(Hey, hey! Look! It’s a new thing! This is a piece that recently inspired me, and I hope you all get a kick out of it! Also, starting in the Author’s Notes (that’s this little paragraph), I’m going to recommend shows and anime and webcomics that I like. Some of these cracked my egg, others I just really like, but feel free to let me know what you guys think! And, if you don’t like my recommendation, maybe next chapter will have something more to your taste! Anyway, my first recommendation is Rain, by Jocelyn Samara. A lovely-yet-realistic look at what a young trans girl goes through in order to become who she always was, Rain evokes feelings of empathy and warmth, to the point that I legitimately cried for her several times. If you have a soft spot for retable, likable characters who work to grow past their all-too-human fws and issues, you’ll love Rain and her friends. I give it 10/10.)

  “Name?”

  “Shimizu Akira.”

  “Where’re you from?”

  “Tokyo, Asakusa district.”

  “Hmm. You’re not the first Japanese this year. West Genetics, or East?”

  “West.”

  The man on the other side of the table leans back, fiddling with his tablet. I study him while I wait. Middle-aged, short hair. On the wrong side of fifty, if I had to guess. Still lean, though. Maybe a former Limiter.

  With a grunt, he leans forward again, fixing dull grey eyes on me.

  “So… why did you apply to join West Genetics? Everyone has a reason, but your synchronization rates for Limiter-suitable Stigmata seems to be on the lower end. 30% at most. Why do you want to fight the Nova?”

  At st, this is the question I’d expected. I’ve been chewing the answer to it over and over in my mind, and now, I speak the words.

  “True, my synchro rates aren’t the best, but… the Nova are coming more and more often. The numbers of Pandora we have avaible to fight them are dwindling. I don’t have any reason not to fight. I can’t do anything as a police officer or a member of some government board, but as a Limiter, I can at least make my life mean something in the end.”

  The man’s eyes narrow. There’s a spark of something in his gaze now, a faint ember of some long-repressed emotion or belief, quickly stamped out. It doesn’t do to have a conscience, when your job revolves around recruiting kids to die fighting alien monsters. So after a long, drawn-out moment, he shrugs.

  “Ah, to hell with it. If you’re so determined to get yourself killed, on your own damn head be it. Your application is approved.”

  And that’s how I found myself attending West Genetics, a training academy for the best and brightest Humanity has to offer. A school-ssh-military-facility that specializes in training, teaching, and deploying the superhuman warrior women, the Pandoras, and their Limiter partners.

  A few days ter, I found myself sitting in the passenger compartment of a military-issue aerial transport, my new uniform starchy and uncomfortable from ck of wear. A stupid-looking vanil-coloured bzer, bck shoes and trousers, a dark blue tie, and a white shirt.

  A boy with short dark hair sits on the same bench, at the far end, looking out of the window. On the other side, a pretty girl with a cute brunette hairstyle is ensconced, her eyes closed. I can’t shake the feeling that she’s somehow looking at us, quite intently. I pay no attention to the other boy, more interested in observing the strange girl before us. She seems to be just a normal girl, but looks are deceiving. There’s something about her that’s tickling at my instincts. I don’t trust her…

  Finally, she speaks, as the air-vehicle begins descending. “Welcome, new students Akira and Kazuya! I’m Chiffon Fairchild, the student council president for West Genetics. I hope you both work hard, enjoy your time here, and end up partnering with a lovely Pandora of your own, to act as her Limiter! Now, it might be a little rowdy here over the next few days, but it’s nothing for you to worry about, just the first Carnival of the school semester!”

  I shiver. Carnivals are part-training, part-blood sport, where Pandoras battle it out to determine their ranking until the next Carnival. It’s not uncommon for deaths to occur, despite the rules and safety precautions.

  The aircraft comes to a halt, and Chiffon disembarks, joining up with another girl, named Ticy Phenyl, waiting for the other student and I to exit the compartment. A few people can be seen crossing the nding ptforms and wandering around the campus grounds. The Student Body President smiles, and I feel uneasy at her cheerful expression.

  Muffled sounds of explosions and metal on metal can be heard from some distance away, and I flinch a little, jumping back as the noises get closer. Kazuya looks around, acting as if he has no sense of self-preservation. Chiffon’s expression changes slightly, a frown on her face despite her eyes staying closed.

  As a cloud of smoke erupts from a nearby building, I duck behind a crash-pilr, a short, sturdy block of reinforced concrete. The rapid cshing of metal on metal grows louder, with a series of rattling sounds accompanying them. The dust-cloud clears, revealing a huge hole in the wall, and two girls in burgundy uniforms stand facing each other.

  The tall blonde one is holding a strange sword in one hand. It has a handle mid-way up the bde, more like a wide knuckleduster than anything else. The other girl, her short dark-red hair accentuated by long twintails, the ends curled into ringlets, a set of six weighted chains connected to her back. Her uniform is shredded beyond belief, exposing most of her body, from the brief glimpse I get before instantly averting my eyes. Kazuya isn’t smart enough not to stare, and she covers her exposed body, before understandably calling him a creep.

  Each of the redhead’s pointed weights is moving in ominous patterns, as the blonde girl readjusts her grip on her weapon. Blood drips from small rents in her dress, several nasty gashes and rips covering her form. Chiffon looks like she’s about to panic, as several floating drones swoop in, cameras filming the bout between these two Pandoras.

  From a loudspeaker mounted on one of the drones, a female voice bres out, “the continued battle between Ganessa Rond, the Angel of Binding, and Satellizer L. Bridget, the Untouchable Queen, is heating up! There’s still everything to py for, though, with these two utterly undaunted!”

