“Umm-MMM-mmm,” whispered another girl, falling in step alongside her, “you’ve been naughty!”

Her eyes flashed, her head jerking to one side in order to grant her a better look at the other girl.

Standing at her side was a girl with uncharacteristically long hair tied in two knots either side of her head and a coy, playful smile.

Deuce hissed, her eyes widening.

“You’re the Drowned World agent!” she gasped in a hushed whisper.

The other smiled, keeping time with the endless procession of girls faultlessly, skirt and petticoat rustling with each movement of her hips.

“Magical Girl Pawn!” she winked knowingly.

The other averted her eyes, looking dead ahead at the endless movement of girls before her and the loud tramp of hundreds of feet brushing wooden floors in the dim candlelight.

“They’ll kill you if they find you,” she warned, trying her hardest to keep the momentary hint of fear from her voice.

Pawn leant in close, her breath warm against Deuce’s cheek.

“Then I won’t let them find me,” she whispered with a smirk.

Angrily, Deuce pushed her away.

“Stop acting so conspicuously!” she snapped, her voice louder than intended, “You’ll get us both in trouble!”

A sudden, sharp voice erupted from the loudspeakers as they passed beneath a carved stone arch and moved into another hallway, this one longer than the first and adorned with stained glass windows on either side.

‘You there!’ the voice cried, ‘You girls at the back! Keep in line! Disorder brings indignity, don’t you know?’

“Yes, Ms. Abe,” Deuce made a show of answering in a bland, emotionless voice, “Sorry, Ms. Abe.”

They kept moving deeper and deeper still into the confines of the ancient academy, passing beneath statues of angels, hands clasped together in supplication to a higher authority and portraits of aged headmasters and significant personages.

Either side of them, light filtered through the glass depictions of the myriad of saints associated with the academy so that, at one step, they were bathed in the light of Saint George’s shield, whilst at another, the spear of Saint Edmund cast illuminated patterns across their own features.

“How did you get in here?” Deuce hissed after a while, “Your hair’s too long, you know that? You don’t look like you’re from here.”

The other girl pouted.

“Pawn doesn’t change her look for anyone! Pawn is her own sort of girl!”

Deuce set her jaw in determination.

“Then you have no place here, you idiot,” she cursed, “the academy teaches you to be everybody else’s girl. They won’t take kindly to your line of thinking.”

The pout eased into a smile.

“I know,” she said with pride, “which is why you should think of this as a gaol-break.”

Deuce blinked.

“Gaol… break?” she repeated.

The other girl nodded enthusiastically.

“You’ve been scouted, Princess,” she smiled, “the Drowned World Society has need of a girl like you!”

Deuce’s eyes widened with panic, her head turning wildly as she glanced about the endless corridor whilst, at her side, Pawn maintained her Cheshire Cat grin.

“You’re crazy!” Deuce hissed, “Even the Drowned World Society can’t bust someone out of here. Don’t you know what this place is?”

Pawn nodded enthusiastically, her broad smile and rosy cheeks a contrast with Deuce’s own pale, fearful features.

“You girls!” Ms. Abe screeched in her shrill voice, emerging from beneath an archway and swiftly charging forward, her plump hands pushing aside students as she waded into the centre of the corridor. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times!”

“Don’t you know who you work for, Princess?” Pawn purred softly, reaching out and taking hold of Deuce’s hand in her own.

Abruptly she pulled the other girl close to her, their faces so close that Deuce could feel the warmth of the other’s breath upon her cheek.

“Your academy,” Pawn whispered, the words like a caress upon Deuce’s face, “is run by Destronger!”

Deuce felt her eyes grow wide with fear, her heart falling silent beneath the frail invented cage of her ribs.

Without warning, the wall running alongside the endless corridor exploded inward, showering fragments of broken red brick and Portland stone over the polished floor and hurling students back against the far side of the corridor.

In the distance, Deuce imagined she could hear Ms. Abe cry out in alarm but in her ears she was conscious only of a terrible ringing, the roar of the unexpected explosion having disorientated her.

