aren't responsible teenagers, but stereotypes exist for reasons."

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"Yeah, it...has an aesthetic."

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"It certainly does. Very dramatic. Like overdone theater plays, sort of."

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"Had they not invented movies in 1939?"

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"Oh, I never much liked those. I keep getting distracted by the bad special effects. 'Planes don't work that way' and such. You can see the wires half the time."

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"They get better, I promise."

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"I'll have to see one. Recommend me something, you or Bar?"

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"Pick a genre?"

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"If we have the same genres... An opera?"

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"...Opera is a genre, but if they make opera movies I haven't seen any and you'll have to go to Bar for your recommendation."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Probably different genres. What do you think, Bar?"

Bar recommends The Princess Bride as a solid introduction to film that she will probably enjoy, and suggests she can watch something animated after that if she's interested.

"If you say so. Can I borrow a tech thing to see it on? Promise not to disassemble it."

She can.

"Thanks!"

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"Oh, that's a good one."

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"Bar makes good recommendations, apparently."

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"She does!"

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"I have an itch to do some kind of experiment too though. I think I'll go sit on that couch and set a magic gyroscope up to see if it precesses while I watch."

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"Sounds good."

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"Don't be afraid to interrupt me if either of you have something to say."

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"Okay."

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She watches the movie. It's funny, and dramatic, and overall a good movie.

She glances toward the bar once in a while. A few people come through and go from the upstairs rooms. Emily and Edie are still here.

She keeps having moments of panic that she's not working, that that tall man is a guard with a gun, trying to find her checklist, ready to stammer excuses - and then she blinks. And nobody's even looking at her... It's nice to disappear into the corner.

When the movie ends she nods decisively, observes that the gyroscope is still upright, stretches and goes to find Edie or Emily, whoever's more convenient.

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Edie is more convenient at the moment!

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"Hello again. I never did get that display of firepower, did I? But, I think it's time to start planning this thing. I'm decompressed enough for now."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Can it wait just a little bit? The first of the reinforcements I called should be here in a few minutes."

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"I think a solid day of planning minimum is called for and I don't know if everyone you called up will be that patient... But yeah, talking about it can wait, I'll start on a list of places that probably need to be blown up and people that need to find themselves without an office."

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"Anyone who wants to skip out can go stand on the other side of a closed door for a while," she shrugs. "That's a good idea."

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"And I'm not sure that the Nazis have as tight a hold as they do by this time in your version of history... Enough bad publicity, enough power players who find themselves in Greece or interdimensional jail or whatever, maybe we can get it to just fold. The Social Democrats and the KPD will be really eager to call a bunch of referendums and install a new senate if the Gestapo's gone."

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"I am very much in favor of getting rid of the Gestapo."

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"Yeah. Gestapo leaders and most if not all of the members. Hitler, Ribbentrop, Göring, Hindenburg... More than one list probably. Red, orange, yellow, in decreasing order of killing-is-acceptable. I'll trawl through newspapers to make sure everyone on my red list really definitely deserves it. Preferably for stuff they've already done in my world. After all we'd not be much better if we burn the entire Nazi party to the ground. But more than one of them will make the Red List."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It is a trope in my world's fiction that if you end up with a time machine the thing to do is kill Hitler."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You'll need Göring and Ribbentrop too. Probably Hess. I'll just get started on that list..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, most people who do the time machine cliche aren't exactly historians."

Permalink Mark Unread

"A real time machine would have severe implications about the speed of light. That's why it's thought provoking fiction eh? Bar, you can show me the general assembly's minutes, right?"

She starts reading, comparing things to her list.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Most things that have time machines don't actually pay any attention to the implications," she says, rolling her eyes.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Good to know silly unrealistic stories still exist. They must be a constant of the multiverse."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Or at least humanity."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Aliens! There's aliens?! That must be so cool."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, not in my world, but the multiverse is a big place."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Right, right. Sorry I yelled there."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's fine."

Permalink Mark Unread

So she nods and goes quiet and works on that list.

Permalink Mark Unread

A few minutes later a pretty blonde woman in what's probably a magical girl outfit walks in.

