Period of Calm Seas, 1477 in the Era of Plunder

  ***

  Marisa hummed quietly to herself, ying out the clothes Mana gifted her. They were just regur clothes: a T-shirt with a Celestial Sisters logo print, a pair of jeans and regur sporty-looking shoes, as well as a few sets of underwear. A modest gift of clothing, but to Marisa it meant the world. She giggled and grabbed the shirt, hugging it close to her body as she spun around, imagining their date at the concert already. Mana told her to pretend to be her twin sister if anyone asked them, but she intended to go further than that and steal kisses when no one was looking. Maybe she would even go back to Mana’s room at her house again – maybe she could even meet her parents, as they knew that Mana was in a retionship with a girl. Maybe they could expin everything – their strange circumstances, the origin of Marisa’s soul… would her parents understand? Would they accept her?

  Those thoughts continued until a sudden feeling of unease took hold of her. She turned her head, slowly, and was faced with herself – her older self, to be precise. The girl looked like she was crying just recently, and her hand was clutched around something. Instead of her usual white witch robe, she wore a school uniform – Mana’s school uniform. Cat ears sprouted from her head, as well as a tail from her lower back. Her look towards Marisa was almost vacant, as if she wasn’t seeing Marisa, the person, but something else entirely – then she grabbed the younger girl’s forehead.

  “Leave me alone!” Marisa shouted, trying to pull the older one’s hand off herself, but she wouldn’t let go.

  “You had fun, didn’t you? You believed that things were going to be alright if you just pyed along? It would be alright if you stopped thinking about that odd feeling that you had when you looked at Arisu?!” the older one shouted and an object in her clenched fist started to glow – Marisa’s eyes widened as she recognized this spell as ‘alter memory’.

  “Remember, younger me! Find the meaning behind that strange feeling!”

  Marisa kept struggling, and tears welled up in her eyes as she remembered the feeling of doom. It wasn’t just jealousy that made her act against Arisu – after all, if it was just about that, wouldn’t it be enough to kill her? Why was her goal to prevent her birth in the first pce?

  “I’ll show you!” the older Marisa announced in answer to her unspoken questions – and used the ring to transfer her own memories into her younger self.

  Marisa saw confusing visions – of herself in a house that resembled Mana’s – yet she herself was wearing a school uniform. The room upstairs was hers, and it was Mana who visited. They called each other sisters, and she had parents… but they weren’t Mana’s.

  Someone snuck into the house. Mana was visiting and pying video games with Marisa – and in that moment she turned her head and locked eyes with the strange girl with an eyepatch.

  “Who are you?” she heard herself ask, while Mana’s face took on a panicked expression. She turned her head towards the door.

  Marisa faintly heard Mana shout “What the hell are you doing here?!” before her eyesight was overwhelmed by strange visions. She saw herself, sitting on a beach, staring at the horizon as her strength left her – and her soul departed. She saw said soul embed itself into an emerald crystal – and then she saw Arisu emerge from it.

  Things finally clicked for her, and she screamed as her older self forced her memories into her skull.

  She is me! She is me after I die! That’s why I can’t allow her to be born!

  Despair took hold and her previously unshakable trust in Mana was shattered – allowing Doppelg?nger to assume control once more.

  ???

  ***

  Mana stared at the white sand pilrs in the distance, which appeared to flow into the endless abaster desert around them. The sky was a pale shade of blue, which grew white the further up she looked, making it impossible to tell where the flowing sand came from exactly.

  “Impressive, isn’t it?” her older self asked as she walked up next to her, putting a hand on Mana’s shoulder.

  “What is this?” Mana turned around to face herself.

  “A world that isn’t overpping with Earth at the moment – a world in which a minute passes and becomes a whole month back home. There’s another where the same thing happens backwards. The sand flows upwards in that one.” Older Mana looked up the pilr – and cursed as her hat almost slid off her head. Blue cat ears sprouted from her skull and her robes moved in a way that indicated she had a tail, too.

