squishy pile - excerpt from Sabrina Blackburn's diary

“Maybe you should leave this to me, Nakajima-san.”

“Nahhh, I’ve got this. You can take the rest of the day off, Miss Culexus.”

This was supposed to be my last day in the Silent Room, but it’d turned into…probably the like, third-most-horrifying thing I’d ever experienced. Shit, I’d put up with just living here for the rest of my life if it meant not having Nakajima and Queen Shit Culexus hovering over me for the better part of a day. It reminded me of the hospital even more than the Room already did, and…man.

“You’re undercompensating. I know you think her ability’s cool or something, but the whole point of this is to make sure she can function normally outside the room.” It was pretty hard to tell if Mal was getting pissed off because of her voice thinger, but I’d probably guess yeah. Nakajima had that effect on people, it seemed like.

“No, you’re overtuning it. Look, maybe in Japan it’s fine to be wishy-washy about stuff like this, but here? Here I get shot at walking to work in the morning. We don’t half-ass things here.” Nakajima was definitely getting pissed. Her big, dumb smile was getting wide, and real forced. It looked like her face was gonna crack any second now.

“I don’t think it counts if you get shot at for being a pest.” They’d pretty much been at this since I got up this morning. See, the Ninth heard about our problem. Our, uh, me problem, with not being able to live outside a Silent Room without a lot of fucking collateral damage, and they sent Mal over to assess the situation a couple months ago.

“Hey, this is a vox unit, right? Nnnneat. Can I take it out?” Mal just sighed. She’d been sent here this time with a Culexus suit for me from the Ninth. Some crazy antimagic bullshit. She told me it would let me focus my…thing. My rust thing. It meant sitting around all goddamn day while they calibrated the suit around me, though. It was like being awake during surgery. Not a new feeling? But it was still a pretty shitty one, especially when we’d step out and test shit out outside the room. Every time it’d been ‘completely numb’ or ‘prickly all over and starting to smell blood pretty fucking fast’. Depending on, I guess, whether it was overtuned or they were undercompensating or whatever.

“It’s not. I modified this suit a little, since Sabpyon’s not a Culexus. Doesn’t need to take the same precautions.” Aw. I wanted a sweet robot voice. “Hey, Sabpyon. Are you still with us? Think we’re ready for another test.”

---

The look of relief on Nakajima’s face was pretty clear when we got out of the Silent Room. I made a note to treat her to Freckle Bitch’s or something, because man, nobody else would spend more than five fucking minutes in there. She out and out clapped when I told ‘em how I was doing – no prickles, no pain, no bleeding into my suit. I could still feel everything, though it was still kinda numb.

“Good. Glad we found a middle-ground. We aren’t quite done yet, though.” I followed her gaze to the pile of shit we’d been using to test. A couple of plywood boards, an old, shitty one and a newer one, freshly cut. A cutout from a chain-link fence. A stop sign I was pretty sure was supposed to be on a street a couple blocks from here, with a hunk of concrete still stuck on the bottom. …Slumped over on the floor was a girl’s body, too. Hospital gown. Bag over her head. I was pretty sure she was breathing, but the other two didn’t seem to have a problem with it. I was…

I was kinda hoping I wouldn’t have to test on her. I already knew what rust did to a dude. And it was never pretty.

Mal tossed me the shitty board first, and I caught it. …Nothing. Seemed like I could at least hold stuff normally.

Uh…how do I do the thing with the suit on…Well, not like this was the first time I’d tried focusing on something…After a second or so, it started to turn black as it got softer in my hand. I could still do it, it just…took a little trying. Which I was kinda grateful for. ...Destroying shit was never supposed to be so easy. I asked Mal if that was good enough, but she shook her head and told me to keep going. Only took a minute, probably not even that, before the board was pretty much just soft, black, and crumbly in a sorta heap on the floor.

She didn’t waste any time in throwing me the next board. It took a couple of seconds more, but not much. Rust pretty much doesn’t give a shit. Rot, I guess. Entropy maybe? Dunno what entropy is exactly but it got thrown around a fucking lot whenever I talked to the boss.

The fence went down even easier. Metal was kind of a specialty, I guess. Even now I barely had to think to fuck the thing up, and just touching the stop sign and kinda…pushing that feeling toward it made the whole thing dissolve away in almost no time, with the concrete under it cracking and crumbling into dust.

That…that was good, right? …Mal just shook her head, and Nakajima covered her mouth with one of her sleeves, glancing away. It didn’t seem like either of them was going to drag the other one over to me or anything, so I…made my way over to her. My legs felt like lead. Man, this was probably just some girl. A POW, or somebody Nakajima grabbed off the street. I didn’t know her all that well, but I heard she did some real twisted shit.

I crouched down next to the...yeah. She was breathing. The unconscious girl and just stared for a second. I reached down to touch her, and…

“How it do, bitches?” A deep voice boomed from behind me, and I just about pissed myself. Fell back on my ass and everything, and turned to glare at the source. …Well, it was the boss, I knew that on some level, but shit. He had a way of sneaking up on you, even now that he’d, uh…gotten some kinda little…cart thing? Looked like one of those robot vacuum deals, but painted gold and studded with enough diamonds to pay all three of us for a year. And I knew Mal’s salary, at least, had to be pretty fucking high. It was one of those little things about Eightball that made him look like a huge asshole, not that I’d say it to his face. He’d been pretty cool with me, and he bailed my ass out hard in the first place, so…

“Things should be in order after oooone more test, boss. Then you can get your torture room back! So how’s your ride treatin’ you?” Kinda seemed like she was stalling. Or trying to distract him, maybe.

“Ballin’, baby, we ballin’. So why the fuck y’all got some bitch sittin’ out here? You gon’ kill her? I tole you ‘bout that shit, Nakajima. You go crazy again-“

“Relaaax. That’s one of mine. She barely even counts as a person right now.” I looked to Mal while the other two talked, but…well, she was kinda unreadable. Looked a little impatient, I guess. …Guess after a while, killing somebody just loses meaning for magical girls, huh. Not like I hadn’t, but…

“C’mon, Sab. Do your thing. We’d have to go and show the bossman later anyway, so just think of this as good timing.” …Yeah, it probably was, I guess.

I took a deep breath and grabbed onto the girl’s wrist. Even though she talked big, Nakajima squeezed her eyes shut and looked away as the girl’s skin started to puff up, then turn a kind of sick green, spreading all the way up her arm and all over her body. …It was turning black just a second later, and I could feel her wrist turning into mush under me.

She stirred a little. Whimpered. Started to shake as her body fucking liquefied in my hand. She was alive for…way too long. Felt it for way too long. She must have been a magical girl... …It was never pretty. Never.

“Good work, bitches. Very good work. Tell my bro we’ll work out the gritty shit later, Malal-baby.” He gave a nod to Malal before fixing his ridiculous-ass sunglasses on me instead. “Yo’ shit’s already in ya new room. Welcome back to th’rest of the fuckin’ world, Blackburn. You gon’ be workin’ in a special Eversor squad with Nakajima, so you bess get along. Eightball gon’ send a bitch check on you later, make sure you settlin’ in.”

He rode off like nothing had happened. Like he usually did, I guess. Called Nakajima after him as an afterthought a couple of seconds later, something about hydraulics, and she gave me really vague, crappy directions to my new room and left me and Mal to find for ourselves.

And clean up a squishy pile of dead girl.