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2.2 For Yuri, I Build a Better Monster
🕑 Added 2025-04-26 14:38:21 +0000 UTCFerromancer’s boast echoes through her workshop. No one challenges her claim, not even the boisterous Bombshell or the mysterious stranger watching from above. Everyone but me seems to know exactly who she is.
I give Ferromancer a second, more appraising look. Button-up and slacks, like my untransformed self is wearing right now, but with the buttons mostly undone and a black vest over the white shirt. She’s got some kind of necklace on, a chunk of amber on a cord, though I can’t make out the species of the bug inside the amber. Black gloves, shiny and sleek. Black shoes, the functional kind without a heel or laces—I think they’re called loafers? I’d call her outfit business formal if the shirt didn’t look so rumpled and unbuttoned.
Her face is where all the action is. Her features are sharp and angular, more rakish than beautiful, and there’s a set to her lazy smirk that gives her whole face a mocking air. Her hair is eye-catchingly red, but not so much that it looks dyed or artificial, and it’s done up in an incredibly messy ponytail. Her eyes—ruddy orange and unnaturally bright—seem perpetually half-lidded, as if she’s bored with everything around her, but there’s a light in her gaze that betrays keen interest. The glasses complete the look.
Nothing about her appearance screams “dangerous witch,” but two of the most dangerous witches in the Pacific Northwest tensed up when she stepped into the room. Who is this woman?
“So I’ve heard,” Radiance says, her whole persona shifting into networking mode as she offers praise to the unknown witch. “If my sources are correct, you were the real designer of the machine that terrorized Hollywood while Geisha and Wildfire went on their crime spree, and you built the power armor that let Penumbra win her grudge match with Slipstream. So what are you doing here, in Forks?”
“And how long are you planning on staying?” Lilith adds, cautious and reserved.
Internally, I whistle. I know about both of the incidents that Radiance referenced, but like everyone else I’d always assumed the tech involved was made by one of the well-known local inventors. Witches that mess with tech are very common in California, though mostly concentrated around Silicon Valley.
Ferromancer takes another drag of her cigarette and shrugs. “Timeline is undecided. I’ve got immediate business in town, and some contacts to meet with, but after that depends entirely on how receptive Forks is to my services. So, to get to the heart of the matter… I’m here to sell technology. Bespoke technology, every piece custom-made, that can’t be reproduced or mass produced. Familiars are my specialty—attack drones, point defense drones, shield drones, and pseudo-autonomous robots like what attacked Hollywood—but they’re not the limit of my ability. Like your Lilith here,” she says with a nod to the witch in question, “with enough time and material I can generate just about any effect not labeled strictly impossible.”
Oh, I have so many questions. And by the looks on their faces, Radiance and Lilith have questions of their own, but before either can ask anything they’re interrupted by Bombshell.
“Enough talk, I want to punch a robot!” The sparkly pink witch punches her hands together and grins. “C’mon, let’s start the demo.”
So that’s why she’s here. Bombshell must have been the first one that Ferromancer contacted. Maybe they already knew each other? Radiance and Lilith both seem to note that interaction and file it away, the questions dying on their lips.
Ferromancer makes an amused noise and says, “Yes, let’s save any more questions for after the presentation. Practicals first.”
The witch pulls out a thin remote from inside her vest and presses a button. The floor between the four floating drones splits apart and slides away, revealing a deep unlit tunnel stretching down beyond visible range. Mechanical whirring heralds the rise of a platform, and upon that platform stands a robot.
The robot is bipedal, tall, with the same clean future-tech aesthetic as the floating drones, rounded and sleek with bright green circuit lines running over deep blue metal. Its face is a smooth screen of black glass illuminated from behind the screen by a circle of white light. The robot towers over everyone in the room, maybe nine or ten feet in height.
Bombshell jumps onto the platform while it’s still rising. “Who’s ready for a show? In this corner, you know her, you love her, it’s Bombshell, here to blow this bot away!” The witch is laughing as she bounces on her heels, bringing her fists up in a ready stance.
“Hold on,” Lilith interjects. “The ceiling was one thing, but this is undeniable: you’re working in a pocketspace, aren’t you?” Her tone this time sounds like genuine curiosity, one master of her craft talking shop with another.
“I am,” Ferromancer admits, unruffled, “though it’s far more modest than your Morrigan’s Ossuary. And to preempt the question, it’s not a technology I’m currently offering for sale.”