Permalink Mark Unread

She doesn't notice. Too busy reading history and newspapers both. Though she's still activated - and in fact has some sort of brass gadget out that she presses buttons or spins cogs on occasionally.

Permalink Mark Unread

The presumed magical girl considers her for a moment before walking over to the bar and soliciting her free beverage.

Permalink Mark Unread

A long list of names is in front of her. Adolf Hitler is at the top. They get tallies as she reads things. Evil points?

"-Hello. Are you one of Edie's volunteers?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I am! Hello! Glorious Anodyne Aria, at your service, or Hero Bianchi if you prefer."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Walta Sharnhorst. Clockwork Artist, Engineer of Perfection... Not sure which half of that I like better yet."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Which half of the magical girl monicker, or between the monicker and your birth name?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Which half of the moniker. I like my birth name, even if it's a bit tainted by sharing part of it with a couple of fascist battleships."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, I like the 'artist' part better, but that's just me."

Permalink Mark Unread

Her little brass device click-click-clicks to a halt. "Ah. There we go. A6... G2S. Not quite. Let's try..." She adds a new ring to it and sets it spinning again.

"Anyway, I don't know who all is coming to help or how thoroughly we can plan this from in here but I'm making good progress on a list of who and what exactly needs to go down to kick out the Nazis for good."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Very important task, that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yep. That's why I'm getting all bothered about it. Milliways handed me a way to stop the Holocaust from ever happening, maybe stop a repeat performance of the Great War... Damn right I'll try."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I like you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Probably for the best if we're going to fight Nazis together. I'm going to be having mood swings and flashbacks and stuff, possibly, just, right, nevermind. What's your theme? Anodyne - electricity, energy?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sound and light."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't have a good feel for magical girls' power levels yet, I think my own is a bit odd... Edie and Emily let me through the door and I thought about Nazis for two seconds and activated, is why, I'm very new to it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They're the kind of people who do that. Well, either you're very exceptional on your own merits or the thing that hands out powers liked the idea of sending extradimensional girls to fight Nazis."

Permalink Mark Unread

"My money is on the second thing. I'm clever with clockwork, hence the name I guess, and just graduated the school of hard knocks and am ready to teach, but I'm not so vain I think your world's source of magic powers ought to consider me a statistical anomaly."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Congratulations regardless, your transformation is lovely."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thanks! Shining brass is a nice aesthetic, I do like what I got. The wings actually work if I use the turnkey on them, it's great."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, are those not a spell?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They're part of the costume. I just activated, only have the one. Gears of Change. It's a gadgeteerring spell."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Lovely. In any case, I don't think I've ever met anyone with wings that were categorically nonfunctional."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hm. I still have to read those magical girl statistics papers after all this. And rather relevantly, what is your opinion on lethal force against Nazis?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Define 'Nazi'."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Different levels. I'm making a red list, orange list, and yellow list. Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, Ribbentrop, Gestapo members, and the most despicable of the top military officers are on the red list. The orange list is more permissive. The yellow list is basically 'everyone likely to oppose us who probably hasn't done despicable things personally.' Grunt guards, interns, that sort of person."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm more comfortable killing grunt guards than interns if it comes down to it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I hear you. I'm aiming for as little overall violence as possible... I wouldn't mind being declared a war criminal at the end if it stops things from going down the tube, but less blood is better as long as the Nazis are still gone... You know what might work really well? Video cameras pointed at the work camps and then flown to the Brits. The fact that 1939's movie special effects are kind of terrible works in our favor - it'd be very hard for the Nazis to convince anyone the footage is fake."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The only disadvantage I can see is that the camps have to continue existing long enough to get footage."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's '39. The Holocaust proper hasn't started yet - it's just a few scattered work camps for prisoners, even if some of them are on trumped up charges. A cleaner transition might be worth leaving them in place for a day. I'm not sure. These kinds of decisions make me feel sick to my stomach..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh. That's--good. That it hasn't started yet, not that you're feeling sick."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, I've gotten too close to some moral quandaries to deal with them from an academic distance anymore. And time's paused in here, I checked, or I'd be giving you all a rush lecture on how to tell when a tesla cannon is trying to fry you and pushing for us to go go go."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Fair."