She felt Pawn’s fingers wrap about her wrist and pull her along, the jagged hole in the wall sucking her down like a whirlpool into the spiralling depths of some unknown ocean.

She cursed silently under her breath. This wasn’t the way she was supposed to react! She had been trained in the most exacting techniques of combat, she understood violence, she was, by the nature the academy had imprinted upon her, a tool of violence.

To have been caught unaware by an explosion, to have been so easily manipulated by such simple trickery undermined everything she had learnt, everything that she was.

She had failed in her duty as a student of the academy and thus she had failed in her purpose for existing.

“Where are we going?” she cried out above the noise in her head, “What’s happening?”

Yet from the girl whose fingers were wrapped so tightly around her wrist there was no reply. Instead, she felt only the momentum of outside forces, dragging her down into darkness and shadow, carrying her forward into a world that was not her own.

She closed her eyes and it made no difference.

Somewhere, at the back of her mind, she heard a voice call back to her from the years beyond.

‘I’m here to teach you the true nature of magic,’ the words announced with disinterest, ‘I’m here to take you to Earth.’

She stumbled and, in the surrounding darkness, heard nothing more.

They had shaved her head upon her arrival; her beautiful, silken hair falling at her feet. Now, after a year, her head was covered in rough stubble, a sign of favour from the academy’s solemn hierarchy and a symbol of her slow progression through the ranks.

No newcomers, no matter what their background or status, were entitled to keeping their hair. It was both a tradition and a form of control, a small example of the wider philosophy that enriched the academy’s educational programme.

Hair, like identity, was something not granted to the unpolished but rather something that had to be earnt. She understood now why so many people had been hesitant to use her name before she came here; in their hearts they had known that she had no chance of retaining possession of it.

In her memory she saw her father, his lips moving in a shape that seemed familiar to her but that she could not recognise. Whatever her name had been, whatever small token her parents had afforded her, was gone now. In its place was the age-old nickname, adopted by the academy for its own purposes.

She adjusted her hold on the Whitworth rifle before her, keeping one eye close to the lengthy scope that ran along the barrel.

Beneath her was a scene she had become dispassionately familiar with; solemn grey buildings worn down by the beat of the rain and the howl of the wind, the bowed heads of commuters and the gathering traffic.

Her attention suddenly fixed on one of the various automobiles turning the corner and approaching from the left - a new, diesel engine model, not one of the traditional steam engines. Her training kicked in, her mind blanking almost as if someone had drawn a curtain over her past reflection and physical discomfort.

She followed the car through the scope, tracking its movements and steadying her aim, waiting in abject patience as the vehicle turned from the flow of traffic and paused outside the grey façade of the hotel she had been watching.

A heartbeat passed; another trickle of rain down the back of her coarse shirt. A door opened and the car disgorged a prim chauffeur onto the pavement. He stood for a moment, breath crystallising around him in the cold January air and then reached out.

Another heartbeat; a second door opened and a head rose up, thinning dark hair revealing a bald spot of sunburnt skin.

In another life she would have stretched the bow strings and lined the head of her arrow up with that blistering skin; in this life, she simply curled her finger inwards.

The 0.451 inch hexagonal bullet burst from the rifle, the butt of the gun kicking hard into her shoulder and throwing her backwards to the ground. Before her body had hit the asphalt roofing, her mind had reached out and taken hold of the bullet, propelling it faster and further than the triggered combustion of the weapon’s design ever could have.

Heartbeat, rain; the man with the sunburnt scalp blinked and the bullet passed through his head, erupting in ribbons of blood from his right cheek and spattering chunks of gore onto the rain soaked streets and the prim chauffeur.

Both men blinked and then the shorter gentleman, his head now displaying a small puncture in the parietal area of the skull, the region where, ironically enough, the brain’s cautiousness resided beneath the layer of protective bone, and a open wound in the lower half of his face that left his jaw bone hanging, collapsed abruptly.

The rain continued to drum relentlessly upon the fallen body, blood slowly spreading beneath its crumpled girth like the tide of some dark ocean lapping at the polished shoes of the chauffeur.

