The Opulent Quarrel - Round One: Mademoiselle Primfel's

Gunzelurge had never been great at reading a room; the layouts were cramped and had altogether too much fine print. She tried raising her hand, immediately hit the ceiling, and seemed to think for a moment how best to get the gesture across. She tried pushing harder, until something pop-creaked unpleasantly and Madame Castigato unfurled from her chair some. "You. Large metal one. You strain the false walls of this dimension, now stop it."

Gunzelurge had everyone's attention for a moment, until one spiny schoolgirl saw the opportunity and shook a headful of quills into a bystander. Gunzelurge nodded, and squatted where she was still seeing over most heads in the throng. "I-will-do-my-best. Madame. I-had-a-question."

Madame Castigato wondered: Why did this school bother trying to teach the complicated business of being ladylike to mockeries of life like these robots? "Do you not understand how detention is structured, Miss-?"

"Gunzel-"

"-I don't particularly care," snapped the Madame. Gunzelurge was silent, when the ratgirl Felixia had spotted in the crowd leapt for the metal hulk's shoulder and stabbed a stolen quill between two plates of chassis. Gunzelurge, almost on instinct, snatched the girl one-handed, looked at her fist and saw an actual panicked person in there, and placed her softly on the ground.

"Not-particularly. I-apologise," she said, pulling out the quill and handing it back to a stupefied rat at her feet. Ah, thought Castigato, remembering she too was something of a mockery of life herself. It was hilarious, that was why - as long as Primfel kept to her domain and Castigato kept to hers, the Madame could enjoy herself and to the Interstice with the Headmistress' motives.

"We're supposed to be fighting our way out of here," hissed someone. Gunzelurge looked down; Georgia glared back up. The majority of the students had backed off in their groups toward the edges of the room, giving the solo detention-veterans and Gunzelurge (who still hadn't moved) a fair berth.

"Hello. again," said Gunzelurge. "Were-you-also sent here to. Detention. For summoning your. Horse?" Georgia's expression could've curdled milk.

"No. I'm here because I'm an accomplice to eyeball theft."

"As I recall, I was sticking up for you against bullies." Georgia hissed, ducked, barely dodged a giant centipede who had been hurled across the room. Felixia appraised the bigger robot, for good sense decreed if it were on friendly terms with the catgirl she enlist its help in this melee instead, but there was something very, very off about these odds. The easy pickings knocked down and out, the rest of the room entered an uneasy lull as everyone awaited the next distraction.

"Whatever. Gunzelurge."

"Hello."

"Team up with me." Felixia meowed plaintively. "Fine. Us." Gunzelurge extended a hand, and the catgirl seized the thumb and hauled herself up. The druid was taken aback, but didn't swat off Felixia when she took a scrambling run up her flank and onto the opposite shoulder.

"Yeah, good idea," said Georgia. "If there's no room in your cockpit, I can hang on up there. Keeps your arms free." Gunzelurge wasn't sure what a cockpit was, much less whether she'd accidentally picked one up on her travels or if it was some emboldened pink Fragile parlance that would need clearing up later, so for lack of better options she put Georgia on her other shoulder as told.

Georgia's garbage school-issue plimsolls squeaked on Gunzelurge's cauldron-like shoulder, providing scarcely better grip than Felixia's claws. "Can you move this thing 'elegantly' enough to take out the nastier girls?"

"And not just for Castigato, I'll note. Spin around too fast and I'm not going to be able to hang on."

"Well why don't you just wish for the skin off someone's back to stretch out and catch you?" Gunzelurge raised a placating hand before Felixia could respond.

"Fella(id)s. Please." Beyond the shack walls, a distant roar.

Gunzelurge stood a little straighter, ignoring Georgia's protests. If the giant metal humanoid taking on some kind of combat stance in the middle of the room didn't alert the other detentiongoers some shit was about to go down, the blue-white summoning circle emblazoned across and beyond the back wall sure did. "Your-attention-please," said Gunzelurge, and Felixia could smell the magic aligning with the bigger robot's phrasing, the focus, the prayer.

