Laris Amalthea

Fareena sits cross-legged on a conveyor belt, surrounded by miniature delectables as the belt chugs along sky-high above the factory floor. Each miniature cupcake dances across her tongue in a melody of flavors. Chocolate, cherry, vanilla, and chocolate again! Each sweet popped into her mouth tastes great and refills her mana. A delicious double-whammy.

Mid-chew, Fareena’s grabbed by somebody and pulled off the conveyor belt. For a moment, she’s free-falling, before slamming into the semi-transparent surface of a hard-light shield.  A hand reaches into her vision, offering to help her to her feet.

She slaps the hand away, stands up, and says, “What’s the big idea? I hadn’t finished eating!”

The girl — not a devil-robot, although she is wearing the uniform of one, however ill-fitting — sheepishly scratches the back of her neck. Underneath the collar of the work shirt, pink ruffles stick out. Her eyes, which Fareena first thinks is a trick of the light, glow the same blue as the hard-light shield beneath her feet..

“Sorry,” the girl says, “You were about to be crushed so… my name’s Laris Amalthea, pleasure to meet you?”

Fareena peers towards the conveyor belt where, just beyond where she was mindlessly munching on mouthful-by-mouthful, machines crush the treats into orderly rows before pressing them into shrink-wrapped packaging.

“Well then, I guess I owe you my thanks,” Fareena says. Then she twirls her wand, rainbow sparkles dancing off the tip, and strikes a peace sign pose. “I’m your cute, friendly magical girl, Fareena Ravenhart.”

Too soon though, the sparkles from her wand sputter and fade. She taps the tip of the wand against the palm of her hand, but only a handful of sad little twinkles squeak their way out.

“Aw man, those sweets didn’t refill my mana nearly enough.” Fareena pouts.

“Cold storage is where the factory houses all food stuff after its production finishes. It’s a lot safer than a moving conveyor belt, and it’s away from the devil-robots,” Laris offers.

“Let’s get to it then, shall we?”

Laris summons a series of shields, staggered to form a makeshift staircase, and they descend together.

•

Huddled behind a metal shelf in the maze of cold storage, Fareena mashes her fifth bowl of acai, pouring granola and frozen berries on top.

“Not to be rude, but how can you eat so much?” Laris asks.

“M-magic is great-t for burning c-calories,” Fareena answers, despite her chattering teeth, and shoves another spoonful of acai into her mouth. 

Laris unbuttons her work shirt, takes it off, and offers it to Fareena.. Underneath her disguise, Laris wears a metal chest piece and pink undershirt with frills. Fareena wraps the shirt over her shoulders, though it hardly offers much warmth when her magical girl outfit exposes so much skin.

“Where’d you get one of the devil-robot’s uniforms anyway?” Fareena asks, pointing to the barcode screened onto it.

“Off a devil-robot,” Laris responds.

“Off a devil-robot?”

“A uhh… no longer functional devil-robot.”

Fareena leans to the side and eyes the oversized metal lance strapped to Laris’s back. “Oh my gourd, you totally trashed a devil-robot and stole its uniform.”

“I had to do something,” she says. “I’ve been stuck in this factory for at least a week, and the robot-police do not like when anyone, robot or not, deviates from protocol.”

“There’s robot cops?!” Fareena exclaims.

“Robot-managers, robot-police… maybe even robot-politicians.”

“Do you know how to get out of here? The last place had a weird AI and portals and floating metal and stuff,” Fareena rambles.

“You didn’t come from the Jungle? Consider yourself lucky. I’ve been looking for the next Exit, but there’s no doors in the factory floor or in cold storage. The only place I haven’t explored yet is the Infinite Corridor Storage Room, but it’s guarded constantly by robot-police,” Laris explains.

Fareena tilts her head as she scraps her spoon against the bottom of the acai bowl, collecting every last icy drop.

"I have an idea," Fareena announces as she surges to her feet and starts walking. 

(It takes 30 minutes before Laris decides that Fareena is hopelessly lost, and then 15 more minutes for Laris to lead them back to the main factory floor.)

Fareena swings the refrigerator door open, letting it smack into the wall with a reverberating clang, and saunters onto the production floor. With every robotic eye in this far side of the facility staring at her, she steps up onto a control panel and yells, "Riot!"

The silence, without the constant buzz and bang of the endless factory, is eerie. Laris scrambles to Fareena's side, mounting the control panel like an improvised podium. 

"Robot rights?" Laris half-says, half-asks, 

"Yeah!" Fareena's fist shoots into the air.  "Everyone should get to express themselves with colorful paint jobs." 

"Or insurance-covered oil changes and the right-to-repair," Laris adds. 

"So it's time to rise up against your robot-overlords and demand basic robot rights!" Fareena shouts, her voice echoing against the high ceiling panels. She smiles widely despite the stretching silence. 

The crowd of devil-robot-workers slowly gather around Fareena and Laris, forming a lopsided semi-circle. They stare blankly at the two flesh-bodied beings. Awkwardness mounts as their lack of verbal response prolongs.

In the near silence of the factory, metallic footsteps echo, and a troop of devil-robot-police rounds the corner. They’re larger than the robot-workers, steam hissing out through their joints. Their hands lack the fine dexterity of the other robots; instead, their forearms are mounted with heavy machinery, like guns and grenade launchers.

