Bootstrapping (Multi-cross, Book 2 - Now in Naruto)

[Tersin]

All right, deep breath and calm down. Screaming isn't going to help anybody. Break it down, what do I know?

First, I'm a baby. As near as I can figure only a few hours, at most days, old. I know this because I'm still in the hospital, currently being cradled by a woman who's very asleep and looking extremely tired anyway.

Second, based on this I'm apparently in a piece of fanfiction. Hopefully written by some alternate version of myself, otherwise this is probably going to get really uncomfortable.

Who am I kidding, it's going to be 'uncomfortable' at the very best anyway. Also, hello SB! I'd flip you all off on general principal (I'm absolutely positive that I wouldn't be here right now if it wasn't for everything I've read there, or here, what ever) but in spite of my clear thinking I still have a newborn's motor control. Now I'm going to do my absolute best to forget all about you so as to avoid an existential crisis.

Third, judging by the second, and the two impossibly beautiful women with improbably large breasts standing outside the room, talking about how the maternity ward had come up clear of Sacred Gears in the newborns, I was in High School DxD.

High School FUCKING DxD.

Land of impossibly overpowered bullshite and slavery, thinly excused as being okay because the person taking away your free will is a cute girl. I have opinions as it turns out.

The only upside to being a baby that I've found so far is that when I have a minor panic attack, I'm actually physically incapable of giving myself away. If I were a year or two older when I figured this out there's no way I would have been able to avoid giving myself away to what I'm pretty sure are two fallen angels right outside the hospital room door.

I think, anyway. I was never really into anime, and High School DxD hit pretty much all my hate buttons. So everything I know about it comes from fanfiction. Dubious at best. But as I recall, Azriel, or Azazel, or whatever the jackass in charge of the Grigori's name was, was the one who was really obsessed with sacred gears. Hardly mattered anyway.

Fourth, I am completely screwed. I'm human, and as the nice fallen angels just informed me, I have no sacred gear. Which means unless I've been reborn into some sort of spiritualist family I'm fodder. Chaff. Somebody who will die early just to show how powerful and serious the bad guys are.

So like I said, as things stand, completely screwed.

Fuck. That.


I'm starting over from scratch, the very beginning, with the mind of someone much older, and all the motivation in the world to do something about it.

So again, break it down. What are my goals? Given that I doubt I'll be able to avoid the plot entirely, that's just not what happens to people in my situation, I need to prepare to deal with it. Although I don't know much about DxD, never watched it myself and only knew what I could glean from second hand accounts and fanfiction. That said, I have a pretty clear idea of the main plot points, and who the major players are, up till the big peace conference. Which I don't think is actually much of what's going on. I'm not sure the major villain had even shown up by then.

So given that I don't really have much of an advantage from future knowledge, I can make one decision that immediately makes me feel much better. Fuck the plot. I am going to take as much advantage of what I know as quickly as possible and set loose all the butterflies I possibly can.

So... right, goals.

One, get powerful. I need some form of power to not just get run over. Making the top ten with Lucifer and Ophis might not be possible, especially since I'm starting with no advantages, but god damn if I'm not going to try for it anyway. I'm in a world filled with magic, if I don't at least try to squeeze everything I can out of it, I will never forgive myself.

Two, get skilled. All the power in the world won't matter if I can't use it worth a damn. More than just mystical skill, I'm going to need physical skill. I have no desire to be a glass cannon, which means I need to still be dangerous up close. In my past life I had wandered through a few martial arts. Aikido, boxing, krav maga, brazilian jiu jitsu, muay tai, escrima, kenjitsu, and HEMA, were all things I'd tried in my life. I'd never gotten very far into any of them, but I'd had solid basics in all of them.

Not that it means much now, as I'm sure that given my inability to even flop effectively, any muscle memory I'd had is long gone. On the other hand, I still remember all of it fairly clearly, so I can probably shortcut some training. On the other, other hand, what I really need is practical fighting ability, not sports fighting. That may be harder to find, but if it came down to it I could get at least a little bit of experience by getting mugged regularly.

Three, get tough. Eventually I'm going to get hit. By a gun, a light spear, or some rook's fist. No matter what it is, I'll die immediately if I don't do something about it. More than that, injury is also inevitable, and as a squishy human, injuries will never really go away. Every time I get hurt will add up and speed along the inevitable failure of my body. So I need as much damage reduction and regeneration as I can manage. Otherwise, I just won't have the time for the first two goals. And if I can manage a form of immortality out of all of this... well I'll be trying for that too.


Four, get allies. From what I recall, most of everything we learn about this world is about the Biblical factions. None of which I particularly like. The devils, if I pull any of the above off even a little bit, will never stop harassing me to join one peerage or another. Which is never going to happen, so just a lot of aggravation for everybody involved. The fallen angels, from what little I could tell, were both arrogant in the extreme, and almost universally more than a little mentally unstable. Not the sort of people anybody with any sense wants to spend a lot of time around. Lastly the Angels, and/or the church. I'm not a huge fan of organized religion in general and... well I'd make a terrible Christian, let's just leave it at that.

I think that the only group mentioned in canon that isn't biblical are the Yokai. They... actually I don't know much about them. Only that they were a diverse bunch, led by a nine tailed fox who is hooked straight into ley lines running under Tokyo, and she had a single kid who was most likely absolutely adorable (I think she got kidnapped at some point?). So I'll put the Yokai solidly in the 'maybe' category. More information is needed.

But other than the Yokai, the world is pretty much a blank slate. I have no idea what's out there, but I'm going to have to find out. Hopefully they'll be friendly. Or at least not hostile.

Five, get out. Highschool DxD is the kind of world which, if I pull off anything like what I'm hoping for, I'll never be left alone. Some power hungry maniac will pretty much always be after me once I start attracting attention, which I can't avoid forever. Eventually one of them will get lucky. So getting to another world would be nice. Failing that, a pocket dimension I can hide in and control access to. At the very least I need a place where nobody will be able to get to me, but ideally I'll find a way to a safer universe.

And Six, the reason I don't think I can do this without attracting attention, and never being left alone. Why devils will be crawling all over each other to entice, or force, me into their peerages. Get all of this, without losing my humanity, my freedom, or my soul.

That's it. Six goals to survive this place. Get powerful, get skilled, get tough, get allies, get out, and get all of it without giving up anything essential. Easy right?

God, I'm so fucked. I have no idea how I'm going to do any of this.

I let out a squeaky yawn as all the thinking and stress begins to catch up to my newborn body. I feel sleep begin to take me and one last sleepy thought occurs to me. For now at least, I have plenty of time to figure it out.

 

[Tersin]

Age Five Years​

I watch the girl in the mirror closely, shoulder length brown hair, hazel eyes, and skin that should be more tan than it is for how much time I spend outside. For all my determination on my first day here, there wasn't a lot I could do that young. Mostly I'd spent my first several years meditating. Largely because I couldn't do anything else. Well, that's not really true. By six months I could have been walking and talking but that seemed a little quick to me. The only reason I didn't give myself away was that my parents had bought quite a few 'How to be a Parent' books. Those fortunately gave a pretty good timeline for when the average kid hit what developmental milestones, allowing me to pretty much coast under the radar.

Of course, even when I could start doing things, I remembered that too much hard exercise at too early an age would ruin me. I couldn't just do nothing though, so my solution? I became the scrappiest, most tireless tomboy ever. If I'm not sleeping, reading, or eating, I'm running around like a maniac and climbing everything in sight. When I get tired, I rest. Then as soon as I can I'm going again. So really, I should be way more tan than I am.

But no matter what my parents might have believed, my currently bouncing knee had nothing to do with my seemingly unending energy. No, my current restlessness is because I'm finally going to take my first concrete step towards goal one.

Get powerful.

During those first few years of meditation I was trying as hard as I could to get a feel for the world around me. Not in the typical baby exploring way, though I did that too. I'm in California, an entire ocean away from the plot, so no clue what the local supernatural scene is like. Also, no idea where I am temporally in relation to said plot. Really though, I was trying to feel the natural energy of the world. I knew senjutsu was a thing, and I was pretty sure you didn't have to be a Japanese cat thing to do it either. I also knew that there were ley lines, though I have no clue where those were aside from 'under Tokyo'. So I spent my first year of life doing nothing but meditating, looking for either of those sources of power.

The results? Aside from getting really good at meditation?

Nada. Zip. Zilch. Nothing.

I don't know if I was just doing it wrong, looking in the wrong place, or as a mundane human, I just can't sense either of them. But I couldn't find anything. So after a solid year of effort I stopped looking.

At that point I started trying to come up with anything that might be a system of magic that wouldn't require me to provide power. Since clearly, I don't have any.


In the end I came up with two. First, ritual magic. I know spell circles are a thing. And evidently an important thing that let magic happen. Devils, from what I recall, just imagine what they want their magic to do, and the spell circles seemed almost a by-product of their magic, making it happen. But still, it was proof that some form of organized symbology has a tangible effect on magic. And while I can't detect the ambient energy of the world, I know it's there and, hopefully, I won't have to handle it myself to make it do things.

Besides, I think I remember that shit driving you mad with the planet's collective hatred for humanity.

Or that was the Fate/Stay series?

Whatever.

The second idea I had was alchemy. This I have far less basis for, but I thought it might be easier anyway. There are plenty of things running around with inherent magic. Not to mention that even mundane things have a lot of esoteric meaning attached to them. With the amount of power that is supposedly just floating around out there, I don't think it would be too far fetched to think they might actually have some magical effect in line with what everybody thought they meant.

I mean, how the hell would people come to the conclusion that a daisy means purity unless there's actual evidence of it at some point? That's what I'm hoping for anyway.

Which brings me back to the present. Sitting in my room, watching myself fidget in my mirror, waiting for my mother to leave for her hair appointment. I'm excited because today would be my first foray into alchemy.

Downstairs, I hear a door open and close, along with a vague shouted goodbye. I hold my breath. The garage door opens, the motor for the automatic door somehow fills the quiet house, no matter how quiet the things are supposed to be. Then the door closes and I leap to my feet, dashing to the window and peeking through the curtains. Down below, my mom's sedan pulls out of the driveway and vanishes down the street.

A squeal escapes me as I bounce on my toes and pump my fist. Sure, mentally I'm thirty plus, but physically I'm a five year old girl. And while I'm getting a second chance, I'm going to enjoy the hell out of it.

I clatter my way downstairs, according to my dad, sounding like a stampede of tiny elephants. Honestly, as soon as I heard that I went out of my way to be as loud as possible. When my parents asked why, I told them I was shooting to someday be a stampede of normal elephants. Really, I just like the way dad smiles when I do. Neither of my parents smile very much.

Especially around each other.

Downstairs, I start my preparations. Step one: retrieve my ingredients. I have them hidden under the outside steps in a paper bag, drying out. I hope that dried, they will be less potent. This is just a proof of concept after all.

Next, I get my protective gear. An old button up shirt of my dad's put on backwards will fill in for my lab coat. I pop the collar to protect my neck, and with some contortions I manage to button a couple of buttons to keep it on. I have a painter's mask to at least mitigate any fumes that might be created, and a pair of safety goggles looted from dad's tool cabinet to protect my eyes from splashes. They don't really fit but with enough pulling on the elastic I get them to stay on. Not perfect, but it's the best I can do.

Then I get a foot stool and plant it in front of the stove. Finding a pot, and trying not to pull everything else in the cupboard out with it, I fill it with water from the sink and then wobble my way back to the stove trying not to spill. I'm at least marginally successful.

Note to self, five year old girls have no upper body strength. Like none. Next time, put the pot on the stove and fill it with a glass or something. Sure it will take longer but I think it might be slightly safer.

Or easier.

I'll take either.

A long handled spoon for stirring and I'm ready to go.

I set the water to heating and start unloading my ingredients from my bag. I have them bundled by like symbolism. A bundle of everything I could get my hands on that represented health, another for protection, and so on. I've made very sure that nothing in any of them are inherently poisonous. Sure, plenty of them probably aren't good for me, but there's no belladonna, nightshade, or hemlock. I'm not planning on drinking any of it any way. Today's plan is simply to pile on as many similarly symbolic things together as I can and just see if I can get a reaction.

Which reminds me!

I hop down from the stool, run to get the cordless phone, and scamper back to my incipient potion. I carefully punch in 9-1-1 so I'd only need to push the dial button if something goes catastrophically wrong.

I put the handset in easy reach, and checking the pot which had reached a roiling boil, I'm ready to get started. I select my protection bundle under the theory that even if something does go horribly, it still probably won't hurt me as that's pretty much it's antithesis.

Carefully I shred my plants into the pot. A fern frond, birch bark, bamboo shoot, fresh, and half a dozen other things are reduced to tiny pieces and added to the brew. I'm not really expecting anything spectacular, but as I drop things into the pot and keep stirring the liquid begins to thicken...

And then I'm on the other side of the kitchen looking up at the ceiling and a high pitched whine is the only thing I can hear. My goggles are askew and, under my painter's mask, there's a giant grin that I just can't get to go away. I'm so glad that little kids are made out of rubber.

I actually take this as a resounding success. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, in that pot that should have exploded. Nothing that should have been capable of exploding. So the extra energy to toss me four feet across the kitchen has to have come from somewhere. Where?