Radiance sighs, disappointed. I, on the other hand, am fascinated. Pocketspaces are high-level magic, from everything I understand of the subject. There are some witches and magical girls who can innately create very limited and temporary pocketspaces, but permanent complex pocketspaces are incredibly rare.
The Ossuary is the most famous, and the most absurd: an extradimensional nightclub whose entrances change daily, and which reaches all across the Pacific Northwest. It’s a regular hangout spot for the witches of Forks—and those with an interest in those witches, be they admirers or opportunists. The Ossuary’s creator, the Morrigan, could be considered Strix Striga’s equivalent among witches. I certainly do.
Before I can gather the courage to ask my own questions about the pocketspace, Ferromancer clicks another button on her remote. Walls of transparent green energy crackle to life around the designated arena, rising from floor to ceiling perfectly aligned with the seams of the section that split away. “Care to test the barrier, Bombshell?”
The other witch whirls around with a grin and throws out a rapid-fire combo of punches at the energy wall. The barrier vibrates, shudders, and is just starting to crack when the villainess pulls back. After a few seconds, the cracks dissipate and the barrier looks untouched.
“Good. Enough preamble. Go loud, the both of you.”
Like a gunshot starting a race, Ferromancer’s words send Bombshell and the robot exploding into action. Small panels on the robot’s shoulders pop open to reveal brightly-glowing cylinders that shoot out green beams of light—lasers—at the witch.
Bombshell is fast. Not quite Slipstream fast, but she’s maybe the fastest witch I’ve seen who isn’t classified as a speedster. And she moves—she moves almost like Striga moves: no wasted energy, every motion in perfect sequence. I can’t tell if she’s faster than the lasers she’s dodging or if she just knows exactly where not to be.
The witch gets in close and lays into the robot with her fists. Green light flashes, a personal barrier shimmering into view every place that Bombshell punches and lingering as she targets different areas. The laser pods on the robot’s shoulders glow brighter and brighter until they crackle and fry as two massive beams burst out of them. This time, Bombshell doesn’t dodge—too close to move away in time, maybe—but instead crosses her arms and takes the blast.
One of my internet friends—Mike, the physics nerd—once gave me a whole rant about the relationship that light has with force, and how photons can’t push you but can cause things to move through some complicated process with electrons and energy—and that was about where I tuned out, but allegedly it’s how solar sails would work and how solar panels do work. It’s one of those nitpicks that sci-fi nerds have with any scene where someone gets shot with a laser and goes flying. Of course, these lasers are magic, so physics analysis only gets you so far. I’m sure Mike would love to figure out where exactly the force is coming from, but the result is that Bombshell gets slammed into the energy wall.
Cracks spiderweb across the barrier around the stage while the cracks on the robot’s personal shield start to diminish. Bombshell catches herself and manages to land on her feet, spending barely a second to steady herself before jumping back toward the machine. There’s a glow around her now, a rising aura of crimson light.
The robot shimmers and seems to split apart into a dozen copies of itself as Bombshell approaches, none of them in the same position as the original. The witch slams an elbow into the nearest copy and goes straight through, the illusion—hologram—not reacting but not disappearing. A panel pops open on the forearm of each robot and two dozen metal tubes rise up, click into place, and start shooting completely ordinary bullets.
A hail of gunfire fills the air. Bullets ping off the energy shields of the robots and the fixed barrier around the arena. Bombshell grits her teeth against the hail, the bullets bouncing off her skin and outfit without causing any damage. She leaps through hologram after hologram, barely bothering with proper form as she searches for the real robot.
The gunfire pauses, something clicks internally, and when the guns start firing again they have a new type of ammunition: pellets that expand on impact into some kind of yellow foam that quickly hardens. Bombshell’s head snaps to the side, eyes locked on a new target, and she lunges for her prey as the foam pellets continue to collide with her.
Instead of attacking any of the visible robots, her fist slams into empty air—and then the air isn’t empty anymore, the true machine emerging from invisibility as all of its holograms vanish, and the fake foam with them. The real foam continues to expand and harden, the robot firing into melee as its personal shield cracks and cracks… but doesn’t quite break before the foam finishes its work. Bombshell struggles to land another hit, but she can’t move her arms. She’s immobilized.