  “I guess I don’t need to hide this anymore, since you met the me from way further in the future,” she said with an awkward grin, and Mana nodded in response.

  “When does it happen?” she asked her older self.

  “Sooner than you might think.”

  “That’s not an answer.” Mana furrowed her brow.

  “I wasn’t told at this point, so I’m not telling you, either. Remember what Madame Bille said: don’t break the cycle,” older Mana said with a shrug. Her tail finally freed itself through a hole in the witch robes, specifically cut into them for that very purpose. It swished around until Arisu gently grabbed and stroked it as she approached the two from behind, causing older Mana’s back to straighten out in reaction – whatever she was feeling from that, it was probably pretty good, but she turned around and chastised Arisu regardless.

  “I told you, don’t touch my tail and ears!”

  “Ehh? But they look so cute!” Arisu compined, letting go of the tail.

  “I don’t want you to- ugh, forget it. Just don’t touch them!”

  Older Mana looked at Arisu with some annoyance – it didn’t look like they got along all that well. Arisu pouted and walked over to Mana, showing her a smile instead.

  “Hey, Mana! I’m Arisu Takeuchi, nice to meet you!” Arisu excitedly bowed after her introduction, like if she couldn’t get along with the older Mana, she would gdly try to befriend the younger one. Mana returned the bow absentmindedly, still overwhelmed by the entire situation – until she noticed something.

  Takeuchi. Ta-ke-u-chi. Ta. She saw that sylble on a certain someone’s employee badge st month.

  “Are you my future wife?!” Mana blurted out. Her older self grimaced and spped a hand to her forehead while Arisu’s eyes went wide, and a furious blush spread across her face. She looked away, covering her face with her hands before she gave her stammering answer.

  “I-is that the first thing you have to say to me?! I… no! Probably not! Not with your older self hating me.”

  “Hate?” Mana looked at her older self, who looked gloomy.

  “Well, it’s her fault that we’re in this mess in the first pce. She secretly followed me to where I held Marisa and Marisa just… flipped out and broke out of containment right after they made eye contact.”

  Older Mana was visibly clenching both her fists and her jaw, looking to the side.

  “It’s fine, Arisu. I don’t… hate you.” Older Mana said with a long sigh, closing her eyes. “And even if I did, I kind of got you back by traveling to the point when Doppelg?nger was about to take over my body and making her focus on you instead.”

  Mana looked around between the two strange girls from the future.

  “I guess you both had your ‘long talk’. Sometime in the past six months for me.”

  “That’s right.” Arisu said – absentmindedly reaching for the tail again, which older Mana spped her hand with.

  “Oh! You said a minute in here is a month! How far into the future are we going?!” Mana suddenly realized and looked around, but the older one made a dismissive gesture and pointed to the still open portal.

  “That isn’t in effect for as long as we are connected to Earth. I will close this for one second and then open it again to bring us a few hours forward. Marisa will attempt to steal something important. Something important enough that its loss would result in Arisu’s parents dying. Or forgetting about each other and never meeting again.”

  Mana furrowed her brow. “What is she going to steal?”

  “The Amaranth potion,” older Mana replied.

  September 2024

  ***

  Surely enough, as Mana stepped out of the portal, it was te in the evening. But not just that, they also changed locations. They stood in front of a rge tower with window fronts and pagoda-like balconies. A luxury residential tower, no doubt about it. Mana saw many well-dressed individuals come and go inside the gmorous lobby – and an out of pce looking woman in an office outfit who looked like she just wanted to reach the elevators as fast as possible.

  “Listen closely,” older Mana said, both to Mana and Arisu, pointing to the office dy.

  “That is Seika Hitoishi. She currently has the Amaranth potion. Younger Marisa will distract her, and older Marisa will steal it. Your job is to capture younger Marisa, so she won’t cause trouble while I deal with the older one.”

  Mana furrowed her brow. “We aren’t going to prevent the theft?”

  Her older self shook her head. “She will be successful with the theft and repce it with a vial of dyed water, but we will retrieve it before Hitoishi knows that anything is wrong. Feel free to grab your robes and your books from your room before you go inside, and one more thing: don’t be seen by Hitoishi.”