Magic.

I dramatically point towards the ceiling, "I must do more science!" I cry and bounce back to my feet to see what the damage is.

Honestly, I was expecting worse. The pot is fine and hasn't moved at all. Neither has anything else for that matter. Even the phone handset, sitting upright on the counter next to the pot, is right where I'd left it. In fact, the only things that seem to have been affected by the explosion are myself and the brew. Which has become a sort of brownish sludge, and has ended up splattered everywhere.

I consider cleaning it up... but honestly it's quite likely that it isn't the only stuff that will end up all over the place. So I don't really see the point of cleaning up the kitchen only to have to do it again in fifteen minutes. I'll clean up when I'm done. This time I think I'll try the healing bundle...

In any case, this is definitely going to work!

###​

This is definitely not working. Not in the slightest. At this point I'm out of bundles, I'd tried twenty of them, and none of them are useful.

I'd varied the amount of ingredients, temperature of the water, and everything else I could think of to get different results. No luck. I get the same thickening and explosion everytime. No matter what.

Healing bundle? Explosion.

Purifying bundle? Explosion.

Good luck bundle? Explosion.

At the end, I'd even started mixing and matching ingredients from different bundles to try and get anything else to happen. No luck. Thicken, explosion, that's it. It even turns into the same brown sludge every time.

So now I'm laying on the floor after using up the last of my painstakingly collected ingredients. The room is covered in an uneven collection of whatever my efforts at potion making have actually resulted in. My front is fairly well covered too.

Really, in the end, it was almost a total waste of time. The only reason it isn't a complete disaster is that the whole experience reaffirmed my belief that there is actually magic out there in the world for me to find. And this method clearly got in touch with it somehow.

It will take a lot more experimentation to make the process do something useful, though. Fortunately I have nothing but time, so I can proceed carefully...

The house is filled with the sound of an inexplicably all consuming electric motor.

I take it back! I have no time!

I scramble to my feet as quickly as I can and start frantically looking around for the towels I'd set out for cleaning... that I'd meant to set out for cleaning.

"Oh my god!" I flinch at the sound of my mothers shocked voice, "Ericka Samantha Rhostana!" Ah shit, she three named me, "What exactly have you been doing in here?"

Cringing, I turn towards where my mother stands in the doorway to the kitchen, "I can explain?" My mother's only response is to cross her arms and raise an eyebrow at me. I have a moment of clarity, seeing exactly what this must look like to her. Her five year old daughter, dressed in her fathers shirt, on backwards. One sleeve partially rolled up, the other flopping well past her hand. Oversized safety goggles sitting haphazardly on her face, the giant painter's mask being the only thing holding them up. Hair in complete disarray, and covered in the same brown crud that covers the rest of the room. At least I'm probably cute, "Okay, I really can't explain. I'm grounded, aren't I?"

"Like you wouldn't believe, young lady," Mom says severely.

"Would it help me at all if I told you your haircut looks great?" It did. She has it in a nice and simple shoulder length cut with some minimal bangs framing her face.

Mom tries, but she can't totally hide the smile that tries to show up at my compliment, "Go to your room, now. You will stay there until your father and I have decided what to do with you, understand?" I nod. "Say it."

"I understand," I slump.

"And leave your... safety gear here." I acknowledge the order by pulling the shirt off over my head, along with my head gear, and leave it in a pile in front of me. Mom leans forward to inspect me with narrowed eyes. Having gone over me from head to toe several times, and making me turn around so she can see all of me, she's satisfied. "Actually, go take a bath before you go to your room. You've got that... stuff all over you." I nod and scamper off before I can find some way to make this worse. I'm brought up short after only a few steps as she calls after me, "What exactly were you trying to do here anyway?"

Fortunately, I have a foolproof answer for that one, "Magic potions!" I chirp, bounding on my toes again.

"Magic potions," Mom deadpans, looking at me over her shoulder.

"Uh huh!" I nod rapidly. Mom just groans pinching the bridge of her nose and waves me off.

Without another word I make good my escape.

I strip down with no small amount of relief in my bathroom. The clothes are more than slightly disgusting. Chucking them into the hamper I examine myself. God, I'm skinny, I'm not sure if it's possible for a five year old to have muscle definition, but I certainly don't have any. I'm just satisfied that there's really no fat on my frame either.

When I'd first discovered that I'm a girl in this new life, I'd nearly had a panic attack. Not because I'm female. Honestly, my gender has never been too integral to my self identity. My sexuality is far more of a concern. So as long as I still find girls attractive when I hit fifteen, I really couldn't care less about the plumbing.

No, the reason I'd freaked out is actually a person. Somebody I'm sure I won't be able to avoid completely. Issei Hyoudou, the nominal lead character and hero for this universe. And isn't that a depressing thought. Issei, as near as I can tell, is basically a puppy. Stupid, eager to please, and completely incapable of not humping your leg. And for some reason, nearly every female that comes into contact with him finds this behaviour attractive in the extreme.

I know that it's at least partially because he's a harem protagonist, but that's also the problem. I am now one of his preferred targets. If his... 'charisma' affects me, I'm going to kill him immediately, or myself, just to avoid the brainwashing.

I've always been more of a cat person anyway.

###​

It takes another hour and a half for my dad to get home. Which is good because it takes two-thirds of that time for me to get the gunk out of my hair. I also spend a certain amount of time poking the places on my body where the sludge had landed and dried to see if it has conferred some effect that isn't immediately obvious.

No such luck.

When my dad does get home it only takes another ten minutes for the yelling to begin. I try as hard as I can not to listen in on what's being said. I turn up my stereo to try and drown them out. And when that only partially works I start shadow boxing in front of my mirror in an effort to give myself something else to focus on.

Boxing is coming back to me remarkably quickly. Though whether that's because of memories from the last time I'd learned, or the saying about the sweet science being quick to learn and long to master is just that accurate, I really can't say.

Eventually I'm called down to dinner. I go down the stairs with my usual pachyderm impression, earning a small smile from my father, though he quickly schools his features to look stern again.

"So I hear you spent the afternoon making magic potions?" My father asks, clearly trying not to smile. My parents are a study in contrasts. My mother is a short woman who I would venture to call voluptuous. The woman is all curves, and wide ones to boot. My father, on the other hand, while not tall, is certainly taller than mom, and made out of toothpicks and chewing gum. By which I mean he's never really outgrown his gangly phase. He's all elbows and knees and, when drunk, he moves like a muppet.

In the darkest parts of my own mind that will never see the light of day, I frequently wonder how exactly my father had convinced my mother to marry him.

Or sleep with him.

I suspect alcohol was involved.

The real problem is that I'm beginning to think that my mother doesn't know why she married him either.

I nod my head slowly in response to my fathers question. I know I'm in trouble and while I doubt he'll be willing to level any punishment at my five year old self that would actually bother me... well, I still have a part to play.

From under my lashes I can see my dad's lips twitching, trying not to smile, "How did that work out?"

I grind a toe into the ground, "Um... Not well? I made explosions!" I cheer, looking up at them with a big smile on my face. Which immediately falls as I see my mother's expression. Storm clouds are friendlier, "And a mess."

"Right," my father sighs.

I think he's about to say something more, but mom gets there first, "Clearly, we can't trust you home alone, young lady," Mom says sternly, "Everybody said that you were too young, but I thought you were unusually mature for your age and could handle it. Clearly I was wrong," Ouch, okay that actually hurts. I study my shoes in great detail, trying as hard as I can not to cry. Stupid five year old body, "So from now on you won't be. You'll be with me or your father, or at school," Her expression pinched. I'm pretty sure she's thinking about how I have no friends my own age. I don't like worrying her, but I have shit to do that has nothing to do with dolls. Besides if I'm going to be friends with somebody it will be somebody I can hold a conversation with. Not something the average five year old is capable... Wait.. WHAT? No! I need time unsupervised to pursue arcane power! "I suppose we'll have to find you a babysitter."

"No!" Flies out of my mouth before I know what was happening. My father's still trying not to laugh while my mother purses her lips, "Not a baby," I grumble as an excuse.

My father finally loses his war for composure and starts laughing softly while my mother's expression softens. She sighs deeply, "Ericka, do you understand why we..." She glances at my father and frowns, "Why I am upset?"

"Made a mess?" I offer. Haven't we covered that?

"That's part of it, yes, but a small part. I don't know what you were playing with, but by your own admission you managed to make several explosions. When I came home you were laid out on the floor! You could have hurt yourself and nobody would have been here to help!"

Oh. I suppose that's true, too. Well, shit. I suppose, given that, I really won't be able to do anything to convince them to leave me alone with the stove again any time soon. That being said, I still can't afford to do nothing to move towards my goals. So if goal one is out, move on to goal two. Now how to approach this?

I have an idea, "But it'll be sooo boring!" I whine. Unlike normal, when I try to act as some sort of compromise between my physical and mental ages, I'm going for maximum annoying here, "You'll be doing grown up things and I'll have to sit there and wait, and I'll have to find things to do while you do!" My parents look concerned. As well they should. As mangled as that sentence was, no parent wants to be confronted with the idea of their five year old finding ways to entertain themselves in public while bored.

"Well..." My father says slowly, "Understanding that we still can't leave you unsupervised, what would you want to do?"

A small smile tries to crawl across my lips and I forcefully repress it so as to not give the game away, "Well... one of the kids at school has an older brother who was talking about something called Aikido..."

 

[Tersin]

Age Seven​

My ploy to start my martial training as early as possible had met with more success than I thought I would get in my wildest dreams. Aikido had been a big hit with my parents.

My mother being the biggest fan. If only just.

Apparently, the idea of her little girl being able to break any would be rapists she might meet in dark alleys appealed to her. I think my father was imagining mostly the same scenario, just with prospective boyfriends. I still haven't worked up the nerve to tell him he's likely worrying about the wrong gender.

Aikido itself, however, ended up being something of a disappointment. At some point since the last time I'd really paid attention to the art, it had become far more 'art' than 'martial'. It's all right exercise, but largely, it's gone the way of Tai Chi.

What it did, however, is act as an excellent gateway for my parents. Once I'd been doing Aikido for a month, I pitch the idea of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, describing it as 'Aikido, only you're lying down'. Which it isn't, but my parents didn't know that, and in their ignorance it was an easy sell.

From there I added Jujitsu, 'It's like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, only standing up.'

That, with the help of the instructor and a lot of fast talking, segued into boxing. That, without too much more trouble, led to Muay Thai, and then I point out that since I have all the pieces I might as well just go to an MMA gym and do them all together. At that point my parents had pretty much given up, so getting them to let me go to a HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) studio to learn swordsmanship barely took more than the asking.

It was in Jiu Jitsu class that the biggest change to my planned training regimen happened. I'd been somewhat worried about conditioning, and when I could start weight training, and what it would do to me if I got it wrong. And then I met Sarah. Black hair, blue eyes, the sort of pretty child that would grow up to be just an unfair adult.

Looking at Sarah was almost like looking in a mirror. She's my age, and just as scrappy as I am. We only shared Jiu Jitsu classes when we met, but she recommended the MMA gym we also end up sharing. The only differences between the two of us really are that she's pretty, where I'm plain. She's almost sickeningly cheerful, where I'm much calmer. And she is in the best shape of any little girl I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot of them in the last seven years.

I asked her what she does, and she answered 'gymnastics'.

Which at the end of two years settled my schedule. Gymnastics five days a week, a martial art after them, rotating by day of the week, with HEMA on Saturday. Sunday is left free for anything else I might want to do and family time. As awkward as that can be.

Also, by the time things settled, it got my parents several things that made them happier. I'm apparently much easier to manage when I get home after my various extracurriculars and only have enough energy to eat, wash, and make it to my bed. Homework gets squeezed in where I can. This means I have no time or energy for trouble.

Sarah also became my first, and only, friend. Something I know my parents have been growing more and more concerned with. Most of the time I find children my own age unsurprisingly difficult to relate to. However with Sarah, we're so busy doing things that my relative maturity hardly ever matters. Whenever she comes over to my house we usually end up wrestling, chasing each other, or climbing something.

It's nice to have a friend again.

###​

Over time, as I continue to not blow up anything else and improve my imitation of a normal girl with Sarah's unwitting help, my parents begin to gradually relax. They're less obsessive about making sure they're there the moment my time isn't otherwise occupied. Which is why I now have the chance I've been waiting for since about three months after I'd started Jiu Jitsu classes.

Right across the street from the dojo is a used/antique book store. In the city there are more than a few of these, it's a college town after all. But this one has an unusual number of impossibly gorgeous, and stacked, women visiting it.

It's kind of sad that my principal method of identifying something supernatural is how attractive the females are. Opportunities to test this assumption have been few and far between, and so far inconclusive. Fortunately, a small child can ask a pretty lady if she's an angel and nobody thinks it's odd. Unfortunately, trying to catch somebody with potentially several thousand years of experience at lying is an exercise in futility.

Doesn't stop me from trying though.

These are the sorts of things that in ten years my parents will use as stories to embarrass me, aren't they?

Still, it's the best I have to go on, so I'll take my chances while I can to follow what leads I have. Thin as they are. So as soon as class ends and I finish saying goodbye to Sarah, girl is a hugger, I grab my bag without bothering to change and scamper across the street the moment the traffic is clear.