Permalink Mark Unread

Her thing clicks to a halt again. She checks it. "...Five matches, all lined up. Sweet. Okay so as soon as we find today's codes and a radio I can listen to military communications."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What is that thing?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...Codebreaker? I don't know how much you know about cryptography so I don't want to confuse or or sound condescending, but... It's basically a codebreaker, yeah."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I know nothing about cryptography," she admits.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I did not invent this, I cribbed some notes from 1951's crypto community. But it'll work."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Cool. Is it an Enigma machine? I think that was the thing Alan Turing did to crack the Nazis' codes."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The Enigma machine is the Nazis' encoder-decoder, it's what I need to break. I'm not sure this thing has a fancy name."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We could look it up!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"If you like? I don't think the nane is too important if I understand how it works and know it's working right."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, names matter to me," she says, "but I'm not sure the extent to which they matter to me is universal. Also there's the fact that the name I'm thinking of, if it exists, is for the version of the Enigma-cracker that Alan Turing invented, and Alan Turing is relevant to my interests for other reasons."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Huh. Bar, can I see those conference papers again?"

 

Read read read.

 

"Apparently this entire class of devices were called Turing machines until about 1960. The one I borrowed the most from for this was a Grainger-Sharp Model Three."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Turing machines are a thing I've heard of! Turing's a big name in the computer science community or something. The Turing Test is supposed to be a measure of how human-like an AI is? Or something? And he was gay, hence the relevant to my interests, just being a Big Computer Name is not relevant to my interests, I'm terrible at doing anything with machines other than using them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I've had about six hours of access to all this future-to-me tech and spent four and a half of those decompressing. An AI is...? Also, people being gay is relevant to your interests?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, I'm gay," she says, "so historical people who accomplished important things is relevant to my interest. Also pretty girls but that's a different kind of interest. An AI is a hypothetical person whose brain runs on a computer instead of a brain; the word is also used to refer to programs that aren't people but do...other things...I don't know enough about computers to define it well enough."

Permalink Mark Unread

She goes kind of motionless for a moment when Hero announces that. Not disgusted or anything - almost fearful? "I, uh, see. I don't know enough about computers either, I'll be sure to fix that later."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Luck to you on that. You alright?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...I grew up in an environment where being gay or expressing much of anything other than disgust for people who are or even associating with people who do the same makes you a target for everything from scorn to trumped up treason charges. I flinched. Sorry."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's fine. I thought that was only male homosexuals, and lesbians were just generally held to not exist by the Nazis, but then that was in a world with no Darwinist critters or Tesla cannons."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, lesbians catch a lot less of it but not none of it? Mostly we- They're said to be lazy women who are pretending because 'they don't want to do housework and raise children'."

Permalink Mark Unread

Snort.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Still not a good thing to be open about back in Berlin around now."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's sort of irritating--if people are going to hate me I'd rather they have intelligent reasons for it--but I'll remember that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah."

......That is a pretty conflicted face. (Because that is a pretty face and a bubbly and charming personality and she has shut down any thought about that sort of thing for years but had a slip of the tongue just now and did she catch it gaaah.)

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do you want me to leave you alone to plan and decompress? If being around someone who's open about it is stressful..."

Permalink Mark Unread

That's a yes. "Um. Um. I've barely acknowledged it to myself and - old social anxieties are coming up is all. You're pretty. I am trying not to think about that. I know there are signals, there are rules, if you get them wrong people will care and I frequently mess those sort of things up and the social butterflies have this really annoying smug cutesy disdain for the - the - grubby mechanic and I compensate by either rambling or explaining my thoughts a lot, except being flustered also makes me talk a lot, and this is kind of a formula to have me rant for hours if I let it get out of hand and I'm already ranting aren't I?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Little bit. And I like to think I'm not a social butterfly, in that way. I--sound dismissive of engineering and machines, sometimes, because I can't do a thing with them and I'm awfully blase about it, but you have a skill that I don't, and you're good at it, and I respect that. What you do is important.