  With that, older Mana vanished, leaving Arisu and Mana behind. The silence between them was awkward, so Mana opened a portal to her room and climbed through to get changed.

  Arisu stood by the portal and peeked inside from time to time as Mana pulled the witch robes over her regur clothes.

  “Aren’t you curious at all?” she asked.

  “About what?” Mana grumbled, coming back out of the portal dressed as a witch. She now walked towards the building with Arisu in tow.

  “Who my parents are? Why all of this would stop me from being born? Anything?”

  Mana looked at the girl next to her. Her smile was radiant, but there was also a little mischievous side to her that bled through her expression.

  “I shouldn’t ask too many questions about the future, or so my older self told me. The one from way further in the future.”

  “Really? I imagined you way more curious about everything.” Arisu looked disappointed.

  Mana’s mind went back to the possibility that this girl might be her future wife and let out a long sigh. She turned her head away as they walked through the lobby towards the elevators and posed one of the questions that were on her mind.

  “Are you into small breasts?” she asked about one of the factoids thirty-six-year-old Mana told her, fully without shame.

  “Eh?! Seriously, what’s with all those inappropriate questions?!” Arisu shouted with a red face as they entered the elevator. Mana inspected the panel in front of them – and of course it was locked with a key card mechanism – not much of a hurdle when she knew portal magic, as long as she knew where to go.

  “Which floor is Hitoishi on?”

  “Dodging the question, huh?!” Arisu asked with a little huff, but then she looked at the console. “Hmm… the Celestial Sisters live… here,” she said as she pointed at one of the topmost floors.

  “Alright! …wait a second, the Celestial Sisters?!” Mana turned around towards Arisu.

  “Yep. This is where they used to live.” Arisu looked at the number on the elevator.

  “Used to?” Mana was almost afraid to ask – given older Mana’s words about the Celestial Sisters concert, anything could be happening to them.

  “Things happened.” Arisu deflected and shook her head. “Anyway… take us up there, Mana.”

  “Whatever you say, Arisu…” Mana sighed and summoned a portal to the floor the eyepatch wearing girl indicated.

  As they stepped outside, they could hear two voices talk.

  “Hello dear. The Celestial Sisters are out, I’m afraid. But I’m part of their staff.” This one belonged to a woman Mana didn’t know – possibly this ‘Seika Hitoishi’, whom her older self mentioned.

  “Oh! I… I see. Can you give this letter to them for me?” this was definitely Marisa’s voice. Mana wanted to turn the corner and run towards her, but Arisu held her back with a hand against her chest, simply shaking her head.

  Mana gritted her teeth and stepped back behind the corner.

  “Alright, I’ll give them your message. And I’ll tell them to send you a reply.”

  “Thank you, miss! I really can’t wait!”

  Shortly after that exchange Marisa walked around the corner and stopped, narrowing her eyes at the two. She looked over her shoulder, then right back at both of them, holding a finger to her lips.

  Mana wanted to say something but was hushed by Arisu, who slowly approached the clone, and only as they heard the apartment’s door click closed, they both rushed Marisa – and fell through a rge portal appearing under them.

  Mana could smell chlorine before she hit a body of water – next to her was another spsh, caused by Arisu. She was disoriented and gasped as she broke through the water’s surface to breathe again, looking around in a panic to try and find Marisa. She found herself in a rge, luxurious pool room. It was long, inside a ‘corridor’ with rge, brown and white columns polished to a shine, while golden mps dyed the ceiling in their glow. Mana saw the city lights outside of a window and realized that this pool area must have been on the top level of a high rise, and they were possibly still in the same building.

  She summoned a ptform to lift herself out of the water, and did the same for Arisu, who inspected her drenched school uniform with a sigh and gave Mana a grateful nod.

  They were soon joined by Marisa, who jumped into the room through a portal and stood on an invisible barrier right on top of the water, as if she was walking on it.