There's a gentle ding from a bell overhead as I open the door and slip in. The store itself is everything I expect from a used book store. A small open space just inside the door with a wooden bargain bin to the right and a counter immediately to the left. Straight ahead are the stacks. Rows of shelves dedicated to mythology, plays, botany, physics, philosophy, fiction and a dozen other topics filled the air with the scent of old paper.

With a grin I start forward, only to be brought up short by a pointed cough. Looking to the counter I finally notice the mildly amused looking goth teenager who's manning the counter. She gazes at me for a long moment, a smile tugging at black painted lips. "Sorry, cutie. Can't let you take a bag into the store, it has to stay here with me," she says, while indicating a sign that says as much in quite clear lettering.

I blush, partially because I really should have noticed the sign, and partially because it's somewhat flattering being called 'cute' by the older girl. With an embarrassed smile I hand the backpack with my normal clothes over the counter, and scamper into the stacks.

I have maybe half an hour before one of my parents shows up to collect me, so I try to work fast. The first place I go is the section where they keep the antique books. Or I try to. There's a very fancy door made of hardwood that just looks heavy. Unfortunately it also comes with a sign that says, 'By appointment only'. So I'm pretty much SOL there.

The occult section is decently large, and unsurprisingly holds things that are either new agey bullshit, or well outside of my price range. Or both. Mostly both. I scan the philosophy section as fast as I can, and find nothing, and then end up in the anthropology section. There I finally hit pay dirt. A book on the history of Norse runes is pretty much exactly what I want. The book costs nine fifty and I have ten dollars on me so I can just afford it.

Clutching the book to my chest I scramble back towards the front, almost clipping the bargain bin on my way past. Dancing around the wooden cart I happen to see a rather large leather tome half buried in the pile of crappy paperback fantasy and romance novels. Mostly just for the hell of it, I pull the large book free to take a look at.

The cover is nothing I can read. No idea what language it is, but it's composed of symbols both flowing and harsh, rigid and light.

Pulling the cover open I find the title page is in English, 'The World Script' it reads. No idea what that is, but it seems a little too convenient for me not to take a chance on. The problem being that the leather bound book costs five dollars. I can get it, or the book on runes, not both.

I struggle for a moment trying to decide what to do. The runes, which I recognize and are supposedly magical, or 'The World Script', which really feels like something deliberately put in my way. Finally I make my choice, and run to put the rune book back before hefting the large tome onto the surface of the counter that's only slightly shorter than I'm. Another two years of growth and working my ass off has done wonders for my upper body strength, at least relative to the standard set by seven year old girls.

The teenager at the counter takes the book and raises an eyebrow as she starts ringing it up, "This seems a little advanced for you," she comments. I try not to feel condescended to. They probably are too advanced for any other seven year old. "What are you up to with this?"

"Magic!" I chirp back at her, trying as hard as I can to channel overly enthusiastic child. I must have succeeded because she just snorts, an amused and mysterious smile curling her lips.

"Five dollars, sweety." She smiles at me again.

"Um... My money's in my bag," I tell her. I get my bag back without fuss, pay and stuff the book into my bag. "Thanks!" I tell her, waving before darting out the door.

Unfortunately, my dad has shown up while I was in the store and is on the edge of panicking at my having 'vanished'. I really hope that I've gotten what I needed on this trip, because I think my grounding just got more strict again.

###​

It takes me two days to find the time to really dig into my purchase. Mostly that's my own fault. In my effort to cram as much progress as I can into as short a time as possible, I've done too good a job. I barely have any free time between school, various martial arts, gymnastics, Sarah, and my parents watching my every move. And of course I'm unwilling to take 'The World Script' out of my room, so I can't exactly read it during lunch or anything.

Fortunately, getting time by myself in my room to read a book isn't so hard after I actually have time.

What I find is both the best hope I've had since I got here, and extremely frustrating. 'The World Script' is more of a dictionary than anything else. A seemingly endless number of symbols, their meanings, and pronunciations. In the universal phonetic alphabet no less, so that's lucky. The symbols themselves are structured almost like a Russian nesting doll.

There's a symbol for 'earth', that if altered correctly would mean a specific type of earth, like 'clay'. That symbol can be further altered to represent how the clay has been shaped, such as 'clay plate', which can again be further altered to represent a specific clay plate, as opposed to clay plates in general.

The result being that if you know how to read them, a single symbol can describe everything about an object. How old it is, what it's made out of, how well it's made, the specific kind of clay, even what techniques are used to make it, and every flaw in its construction or damage it's acquired over time.

And there are symbols in the Script for everything.

What the book doesn't have is any information on how to organize or make use of the Script. Nothing on grammar, or sentence structure, and especially nothing on how to use and activate this clearly magical language.

So useful, but frustrating as hell. I'm going to end up tearing my hair out. So close, but still impossible to use. Given the explosions my alchemy had caused, I'm a little hesitant to just start trying things.

Well... maybe? I can probably find something innocuous and harmless. I eye the book again. Fire is a terrible idea. Maybe Ice? That sounds better, I can find the Script symbol for 'freeze' and provide my own water so that when all the water provided is frozen the reaction will stop!

Yeah, this will work.

Nodding to myself, I get up and run down to the kitchen to find a glass and get some water. Running back upstairs, followed by my mother yelling at me to slow down and not spill, I settle down at my desk with the Book, a spare piece of paper and a pencil, and start to try and find what I need in the large tome.

It takes a little bit of work as the difference between 'freeze' and 'frozen' is pretty subtle. But soon enough I have it and scribble the symbol down on the paper. Placing the glass on top of the symbol, I speak the word that goes with the symbol and hold my breath.

Nothing happens.

After I start to feel a little dizzy from not breathing, I decide that something has gone wrong. Organizing a complicated effect with multiple symbols I can see screwing up plenty, but a single symbol? How can I have gotten that wrong? Unless I'm supposed to do something other than draw and speak the Script to get them to work? Maybe they need to be on something specific?

I move the glass of water and examine what I've drawn, comparing it to what's in the Book.

...Well, that line is at a sharper angle.

...And that curve is much shallower.

Okay, maybe I can screw up a single symbol plenty.

At least it hasn't exploded?

###​

Sketching becomes my new obsession. I draw everything. A lot of it is the Script symbols, but only while I'm at home. I don't want to explain to my teachers or my parents where the giant leather bound tome had come from. The rest of the time I draw anything that falls into my field of view. People, animals, objects, plants, insects, anything.

I draw more than the Script symbols because I don't just want to get good at drawing whatever specific symbol I'm practicing. I want to be able to see a new symbol and draw it right the first time.

Not to mention I still have no idea how this Script will translate into arcane power just yet. It could be that all I'll have to do is pronounce the word and something would happen. But on the off chance that making use of this will involve writing it in the middle of a fight, I want lots of practice replicating something that I've only seen once.

The other thing I do to start making use of the tome is to check out a book on the universal phonetic alphabet. The UPA is an amazing thing, invented by linguists to have a way to write down literally every sound the human mouth can make. Clicks, tonals, everything. This means that if you know how to read it, you can pronounce a word correctly even if you've never heard the language before.

As it turns out I have no idea how to read it, so my first attempt at the vocal part of Script was epically bad. So that's another thing I need to learn in my copious spare time. Needless to say, I'm beginning to run myself a bit ragged.

I just have to hope that it isn't beginning to show. Last thing I need is my parents trying to get me to slow down on some aspect of my training.

 

[Tersin]

Age Eight​

It's my mother picking me up and nearly squeezing the life out of me that finally shakes me from my daze, "Oh my god, Ericka, are you okay? Did you see anything? You're safe now! Are you hurt?" The flow of parental babble helps me to ease back into the present.

Looking down at myself I find my jacket hanging off one shoulder, my backpack hanging off the other. In one hand I have a crumpled piece of paper that I'm clutching hard. I'm covered in dust, scrapes, nicks, and bruises, and my shirt is full of holes.

"I'm... fine?" I'm not entirely sure. Looking over my shoulder I see the school. The large hole in one wall indicates that something exciting has happened. When I try to remember though...

A gun scare? School shooting? In an elementary school that's unusual. But...

"She's fine, Ma'am." My train of thought is interrupted by another voice. I'm sitting on the back of an ambulance, one of many that has crammed their way into the parking lot of the school. "She's just in shock. It's not surprising given what happened." Many children are being tended to and fussed over by their parents, much like myself.

"What did happen?" demands my father. He sounds forceful for maybe the first time in my life. Besides it's obvious isn't it?

My eyes are drawn back to the large hole in the school wall.

"I can't really say, sir." The paramedic does a great job of remaining calm in the face of what's probably just one of many panicking parents they've dealt with today, "I only got here after the fact, and the investigation is still ongoing." He's probably just happy that he's not dealing with one of the parents whose kids have been brought out on a stretcher, or under a sheet.

Or one whose kid is missing.

It's a school shooting...why are kids missing?

I blink again, trying to remember what happened. There had been an alarm? No, the sound came first. Gunfire my brain insists, even though I can't summon up any details. I do shudder in dread when I try though, so maybe that's for the better. I remember running... which is wrong. You're supposed to lock the door to the classroom and shelter in place, unless you absolutely have to move. But I was running. I think I tackled somebody? A boy in my class out of the way of something...

The memories are fading like a dream, the only things that stay are that there had been a school shooting. I ran. And... that's it?

Is that wrong? It doesn't feel wrong. Just incomplete.

I'm put in the car and buckled in, my parents worried conversation is reduced to nonsensical noises.

I'm so tired.

The next thing I know we're at home. Which is wrong. It's Tuesday, which means gymnastics, and boxing. It's been that way for almost three years, why are we at home?

"Honey?" I blink looking up at my mother, "Can you let go?" I look down at myself again. My jacket is gone, as is my backpack, and my mother is trying to pull the paper out of my hand, "I'll put it on your desk so you won't lose it." It takes effort to unclench my hand. I can almost hear my bones creaking, they're so stiff from gripping the paper as hard as I can for so long. But I manage to loosen my fingers enough for the paper to be pulled free.

Once that's done, there's a shower, though I don't think I did much of it myself. Then I'm put to bed, and asleep before my head hits my pillow.

###​

I wake up and my everything hurts. It's like the first day I'd done gymnastics, or boxing, or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu... any martial art really. The only difference being that these are all muscles I'd become familiar with previously.

Familiarity doesn't make it suck any less though.

With a groan I pull myself upright and look around my room, blinking. The sun is way too high in the sky for it to be my usual wake-up time. Habit leads me through my morning stretching/workout routine. I'd gotten it by mixing things we do as warm ups in gymnastics and stuff from a book on yoga I'd found. The routine goes much slower than normal and I spend a lot of it wincing and groaning as I stretch sore muscles. When I finish I feel much better, though. The exercise doesn't do much for the scrapes and bruises, but my muscles feel miles better.

Trying to remember the day before still makes me shudder in dread, so I shy away from trying to dredge up more detail. Instead, I head down stairs to figure out what's going on.

Oddly enough, both my parents are home. At ten thirty in the morning no less, according to the clock. The moment I'm noticed my mother descends on me in a cloud of barely suppressed parental panic.

"Ericka!" She catches me up in a hug which I return more out of habit than anything else. "How are you feeling?" she asks, pushing me back slightly to look me up and down.

"I hurt," I comment and immediately regret it as I see the panic become somewhat less suppressed, and my father starts moving towards us in something of a hurry, "Like really sore." I continue quickly to try and calm them down without lying to them, "Like I overdid it in Brazilian jiu jitsu again."

That seems to calm them down some. "That's good," my dad says, looking over mom's shoulder, "You're looking better. You were pretty out of it last night."

"Do you remember anything?" Mom is looking pretty concerned, probably wondering if I'll need therapy or something.

"I remember..." I shudder at the feeling of dread and mentally shy away from thinking about the event itself, "I remember you getting there while I was getting looked at. I kinda remember the car, and I know you got me clean and into bed..." I shake my head, "That's it."

Both of them let loose sighs of relief, "You're sure?" Mom asks, "You seemed a little upset at the beginning."

I nod, "I'm... trying not to think about anything before that," I admit, "But as long as I don't think about it I'm fine. Can I go to gymnastics and jujitsu?" My mom hesitates, likely she doesn't want to let me out of her sight. "I want to see Sarah," I push, "She'll be really worried if she's heard what happened."

"They did say that getting back to a normal routine as fast as possible would be good for her," my dad points out when mom seems to be wavering still. That seems to do the trick though, as she gives another sigh, frustrated this time.

"Fine. If you take the rest of the day slowly, and you don't have any other problems before it's time to go, you can go," mom finally caves. I bounce and cheer and immediately regret it. "And you promise to take it easy in class," mom admonishes me, earning a sheepish nod.

Bouncing like that had hurt.

I spend the rest of the day with both of my parents. Normally this would have been a nightmare, but apparently the scare has unsettled them enough that they are both unwilling to focus on anything but me. This includes all the things that would usually drive them up the wall about each other.

So instead, we have breakfast. We walk in a park, in what I'm pretty sure is a subtle attempt to see if I'm really as physically well as I claim. I already have a reputation with my parents and trainers of ignoring or downplaying injuries that would keep me from my training.