And I've never been much of a one for rules."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah I haven't been getting any 'smug disdain social butterfly' off you and I do fine if I'm not thinking about it, usually, but now I am thinking about it and wondering how to make it so nobody with bad social opinions can hurt me which is probably the wrong response. Good to hear."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I wish this went without saying but I won't tell a soul without your permission."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, you can maybe... Most of that was flinch and then chain reaction of worry? The fact that I slipped and said something about it had me shivering. Edie and Emily can know if they'll not blab either, and it becomes relevant somehow."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...Yeah, I can see that. I won't tell them without reason, but I can't imagine they would."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And now I am done talking about this. I should explain tesla cannons. They're probably the biggest threat we don't have a good answer for yet."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes, do tell me about Tesla cannons."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Tesla didn't actually invent them he made the theory then went crazy and wandered around Siberia for years and died but - this isn't relevant. Tesla cannons hit their target with two things... A lightning bolt, then a ball of plasma that follows the lightning's path. It's scarily effective. There's this... Sort of leading mechanism, it involves ions, but it makes the lightning want to follow a certain path? And then the plasma follows the lightning's path, mostly? Oh, they're," wince, "Dangerous to be near, being unshielded near one when it shoots will electrocute you. Destroying one that's not powered down gets you electric arcing and maybe an explosion. Am I explaining this out of order?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't think so."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...What you really need is the instinct of when one's about to go off, where it'll probably go, and how much damage it'll do, I really can't think of a way to put that into words."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Edie has a telepathy spell that does nonverbal."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Huh! Well, define 'telepathy'?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Purely communicative, it doesn't let her just read your mind or anything."

Permalink Mark Unread

"She probably has one that does that given her moniker, though. But purely communicative I can do. D'you know where she is?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, she does, but it's really obvious. Conjures a full-length mirror. I think she went outside."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think I'll go find her. Be back soon."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Of course."

Permalink Mark Unread

She walks outside and tries to locate Edie. Those bright outfits probably won't be hard to pick out.

Permalink Mark Unread

They are not!

Permalink Mark Unread

If they're flying, she shouts up a greeting. If not, she walks in that direction.

Permalink Mark Unread

They are standing by the lake and talking.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hello! Edie! I started talking about Tesla cannons and realized what you really need to know is not very... Word-able. And Hero said you can do telepathy."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can!"

Permalink Mark Unread

She explains Tesla cannons again, fast version. Pilot beam, lightning strike, plasma bomb. Dangerous to be near when firing or being destroyed. "...And all the subtle things like judging exactly how much damage it'll do, or how to pick one out, and so on... That's probably better done with telepathy."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Aha. Yeah, I can do that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So... How does it work?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Mm--there's a sort of connection, when I first cast the spell, sort of like casting a net, and then there's a sort of--bridge--between our minds, and if you focus on it you can send thoughts across, and I can connect to more people while the spell's active but I need to designate an initial target and if for some reason I can't connect to them the spell just fails."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sounds super handy for coordination."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yep. Way more information density than almost anything else."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Exactly what we need to teach you the fine points of Tesla Cannons, at least as much as I know them myself."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Telepathy is the best."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's a bit odd to me but a tool is a tool. Let's do it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

Edie incants the spell.

The telepathy-trigger is a lot like the triggers for her transformation or spells, in a way, perfectly unobtrusive until she goes looking for it and then completely obvious, but it involves only mental action, no physical side effects like casting one's own spell.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Testing"/nervous/This is strange

Permalink Mark Unread

Coming through perfectly clearly/I wonder why so many people find it strange/most natural thing in the world to me/well, it'd be an odd world if we were all alike.

Permalink Mark Unread

Odd, also bad, yes/Like I said, this is a handy shortcut to me not much more/This is a good example of a Tesla Cannon, you can tell it's one because of this and this...

Permalink Mark Unread

Edie pays careful attention to the Tesla Cannon construction.

Permalink Mark Unread

And the physics of it, translated much more elegantly than words could manage - and the overall style of operation, how you can tell when one is about to fire (the subtle prickling) how machines strained for power will take much longer to charge and recharge the things - unless Edie can pluck an entire field of intuition out of her head a bunch of examples of Tesla Cannons firing and where the shots go and where they might have gone instead (they're a bit random) -

Permalink Mark Unread

Edie cannot do this unless Walta has enough self-knowledge to pick it out of her own head!