There was a moment in which the city continued about its business, entirely oblivious of the situation that had taken place before the revolving doors of the prestigious hotel, and then suddenly the sound of klaxon song filled the air.

Alarms and shouts rose up like a flock of agitated seagulls, the cacophony of sound drifting from the scene of the large man’s death to the dark clouds and rooftops above.

She lifted her legs and then swung them down, kicking hard against the asphalt and jumping to her feet.

With one hand, she swung the Whitworth over her shoulder and with the other reached down for the reassuringly elaborate buckle of her belt.

The best reaction time of the enforcement robants was thirty seconds and, at this time of night, the nearest unit - Team #150481, she guessed - would just be turning back from the city’s east gate.

That gave her sixty seconds, she guessed, her feet already hammering the asphalt as she sprinted for the building’s edge, seventy seconds if she was lucky.

The edge of the building came into view, a momentary glimpse of the gap between it and the adjacent roof and then she was up in the air, legs kicking against nothing as her lithe body sailed over the sheer drop and the bleak alleyway below.

Effortlessly, she landed on the other rooftop and kept running, the motion unbroken by the physical demands upon her.

She heard a sudden crack of sound, like a peel of thunder resounding through the dark skies, and she glanced once over her shoulder, already knowing what she would find.

Crossing the rooftop behind were Team #150481, the Siege Engine at its head, royal purple cloak billowing in the wind, and its four satellite dolls arrayed about it in a defensive formation.

Her mind raced through possibilities, every long hour she had spent studying robant tactics converging into a single warning that urged her, at all costs, to keep moving.

She threw her arm out and snatched hold of a narrow metal stovepipe, using her speed and grip to pivot on the pipe and abruptly change her direction.

She reached another building ledge and once more flung herself into the air, allowing herself to cross the void and dropping down onto a winding, outside staircase with a grunt.

The Whitworth rifle slipped from her hand and fell silently into the blackened depths over the iron railings, clattering loudly on the ground several moments later.

Gunfire rang out in the night and she knew her window of opportunity had been drastically reduced.

Automatically, she reached down and snapped the buckle from the belt.

With a twist, she rotated the separated buckle and it snapped open, revealing a shimmering spark of raw energy.

The air about her crackled with static discharge as the spark brightened and her hidden armour unfolded from the coarse garments she wore.

Deceptively thin black armour engulfed her, white boots and gauntlets clothing her hands and feet, and a decorative white mantle and featureless masque swallowing her head.

The bullets slammed into her hard, knocking her from the railings and sending her spiralling downwards into the valley between the buildings.

She pulled her legs in close, twisted her body in mid-air and changed direction, landing in a roll upon the unbroken pavement. She swiftly sprung up and broke into a run, snatching the fallen rifle as she passed.

Both the fall and the impact would have been enough to shatter the bones of her limbs in her normal state but the armour, and the power that coursed through her body from that single spark in the belt buckle, was more than enough to ensure her survival.

It was this power that not only gave all the academy’s prized students their remarkable durability but also fuelled the various rival institutions and corporations and the robant squadrons that policed them, ensuring that no one group could break the stalemate.

With the bullet she had placed in the sunburnt man’s head, the young girl with the shaved hair had gone someway to undermining that stalemate.

Her victim had, in life, been the president of RMM Farming Industries, a man whose vices were every bit as corpulent and bloated as his physical appearance. His death would not only destabilise RMM but also send the various other competing parties into a futile power struggle and tie up robant resources.

All the while, her masters in the academy would be free to act according to their own agenda.

The wall to her right shattered in ruin, tearing her mind back to her present predicament with a gasp, as a second cadre of robant enforcers broke through the red brick.

She cursed loudly beneath the white masque.

In none of the predicted scenarios had she perceived the possibility of a second squadron.

Before she could react, the second Siege Engine had reached out and wrapped its giant hand about her hand, swinging her sideways like a rag doll and slamming her hard into the remnants of the wall.

Her body screamed in agony, vision blurring beneath the thin bar of black aluminiuglass arranged at eye-level in the otherwise featureless masque.