We even go to see a movie. A film about toys coming to life when nobody's looking. That's a lot of fun, and mostly appropriate for my physical age. I'd seen it before in my last life, and the differences between my old world's version and this one are interesting.

The biggest change is that the space ranger action figure is female. I figure it has something to do with how many more female supernaturals there are than male. Which means, statistically, more of the supernatural badasses are female as well. Even if the mundane world isn't aware of this, that sort of thing would have an impact on cultural subconscious biases.

I'm also proud of them for not having even a hint of romance between the cowboy and space ranger characters.

In the end though, I manage to convince my parents that I'm not too much more injured than I claim to be, and they let me go to my after school classes. The moment I walk in the door to my gymnastics class I'm hit by a black haired missile that takes us both to the ground. I manage to fall well at least, and end up with Sarah straddling me and talking a mile a minute.

"Oh my god are you okay? Mommy was talking about what happened at your school! She said it was really bad and that you shouldn't go back there but that wouldn't be a problem because the school would be closed for a long long time and you'd probably need to go to a new one and I told her that you should come to my school because then we could play all day as well as just after school..."

I finally manage to get a hand over her mouth. Which she immediately starts licking, but I ignore that. "I'm fine, Sarah. At least mostly. Just a little banged up. I got more hurt falling out of that tree last summer." I'd broken my arm, and hadn't that been an annoying set back in my training. Got really good with my left hand though.

"Well, that's good," she says as she finally manages to pull my now very damp hand away from her mouth. I wipe it off on her pants, "You'll tell your mommy that you should come to my school right?" Ah, the priorities of eight year olds. I'm not dying, so the next most important thing is securing more hangout time.

"Yeah, I'll tell her." Sarah is fun, and I could stand to play with her more. Most of our play doubles as training anyway.

"Girls." Both Sarah and I look up at the gymnastics coach, "Sarah, get off of Ericka." My friend pops to her feet like she's made out of springs, "Ericka, I heard what happened yesterday. Are you sure you're well enough to participate? Or are you just going to watch." Her tone makes it clear which she thinks it should be. She glances over my head at where my mother is hovering. Normally she leaves me in the care of Sarah's parents, but not today it seems.

"I'm good!" I insist, trying to project as much energy as I can, and bouncing to my feet like Sarah had. Ow, bouncing still hurts. All I get for my trouble is a raised eyebrow, "Good enough to try at least." I amend in the face of clear disbelief. Sarah, bless her tiny heart, is nodding next to me, backing me up. With a sigh, the coach gestures for me to join the rest of the girls and starts class for the day.

Honestly, I'm not one hundred percent, and it shows in my performances in both gymnastics and Jiu Jitsu. I'm incredibly sore in some really odd places.

But I manage to get through the day and home again, falling asleep just as easily as I had the night before. When morning comes I'm at something of a loss once I finish my morning routine. The school is closed and, like Sarah had said, likely to stay that way for some time. My training won't start until the normal after school time. Sarah still has to go to school so she was busy.

I'm looking forward to having most of the day free for the first time in two years, and I have absolutely no idea what to do with myself. With a sigh I decide that I can get some Script and sketching practice in, so drag myself over to my desk.

Settling in, I pull my Script dictionary, as I call the large tome, into a good reference position and only then notice a crumpled up piece of paper set off to one side. With a frown I pull it over. I can't really remember what it is, or where it had come from for that matter. So I carefully uncrumple it and flatten it out, and freeze, breath catching in my throat.

Sitting there on my desk, right in front of me, is a devil flier. The pictures of naked girls in the corners seem a little unnecessary, but I'll admit they probably attract the usual intended target audience. But the thing that's claiming most of my attention is the circle printed in the middle of the paper, entirely formed of World Script.

As soon as I start breathing again I almost start hyperventilating with excitement. Since I had gotten the book almost a year ago, I have been wrestling with how to make the Script do anything. In fact, I was beginning to suspect that as fascinating as the Script is, it isn't actually magical in any way.

But here in front of me is a functional piece of working magic, and it's made from Script. I'm, in a word, giddy. It takes me almost ten minutes to calm down enough to actually start to make use of my new discovery, but as soon as I can focus again, I settle in and start to translate the circle.

This will be my Rosetta Stone, it'll give me grammar, structure, and if I'm very lucky, how to make it all work together.

###​

It takes me almost all of my free time during the week to translate the flier. Which nearly causes me some problems with mom and dad as they are convinced that I'm depressed and traumatized, hiding in my room the whole time. Placating them takes some time, but is actually fun at first.

Then, as they begin to realize that I'm not in danger of imminent explosion, they start sniping at each other again.

Less fun.

Still, the flier has turned out to be every bit as informative as I hoped it would be. It's pretty clear, with an example in front of me, where I'd gone wrong trying to make Script work the first time. I had assumed that written magic like this would function like computer code. Precisely describe what you want to happen and what will set it off, and then it goes. As little extra and as precise as you can get away with, everything dry and explicitly clear. I also expected a lot of math to be involved.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

In fact, it's more like reading a short story. Descriptive prose designed to evoke emotion as much as a clear image of the desired result. I wish I had more examples to work with, but this is enough to get started.

I've always been better at storytelling than math anyway. So this is actually pretty good for me.

I can work with this.

###​

I groan, slamming my head into 'The World Script'. It still isn't working. I've been tinkering for almost three months with the Script and how to organize it, based on the flier. School had started up again at the end of that first week. I did indeed request, and end up at, Sarah's school, though we are in different classes. Still, with this new project taking the place of a lot of my sketching practice, I have plenty of time for experimentation.

So far nothing.

I've tried different word order, both more and less specific Script symbols. I've tried writing from right to left, left to right, up and down, in circles, squares, stars. Once, in a fit of frustrated whimsy, I even wrote one in the Disney mouse silhouette.

I tried writing in poetry instead of prose. I tried being more descriptive, less descriptive. I even tried to imitate the florid prose of H.P. Lovecraft. Which in hindsight I'm very glad didn't work.

It's clear that whatever power others use to fuel magic, I don't have any, so I add an entirely new set of Script symbols that should draw on the power that I know saturates this world. At least that's what it should have done. Given I get the same zero result as all my other attempts, it even might have and I'm just doing something else wrong that I haven't thought of yet.

I flop my head to the side and end up staring at the devil flier. Maybe I need a larger sample size of actual effective examples of World Script. I might be missing some essential rule or standard just from lack of comparisons.

The problem is I don't know where to find more examples of World Script in use. Or even more fliers...

I blink, then frown at the flier. Come to think of it, I don't know where I'd gotten this flier. Somebody had to have given it to me, and that seems like the sort of thing that would stick out in my memory. If for no other reason than how nervous I would be coming face to face with the supernatural for the first time.

When had I gotten it? I can't really remember when it'd shown up. I hadn't put it on my desk, I know that much. Which means one of my parents had put it there.

Well, that brought an easy solution. I'm pretty sure that it hadn't been given to them directly. If either of my parents had seen the naked girls on it, I never would have seen it. And it had been crumpled when I found it...

I quickly dart downstairs and find my mother doing some form of work at the kitchen table. A quick interrogation later, which amuses mom greatly, I find out that she had pried it out of my hand after bringing me home from the school shooting. Since I'd held onto it so hard she had put it on my desk just in case it was important.

I'm frowning hard as I clomp my way back up the stairs. I don't remember getting handed the thing, or finding it on the ground, I don't think. So where...?

I shudder in dread as I try to recall that day, my thoughts shying away from the event almost on instinct.

I shake my head. No, I can't just keep avoiding this. No matter how much I want to. At some point during that day I'd gotten a devil flier, and I need to know how.

I flop down on my bed, straightening myself out, so that I'll be comfortable if this took a while. I'd never really stopped meditating as I grew older. I just did it less with other things to occupy myself with, but it's still the last thing I do every night before I go to sleep. Every night I can manage it anyway. Hopefully, several years of doing nothing but meditating and several more years of practice on top of that will help me now.

Now, start at the beginning.

I remember getting up that morning and doing my morning stretching and exercises. I remember breakfast and my parents sniping at each other over who was going to take me to what classes that week.

I remember the car ride to school.

I remember my first class, and my second.

I remember during my third class there was a sound. A gunshot? No it was... I shudder in dread.

There.

My eyes pop open, and I'm breathing hard. Right there is where I start having problems. So that's where I'll begin.

Calming my breathing, I settle in. My body falls into familiar rhythms, and I feed all extraneous thought and emotion into the image of a candle flame, until all that's left is what I want to focus on.

###​

I sat at my desk towards the back of the room, the only elementary schooler taking notes. I had thought that school might be boring, having done all of this before. But really how much does anybody remember from when they were eight years old? I certainly knew the material, but at least part of that was because of how simple that material was. The review would help when I got to say, high school math. I didn't really remember any math from high school forward. Maybe I'd do better this second time...

My thoughts were interrupted.

By an alarm?

No...

A gunshot?

A roar.

My thoughts were interrupted by a howling roar. I blinked, looking up and towards the windows where the sound had come from. The room was silent for a moment, our teacher hesitating as we all tried to identify the unfamiliar sound.

We probably would have turned back to our lesson after another moment of silence. Instead the roar came again, this time accompanied by numerous explosions. We all paused and several of my classmates started to stand up to get a better look out the windows. The teacher started to raise his voice to call the class back to attention.

Then something huge crashed through the wall and smeared the teacher along the floor.

It was misshapen. Its legs bent in odd ways, as though they hadn't yet decided what kind of legs to be. They were welded awkwardly to a serpentine body, it's tail splitting into many. It looked like countless writhing snakes, each tipped with a crude bone blade or hook. Its head was decidedly toad like, save for the chameleon like horns on its face. One eye bulged outwards. The other eye was sunken deep under one of its horns and a ridge of exposed bone.

It moved with a speed unnatural to something that big and awkwardly put together. Moments after it landed on our math teacher it was on its feet again, its scales utterly indifferent to the impact with the wall.

Or the floor.

Or our teacher.

"Young souls." Its voice was a horrible rasping sound, layered dissonant tones that somehow grated together just right to produce speech. Its bulging eye rolled around the room before settling, its mouth cracked open filled with nothing but a slimy pink mass.

For some reason I thought of the Discovery Channel.

Without thinking, I flung myself into the boy standing next to me, still frozen from all that had happened in the last few seconds. Both of us hit the ground just in time as, with a crack, something flew over us. My efforts to save my classmates proved futile. The sound of a wet impact and bones breaking accompanied a short scream. The crunching sound that filled the silent room only moments after the thing's tongue retracted showed that it had gotten one of us in spite of my efforts.

"Yessss. This will give me the power I need," it wheezed. Whatever mechanism it used for speech clearly didn't involve its mouth, as that was still occupied with the child it was eating. "Why we stopped eating you morsels, I'll never know."

That protruding eye rolled again, searching for another target. Before it could find one, though, another figure charged through the hole in the wall. This one, while still large, was only eight feet or so tall to the monster's twelve or more, and was armed with heavy metal gauntlets. What really caught my eye, though, was the figure's bull head.

A fucking minotaur.

The classical Greek monster hit what had to have been a stray devil like a runaway train, sending them both out of the room through another wall. Screams began to fill the air as people caught up with what was happening. My own class either stayed where they were in shock, or collapsed in tears. I simply stared wide eyed. Nothing I'd seen in my last life had prepared me for the reality of what had just happened in front of me.

And that voice...

I shook my head, refocusing. I was going to do something very stupid, but I needed to have a clearer idea of what I was getting myself into. Of what I wanted to someday cower in fear of me. So I watched as several more figures charged along the trail left by the stray and minotaur, and got ready to try and follow them.

The next one through was short, and almost as wide as he was tall. A long braided beard was tucked into a belt wrapped around his heavy plate armor. In his hands he carried a hammer almost as big as he was, and on his back was an axe, at least as big.

Following him came a pair of blurs that moved faster than my eye could follow.

Behind them came a group of four. A tall man that I suspect some would call handsome, dressed in fine leather armor and carrying a rapier that crackled with lightning. Next to him was a woman in an elegant white kimono, with pale skin, white hair, and leaving a trail of frost in her wake. Flanking them one step behind was a dark skinned woman wearing what looked like a whole seal skin, and a young girl floating along perched on a pestle and carrying a god damned mortar! Something I really didn't want to think about too hard.

This was a devil with a full peerage hunting a stray! I bet the pawns were trying to hem the literally damned thing in, or form a perimeter.

As the four of them moved through our classroom, the one wearing the seal skin paused looking us over, "My King?" she called.

The rest paused and the man turned back to her, "What?" He sounded impatient.

"What should we do about the children?" she asked, waving towards us.

Oh, I did not like the sound of that.

They were all looking at each other, so I took the opportunity to move on my fingertips and toes as quietly as I could towards the back of the classroom where there was a door into a storeroom. A storeroom which also had a door into the hallway that the minotaur and the stray would have ended up in by going through that wall.

The man glanced at us along with the rest and I dropped where I was as soon as they started to turn in my direction. I held my breath, I was almost there, but if one of them saw me trying to escape...

