Chapter 4.5

Both Fujiko and Miyuki expected the ascension to progress after the Egregore declared its beginning in one, unified voice.

But Lisa Everest gave no indication that she cared at all about what happened next. She marveled instead at the netted construction of the imaginarium above, watching with serene glee the continuous stream of magic gushing from the Eye of Castle Gramarye.

“When?” Director Arataki tapped his shoes. “When will she ascend?”

“Hmm?” Lisa grinned. “Is something bothering you, director? Why the rush? Are you concerned about the intruders who have arrived at the castle? Your people can handle it, I presume.”

“They wouldn’t have to handle it,” Arataki snarled, “if she simply ascended now.”

“These things take time.”

“But you are doing nothing!” Arataki glared. “This is not what we agreed to.”

“Relax, sweetie,” Lisa laughed. “If the Commission is incapable of handling a so-called failure, then she can always step in, won’t you, Baba Yaga?”

Lady Baba Yaga nodded.

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten you trying to circumvent your Permission,” Lisa frowned and turned to Fang Fang, who remained as expressionless as the others. “That was uncalled for, granting her Permission to fetch me out from under me.”

“At the time, we all thought you were dead,” Fang Fang shrugged.

“Bull. Shit,” Lisa snorted.

“Then consider it an intervention out of love, Lisa,” Fang Fang sighed.

Arataki stepped aside, barking into his portable radio for more reinforcements.

“The captain’s here,” Miyuki muttered.

“What’s she going to do?” Fujiko scoffed. “Fight off the Egregore herself? Rescue us like a knight saves the princesses?”

“Quite cliché, I agree,” Lisa sighed. “I’d write it differently.”

“And you’ve started the ascension,” Fujiko said. “Why haven’t you finished it?”

“Maybe I have writer’s block,” Lisa shrugged. “I don’t know how it continues.”

“You don’t intend to ascend either of us,” Miyuki said. “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what you’re testing.”

Lisa laughed.

“I knew you would come in handy, Miss Kobayashi. You always need brains for a mystery, someone who can explain to the simpletons what’s actually going on.”

“What is going on?” Fujiko asked.

“Since neither of you are ascending, I may as well tell you,” Lisa answered. “Every ascension possesses three steps. The first step is committing Taboo, which you all dutifully performed when you participated in the Brideskiller case.”

“That counts?” Fujiko raised an eyebrow.

“How does the universe decide whether you’ve committed Taboo?” Lisa said. “Is there a god somewhere who watches the actions of us all? No, I think not, and so the logical conclusion is that everyone in the vicinity has committed it by virtue of being exposed to the imaginarium produced by Taboo.”

“The second trial of ascension,” Lisa continued, “concerns destroying the Taboo that then manifests in The Now. This, you have also done–”

“When you died by your own hand,” Miyuki finished, “and regained your original form by erasing the manifested phantasm.”

“Precisely,” Lisa nodded, “and so two steps of ascension have been fulfilled. The final and most important step is that.”

Lisa gestured to the imaginarium spilling out of the clock tower, layering upon each other like folds of wax paper.

“Destroying Taboo causes a release of imaginarium,” Lisa explained, “imaginarium that needs to be consumed by the candidate in order to ascend.”

“All that,” Fujiko whispered. “Someone’s supposed to just consume it?”

“Or in this case,” Lisa corrected, “we simply allow it to fester and break open the causality of this world.”

“What does that mean?” Fujiko asked.

“So if nobody ascends…” Miyuki reasoned. “If nobody ascends…”

“If nobody ascends?”

Director Arataki returned from shouting at his minions, a ghastly look etched on his face. Rampant explosions echoed from the bell towers beyond the cathedral mixed with strobes of golden light.

“Did I hear that right?” Arataki hissed. “You don’t intend to ascend her? That was our deal, witch. If I helped you, Fujiko Kazama would be this country’s next Egregore.”

“You could say I’ve fulfilled my end of the bargain,” Lisa replied. “I’ve just explained to both of them in painstaking detail how the ascension ritual is done.”

“Don’t fuck with me, American scum!” Arataki howled. “Who let you run unchecked in this country for ten years, using your magic to steer people’s lives for your supposed reality? You think I did that for nothing? You think the State Department is going to appreciate you reneging on our arrangement?”

“Arrangement?” Lisa asked.

“Yes,” Arataki laughed, then raised his hands at the other Egregore. “Did you know? Lisa Everest agreed to sponsor a Japanese Egregore, a witch hunter. Why? To keep the rest of you witches in check, to give America an advantage against other Egregore should war break out.”

If the members of Egregore Seven looked surprised, they didn’t show it.

“Is he stupid?” Gentiane asked.

“Irredeemably so,” Fang Fang answered.

The explosions from afar grew close. Reiko Nakamura and three others jumped from the roof of the nearby cathedral.

“Looks like you’re up,” Lisa eyed Baba Yaga.

Baba Yaga responded with a curt nod, then blinked off to stall the intruders.

“This is unacceptable,” Arataki said with rabid eyes. “The two of you. You have a duty to this country. Ascend. Now.”

“What happens,” Miyuki ignored the director, “if nobody ascends?”

“If I knew that, why would I be standing here?” Lisa asked. “The imaginarium has gathered. It anticipates… it thinks it knows that an Egregore is about to ascend. How will reality manifest itself when that turns out to be untrue?”