  “You’re trying to capture me, aren’t you, mistress?” she wore a smile on her face, but it was devoid of any emotion. Mana’s jaw clenched as she finally got her confirmation. This wasn’t Marisa anymore; It was Doppelg?nger puppeteering her.

  “Well, I can’t have that!” Doppelg?nger pointed a hand at Arisu and released an arrow – the girl was caught by surprise and flung backwards, pinned against one of the pilrs behind her with a loud yelp before she went limp. Mana looked at her with wide eyes before she got hit with a bst spell and nded in the water again. Doppelg?nger was immediately on top of her, grabbing Mana by the throat to hold her head underwater. She was prepared for it this time and hit Doppelg?nger with Bst, catapulting her into the ceiling where some of the pster came off from the impact. Mana jumped up next to Doppelg?nger and followed up with another Bst spell to make her hit the column behind her. She let out a pained groan in response, looking at Mana with manic eyes.

  I’m sorry, Marisa. I don’t want to hurt your body.

  Mana summoned a few arrows to nail Doppelg?nger to the pilr by her clothes, then she turned around to check on Arisu.

  She can’t be dead…!

  She got tackled to the side and smmed against a pilr. Pain radiated through her entire body as she opened her eyes to see what just attacked her. A humanoid figure, made entirely out of stone pinned her against the wall, and its hand shaped from rocks closed around her fragile body.

  Mana let out a scream as Doppelg?nger grinned and tore herself off the column, slowly walking over to where Mana was.

  “That’s right. You forgot I could do this, didn’t you? I think it’s time for us to become one, mistress! And then, together, we can prevent this girl from being born!”

  A green light emerged from the side and the golem bucked as it was hit by a fist. Flesh met rock, but the tter proved weaker as a rge chunk of the golem’s structure was simply punched away by Arisu. Her uniform had a hole where the arrow penetrated her heart just moments before, but there was no trace of that injury left underneath. Her hair glowed in a brilliant emerald green and her blue eye now shone with an inherent light. She had her teeth gritted as she clenched her fist and a bde made out of green energy sprouted from her wrist, which she used to dismantle the golem and free Mana, pcing herself in front of her.

  “Are you alright, Mana?” she quickly looked over her shoulder, gncing at her with the shimmering green jewel she had in pce of a right eye.

  “I should ask you that question! You got an arrow through your heart!” Mana grimaced and hurried to her side, summoning a fire arrow which she pointed at Doppelg?nger.

  “I can’t be killed by hurting my body,” Arisu said with an awkward smile. “It’s not my true body, after all.”

  Mana nodded, but in that moment, Arisu was tackled aside by yet another golem and grimaced as she hit the nearby column, with its hand closing around her body.

  “Damn it…!” Arisu groaned and worked on freeing herself as the golem tightened its grip around her.

  “Don’t worry about me, Mana! Go get her!” Arisu shouted as a disgusting crack could be heard, and she let out a strained scream. The golem grabbed her leg and swung her into another pilr, turning concrete and pster into dust with the girl’s body, all while Doppelg?nger ughed.

  “She may not be able to die, but she can still feel pain! What do you say, mistress? Should we torture her until she begs for death?”

  Mana gritted her teeth and charged towards Doppelg?nger. The clone erected a barrier in front of herself and gave Mana a smug grin, all too certain of being safe behind it. Mana, however, jumped at it to Doppelg?nger’s obvious surprise. A portal opened on the barrier a split second before Mana would hit it, bringing her right into Doppelg?nger’s personal space.

  “Bst!” With that quick incantation, Doppelg?nger soared towards the nearest column again, hitting it with a loud thud and letting out a pained scream as Mana approached – she quickly reached for Doppelg?nger’s sleeves - she would be alright, as long as she took away the clone’s books…!

  Or so she thought, as her arm didn’t move. She grimaced as pain shot through it, and she saw a giant hand holding it in pce. She felt like she could hear her bones creak, and she let out a strained scream of pain as the minotaur held her in pce.