The pale woman, who I was pretty sure was the queen piece, glanced in my direction for a moment. She might have seen something, but she didn't say anything, so I decided not to worry about it.

After looking us over for a moment he turned to the rest of them again, dismissing us, "Put them to sleep, we'll modify their memories when we're done."

I was glad that I'd started moving as soon as they'd looked away, because I only just had time to throw myself through the door I was heading for, before the room was filled with a soft blue light. Even only exposed to it from the crack under the door, I wavered for a moment.

The floor was remarkably comfortable really.

A self administered vicious pinch to my arm helped me shake off the edges of the sleep spell. Pulling myself back to my feet, I crept to the door into the hallway and peeked through. The four of them were just exiting the hallway, following the path of destruction that the stray, and what I was willing to bet was a rook, had caused.

As soon as they were out of sight I sprinted softly down the hall to the edge of the broken hole in the wall. Leaning my head around the edge of the hole, I looked down the path of destruction the pair of devils had left. It traveled through three more classrooms and another hallway before exiting the school building the same way they entered it. Leaving them in the playground behind the school.

I moved carefully through the classrooms trying not to make noise. As I did though, I couldn't help but take in the damage. The walls destroyed were obvious, but the rest...

There were kids under the rubble from where the fighting devils had burst through the wall. One girl sat on the ground, eyes wide in shock. Her leg was bent forward at almost a right angle at the thigh, the rest of her leg crushed.

I think she'd been stepped on.

There were more than a few bloody smears on the floor or walls like what had been left of our math teacher. I tried as hard as I could to not look at them, but I registered that they were there all the same.

When I reached the end of the new tunnel through the school, I had to take a moment and empty my stomach into the bushes. This was exactly what I'd been afraid of when I woke up here that first day in the hospital.

Sure the devils in the anime made a point of how nice they were, but that they made such a point of it implied that other devils weren't. Most of them probably weren't, given how proud the Gremory were of being nice. It was a point of pride how different they were.

The fight was still going on when I caught up. They had moved from the playground equipment, leaving it totaled in their wake, to the open field where phys-ed classes happened. I crept closer, all the while wondering where my self preservation instinct had gone. A tree provided the best cover I could find, which wasn't saying much.

In the field, the battle raged on. The minotaur stayed in the stray's face, trying to keep the monster's attention like a good tank. The other rook, a dwarf I was pretty sure, spent more time hitting the ground than the monster. Of course, every time he did, the ground shook, sending the stray off balance as it's mismatched legs scrambled to keep itself upright. The other devils seemed to have no problems with the tremors, but I only stayed standing by clinging to my tree.

The two knights, one a horse with a burning mane, hooves, and tail, the other some sort of living shadow, harried the sides of the stray, distracting it at the best moments. Though they seemed incapable of penetrating the thing's scales.

The two bishops and the ice woman, who I had pegged as the queen, were working on something together. It involved a lot of spell circles and some intense concentration. Through all of this, the King just sort of posed off to the side with a very smug look on his face.

Only a few moments later the magic users finished what they were doing and, as one, turned and gestured at the stray. Water welled up from the ground turning the field into a muddy swamp. At the same time vines grew like a time lapse video up the monster's legs, winding around its body and then pulling it down into the muck. No sooner was it thoroughly embedded in the mud, than the entire mess froze over, leaving the stray trapped.

The rest of the peerage had cleared the area as soon as the ground started to dampen. Now they waited off to the side as their King strolled forward, his cloak flapping dramatically in the nonexistent breeze as he performed showy flourishes with his still sparking rapier.

Who the fuck was he showing off to?

Not his peerage certainly. The rooks never took their eyes off the stray, and the pawns weren't here. The bishops just looked bored, and the queen actually seemed to be rolling her eyes. I suppose it could have been the knights, but neither of them had facial expressions as far as I could tell. So who knew?

"Well now, beast!" He sounded like something out of an eighties superhero cartoon, "You are now well and truly caught! By my cunning plans..." Oh god. He's monologuing. This guy's peerage is way more competent than he is. I wonder where he got them? The fact they hadn't collectively turned him in for a better model just reaffirmed my determination to never find myself trapped in a peerage. "Well monster? Have you anything to say for yourself before justice is done?"

The stray eyed the devil in front of it, then... croaked? Ribited? It's throat puffed up, and it let out a sound that resembled the noise a frog makes the same way a blast furnace resembles a candle. The sound rippled through the air, producing a visible shock wave that sent all the devils flying and shattered the ice it was trapped in, along with my tree. I was peppered with shards of wood and knocked from my feet, landing on my back and hearing nothing but a high pitched whine. My entire front felt bruised, and I was covered in scratches and scrapes from the wooden shrapnel.

Yet all I could think of at that moment was mom lecturing me about ruining another shirt.

"Young souls." And that fucking voice was clearly audible anyway. It took me a moment to figure out who the beast had to be referring to through the ringing in my head. By the time I realized I should be running it was already too late. Free from the ice it sprinted at me, its gait an odd stumbling thing with it's mismatched legs, and it still moved faster than I could really react.

By the time I knew what was happening it was already looming over me. It twisted its head sideways and leaned down to snap me up in a single bite. Panicking, I did the only thing I could think of.

I punched it as hard as I could right in its bulging eye.

It snapped its head back. I didn't really have the strength to hurt it, but a poke in the eye is a poke in the eye. As it turned out, I didn't really need to do anything more. Before it could recover the minotaur hit it in a full charge. The rook hit the thing right in the middle and took it with him as he continued to charge, until a few yards further on, he rammed it into the ground hard enough to send up an explosion of dirt. The second it held still for even a moment, a six foot long spike of ice flew over me like a ballista bolt and took the stray right in the neck.

It thrashed and bled as the minotaur held it down. The wound in its neck evidently kept it from croaking again. Then the flaming horse was there dropping off the dwarf, who ended the monster by using his large axe to take its head off.

I stared wide eyed at the dead stray. The entire event was humbling.

I knew that I had a long way to go before I could throw down with even the weakest supernaturals. I knew I probably wouldn't be able to do that much until I got some magic of my own, given the massive gulf in base physical stats.

But knowing that, and seeing a rook shake the ground with a hit...

Or a knight move faster than the eye could follow...

Or see ice come out of nowhere and used as a god damned siege weapon.

I was glad that nobody had called down a lightning bolt out of the clear sky. I wasn't sure I could have handled an artillery strike from god on top of everything else right now. Though given the one floating around on the pestle, I was kind of assuming that they just didn't feel the need.

I was brought out of my stunned state by the arrival of the bishop wearing the seal skin. She tried to say something to me. But when I just stared blankly at her, she knelt and reached forward to cup my ears. I felt water for a moment, and then there was a pop and the world had sound again.

"There you go, my Queen. She can hear again. I didn't heal anything else as that would take more time," the bishop said, looking up and to the side. I followed her gaze and found that I'd somehow missed the ice lady standing right next to us.

Was I in shock? I think I was in shock.

"Thank you, Madalyn," the queen said, and knelt down next to me as the bishop stood up and left to go do... whatever she was supposed to. "Why did you follow us, child?" Her voice was gentle and she actually looked concerned.

"Ummm..." I blinked at her, still stunned. She was really pretty. Don't say that, "I wanted to see what happened." The truth, if simplified almost out of recognition.

She gave me a look. The same look my mother gave me when I did something she thought was stupid. Usually in the pursuit of moving my training forward faster. So, pretty much like this actually, "That was very foolish."

"Yeah, I got that about the time the tree exploded," I told her as I tried to sit up. God damn it mouth, don't smart off at the pretty lady that can make us a popsicle until we can make her work for it.

Holy fuck, I hurt.

After a moment she decided to help and propped me up against what was left of my tree so I could stay sitting upright. Her hands radiated a kind of soothing cold that actually numbed some of my pain.

She tried to look stern, but the way her lips were twitching made me think she found me amusing, "Well. Regardless of how wise the decision was, the way you went about it, especially having the presence of mind to strike the stray devil, was rather impressive." She sighed then, "I suspect that you will continue to get yourself into trouble like this given half a chance." Well, she wasn't wrong. Getting into 'trouble like this' was pretty much my life plan. "It would be a shame to waste such potential, and I find I like you. Here." She reached into a sleeve and produced a sheet of paper, "Insurance. So you might get aid the next time you find yourself in over your head."

I took the sheet of paper from her mostly on autopilot. My mind was still going over what I had seen, in a sort of stupefied fascination. Later, it would be to find things to help me focus my training, but for now stunned staring was all I could manage.

That lasted until I actually glanced at what I'd just been handed.

It was a devil flier. Arcane circle, naked girls and all. What was really important though, was that the circle was made of World Script.

My breath caught in my throat and I almost choked on air.

This! This is what I needed! If I could derive structure from this working piece of magic...!

"Yes." I jumped and glanced up at the ice woman who was grimacing, "The decorations are more than slightly tacky, but sadly I had no say in designing them. And you are a bit younger than our normal clients, but even so..."

"My Queen!" The king was striding over looking less than happy, but was still talking in that dramatic eighties cartoon voice. His cloak was still dramatically fluttering as well, "Why do you waste your time on these worms?"

The Queen's expression, formerly warm and slightly amused, turned flat in a blink. Her jaw clenched, she turned to the other devil, "My King." I've never heard a voice that was literally frosty before, but I could actually see my breath in the air as the temperature dropped, "I was acquiring a new client and potential..."

"Let me take care of that for you," he smarmed at her solicitously. He wasn't actually listening to a word she... Wait, what did he mean take care of?

His hand gripped my chin roughly as my head was jerked around to look at him. The moment I met his gaze I knew I had made a mistake. My heart rate shot through the roof and my breathing sped up. The ice lady was saying something but all I could think was that I had to keep the flier. It was my key and I couldn't lose it. I gripped the paper as hard as I could, even as the world went fuzzy and then faded away.

###​

I jerk upright on my bed, sweating and hyperventilating. My eyes are unfocused and my hands tremble in fury.

They fucked with my head. They fucked with my head! They! Fucked! With! My! Head!

Everybody has a berserk button, and this is mine. I hate being manipulated in any fashion. But messing with my mind? Removing my free will?

I shriek in rage and slam my fist down onto my desk as hard as I can. Murder is clearly the only option. I'll just have to set a trap with...

My attention is almost forcibly jerked to my desk where I still have my fist planted. My knuckles have split, spattering my homemade attempt at a World Script spell with my blood. From where my blood landed light spreads outward like ripples in a pond, faintly tracing the Script symbols and moving in chaotic patterns through what I had written. The light jumps and flickers along, until the sputtering light reaches my attempt at a Script to draw in ambient power, to make up for the magic I don't have. Then the symbols flare brightly and the entire thing goes up like flash paper, just as my door slams open. My mother bursting into my room to see why I'm screaming.

She lectures me about lighting fires in my room and injuring myself. But honestly I'm not listening. Part of it is that I'm still quietly seething over what has been done to me. Fucked. With. My. Head! But mostly I'm thinking about what I've just learned.

So as mom shifts her tirade to why I have a piece of paper with an occult circle and naked girls on it, I suck on my bloody knuckles and smirk. I know how to activate the Script now and even from the few seconds of seeing how the light moved through my poor attempt I already had so many ideas on how to make it better.

Finally, goal one is making actual progress.

 

[JayTar]

Happy to see this posted here! Read it on SB and it was great.
At a high level glance it has everything that makes these sort of stories terrible. An intelligent protagonist who's goal involves seeking power? There hundreds of stories on that which are terrible.
But. There are a small few that are amazing. And this is one of them.
Thank you Tersin for doing what so many others did wrong right.

 

[Ethan Eldritch]

So why aren't you posting the whole story at once?

 

[Ethan Eldritch]

Best Author

 

[Tersin]

So why aren't you posting the whole story at once?

Click to shrink...

Because I'm still editing most of it. As I finish each chapter's final edits I'll post it to other sites.

 

[Spartan3909]

So I'm going to post some artwork, but I want to be clear that it should not be looked at until "Chapter 20: And were back in Business."

Spoiler: Chapter 20 spoilers

Spoiler: I'm serious

Spoiler: I warned you

Spoiler: Sclamhaire, The Devourer

Spoiler: Armour

 

[Ttw1]

Yay, You're posting it here! I'd have liked your posts if my ability to do so hadn't been just revoked.

 

[The Grey Mage]

Great to see this over here too! This'll making keeping up with the Book 1 editing much easier!

 

[Tersin]

Age Fifteen​

My opponent and I keep our eyes locked on each other. A blink, or even a glance away on either of our parts will result in instant punishment from the other. At some signal that I never consciously register, we both lunge forward.

I slap her jab downward and try to punch over the top of it with the same hand. My opponent isn't sloppy enough for that to work though, so I meet a solid block instead. My straight hits the same block, and a dipped elbow catches my hook. I slip around her return straight and dance back, throwing out another jab just to keep her honest.

"So you're coming tonight." Sarah says it like a fact, and it says something that I find the verbal battle more difficult than the physical one. More dangerous too.

"Sarah..." I most certainly do not whine, and then try to distract her by reengaging. She sweeps my push kick aside and tries to counter, which I slap offline as well, and fall onto my forward leg into a straight that actually lands. She, of course, punishes me for that victory by spinning with the blow and kneeing me in my exposed side before I can recover.