Steam hissed from the various valves and pipes of the Siege Engine’s body, its head regarding her with soulless disinterest as it hauled her out of the ruin.

The roar of movement in the distance indicated the impending arrival of the original robant group and she cursed once more beneath the armour. The prospect of fighting one group of machines was daunting enough, let alone the notion of fighting two.

She was now completely at the mercy of the inhuman agency.

The Siege Engine tilted its head slightly and then, much to her surprise, the head slowly toppled from the shoulders and clattered to the ground. The hand wrapped about her head spasmed, contracting briefly and then released her as the machine staggered backwards.

The four accompanying lesser robants rushed forwards and, through the tears of pain that filled her eyes, she caught sight of two anachronistic figures dressed in the colours of the Drowned World Society.

She dropped to her knees, reloading the Whitworth and bringing it to her shoulder, determined not to waste her second chance.

Levelling the gun, she peered through the sight and let off a single shot at one of the dolls, staggering from the kickback and once more reaching out with her mind to guide the bullet to its target.

Her thoughts clashed in the ether with another and she recoiled, the invading mind of the Drowned World operative seizing control of the bullet and stabbing it forwards like a knife into the Siege Engine’s chest.

The headless machine faltered and collapsed and she was granted her first full view of the two rival operatives.

Both wore clothing of dark purple, trimmed with spotless white; the first was a young man in a trailing surcoat, wielding a large sword. His hair was dark and tousled and his hazel eyes seemed to betray a seriousness entirely suited to the affiliation he held with the academy’s rival.

The second of the two operatives was a girl of her own age, dark hair tied in two knots either side of her head, and dressed in a maid’s uniform of frills and lace.

In direct contrast to the antiquity of her partner’s sword, she was armed with a Pattern 1861 Enfield Musketoon.

Both wore heavy belts following roughly the same design as her own, the symbolism of which providing all that was necessary to identify them as members of one of the five conflicting factions.

She lowered her gun and glanced at the far end of the alleyway before turning back to face the two Drowned World agents and their stumbling robant attackers.

The combined loss of the Siege Engine and the unexpected rescue of their target by a rival faction had thrown the dolls into confusion, reducing their effectiveness in policing the situation by such a radical amount as to render them temporarily harmless.

This fragile balance would change once the Siege Engine of Team #150481 arrived and the dolls instantly ceded authority to the larger machine, but for now, there was an uneasy peace between all parties.

Slowly, the swordsman lowered his blade, looking directly at her with his thoughtful eyes.

“You better leave now,” he remarked after a moment. “It won’t be long until further robants arrive.”

She frowned beneath the masque.

“Why are you helping me?” She questioned in genuine confusion.

The swordsman smiled enigmatically.

“You have no conception of how important you are, do you?” His voice was heavy with self-assurance and misplaced confidence.

She regarded him silently for a moment and then quickly swung the rifle over her shoulder and turned away without further comment.

“When your mentor asks you what happened,” he called out to her retreating form. “Tell him Johann Weisz sends his regards.”

She turned back to look once more at the two Drowned World agents but only the stuttering dolls remained.

In the distance, the roar of steam engines signalled the approach of Team #150481. Without thinking twice, she disappeared into the streets.

Behind the masque, her expression was troubled.

If she was lucky then, with a mock bow, she might even be afforded the title of Little Miss Deuce or, should there be knowing nobles within earshot, Princess Deuce.

It was as if somehow she had been set aside from the upbringing seemingly reserved for her siblings, as if there was some secret she had yet to be told.

In the Koklyush language, the two characters used to form her nickname, ‘deu’ and ‘ci’ meant, individually, ’sly’ and ‘knight’. When the same knowing nobles, kitchen staff and servants became aware of this fact, they would nod seriously and whisper to one another.

It had been like this for as long as she could remember.

Whenever she questioned her mother or father on the matter they would turn and look sadly out of the stained glass windows of the palace, regarding their lands with stately melancholy and refraining from providing answers.