  Her eyes darted feverishly to the creature holding her and she summoned an arrow on the tip of her grabbed arm’s finger. As she let it go a portal immediately swallowed the arrow and drove it into the minotaur’s nape, which growled before its grip and stance weakened, then it colpsed – right on top of her. Mana let out a scream until she hit the water, where the rge creature pinned her. A portal appeared under her, and she fell on the hard tiles next to the pool, with a good volume of the pool’s water following her.

  She coughed and sputtered, weakly trying to find purchase on the ground as she got her bearings -Arisu was still busy with the golem, or rather, it was busy with her. It used her like a ragdoll, crashing her into various columns and punching her – her body looked bruised and beaten up, but healed incredibly fast from the damage to the point that Mana could watch the blood and blue spots vanish in real time. It hurt to watch her like this, but Mana wasn’t sure if she could do anything to interfere – she had to get Doppelg?nger and disarm her first.

  “Thanks for getting me out of there, Portal,” she said first, but she got no response. “Portal?”

  Mana’s eyes widened in horror as she saw Doppelg?nger emerging from behind the nearest column, holding the book and grinning.

  “You’re way too reliant on this tome, mistress. I’ll be holding on to it for now, until I’ve dealt with the homewrecker.”

  “How did you…?”

  “Strange, isn’t it? How would I be able to steal your beloved book off you without you noticing?”

  Mana blinked and froze as she heard Doppelg?nger’s voice behind her all of a sudden.

  “Stasis is such a devious spell… if your attacker learned to use it without the need for vocalization, you would never know that it hit you…”

  Doppelg?nger was suddenly in front of her again, lifting Mana’s chin with a finger. “…isn’t that so, mistress?”

  Mana recoiled in horror, trying to crawl away from Doppelg?nger, but whenever she got away, the clone simply appeared right in front of her again, pying with her like a cat would with its prey.

  “Oh, poor little Marisa. She collected spells with Trace for the Broker, even without you! She wanted to impress you, be useful to you! She practiced day and night whenever you weren’t together, to master the spells the silver-haired woman taught her! And now that knowledge benefits me, and me alone!”

  Doppelg?nger showed a wide, demonic grin, but her sadistic chase came to an abrupt end as she had to dodge a rge head-sized rock soaring her way, which crashed into one of the columns instead of her face. The golem was shattered, and Arisu stood triumphantly above the rubble, drawing a bow made from green light and pointing its arrow tip at the clone.

  “Tch. Step aside, would you, mistress? I’ll retrieve you ter,” the clone hissed Mana’s way, who fell into a dark void behind another portal.

  ???

  ***

  Darkness surrounded Mana in every direction. The ground below her was grey like ash and crumbled at the slightest touch. Sometimes she could see the faint traces of lightning behind a thick cloud cover in the pitch-bck sky, but none of that light reached her. She was trapped in this strange dimension, without Portal being here to get her out again. Her hands were shaking, and she was about to cry as she got up, realizing that she wasn’t alone in this darkness. Something was skittering in the shadows beyond her eyesight and her breathing became ragged – she lifted her hand and illuminated the surrounding area with a fireball to see – but she wished she hadn’t.

  Mimics, or Shadows, all in different sizes and shapes were all around her. Apes, wolves, snakes, rge cats, all these different things looked at her. And all of them let out a loud, otherworldly roar as they charged her way.

  ***

  Mana flung fireballs and shot arrows into the dense crowds of otherworldly creatures that came for her. She cleared space with her bst spells and used her fire arrows as well – anything that could cause an explosion and take out multiple of the Shadows at once. She saw some of them jump at her and she blocked them just in time with precise use of Barrier. Still, she felt herself at a complete disadvantage. Even by using Jump and positioning herself above the crowd with a magic ptform, even as every single one of her spells took out twenty of those creatures. Doppelg?nger was right: She was so reliant on her old friend Portal that she felt lost without it – she couldn’t quickly reposition somewhere else or flee this dimension.

  She was in the world of the mimics, and it was only a matter of time before they would overwhelm her.