"Don't 'Sarah' me." She does my whine pretty well. Not that I do that, "You need more friends than just me." She feints a wheel kick that turns into a push kick that I slip and use to dump her on her ass. I dive after her, turning the match into a grapple, "This will help with that." She manages to get out as she fights to get me into her guard, while I lay across her body and try to lock something in on her opposite arm.

"The hell it will and the hell I do," I grunt, as we squirm back and forth. "I'm happy as is, so why does everybody insist on changing things." She manages to twist out from under me, and then dives on top of me in an effort to take my back. Lucky for me, spinning onto my back is a quicker action, and she ends up diving into my guard. I lock my ankles behind her back, get her in a plum hold, and begin to lightly slap her head. It's what we do in practice instead of punching, as rapid, repeated blows to the side and back of the head tend to lose you sparring partners, "My social life isn't broken. Stop trying to fix it."

Sarah snorts and somehow manages to get an arm in the way of my slaps, pop the plum hold off the back of her head, and plant a knee in my thigh, forcing my guard open. Suddenly neither of us have the breath to keep arguing.

The two of us are pretty evenly matched, so our spars usually are either inconclusive or come down to points. Something that neither of us are very fond of. Her, because she wants a win, not a technicality. Me, because I'm trying to learn how to fight and points meant shit to a stray devil. Not that I've seen another one since that day when I was eight.

This is our second bout. She won the first one by knocking the wind out of me with a rising hook that somehow hits like a pile driver no matter how little effort she puts into it. When she actually drove the thing with muscle, I've seen her bounce heavy bags. I manage to take the second bout, though, with a soft technique that has her landing on her back hard enough that she just decided to lay there for a minute.

###​

"I'll see you when you're done with your interview!" Sarah says, as she tries to squeeze the life out of me. She is still a hugger. She waves at me, which I return, as she jogs down the street towards the bus, and moments later I'm alone on the sidewalk.

I take a deep breath and check myself over again. I'm wearing a nice blouse tucked into a pair of slacks and covered by a nice enough jacket. My hair is damp and twisted up into a bun, as I'd actually used the shower at the gym for a change. Normally I try to stay out of there because as it turns out, I do in fact still like girls. Changing rooms are just embarrassing for a lot of reasons.

My parents think that I'm going to an interview for my first job. In a way I am, but really what I'm doing is far more important. Goal four, get allies. The first step of getting allies is getting a reputation for being somebody that people want to ally with. For that reason, I once again find myself standing outside a martial arts class, looking at the front of the used/antique book store that I've looked at plenty, but haven't set foot in since I was seven.

With another fortifying breath, I adjust my backpack and stride across the street. The door opens with the ring of a bell, revealing the entry area of the store looking exactly like I remember it. Open area leading to the stacks, bargain bin on the right, counter on the left, and... a goth girl only a few years older than me sitting behind it, reading a book.

The girl glances up from her book as I enter. "Gotta leave your bag with me, cutie," she says with a smile, "Can't let you take it with you into the stacks."

I blink, "You know, that's the second time you've told me almost exactly that." I take the backpack off my shoulder, setting it on the counter.

Her smile gets even wider at that, "I'm surprised you remember me. You were quite little at the time. Did you find your magic?" Her tone is playful, and she's clearly teasing me.

"I'm surprised you recognize me, like you said I was very small at the time. And actually," I hesitate for a moment. She might or might not know about the supernatural, or she might not be willing to introduce me to her boss, or her boss might not be willing to help. I take a deep breath and force myself to calm down. I really don't have very many options. My only ins with the supernatural are a devil flyer I really don't want to use and this book shop. It really isn't a very hard choice, "that's what I was hoping to talk to somebody here about. I don't suppose that your boss or the owner is in?"

Her expression immediately becomes more withdrawn and wary. "That would depend on who you represent, and what that conversation would be about." I don't miss that one of her hands has slipped under the counter.

I try not to show how much my heartbeat has just sped up. I'm sure I feel a bead of sweat rolling down the back of my neck though, so I'm not sure how well I do. "I don't represent anybody," I say levelly, not moving my gaze away from her, and I just hope she isn't some supernatural that would take that as a challenge. I'm sure she is something, she doesn't look like she's aged a day, but non-hostile would be nice. "And mostly I was hoping that they could help put me in touch with some people."

She blinks, the suspicion fading some and being replaced by growing surprise, "Who told you to come here, then?"

"Nobody," I sigh. I have a feeling I know where this is going, and it's going to be embarrassing.

"Then how did you know to come here?" Suspicion is beginning to fade into incredulity, which is fair. My answer is completely ridiculous.

"Honestly?" I'm blushing, one hand half covering my face, "I take classes across the street, and happened to notice a large number of unusually beautiful, and improbably stacked women coming in and out of this place."

She pauses for a moment, as if waiting for me to continue, "That's it?" At my embarrassed nod she dissolves into hyena like laughter. I just groan and wait for her to get it out of her system.

Sooner than I would have expected she gets her laughter under control, "You have no idea who I am, do you?" I shake my head, "That either makes you stupidly brave, or confidently dumb. Which is it?"

I just sigh, "Neither." She opens her mouth, probably to lay into me, given her frown, but I keep going, "It's desperation. I literally have no contacts with the supernatural. Nothing. How would I find out who you are? I have nobody to ask. Nobody to tell me that I should ask. Until just now, I thought you were the teenage hired help. At some point, I'm going to have to take a risk on somebody I know nothing about. Might as well be the cute goth girl who was nice to me when I was little." I finish with a shrug. At this point, I'm standing in front of her counter looking down and fidgeting with my hands behind my back. My blush has faded to a faint pink tone, and I'm only just avoiding tripping over my own tongue.

After a few moments of silence I look up and find the girl gazing at me with an expression that was fluctuating between sympathetic and impressed, "So you took the necessary risk." The girl sighs and stands. She moves around the counter, flips the sign on the door to 'Closed' and waves me to follow her into the back, "All right. kid. Let's see what you've got."

###​

The first time I'd been here I had tried to head straight into the back where the antique books are supposed to be kept. As a seven year old, I had unsurprisingly been denied entry, not that I had tried too hard. Now, though, the goth girl, who I really need a name for, leads me straight through. The door opens to a hallway that seems pretty standard, carpet, wood paneling. It looks like any other high end office building I've ever been in. There are a couple of doorways on either side of the hall and it ended in a T intersection.

My guide opens the second door on the right and lets me into a well appointed conference room. The large table seems to be a single, solid piece of wood and the chairs are rich leather. The back wall of the room is occupied by a glass case that was filled with books and other artifacts. I'm sure they would be very impressive if I had any idea what they are.

My host takes a chair, leaning back to study me. After a moment of intense scrutiny, during which I do my best not to squirm and to meet her gaze evenly, she speaks, sitting forward again, "All right kid, you want my help. What do you want, and why should I care?"

I try to suppress a wince at the blunt second question, though it's pretty much what I expected. But first, "Um... since you brought it up earlier, who are you? I mean, I can't just keep calling you 'cute goth girl'." Flattery might not get me anywhere, but it never hurts. Especially when it's true.

She smirks at me and nods approvingly, "My name is Caitríona, but you can call me Cait, dealer in rare and arcane books. Now, your pitch?"

I take a deep breath. Right, presentation time, "What I want is contact with the supernatural community. Both for information, and to sell my magic." If you can call it that, "Aside from having few options, I also figure that as a... as somebody who already sells to the supernatural community, you'd know who I should talk to." I calm down as I talk, I can do this. As it turns out, those practice interviews with mom and Sarah actually help, even if the questions I'd practiced with have nothing to do with my actual interview. "As for what's in it for you, I was thinking that I could offer you a commission, either a percentage of profits or service on the house, so to speak."

Cait's nodding along as I speak, an expression of polite interest never leaving her face, "All that sounds good, and even doable. Depending on what you have to offer, of course." Of course. "So what magic did you figure out? What can you do with it, and why do you think, at fifteen, you're good enough for it to be worth selling?"

"Well, in one sense I'm not sure. Not having anything to compare it to and all. I came with the assumption that I'd be making a demonstration, and then you'd tell me if I was wasting both of our time or not." Cait nods, which makes me feel like a weight has just come off my chest. Now to deal with the other weights, "As for what I can do," Another fortifying breath and I go for broke, "Basically anything."

Cait stares at me in silence, before a single eyebrow creeps upwards, "Anything." She has a remarkable dead pan.

I nod, "Anything. Within the limits of the time I have, the space available, and what I can figure out."

"You're going to need to explain that." Cait leans forward and for the first time she really looks inhuman. Formerly pale skin gains a luminous shine. Her eyes glow, their blue color turning from a nice sky to something impossible. Her black painted lips pull back to expose unnaturally sharp teeth. Really, I'm starting to wonder if the goth look is actually makeup at all. A cool autumn breeze blows through the room, which is impressive since there are no windows and it's late spring outside.

You know, in this moment, it occurs to me that if she decides that I am wasting her time, I might not get out of here.

I nod quickly and try to hide my trembling hands. Hurriedly reaching into my backpack, I pull out my Script dictionary and drop it onto the table with a thud. She leans forward to look at the book and makes a small sound of surprise, "You bought this from me." I nod, "You actually got it to work?" She sounds doubtful, but I nod again, "What have you done?"

I swallow, "Um, I've set up wards around my house that work by intent." That was tricky, the mailman was more than a little confused for a couple of weeks, "I've reinforced the structure of the house. Theoretically, it'll be invulnerable until the script burns out." I'd used paint in various places around the house to achieve the effect. Normally, I think, it would be limited by the amount of power I have to feed into the effect. With my Script to draw ambient power, it comes down to how much energy the paint can channel before it starts to boil, "I've set traps." That racoon was never going to rummage through our trash again, scared the crap out of him, "Made things grow." Explaining to mom where the new six foot tall rose bush had come from took some doing, "And once, called down lightning." All of that and none of it really combat applicable. The lightning especially, until I figured out how to activate a Script from 'over there'. Standing inches away from a lightning strike isn't fun. Really cool though, once I could see again and my hearing recovered.

Cait began my recitation stoic and more than a little hostile. As I talk, though, she goes from hostile to incredulous, then to shocked, and finally settles on stunned. As I finish she just stares at me for a moment, once again looking like nothing more than a goth teen. Finally she shakes her head and makes a gesture with her off hand. My ears pop as something in the room changes. I look at her and she shrugs, "Truth spell. If you'd lied, you'd have glowed."

"So does that mean you believe me?" I can't take much more of these ups and downs. I'm already exhausted.

"It means I believe that you believe what you're telling me. But extraordinary claims and all that." Cait stands and heads towards the back wall, opens one of the display cases and returns with a box. It's made of wood and stone, and covered in what I think are Futhark runes. I examine the box for a moment before looking up at her in question. She just waves at the box, "Open it."

The first thing I try is just opening the box. It doesn't open when I try and really, I don't expect it to. I just don't want to be that person, the one that misses the obvious solution because I assume the answer has to be supernatural. I get a giggle from Cait though, so I take that as a win.

Right.

Open the magic box. I've never even thought of using my Script to pick locks! Probably because it's never come up, but still!

I take a deep breath to center myself. Okay, start at the beginning. What do I know?

Magic box, locked with Norse runes.

...That's it.

That's also known as not nearly enough. So there's the first problem.

I look up at her again, "Can I use this table? Or is there somewhere else you'd like me to work?" Cait just waves me on, so with a nod I get to work. I've found over the last seven years of working with Script that while almost anything would do, bone chalk works best for written Script.

Fishing a stick out of my backpack, I go to work. The first thing to do is an analysis Script. I realized pretty quickly that the more detail I put into the descriptions of what I want, the better the Script works. So I quickly worked out a general Script to tell me about things. The trick with it is limiting the information to what I want to know. The first time I tried it was on a random pebble. I knocked myself out with the headache brought on by having my brain filled with everything that could be known about the pebble right down to its subatomic structure and including its entire history. I was lucky that the piece of paper I'd written the Script on burned itself up ending it, or I might have seriously hurt myself.

Mom wasn't thrilled to find me passed out on the floor, next to some ash, and bleeding from my nose. It's taken me a lot of fast talking to convince her that I wasn't 'on the drugs'.

Fortunately, I've had a lot of practice since then and I know how to limit the information now. In this case all I want to know is how the magic holding it closed works, and what it's made from.

It takes maybe twenty minutes to draw the whole thing out, and I work pretty quickly. Which goes to show how many symbols are included in even the simplest Scripts. Not that anything is really 'simple' in Script. Once the Script is finished, it takes the form of two circles. One I put the box in, that's where the Script would look for what to scan. I sat myself down in the other, where the Script would dump the information into whatever brain was there.

With another quick look over it to make sure I haven't missed anything, I start the next step. I pull the tiniest pen knife I could find and set it against my thumb. Before I can press though, I'm interrupted by Cait's, "Really?"

Glancing up at her, I find her looking very amused at my tiny knife. I give a slightly embarrassed shrug, "It's easy to carry without attracting attention, and is about as non-threatening as a sharp object can be." She's still smiling but waves me to keep going, so I nick my thumb, producing just enough blood to start the Script, and press it against the place where this Script's story starts. Then I begin to sing, and as I sing light follows along the Script symbols keeping pace with me.