  I’m not certain, but it’s a fairly safe guess that that the Angel of Binding is the redhead, judging by the chain weapon. That must mean-

  A fsh of movement, and Kazuya does the STUPIDEST thing imaginable. He sprints out, right into the middle of this face-off, and hurls himself into the blonde girl. She catches him by blind instinct, dropping her weapon, her face shifting into a mask of flushed shock and… fear? As Chiffon almost has a mental breakdown.

  “Oh my god, oh my god, why did he just do that?! She’s called the Untouchable Queen for a reason! NO-ONE has ever id a hand on her and gotten away unharmed!”

  Filing THAT away to unpack ter, I simply watch in burgeoning horror as the situation goes from bad to worse. As Ganessa stares in outraged surprise, still covering herself, Kazuya’s face-first in the Untouchable Queen’s bosom. He’s gonna die, isn’t he? Five minutes at school, and he’s already molested a student. He’ll be lucky to get out of this with his spine intact!

  Something… unexpected happens, though. Instead of screaming, or just outright beating Kazuya to death with his own legs, the blonde girl only tries to adjust her long skirt, a luminescent blush lighting her pretty face.

  As she tries to extricate herself from the idiot’s desperate embrace, something even more ridiculous happens. A glowing field of elongated hexagonal shapes explode out from Kazuya, locking the girl in pce beneath him. I gasp, and the two student council girls simultaneously yelp, “a Freezing area??!”

  No way… no-one should be able to do something like that, not without being a partnered Limiter! That’s a literal impossibility!

  Ganessa recovers fast, leaping back and unching one of her chains in a blisteringly-fast attack. I don’t see what exactly happened, but the result is a spray of blood, and the almost-nude redhead nding, blood dripping from the weight she’d unched.

  The next couple of hours are a blur as I try to process what kind of insanity I’d gotten myself caught up in, as Ganessa Rond is crowned the first-ranked second-year, and Satellizer L. Bridget being dethroned as the Untouchable Queen.

  I can’t help but start to dislike Kazuya. Interfering in a fight against Pandoras is stupid enough, but to humiliate one of them, ogle the other, and to behave like nothing’s wrong with his attitude and actions?! What kind of head-injury did this guy sustain???

  Chiffon and Ticy scold him soundly as they escort us to the dorms, demanding to know what went through his skull when he molested an uppercssman. He weakly protests, before Chiffon gives her recommendation for how to fix this whole mess.

  “Kazuya, you should transfer to East Genetics, immediately. You buried your head between her breasts, straddled her, forced her down, and, above all, you touched her! You broke an unbreakable rule! I’m sure she’ll hold a grudge!”

  A shuttle pulls up, coming from the medical centre. Bandaged, using a crutch, and now in gsses, Satellizer gets off and hobbles in our direction. I can’t bear to watch. As she limps towards our little group, Ticy and I both react with the appropriate level of fear, Chiffon herself backs up, and Kazuya? Well, he proves that he has a score of 0 in both intelligence and common sense, and proceeds to grab Satellizer’s wrist.

  She goes wide-eyed, yanking her arm out of his grasp, totters back, and falls, her crutch and spectacles skittering to nd a few feet away. I bury my face in my hands. Yep, she’s going to kill him for this… assuming no-one else decides to do the job first. This guy has a talent for provoking the worst possible outcomes through sheer bone-headed disregard for sanity and logic.

  He does at least make sure she gets her gsses back, though, but, as soon as she stands and tries to leave, he defies all reason and decency, grabbing her AGAIN. I swear, if this dumbass ends up as my roommate, I’d rather sleep in the cafeteria.

  She weakly protests, trying to free herself, as he mouths off about how it’s his fault she got hurt, and how he cost her the match, and that “a simple ‘I’m sorry’ won’t cut it”, all while holding her by the wrist. Eventually, she manages to pry herself out of his grip and stalks off, with a perfectly sensible and clear, “I’m finished with you. Don’t EVER come near me again.” He does the thing I’ve just come to expect from him now, and reaches for her as if he’d not heard a single thing she’d just said.

  As he acts the fool, Satellizer whirls, turquoise light fshing, and her volt weapon, formed by her Stigmata, appears in her hand, the edge almost at his throat. About bloody time he realised that he was poking a very angry bear after selling her cub on the internet.

  Before things get better, though, they can always get worse. A short, strident cackle rings out, and Ganessa Rond approaches, apparently having settled on picking NOW as the best time to needle her defeated opponent.

  The line about Satellizer having ‘found a cute little Limiter to py with’ was uncalled for. Who in their right mind would want a complete and utter moron as their partner?!

  It’s clear to me now, as a crowd starts to gather, Ganessa’s taunting ringing out, that my time here is most definitely going to be more than I bargained for…

  Aaaaand of course, the only thing that Kazuya the Brainless picks up on, the sole fact that he’s managed to glean, is that Satellizer has no Limiter. Don’t tell. Me… Oh. Oh no. Nooooo, surely not… even HE can’t seriously be THIS GODDAMNED STUPID…

  It seems as though Ganessa’s taunts failed to extract the response she wanted, and, incensed by Satellizer’s simple gre, has decided to break the rules and go for the kill. With a shout, she deploys her volt weapon, the Chains of Binding. Four of those weighted chains from earlier form from her back and she send the whole lot rocketing towards the former rank-one second-year.

  Satellizer’s more than capable of dodging, though, surprisingly delicate little hops and shifts that effortlessly take the blonde out of the path of each flexile spear, not even using her own volt weapon to level the pying field.

  As dust flies from the brick and masonry shattering under Ganessa’s concentrated assault, I lose sight of Satellizer. She’s somewhere in the thick brownish cloud of vision-obscuring grit and powder. Who know what’s going to happen next…