“So for this to be a proper test,” Miyuki realized, “we would both need to purposefully choose not to ascend. Forcing us would ruin the whole point.”

“...Yes,” Lisa answered, slowly this time.

Fujiko eyed Miyuki with sudden caution.

Something had changed about her, ever since their one-sided spat in the van. Fujiko saw it before, her withdrawn timidity, but the way she probed with her questions now, as if her mind was made up about the answers, was like and unlike her.

Miyuki caught Fujiko’s glance and nodded.

“Don’t worry,” she mouthed. “I won’t be dead weight this time.”

“You don’t know what’s going to happen?” Arataki reached into his suit. “You don’t know what’ll happen if nobody ascends?”

“I could list you the possibilities if it would make you feel better,” Lisa shrugged. “Nothing could happen, or maybe the imaginarium detonates and grafts out a part of The Now. But Mister Arataki, there are six Egregore here–”

“Enough!”

Arataki snapped a pistol out of his pockets.

“How typical,” he said, “for you Americans to again use Japan as a testing ground for your experiments and weapons of mass destruction. The Now? Is that what you call Sapporo, just something you can bend to your liking? No, I will not allow yet another city of my country to burn beneath your whims.”

Arataki pointed the barrel at Miyuki.

“Fujiko Kazama,” he said. “If you have any consideration for the life of your teammate, I suggest you do as I say and begin your ascension.”

“Nevermind that I don’t think you can kill her,” Fujiko said. “If I say I won’t do it, what then? You’ll try to kill us both? Who’ll complete the ascension in our stead?”

“I think you should shoot her instead, Director Arataki.”

Fujiko whipped her eyes back to Miyuki.

“What are you doing?” she hissed.

“I’ve finally figured it out, Kazama,” Miyuki chuckled. “I figured out what I have to do.”

Miyuki gazed at Lisa Everest.

“I looked up to the Egregore,” she said. “When one part of my life ended, magic gave me a second one. I thought the only reason why I could be here is because of you. I didn’t think that was so literal, that the reason why I’m here is because my injury was written into the fabric of an Egregore’s supposed reality.”

Lisa listened quietly.

“And now,” Miyuki continued, “my life is again in an Egregore's hands. What can lesser mages like us do? What is to be done? Do we simply do as we’re told? I don’t think so. In that case, do we resist? I don’t think so either. To resign ourselves or to fight noblely are two sides of the same coin. Pointless. Exploitable. We must, therefore, choose a third option."

“A third option?” Lisa scoffed. “What are you talking about?”

Miyuki turned to Tanaka Arataki.

“Director,” she said. “If you want the Egregore that you’ve been seeking, if you want to thwart Miss Everest, then you should shoot Fujiko Kazama. I promise, you won’t get a second chance.”

Tanaka Arataki considered Miyuki’s offer for half a second. He nodded, shifted his sights to a bewildered Fujiko, and pulled the trigger.

Before Fujiko could open her eye, Miyuki threw herself in front of the bullet and caught it in her hand.

Arataki stared, dumbfounded.

Lisa’s face turned pallid.

And Fang Fang set down her hand.

“No!” she shrieked. “You’ve ruined it! You’ve ruined everything!”

“No!” Miyuki cried. “Don’t kill her, director! I’ll do it! I’ll ascend!”

In truth, she wasn’t sure if the gambit would even work.

Miyuki had considered simply declaring ascension instead of a poorly acted ploy, but there were other risks involved in doing so.

Like Fujiko ascending on accident.

That, she would not allow.

The imaginarium responded to her cry, collapsing onto the plains and whirlpooling towards the ascension site.

Miyuki rose into the air. Her scarlet ribbons gleamed as imaginarium flooded into her body. It felt strange at first, disorienting, not dissimilar to feeling bloated after drinking too much water. But bloat turned into nausea. Her head started spinning.

Almost by instinct, Miyuki felt the need to cradle her body. She brought her knees to her chest, squeezed her eyes closed, and folded her fingers as if to pray.

Piece by piece, Miyuki relinquished her clothes. Her scarlet shoes and the ribbons tying her hair decomposed into orbs of light, leaving her feet barren and her golden hair loose. With another blink, her frilly skirt shined brilliant then vanished, followed by her leggings and kneesocks, her pink bowtie and below it, her sailor uniform.

The remaining imaginarium fashioned into a white tunic, flowing from her neck to her ankles. It was plain, with no resplendent shine or enduring glow, but its mere presence on Miyuki’s bodice struck Lisa Everest with terror and Fang Fang with hollow resignation.

“Now you’ve done it,” Fang Fang breathed.

“You’ve no idea what you’ve done, you bitch!” Lisa screamed. “You’ve wasted ten years of effort!”

Miyuki opened her eyes and smiled.

“No, Miss Everest,” she said. “Now, unlike any other time in the last ten years, I know exactly what I’ve done.”

Miyuki turned to Fang Fang and the other Egregore. Behind her, she could sense Lady Baba Yaga’s cold stare and Captain Nakamura, unconscious and washed up against the cathedral. Above, she saw slowing dials and the Eye of Castle Gramarye for what it truly was.

“I believe,” Miyuki said, “that now is the time that I ask my Question?”

“If you have one,” Fang Fang responded.

Miyuki nodded and gestured to the clock tower.

“It’s that, the eye of the castle,” she said. “Finally, I can see what it is. It crafts the Existence Formula necessary for any Egregore’s ascension. Therefore.”

Fresh imaginarium danced in the palm of her hand.