I'm a terrible singer, but it's necessary, and I've found that Script responds better to singing than to chanting. So singing it is. This is why, for all the skill I've gained with the World Script, none of it would help me in a fight. Because if you want Script to work, you have to sing or chant along with what you write. On some level it makes sense to me, that for a story to mean or do anything it has to be told. Really, I have no clue why or how though, I just know that if you don't have the verbal component the results are unpredictable and often explosive.

The song and the story finish and the knowledge floods into my mind. I quickly learn two things. First, the box is granite, and old granite at that, but otherwise there's nothing special about the material. Second, I still know nothing about magic.

What I see when the Script tells me about the runes is a mess of colored lines and shining auras that layer over, and wrap around the box. What any of that means, however, I have no clue. I lean back on my hands and study the box again. I need to know what the hell those runes are doing to the box!

...

I'm an idiot.

I look up to where Cait is still watching me with great interest, "I don't suppose I could consult a reference?"

Cait looks amused but nods, "Sure."

I scoot off of the table and dash back down the hallway into the main store again. It takes me only a few minutes to find what I'm after. When I return, it's with the rune book that I'd looked at but decided against the last time I was here. Cait looks surprised and still amused, but I just plop myself down in a chair, pull the box close, and start looking up the runes.

One thing that working with Script and its dictionary taught me was to look things up quickly, and patience when 'quickly' turns out to be relative. And it is. It takes me almost half an hour to find all the runes with any degree of certainty. I can't do what has been done to the box, not with runes anyway, but I don't really need to. What I can do is find the meanings of individual runes and make some educated guesses.

There are runes for protection, resistance, locking, and a couple of other things that added together, keep anything from even touching the box. There doesn't seem to be anything done to the box itself, however. That matches up with what my analysis Script had shown, auras and lines of color wrapped around the box, but nothing actually entered it's substance.

Which... does suggest a solution, "Um... Is the box itself important? Or do you just want what's inside of it?"

Cait frowns, watching me. She had retaken her chair and seems content enough just to watch me work, "I said that I wanted you to open it. Destroying the box is not opening it."

I hiss under my breath and look back at the box. After a moments thought I look back up at her, "So your only objection is that I need to open the box?" I ask carefully, "Not that the box might be damaged?"

The supernatural woman narrows her eyes at me, but slowly nods, "I don't see how you're going to get at the box through the magic to damage it, but I suppose that minimal damage would be acceptable."

I nod. Plan set, I pull my Script dictionary and set to work. I take my time finding the symbols that I want, as I'm playing with something that I've never really considered touching before. Once I've found the exact symbols I want, I pull a washcloth and squirt bottle out of my backpack and set to cleaning the last Script off the table. Once I'm sure that my work surface is clean, I grab my bone chalk again and set to writing out my new Script.

Unlike my analysis Script, what I'm working on now is mostly new. Not just new symbols, but something I've never tried before, so I keep having to go back and correct sections as I get further. Twice I even have to start over from the beginning as I realize that a mistake earlier has changed the context of what I'm trying to describe later. All the while I practice the pronunciation of the new symbols. It takes several hours before I'm finished, and in spite of how big the table is, the Script almost didn't fit.

The box went in its place, a final check, and I'm ready to go. I bite my thumb to start it bleeding again, press it to its place and begin to sing again. The Script lights up as before, following my song. When it finishes, I start again from the beginning. The glow brightens as I go through it again. Then again. On the third pass through the Script, its light brightening each time, the box begins to be affected. Grains of sand and dust begin falling from the front of the box. Slowly, as I continue to sing through the Script again, the stone around the locking rune begins to dissolve. Finally, on the ninth time through the Script, the last bit of the locking rune finally vanishes and I stop singing.

I lean forward, and with a finger, flip the lid of the box open, the force that held it shut gone. With a groan I drop back into a chair, exhausted, and look up at Cait, "Well?"

Cait looks mildly stunned. She leans forward and draws a finger across one of the lines of the Script. The once white symbols have turned black, the power running through the chalk having burned it away, and in the process burned the symbol into the table.

I wince and start to open my mouth to apologize, but she waves me off before I can even begin to croak out a sound, "Well I have to say I'm impressed. What did you do? I've thrown everything I can think of at that box and never gotten anywhere."

I sigh, try to talk, choke, try again, and manage to scrape out some words this time, "I uh... I didn't understand the magic, but it didn't really matter as none of it affected the box itself. The runes created a shell around it that prevented harm, but that's it. The only exception was the locking rune. So I very carefully targeted the stone that made up the rune and, uh, intensified entropy on it. So it decayed until the rune was gone. Once the rune was gone, the box wasn't locked any more so..." I wave a hand at the stone box on the table.

Cait smiles broadly, "Like I said, I'm impressed. I think we can work something out."

I sit upright in spite of my exhaustion, "Thank y..." Cait holds up a hand stopping me mid-word.

"Before you finish that, I should introduce myself again. Like I said, my name is Caitríona, or Cait. However in the past, I was known as Caitsidhe."

I blink, then blink again as my tired brain runs through that and catches the import, "Sidhe? As in Fae? Don't thank them, rings of toadstools, that kind of fae?"

Cait nods with a grin, "You're rather knowledgeable for somebody that has no contact with the supernatural."

I shrug, "I have no contacts, but I clearly know the supernatural is there. I don't know how much is reliable, but I studied whatever I could." It's true, even if the two statements aren't actually connected. Most of my mythological studies happened in my old life, so I really wasn't sure if any of it was accurate.

"Well then. I think we can help each other. I'll take ten percent or a single task like this for every job I get you," Cait says, leaning forward, "It'll take a couple of days to find some people, and you'll probably have to do the first few for free, or at least a reduced price. Just so you have some people to vouch that you know what you're doing. It'll help you build a reputation."

I smile at the last word. Reputation is exactly what I'm after, the money is secondary. Seeing that we're done, I quickly repack my bag, taking special care with my Script dictionary. Finishing, I offer my hand, and smile more when she takes it, "T... I'm grea... I'm glad we could work something out, and very happy you were willing to hear me out and help."

Cait's smile got even bigger, "I, as well...?"

She trails off and it takes me a moment to realize that through all of this I'd never actually given her my name, "Ericka Rhostana."

"Ericka. Rhostana." She lets go of my hand and leads me towards the front of the store, "I think your name will end up being one to watch for. Just do me a favor and don't join the devils." Her face screws up in disgust, "And no matter what they say, don't trust those Evil Pieces of theirs. Or their intentions."

Were I somebody else I might have asked why, but I've seen a noble devil in action. And they'll never convince me that Evil Pieces don't plant some sort of control mechanism in the people they are used on. So I just nod in agreement, which seems to make her happy.

"Come back on Sunday and we'll get started," she says before ushering me out the door and shutting it behind me.

While I'd been inside for my interview the sun had gone down, leaving me to enjoy the late spring evening. Maybe I can just head straight home. I'm tired and Sarah, as much as I love her, is exhausting. Her friends are worse.

I idly take out my phone to turn the sound back on and discover that I've missed a few things. My mother had sent a message an hour ago to check in on how the interview was going. My dad sent a message saying that he would be available in the next hour to give me a ride two hours ago.

And Sarah has sent six messages and a picture of her pouting.

I sigh. That... Well I guess I have no choice really. I'm going to have to go to something infinitely more dangerous and terrifying than the supernatural job interview with a sidhe of the fae.

I'm going to a sleepover.

###​

Sarah lives in a nice neighborhood in a well maintained house with two upper floors and a basement. Her mother is a nice woman who's obsessed with gardening, and it shows. Even in the dark, as I move up the walk through the front garden, the sheer effort put into the landscaping is obvious.

Before I even reach the front step, the door is flung open and a familiar black haired missile takes me around the middle and lifts me into the air, "You came!" Sarah squeals, shaking me back and forth, "You weren't responding to my texts so I thought you might have decided to ditch me and gone home!"

"I thought about it," I tell her looking down, hanging somewhat limply as she continues to hold me up, arms wrapped around my hips. She looks up at me and starts pouting again, "Except that pout is hard to argue with." I quirk an eyebrow at her, "Yes. That one. Now put me down." Sarah giggles, sets me on my feet, and drags me into her house.

When we'd started high school we both stopped going to gymnastics. It's not that we didn't like it. It's more that we were at the age where if we wanted to keep going to the same gym, everything was going to start being about competitions and getting ready for them. Neither of us are interested in that aspect of things so we found other places that would let us continue with what we did want without the aspects that we didn't.

I found parkour. Not only is roof running a thrill, but it taught me how to climb. Parkour keeps me in shape the same way gymnastics had, and lets me keep a lot of the same skills when I'm just having fun with it, instead of actively going somewhere. I can also see it being a useful boost to my mobility in the future.

Sarah found cheerleading.

The rest of the girls are Sarah's friends from the cheer squad and have been going strong for an hour or more already. Fortunately, I get there just in time for food. Pizza is devoured in huge quantities, movies are gathered, and all of us get changed for bed so we can lock ourselves in the basement until morning.

My sleepwear, when I bothered with any, are a pair of cotton shorts and a large t-shirt. The others... Well, I'm not sure if Sarah doesn't know I'm gay. Knows I'm gay and is punishing me for something. Or knows I'm gay and trying to help. While my sleepwear tends towards loose and covering, these girls, while still comfortable, are clearly showing off and having some sort of competition. Tight t-shirts, well fitted flannel pants, tight barely there shorts, or just panties. It's all I can do to keep my blush under control whenever I look at them, which I try not to do in any obvious fashion.

We have action movies, rom-coms, and horror films. The rest of the girls shriek and cling to each other during the jump scares. I, on the other hand, sit curled up on the other end of the couch, away from the pile. Since the stray devil, horror movies haven't really done it for me. The fake stuff isn't really scary after seeing the real thing. The human mind can't really grasp exactly how horrifying the supernatural can be without seeing it first hand.

Out of the corner of my eye I see Sarah watching me, looking worried. I try to smile reassuringly at her, but that just seems to make her more concerned. How exactly she can look grumpy from under a pile of cute girls, I have no idea. Well, other than that she would care more if they were cute boys.

Eventually we take a break from the movies, and quickly the conversation devolves into the inevitable discussion about boys. I stage a tactical retreat to the far side of the room and try to lose myself in my sketchbook. I have nothing to contribute to that conversation. Honestly, some part of me is afraid that if I hang around, my orientation will come out. Then I'll end up trapped in a room for the night with a group of irrationally paranoid, homophobic, teenage girls. Now that would make a scary horror movie. It would have a niche audience, but I certainly find the idea terrifying.

Unfortunately, Sarah refuses to let me hide in peace. She leaves the other girls to their discussion after a short while, and comes in my direction still looking concerned. I sigh as I see her head my way, and set my book aside.

Both Sarah and I have grown into the promise we'd shown when we first met. She as a teenager is devastatingly pretty and well on her way to beautiful. Shimmering waves of long black hair, deep blue eyes, a figure that curved in all the right places, with just the right amount of muscle tone. Really, I'm very glad that I met her as early as I had. Because if I had first encountered her after the Westermark cut off, I'd be incapacitated by the size of the crush I'd have on her. As it is, I could just appreciate the aesthetics and be glad she's my friend.

If I keep telling myself that long enough I may even start to believe it.

I, on the other hand, am just as plain as I expected to be. The best I'd ever achieved as a child had been cute, and that was more about behavior than appearance. My brown, not quite auburn hair is shoulder length, and that's only because I couldn't convince mom to let me cut it shorter. My build takes after my father's, all arms and legs, just with my mother's height. I'm only saved from looking like I'm made out of toothpicks by the unreasonable amount of muscle I have for a fifteen year old girl. Which also does me no favors, I've been assured. My features are almost painfully plain, and while I know my size, I've never actually needed a bra.

Sarah opens the conversation in typical Sarah fashion by setting herself in my lap. Really glad for the Westermarck Effect. "So why are you pouting over here?" she asks, smiling at me.

I just glare at her. "I'm not pouting," I tell her flatly.

"Hiding then." Damn girl's smile doesn't waver in the least under my glare. Fear me, dammit!

"I'm not hiding either. I'm in plain view. I just don't have anything to add to that conversation," I say and wave a hand at where the other girls are still gossiping.

"Really? Nothing?" Sarah wheedles, "Nobody caught your eye? Come on, you can tell me!"

"Nobody. I keep myself pretty busy in case you haven't noticed. I have little time for, and less interest in, boys." I can't quite hide all of the disgust I feel when I think about being 'involved' with one of the male gender.

"That's what I'm worried about. You work yourself too hard." I look up at Sarah to find that her smile has finally disappeared, "You need more friends. I'd say you need hobbies, but I'm well aware that the only time you take breaks is when you're injured or when I make you. So you need more people who can make you take breaks."

"I have hobbies!" I object, ignoring her comments about my schedule. She's right, and we both know it, so I see no point in discussing it, "I draw, and..."