It's alright if I forward this stuff, right? she asks at one point.

Permalink Mark Unread

Probably don't know myself that well/Also my psyche is a mess lately (fear/panic/watch everyone for threats/warm fuzzies at having something close enough to friends again)/Anything that it doesn't seem like I leaked, yes, you can forward.

Permalink Mark Unread

She nods.

They can get through a lot of this pretty quickly, this way. Also they don't have to do the whole thing all at once.

Permalink Mark Unread

Walker operations and typical weak points. Her world's national political situation, in reasonable detail. How the blacksite she was work-camp-interned at will probably never do anything useful but they should maybe destroy it anyway (it's supposed to be a teleporter). Other dangerous things the Nazis should no longer have: Various military hardware and the nuclear research facility up by Hamburg top the list.

And then, yeah, let's take a break.

Permalink Mark Unread

She finishes funneling her sister all the relevant information and they acquire relevant books from bar and start discussing whether it's worth trying to preserve anything to metaphorically beat into plowshares.

Permalink Mark Unread

 

She comes back fron her break eventually and opines that: Probably yes. The ships and some of the lighter walkers, stripped of guns, could be used for various things. Some parts of Tesla Cannons could be converted into power infrastructure. Et cetera. Industry in general is finally taking off again and trying not to destroy too much capital would be ideal. Then again there is a risk reward thing - doing too little damage to the Nazis would be bad.

(She kind of hates turning potentially-lost-or-saved lives into numbers like this, even though it's probably smart to, that leaks through when she asks to telepathize some fine detail for a moment.)

Permalink Mark Unread

Edie reinitializes the connection briefly to accept the detail.

They're drawing up best-case lists of known spells that people they know or have heard of have; if they could get enough magic on board to save everyone that would be fantastic but they're not at all sure that's feasible.

Permalink Mark Unread

Planning a coup takes a while, doesn't it? Walta keeps track of the conclusions they make on a big bulletin board thing.

Permalink Mark Unread

Well there's also the issue of a lot of the more prominent people that they don't have as strong connections to being liable to not believe them and therefore not show up at all--but with enough time they can plausibly produce sufficient evidence.

Permalink Mark Unread

...If newspaper articles from the (admittedly unlikely) interdimensional bar don't work. Walta's memories relayed by Edie might be an option.

Permalink Mark Unread

Newspaper articles are the kind of thing plausibly faked. She was thinking more along the lines of specs for or actual instances of technology from Walta's world that would have been non-trivial to create and better used by almost any metric on other things than trying to fool someone into this.

Permalink Mark Unread

"...I can't get my hands on any Darwinist critters easily. A stormwalker or landship would fit that bill nicely, I don't think you have walking tanks in your world? Not exactly the kind of thing I can buy from Bar. Maybe a little one, minus guns. I could steal a few pieces of tech from the camp but that unpauses time out there and probably warns everyone."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is there anything that's made completely of metal?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't really think so? Maybe mechanical calculators, but you have those too. Everything impressive enough to be proof has some fittings and stuff. I could probably install those, though, if I choose something mostly made of metal. You thinking that Emily can make one?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"If you can draw up plans or something, yeah."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hmm... Yeah, I can probably do that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sounds like a plan, then. What're you planning to do about fittings?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Pick something that needs as few as possible, put them on my tab from Bar. Hm... Would a walking scout thing, maybe ten feet tall, with a mount point for a machine gun and rockets be convincing?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe. I think we could probably build something that fulfilled that description if we really wanted to, do you know if plans for a civilian thing that operates off the same principles would be available through Bar?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Definitely. I imagined you wanted military hardware, though, to help with the proof thing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Right, the civilian model is to establish that these run on principles that we don't have and would have a hard time inventing before asking you to do the work of drawing up plans for the military one."

Permalink Mark Unread

Walta asks Bar for the schematics published in a certain scientific journal on control mechanism theory.

