Girl and Machine

How was this possible?

As the one who actually stuck her sword into Two’s body and saw her dying with my own eyes, the possibility of her still being alive was nonexistent.

However, seeing her wooden expression—a plastic-looking smile—and general demeanor, I recalled an important fact and felt like an idiot. Even Mana reached the conclusion before me.

“…It’s one of Two’s dolls!”

Right, her dolls. Or to use a term much more familiar to me, robots. It had been in Shellkeep, which we’d left yesterday, that Two had sent her army of mechanical clones on a rampage.

The fact it came here to find us was very bad news indeed, but for now I knew what I had to do—the only thing I could do.

Fight.

I lunged with my sword.

Having fought several of these before, I knew they weren’t really difficult opponents. At least not for someone like me. They were surprisingly agile and lethal for creatures not made of flesh and blood, but that was it.

“Give up!” called the robot Two. “Surrender to Master Three! That is your fate!”

She swung her knives and spun as if dancing, but I parried her blades, dodged her swipes and gave some swipes of my own. Sparks appeared from where I slashed at her hand, making her drop the weapon, and then I just stabbed through her stomach.

Like I thought, it wasn’t a difficult fight. Probably her only real advantage was that she was a robot, but they all acted the same, and were thus predictable.

Why did it feel like in a sense I was fighting myself?

Girl and machine were nothing alike.

And yet, one could say that we were both created for a purpose. Perhaps because of that I felt a certain affinity to her.

“Haha… Master Three will avenge me,” said the robot, its voice distorted. As I pulled out the sword, the remaining knife fell from the woman’s hand, her body spasmed, she was covered by sparks all over, and then collapsed. Some black liquid that might be oil oozed out of her in puddles.

“Let’s keep moving,” I told Mana and started a brisk walk, not even basking in the glow of my victory.

After all, it was obvious that if one came here and somehow found us, others might be scouting the area, too.

With that being said, I started paying more attention to my surroundings and opting to move under trees and such places that would provide cover. Now that I knew our enemies would come from the skies, it made things a bit trickier.

“Two… is she really dead?” muttered Mana as she hurried up to follow me.

“…I killed her,” I noted, cringing slightly at the memory as well as heating up.

Technically it was C who’d dealt the final blow… but she couldn’t have lived for long with those injuries I inflicted on her.

The first person I ever killed. It wasn’t something pleasant to recall at all.

Mana looked at me after that revelation. “So it was you… Ah, not like I’m blaming you or anything. She used to be… better.”

I said nothing. I couldn’t imagine Two as anything other than a sadistic killer, but apparently Mana had some shared history with her.

There was something that bothered me all this time, though.

“Those… dolls, as you called them,” I said. “How did Two make them?”

“…Oh, those. That was back when the four of us went on dimensional adventures… before I noticed Three’s true nature.” I did not look at Mana—I was too focused on walking stealthily through these woods, but I listened with rapt attention. “We’ve been to a few worlds. Only because Three wanted to conquer them, which I found out later… but never mind that. One of those was a world with strange devices that operated on a different format than magic, just like those dolls. Two immediately took a liking to them, and imported many of them here.”

Meaning, they found another parallel world that was ruled by technology instead of magic—that made sense. Though if the way these actually worked was any indication, it was probably a case of “any sufficiently advanced technology” and all that jazz.

“Hah… did she also drink the potion?” I found myself wondering further.

“Oh, yes. Three, Two and Half all did. There’s an issue of magical affinity, though, so Two aged more than me, while Half aged a lot more.”

“…Half?”

“Um, that’s the nickname he had before Three left and he became the Emperor in his stead.”

Oh, right. I think Three did mention something like that, but I wanted to forget that horrible man. Anyway, this explained why the emperor was such an old fart while Two was a mature woman.

“…And Three?”

“He also had a great affinity, but by the time he drank the potion he was already mature. I only knew him as an adult—otherwise I might have recognized him.”

Imagining C as an adult evil overlord was not something I wanted to spend any time on, so I neglected from asking further questions.

“Wait, I just remembered there was something I—mmf!”

Besides, I noticed a loud sound coming nearby, so I immediately put a hand to Mana’s mouth and held her against a nearby tree. As expected, something spewing smoke and flames passed somewhere above us.

I felt my heartrate quicken as I waited for the noise to pass, and waited even another minute once things quietened down just to be sure.

Noticing that I kept holding my hand over the girl’s mouth all this time, I hurriedly removed it. She looked more afraid than annoyed right now, however.

“Are they gone?” she whispered.

“Probably,” I said and continued walking.

This situation was definitely not ideal in the least. Did Three actually send out an entire army of Two clones to go after us?

Never mind it being dangerous for us, if it caused us to go even slower, we’d never get anywhere. It would give that piece of shit more time to send people (or other robots) after us, too.

At this rate, perhaps it was better to skip up on my plan and head straight to the goal. But first I wanted to get out of this forest alive and unscathed for that.

The following hours were tense, and we nearly got lost as well; I risked climbing on a tree to scout the area and realign ourselves, luckily not running into any other robots.

By the time night fell we managed to evade about two more of the flying women before making our camp. I made the call to avoid lighting a fire—I wouldn’t bet on these robots not searching for us at night as well, though for all I knew they had night vision anyway. I barely slept that night for similar reasons, too.

Looking at the exhausted Mana sleeping, I kept being reminded of myself.

—I had to make sure I was doing the right thing, not just projecting my younger self on her. She deserved that much.

I swore to protect her while remaining alert to the surroundings, waiting for the excruciatingly long night to pass.