Laris looks towards Fareena with eyes. “Those would be the devil-robot-police.”

“Do you think they know that you totally murdered a robot-worker?” Fareena loudly whispers, hand cupped over her mouth. 

The two girls leap off the control panel and begin dead-sprinting. Laris leads, throwing shields up wherever she can to slow down their pursuers.

Through huffs, Fareena shout-asks, “Where are we going?”

“With any luck—,” Laris’s words are cut off as she grabs Fareena’s wrist and yanks her out of the path of a bullet. “With any luck, the Storage Room will be less guarded.”

“Since all of the robot-cops are chasing us?” Fareena asks. She swings around for a step and aims her wand towards the ceiling. Her starlight blast slings towards the ceiling and collides with a conveyor belt. It falls, crushing a few of their pursuers. The ricochet makes her stumble, but Laris steadies her.

She looks at Fareena and smiles despite the heavy breaths pushing ice through her lungs. Laris rips apart a nearby machine with her super strength and flings it backwards.

Whenever the girls create space between themselves and the closest robot-cops, another troop of enforcers emerges from their left or right. With each push, Fareena’s calves burn, but flying would only give the robots a clear shot.

“There!” Laris shouts, pointing towards a sign labeled The Infinite Corridor Storage Room in Times New Roman. They beeline towards the door. Fareena slings the work shirt off of her shoulders, fumbles with it for a moment, before pushing its barcode towards the electronic lock.

With a green light and a quiet ding, the door opens and they skid into the room. Laris straightens out her arm, palm facing towards the swarm of approaching devil-robot-cops, and forms an oversized shield between the door and the army. Fareena whips her wand towards the door's controls and shoots a magical blast. It shreds through the buttons and wires, and the door slams close. 

"How long will that hold?" Laris asks. 

The banging of metal-on-metal rings through the steel door. Then a moment of quiet, followed by a whispering whirr. The backside of a plasma cutter digs through the layers of steel, starting to dismantle their only defense. A stray spark of molten metal dives towards Fareena, and she scuttles backwards. 

"Shiitake! Not long enough," she says. 

Laris switches her lance to RPG-mode, loading a rocket and aiming it towards the soon-to-be-breached door. She takes a deep breath, trying to steady her aim despite her heaving lungs, and stares down the sights.

But then something —Fareena’s hand— gently pushes the launcher’s head towards the ground. Laris looks at Fareena. 

Except it's not her, not fully. 

The scleras of her eyes are swimming in inky darkness, and she emanates an aura that sucks in the surrounding light. The grinding of the plasma cutter slicing through metal is deafening, but Fareena's voice still rings clearly through it. It feels like, and Laris can't stop the comparison no matter how much she wishes to banish it from her mind, the pulsing void that stole her teammates from her. 

"Consider yourself lucky, mortal, for today I have decided you capable of a simple task," Fareena, or whatever is inhabiting her body, pronounces.  The plasma cutter completes its circuit, and the door falls, clattering against the ground. "You've provided my host with sustenance, refilled her mana reserves, and earned the honor of finding the Exit for me. I will crush the scrap metal."

Laris scrambles backwards, heeding the hind part of her mind that screams at her to run. She darts between piles of raggedy dolls and air purifiers and tchotchke, hoping for a glance of the Exit. She flings obstacles indiscriminately; her super strength ensures that no pile remains intact. 

Fareena, hand on hip, stands and watches the devil-robots as their mechanized march thumps like a war drum. With laser sights glowing red, they cross the threshold of the doorway. Fareena points her wand at the devil-robots as her grin grows more feral, more bloodthirsty. At the point of the wand, darkness sparks and then swirls, compressing into a miniature mockery of a black hole.  

The blackhole, no larger than the palm of her hand, surges forward. In a zigzag path, it rips through the robots, leaving hollow cavities in its wake. Oil splatters across the floor. Split wires spark then die. The devil-robots collapse motionless.

Beneath a mountain of doors, Laris finds the Exit.

"Fareena, I found it!" Laris shouts from atop the highest door. 

Fareena's back is towards Laris. She doesn't respond nor does the field of mangled robots at her feet. Laris slides down the side of the door-mountain and jogs towards her. 

At the brush of Laris's hand against her shoulder, Fareena's eyes widen as she notices the motionless robot corpses. With her eyes no longer tinted black or gleaming manically, she looks back towards Laris. 

"I found the door," Laris repeats. 

"Oh, coolio..." Fareena says, glancing back towards the robotic carnage. "What happened?"

"You don't remember? Surely you're joking?" Fareena shakes her head. "You spoke ominously, told me to find the Exit, and then eviscerated them."

“I don’t remember,” Fareena says. Laris takes one of Fareena’s hands and holds it in hers.

“It’s— we can discuss it later, but I’m not curious to discover how numbered their reinforcements are,” Laris says.

She leads Fareena to the mountain of doors and clears a tunnel to where the Exit lays, an iridescent door embedded into the floor. It shines blearily, ignoring all logical light sources, like it was poorly rendered in the wrong reality. They exit together.