"The-next-horse-arriving-at-platform D. is-the-<ERROR>-hour. Present. Now-hour. Now-hour-IORE-express-service-to. Madamoiselle. Primfell's. Academy. In-the-interests-of-safety-please-stand-back-from. The trajectory. of-the-horse-until-it-is-brought-to-a-stop-"

-something metallic, huge, and distinctly unhorselike crashed through the back wall of detention, iron wheels chewing up floorboards and whatever pseudosubstance shimmered underneath. Gunzelurge caught the machine by its face in outstretched hands, dug in her heels, and forced the beast to a stop scarcely a metre shy of Castigato's desk.

Castigato smiled a smile so thin, she could've strung it across a footpath and decapitated passersby. Her expression cut through still-swirling debris in the air, and Felixia felt those awful eyes boring into the three of them, but Gunzelurge patted her steed affectionately on the snout, an oblivious clang-clang into the stunned silence, and turned only when Georgia hissed in her ear. Side of its face. Whatever.

"You," said Castigato, "should choose your next words. Very. Carefully."

Gunzelurge nodded.

"Now-hour-IORE express-service-to Madamoiselle Primfell's. Academy. Is-now-ready-for-boarding. For-your-safety please take-care-when-stepping-upon-the-horse. Proceed. In an. Orderly. and-ladylike-manner, as-failure-to-do-so-may require-you to. stay on. the platform."

"Wait," said a girl, no longer bothering to escape the almost-casual headlock her fellow student had locked her in. "Are you saying we can just get on this train-"

"Horse,"

"and just leave?"

Everyone looked at Gunzelurge. Gunzelurge looked at Castigato, who boiled inscrutably in her seat.

"Well,"

"chivalry is not one of the school's core values to be instilled in pupils, however. Given the ample damselling opportunities you've created with your little stunt here, I believe you may have generated enough ladyship to get away with it."

Nobody dared move, until Gunzelurge asked "Is-that. a. Yes?" to everyone's exasperation, relief, and terror. Castigato shrugged, her shoulders tracing non-euclidean paths. Someone watched it a little too closely and threw up.

"It is no longer my jurisdiction, for with this pocket dimension's boundaries destroyed, my contract with the school ends and I am at long last free to unmake myself."

"Congratulations," said Gunzelurge, because that seemed like the right thing to say. The dame of the detention dimension gave a prim nod, before evaporating before everyone's eyes. IORE neighed impatiently.

---

The driver compartment was crowded, but mostly civil. At Georgia's behest, the girls caught taking an "active role" in detention had been left behind, though Gunzelurge had immediately ruined the gesture with a "IORE will return on a round trip."

"Some of these people need medical attention," Georgia had said, aghast.

"Other students. Would be sent here with. No means of exit."

It sucked, but Georgia had to concede the mech had a point. It had taken a seat on the roof of the cab - god only knew how it was directing the locomotive - which chugged through the oozing dimensionless void. The only indication they were actually moving was the loose hair of girls perched outside on the pilot and buffers, sharing quite inanities and one of them occasionally breaking into cackles. Felixia was elsewhere in the cab rubbing metaphorical shoulders or extorting people or whatever the little menace's business was, and Georgia felt herself wishing she could be alone, physically alone, as she felt.

If nothing else, time to herself might help get her head around this whole battle nonsense-

"-and. Actually just ladies. My-apologies-ladies-and-ladies-we-are-now-approaching-the-Academy-"

-ok, never mind, Gunzelurge was jumping around, shuffling everyone back indoors and bracing herself in the doorway, yelling more train stuff. Georgia shoved her way through the crowd until she was face-to-elbow with the robot.

"Any chance you could run this thing straight through the school?" I mean come on, the showboating mech pilot in her had to ask. A few girls who overheard her oohed appreciatively.

"-thank-you-for-choosing-IORE-my-good-horse-and-finest-companion-

Yes.

-today-please-ensure-"

"Haha, wait, are you serious?"

"Yes," said Gunzelurge. "There are-" Georgia could've sworn she saw it do the robotic equivalent of back-of-the-napkin math. "-many chances."

And the void dissolved to sky, and the silence gave way to whistling, and the headmistress' tower was full speed ahead, and Gunzelurge's safety message was overtaken by a fair amount of screaming.