Her tutor, the frail and evasive Counsellor Drosselmeyer, was equally adamant that the subject be avoided.

He would peer out at her from behind his wire framed spectacles, stroke his wispy grey beard and then go on to complain that her theoretical knowledge of the forms of classical magical really wasn’t up to the level expected of pupils her age.

It was thus that Princess Deuce had turned away from the study of magic and Koklyush fables and applied herself in the solitary pursuit of becoming, once and for all, a tomboy.

She was the youngest of three sisters and, as such, there was little left for her in the way of etiquette and beautification. Instead she devoted herself to studying archery and horse riding; not the silly, ceremonial kind on winged horses and virgin unicorns practised by her sisters, but bareback upon the war horses stolen from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers charged with guarding the palace.

She had made of herself both a rogue and a rebel, a girl unfit for royalty. She was the perfect self-fulfilling prophecy of reluctant parents and scullery maids.

It was thus that she found herself by the river that ran through the king’s forests, her feet idling beneath gently running water and her stolen steed at pasture, when the king and his entourage arrived from the west.

Little Miss Deuce made no effort to rise or show benediction to her royal father, a fact that was overlooked by none but the king himself and the curious figure with whom he rode.

“Hwæt, Princess Celesta!” cried the king in a voice of false cheer and bravado.

“Hwæt…father.” Little Miss Deuce answered with disdain, her eyes fixing on the common man who rode alongside her noble parent.

He was a short man compared to the peoples of the palace, his hair dishevelled and burnt pale by the sun of a distant land. His face was marked with stubble and his blue eyes were fierce and decisive. A bard, Princess Deuce decided. No other of so completely untrustworthy a manner would have been entertained in her father’s court.

“Tomorrow shall be your fourteenth birthday…” the king began.

“I hadn’t forgotten, father.” Deuce interrupted.

The old man smiled in a confused manner and laughed nervously.

“Yes, well, being as such, we, that is to say, your mother and I, thought you might benefit from the tutelage of a new instructor. I suppose old Drosselmeyer and his fuddy-duddy ways must seem quite old fashioned to you now you’re about to turn fourteen years of age.”

She narrowed her eyes and rose from her place on the bank of the stream, brushing back a strand of dark hair.

“What is it you want of me, father?” She asked firmly.

The king, now thoroughly flustered, began to pull at his grand, ermine trimmed robes and look decidedly unsettled.

“I’m sure you can’t have failed to notice my companion, Celesta, dear,” he said, his voice suddenly low and urgent.

“This man,” he paused and glanced just once at the other rider before inclining his head back towards Princess Deuce. “This man is to be your new benefactor and you his ward.”

A flush of anger welled up in the young girl and her expression darkened.

“Is this it then, father?” She asked loudly. “Is that the fate I’ve been set aside for; to be cast out of the palace like some magician’s peasant niece and sent away to live with a stranger? Is this the fate of which they whisper in the palace halls, is this what you have always intended for me?”

The old king looked imploringly towards her, reaching down from his horse and caressing her young face.

“My dear Celesta, my dear, dear Celesta, if only you knew,” he murmured softly. “How troubled was your birth, dear one, how bleak was the curse laid upon you by the Carabosse, how this man alone was able to raise you from an eternal slumber by dowsing you in the waters of another world.”

The old man looked away, sudden tears springing forth in his dark eyes.

“There is a price for all life, dearest one.” He said, his voice suddenly firm. “This is the price for yours.”

Little Miss Deuce turned angrily from her father to the man upon the dark horse at his side.

“And who is this great hero who did so much for you all and damned me to this outcast’s life?” She spat. “Who is the man to which I owe so much?”

The bard upon the dark steed smiled in a lopsided manner and bowed half-heartedly.

“Hello, princess,” he said in an accent she hadn’t been expecting. “You can call me Magenta.”

She blinked once and, in that instant, it suddenly occurred to her that every animal of the forest had fallen into solemn silence.

The bard looked at her appraisingly with his fierce, blue eyes.

“I’m here to teach you the true nature of magic.” He said with disinterest. “I’m here to take you to Earth.”