Radiance raises a single eyebrow. Lilith frowns. Delilah crosses her arms and says, “Stop jobbing. We get the picture, and there’s no crowd here to ogle you.”
Bombshell grins. “You’re welcome to go next.”
The witch’s aura shifts from red to purple, and this time when she flexes her arms and strains against the hardened foam it shatters. She tears chunks of the material off of her body and legs, ripping it apart faster than the robot can shoot more at her, and then in a single fluid motion she pulls her arm back, twists her whole body, and slams her fist into the robot’s head. The energy barrier holds for only an instant before shattering, and in the blink of an eye Bombshell’s punch tears into the machine and takes its head clean off.
The robot head bounces off the arena wall and rolls to a stop. The body slumps, deactivating, and just like that the fight is over.
Bombshell’s aura fades away and she staggers, but quickly recovers, though she’s still breathing a bit heavier. The grin on her face is even wider now. “Now that’s a good way to get the adrenaline pumping!” She turns back to the rest of us and strikes a victory pose, elbows out and fists on her hips.
Seeing Bombshell fight in person was amazing. The videos really can’t compare to being up close to the action, even if there was a protective barrier between me and the violence. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding and clap. “Woo! Brava! Encore, encore!”
Radiance ignores my cheering and directs rapid-fire questions at Ferromancer: “What are your production limits? What kind of price range are you operating in? Are you willing to consider exclusive contracts?”
Lilith glares at Radiance and steps past her. “More importantly, who are you going to be selling to? The Coterie won’t shelter you if you’re caught supplying groups and individuals that exist outside the pact.”
Radiance scoffs. “Oh, please. As if the Coterie was ever going to shelter a witch who doesn’t officially exist. You’re barely willing to ‘shelter’ the people in this room.” She gestures at herself and then sweeps her hand toward Delilah.
Now that has my attention. Who is Delilah, and why is she here? Maybe she’s like Ferromancer, another witch that exists outside the public eye. How does she fit into the interplay between Coterie witches and Visage witches?
I want answers to all of those questions, but I’m not sure any of that is what I’m most interested in learning. Delilah is a mystery, but one that I know too little about to really get invested in. No, the one who really has my attention is Ferromancer.
The plain-dressed witch has been watching everything with that same expression that sits somewhere between calm boredom and keen perception. With a final breath of smoke, she stubs out her cigarette on the back of her glove and gives her full attention to the two witches asking her questions.
“I pick my clientele very carefully,” Ferromancer says, her voice frosting, “and I’ve never, ever needed protection from an organization like yours. I’ll follow your rules while I’m here, but I don’t answer to your Coterie, or to your Visage, or even to the Morrigan herself. Think of me as an outside consultant. For the right price—and we’ll get to that, Kamilah—I’ll sell to anyone I see fit. You’ll just have to trust my judgment on that one.”
There’s something enthralling about the way Ferromancer shuts down and dismisses two of the most powerful people for hundreds of miles. I could never imagine talking to Radiance or Lilith that way, and she does it effortlessly. The way her lips quirk even as the skin tightens around her eyes, the arch of her brow, her lazy posture as she leans back against a storage crate, the ash falling from the back of her glove as she crosses her arms…
Ferromancer radiates power and control to an almost intoxicating degree, and I’m feeling the contact high. I need to talk to this woman. I need her to talk to me. I need her to like me. It’s a heat spreading through my body like a fever. Who is this witch?
Bombshell breaks me from my reverie by bouncing over to Ferromancer’s side and chirping, “And mine!”
What? It takes me a second to connect her statement back to what Ferromancer just said, shaking the fog of obsession from my mind. Judgment. Ferromancer’s judgment, and apparently Bombshell’s judgment?
I can’t get a read on Delilah, but Radiance and Lilith look just as surprised as I am. Ferromancer regards them all coolly and says, “I’ve hired Bombshell to be my enforcer while I’m here in town. Those who want to interfere with my work or default on my contracts will have to deal with her kindly attentions. The other side of that coin is the threat of losing my enforcer if I take any action too objectionable to your community. Whether you trust me or not, you should trust one of your own.”
Radiance puts a smile back on her face and says, “That seems a perfectly reasonable arrangement. Now, if you would, I believe I put forward a few questions worth answering.”