They operate on physical principles, sure. Engines provide the power. But the methods used for balancing it, to compensate for oversteering, to control the things so elegantly - that's all new. Maybe some experimental robots running on computers could do it too, but these don't use any computers at all. Essentially just fancy clockwork.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ooh, wow, yeah, this kind of thing'll do great."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Nice! We drew a lot of inspiration from the Darwinists to hear it told, how animals move, but there's lots of tricksy cleverness in here either way."

Permalink Mark Unread

"People in my world draw a lot of mechanical inspiration from animals too but we don't have Darwinists to copy from."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I suppose we possibly had better groundwork, more detailed study of animal movement? Hm."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think a lot of the things we do are more efficient...it takes a lot more motive force to take a step, especially with metal legs, than to turn a wheel."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, the biggest reason to use walkers is their adaptability and flexibility. Trains, trams, passenger craft - none of those walk. Though a lot of effort goes in to making the walk more efficient too."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What exactly do you mean by passenger craft?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Airships, landships, and seaships that are meant for civilian use only. Except landships don't work at all without legs of some kind."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What are your roads like?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They're... Roads? I'm not sure what you mean by that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"In our world people mostly get around on land in wheeled vehicles. Are your roads not in good enough condition for wheels to be practical?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Wheels work. Quite well in some cases, especially going from town to town. Roads are usually a lot slower than taking a train or ship though. And owning a private car is an upper-class thing. Or, like, a tractor if you're a farmer."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They get less expensive over time. It's more common than not to own one, by our time. Are landships less expensive?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Buying a landship ticket every day, or just train tickets, to go to work and using the trams to do shopping and such is cheaper and much less hassle than owning a car or a fast walker of your own for most folks."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We have buses," she muses. "That's...like those."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, buses too. Roads good enough for those to be comfy are kind of few and far-between though."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Using legs instead of wheels is just really puzzling on an economic level."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...Maybe our roads really are worse, and legs are cheaper on a national level if we don't have to build and maintain them? I am not an economics student."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe. Anyway, that's probably a question for after we deal with the Nazis."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. But I'd be a bit surprised if your world doesn't have anything that seems economically absurd to me."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, probably. Being an insider I can't immediately guess what, mind..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"We'll see sooner or later."

Back to planning, then?

Permalink Mark Unread

Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.

Permalink Mark Unread

She has, in fact, planned criminal enterprises before. Relatively harmless ones, like sneaking food around for people at night to avoid rationing and tariffs, she assures them. The massive scale of planning a coup... Shouldn't be that different. But what she hasn't done is plan with magic on her side. How reliable is this spell? How carefully will that person follow her instructions? How flashy and attention-getting is that other spell? And so on.

 

Does anyone have outright teleportation? And ability to track a person she knows? There's someone relatively trustworthy she knows who might be good at staging a popular coup, and moreover cleaning up afterwards...

Permalink Mark Unread

Teleportation: totally a thing! Tracking: probably a thing, but not something they can think of anyone who has it off the top of their heads.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Elyse Varcham. I can probably find her anyway, by checking a few old haunts... She's a communist, though not a politically loud one just the kind that donates most of her family's fortune to the poor over the years. She'll know the kind of people who can take advantage of Nazis disappearing for a couple days and lots of damning evidence of their crimes. And she's a good soul, I really do think that."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"Communists were one of the kinds of people who got sent to the death camps."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes, but... Those haven't started in earnest yet, and I asked bar for stuff she published earlier and there's an editorial from a month ago. I think she's still okay for now."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, just...having feelings."

Permalink Mark Unread

"My feelings are... Yeah, but we are going to make it not have happened in at least one world. If that makes any grammatical sense."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Completely."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So... Worth trying to bring her in on the plan?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes but maybe not this minute, since letting time pass in your world is costly."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What she thinks is best will probably change what the final plan looks like, but we can definitely do a lot more organizing first, maybe have a plan that doesn't need her ready in case something happens."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And get a teleporter first so fetching her will have a lower opportunity cost."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. I... Might want to take a break from planning and decompress a little more but I'll be back soon enough."

 

She does, and is. Planning continues.