Ferromancer rolls her shoulders. “So you did. Price is negotiable, exclusivity is not. As for limitations, well, you’ve seen one: the machines I create aren’t replacements for your abilities as witches, they’re complements. Use them well and you’ll find success. Use them poorly and I don’t want to hear you blaming the hardware. A second limit is quantity: you don’t need to know why or how, but the most I can sell you of any single invention is four copies. That doesn’t mean I can’t design something similar to get around that, but you shouldn’t expect to be buying in bulk. Everything I make is bespoke.”
I can practically see the gears turning in Radiance’s head, and in Lilith’s, but it’s Delilah who asks the next question: “Why is the new girl here? That Archon kid.”
I freeze. All of a sudden, everyone is looking at me. Witches I knew before today and witches I didn’t, but all of them more powerful than me, more important than me, just more than me. Why am I here? Even if Ferromancer is going to teach me something, why bring me here like this? What was Pandora’s game?
Ferromancer is the one who saves me. “We have private business,” she says, her smirk taking on a knowing, secretive cast. “And, speaking of that business, I believe everyone has seen and heard enough of my work for one day. You know what I’m offering, and whether you’re interested. I’ll be in touch.”
It’s a dismissal, and everyone can hear it. Radiance and Lilith make a bit of noise and snipe at each other, but eventually all the other witches file out—even Bombshell. They watch me as they leave. What do they think of me now?
My gaze falls to the cat beside me, sitting unnoticed by everyone for that whole scene. When the last witch has left, I accuse it, “You set this up. You engineered that moment. Why?”
“I told you,” Pandora purrs, “we invest in our talent. You have the motivation, but it’ll take more than the usual routine to shape you into the kind of witch that has the ability to restrict Striga’s actions.”
Right. Of course. It’s all about Striga.
On that, the cat and I agree.
“So,” asks Ferromancer, “what did you think of my little show?”
I look up from the cat and blink twice in surprise. In the time my attention was away from her, Ferromancer must have slipped away and changed, because her outfit is completely different; the pants and shoes are the same, and the amber necklace—it’s a scorpion, I can tell up close—but she’s traded shirt and vest for a black tank top and a red flannel left unbuttoned, and she’s ditched the gloves.
Somehow, the change in clothing makes her both more approachable and more intimidating. I can’t stop myself from focusing on the flannel jacket and spinning my thoughts in circles, because it’s not like only lesbians wear flannel but it’s such an iconically lesbian piece of fashion and she seems like the kind of person to think about the impression she makes and why am I even thinking about this??? I have a girlfriend!
Well, okay, no, I don’t. That’s kind of my whole problem. But there’s one girl who my heart belongs to and it is not this admittedly very cool and attractive woman who I’m going to be spending an unknown length of time in close proximity to and oh god this is a problem.
My gay panic happens in a flash and I pull myself together to try and answer the actual question that I was asked, hoping to death that I’m not blushing. I try to project as much gravitas and confidence as possible as I say, “The performance was very interesting. I’d never heard of you before this, to my regret, but you seem to have a real reputation with the other witches. You’re clearly good at what you do. I look forward to learning from you, Ferromancer, if that is indeed what I’m here for.”
Her eyes twinkle like she’s laughing inside at a joke only she knows the punchline to. “You’re pretty cute when you’re acting the proper witch, but let’s put the stuffy formality aside. I’m Erica, and thanks to our mutual feline friend I know that your civvie name is Rachel. Take off that face and I’ll buy you lunch.”
Is this what it feels like to be stunlocked in a video game? She called me cute. She knows my real name, and she told me hers. I feel like the whole world just dropped out from under me. “I. Um. Yeah, okay. Yeah, let’s do lunch.”
Hesitantly, almost fearfully, I let the transformation burn away until it’s just me again. Rachel Emily in her faux-formal outfit, painfully ordinary, standing before… Erica, I guess.
“So,” Erica asks, eyes bright and smirk turning into a smile, “you like Mexican?”
Comments
Jayem
So we have someone who can make really powerful machines, but only a few of any design, and someone else who can make seemingly endless replicas of anything she burns. Yeah a partnership here makes a lot of sense, and Erica's creations would likely be an immediate and massive power spike for Rachel
Lucy Severine
Oooo this was fun. Looking forward to the next chapter!
Lako
Thanks for the chapter! Very interesting! I am guessing that Rachels ability to replicate stuff is very interesting in combination with ericas abilities.