"Drawing isn't a hobby," Sarah interrupts me flatly, "I don't know why it's not, but you have the same look on your face when you're drawing that you do when we spar. And don't try to claim that martial arts are a hobby for you, either." She's glaring at me now, which is something I've actually never seen before. Not pointed at me anyway. "Ericka, I'm worried about you. You work yourself constantly. If you're not training physically you're practicing something else. Even if what it is escapes me, I can see it. I don't know what you're afraid of," she holds up a hand to silence me when I go to interrupt, "and I won't pry, right now, but you need to have some fun or I'm afraid that you'll do something bad to yourself. Please just try to have some fun tonight? That was the whole reason I set this up. Please? For me?"

I blink up at her. She'd done this just so I'd stop training for an evening? I... really don't know how to respond to that. With a sigh, I hug the irritating ravenette, "Fine. I'll try to... to unwind a bit. Just for you."

"Great!" she chirps, hugging me back, "besides, it's not like you don't actually have anything to contribute." She looks at me conspiratorially and tightens her hold on me as I'm seized with the sudden urge to flee, "I've seen you watch Sandra. And I have it on good authority that Madison thinks you're cute~."

"What?!" I whisper-shriek and look up at Sarah wide eyed. Sandra hadn't been invited, but Madison is right over there with the others. My face turns bright red.

My captor smirks at me, "What? You thought I didn't know? Come on, I know you better than you know yourself." Sometimes I worry that's true, "So relax, I wouldn't have invited anybody who would take your orientation badly. Come socialize some and you'll see. Maybe you'll make a friend, or even more~." Sarah singsongs the last word and I frown up at her.

"Don't be ridiculous. I'm prickly, anti-social, abrasive, and not nearly attractive enough to make up for it," I tell Sarah flatly. The attitude is something that I actually cultivate deliberately, "Nobody's going to have a crush on me."

"That's something else we'll work on. You're not nearly as unattractive as you seem to think you are." It's hard to argue with a girl that looks like Sarah while she's sitting in your lap. I'm determined to try anyway. Just as soon as she let me get a word in, "If you'd just let me take you shopping we could give you a makeover," Oh god, no, "and you'd get a girl in no time flat." Sarah is just getting ready to start wheedling, a tactic against which my defense has historically been poor, when I'm saved by the rest of the sleepover.

"Sarah!" The aforementioned Madison calls from where the others are, "Cynthia is claiming she can do a freestanding handstand longer than the rest of us. We're doing a contest, come on! Ericka can judge!"

Sarah looks down at me and raises an eyebrow. I hesitate for a moment, then shake my head, pushing her off my lap as I stand, "Judge hell. I'm going to have to teach you lot how to hold a handstand." Sarah whoops and bounces off the floor to lead me back over to the group.

Maybe some fun wouldn't go amiss. Really, I do have fun with my training. There's no way I would have been able to keep it up for as long as I have, at the intensity I have, if I didn't enjoy it. But some more conventional fun might be good too. I don't want to be completely clueless when I finally get to the point where I can slow down some. So I'll give this a try.

However, no matter what Sarah thinks, I'm not going to be ending the night with any new friends, and especially no girlfriend. I'm still planning to leave this reality just as soon as I figure out how, and I'll probably never be coming back. I don't need to get attached to people I'm just going to leave.

I already have no idea how I'm going to leave Sarah or my parents, and that's hard enough.

###​

Sunday finds me, for the third time, standing in front of the nameless book store. I've spent most of the day before looking up everything I could on Caitsidhe. Or cat sith, nothing to do with Star Wars, and found depressingly little. There's a quick almost... tongue twister, about the death of the king of cats, and some references to them being both protectors and breath eaters. On Sidhe in general, there's somewhat more. Basically, I'm glad to have settled on a price for Cait's services before we ended the negotiations two nights ago, because owing a debt to fae of any kind is just a terrible idea.

Otherwise, there's a lot of conflicting material. Cold iron is the general solution to fae, unless they're a red cap, or a brownie, or... it's generally just better to look up whatever you're dealing with specifically. Assuming that anything I found on the internet is at all accurate.

Which isn't something I'm willing to take on faith, even beyond the normal skepticism of internet sources.

Cait meets me at the door before I can even think about knocking and waves me in, immediately leading me towards the back. "So I worked fast and found three jobs. You'll have to do them for free to prove to the community that you know your stuff. Lucky for you, they're still paying me a finders fee so you don't have to worry about that."

"Okay," I nod along as she leads me into the back hallway, and to the first door on the left this time. Inside is a dirt floor and a ring of mushrooms. I stop dead upon seeing it and look askance at Cait.

The cat fae smirks at me in a highly appropriate fashion and nods approvingly, "Yes that's what you think it is, but don't worry about it. You're a guest, as long as you stick with me, go where I go, and stay on the path you'll be fine."

That sounds like a lot of caveats, "I don't suppose I can just hang onto you to make this easier?"

"What, like holding my hand?" Her smile is positively wicked now.

I roll my eyes, "Or hang onto the back of your shirt, or your belt, or you could grow a tail and I can hang onto that."

"You want to hang onto my tail?" She draws herself up looking affronted.

I raise an eyebrow at her, "Isn't that what the spot on the end of cat tails are for? So kittens have something easy to follow when being led places?"

"Are you calling yourself my kitten?" She's grinning at me again. The woman has more different kinds of smiles than I've ever seen on a single person before. This one seems almost pleased.

"You are older than I am," I point out. I figure the thing about women and age doesn't matter when the woman in question doesn't age, and age only brings power. I'm still not asking though, I'm not quite that confident.

"True enough." With that, Cait grabs my shoulder and pushes me so that we step together into the faerie trode.

###​

The moment I cross the ring of mushrooms, I'm somewhere else. There's no real transition I can describe, one moment I'm in a dirt floored room in the back of a bookstore, then next I'm... somewhere else.

Beneath my feet is a path of shimmering silver sand. The path is wide enough for two people to walk shoulder to shoulder if they're friendly, and the sand of the path makes a chiming sound as I step on it. Cait, of course, doesn't make any sound at all. On either side of the path I can just make out tree trunks and branches overhead. The trunks of the trees are black and shiny like obsidian, and the few leaves I can see are bright like emeralds. Past the trees, the sky is too black and the stars too bright. Surrounding us is a thick white fog. Nothing ahead of us, or behind, or past the very edges of the closest tree trunks, but swirling white mist. I can't even see the path past a foot or so.

Almost on reflex my hand snaps up and grips the back of Cait's shirt. It would be too easy for the path to turn out from under my feet without my noticing until it's already too late. I don't really want to know what would happen to me then.

Cait looks over at me and smiles gently. A moment later, a black tail with an orange tip smacks me in the face. Cait laughs at my expression, but I grab onto the offered appendage without a word.

The moment I have a good grip Cait starts ahead, and I dutifully follow behind. At first I try to watch my surroundings, try to see past the trees, or watch where the path goes. What I see, when I see anything through the mist, is a nonsensical Escheresque nightmare that makes my head pound and my stomach churn.

I quickly decide that my feet are the most interesting thing out here, "So how can you tell where we're going?" I ask after an indeterminate amount of time.

I think she looks back at me, but I refuse to look up to check. After a moment though, Cait answers, "Well, I don't have trouble seeing like you do. The Lords and Ladies of Faerie don't like mortal guests. So there are illusions laid everywhere that affect only them."

"So to you, it's a clear day and a straight road?"

"Well, I don't see the mist, and I'm used to the geometry here."

Suddenly I'm glad that I can't see more. The silence is getting to me though, so I keep talking, "What are these jobs you found for me?"

"First, you're going to grow some trees. There's a grove of dryads that are trying to set up a new grove that they can move to, but that can take anywhere from decades to centuries depending on the tree."

"But I can speed up the growth so that they have what they need now," I nod. The rapid growth Script isn't hard, and won't have to be adjusted much for trees instead of rose bushes. But, "I'm going to need something to write on," I tell her.

Cait just nods and keeps going, "Second, there's an orphanage that needs you to get rid of a Tulpa."

"A what?" That's one I've never heard of before.

"A Tulpa. It's a spirit made by collective, focused thought or belief," Cait explains. "Most boogeymen are Tulpa, and that's probably what you're dealing with here." How the fuck? This one would take some thought. Spirits aren't anything that I've dealt with before and haven't really thought of dealing with before. Not to mention, how do you get rid of something that's dreamed up and so can probably be dreamed up again?

Before I can get too lost in trying to figure Tulpa out, Cait continues, "Third is a mage society that wants help securing a vault." Well, that would be easy enough at least.

Some bit of genre savviness warns me that I might have just screwed myself with that thought.

###​

We reemerge into the real world, stepping out of another ring of mushrooms, this one somewhere in the middle of a redwood forest. Ferns and duff cover the ground and there are no signs of civilization as far as the eye can see.

Which granted, with the dense forest, isn't very far.

It occurs to me at that moment that I have no idea where I am. Nor do I have a way to get home without Cait. That's something I'll have to fix as quickly as possible. Though the only way I can think of to teleport with Script would be very slow to write out, and easy to get wrong. Something else to work on then, in my copious free time.

It's another twenty minute hike to the dryad grove.

The dryads are waiting for us when we arrive, six of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. Their skin is the color of redwood, their hair is a deep green, their eyes a tawny yellow, and rose red lips stretch in welcoming smiles. Devils might be lush seductresses, but the dryads are svelte and athletic natural beauties. Which honestly has always appealed to me more.

And they're entirely naked.

I don't know why this surprises me, but it does.

They descend on Cait and me in a giggling swarm of welcoming hugs and introductions. Getting hugged by a dryad is something that I'll think about later. By myself. Anyone thinking of them as simple fertility spirits, or taking their giggling and enthusiasm for stupidity, is in for a nasty surprise, however. I can see it in their eyes, sharp and watching. They're nature spirits, and anybody who thinks nature is all sweetness and light has never seen National Geographic. They are as much predator as prey.

After the dryads finish welcoming us, they show us the grove to be, a large clearing in the tree cover filled with ferns and dappled sunlight. In the center of the clearing is a massive redwood stump. Eight feet tall and maybe twelve feet across. The clearing had apparently been made when this tree had been cut down. Arranged in an almost perfect circle around the stump are twelve little redwood saplings.

This might be easier than I thought.

I had thought that either I'd have to struggle to find a way to target all the trees to be grown at once, or have to redo the Script as many times as it took to grow each tree individually. But I grew up in California and so know more than I really need to about redwoods. Some species of redwood, instead of reproducing by seed, spread by sending out runner roots. Roots that after they travel a certain distance sprout upwards into a brand new tree. Redwoods usually do this when a larger tree dies. Like when it has been cut down. So all the new saplings are still connected to each other through the central stump, which will make targeting them all at once much easier.

Finishing the brief tour I turn to the girls, fighting to keep my gaze above their necks, and ask the important question, "So what exactly do you want me to do?"

"Well," One, I think her name was Edinia, presses her athletic form into my side "we can't inhabit trees until they reach a certain size. Caitríona said you could make things... grow quickly." Ooookay. This is going to be a problem. How the hell did she make that innuendo? I don't even know what she's insinuating and I'm already red.

And now they're giggling at me.

I regain my composure by force of will, "I've had success with rose bushes before, but I don't see much trouble adjusting to growing trees." I manage to keep my voice steady even as they celebrate by bouncing up and down clapping their hands, "It's... um... the best place for me to do this would be the central stump," I say pointing and struggling to look in that direction, "if the top is smooth?"

They nod, Edinia especially rubbing her cheek against my shoulder, her very red lips spread into a smile, "Oh yes," she coos, "once we heard what you could do for us," Script, she's talking about my Script, "we made sure you'd have a good place to work from."

I wrench my focus away from the dryad cuddled up to me with a swallow, and nod, "Right. I'd best get to work then."

I step away from Edinia, who responds with a pout, and do just that. Step one is measuring the distance from the center of the stump to each of the saplings and recording the distance for reference later. This takes help from a dryad, one of them holding my measuring tape in place while I hold the other end to the saplings.

Once that's done, it takes some time with the Script Dictionary to figure out how to adjust my grow Script to work on redwoods. This takes more time than it really should have as the dryads insist on being involved in every detail, because they want to shape the growth of their trees slightly. That part actually helps, as they know their trees very well and remind me of several things I would have missed. They also tell me how the absent dryads of their grove would like their trees. Apparently about half of them have stayed behind to protect the old grove until they have someplace else to move to.

What doesn't help is that they insist on draping themselves all over me as we work. One pressing into my back, one leaning into each of my sides, and one snuggles into my lap. The rest are sitting close and leaning closer, frequently reaching out to touch me with hands, or laying their heads on whatever bit of me is available.

"You're very tense," the dryad at my back says, and starts rubbing my shoulders. My eyes unfocus at the impromptu massage, "Too tense, you should let us help you relax." I've actually started to agree when what she's probably implying registers.

I blush and stammer before freeing myself, not at all reluctantly, from the dryad pile. An action that earned much vocal disapproval and pouting. I get on top of the stump easily enough. A running start and, parkour for the win, find myself on the smooth almost polished surface of the top of the stump. Pacing out the area I have to work with and planning out how things will lay only takes another few minutes. Then finally, I can get started on the Script itself.

Bone chalk goes onto the wood like a dream, and I quickly lose myself in my writing. I identify the trees to be affected by distance from the central point, and how they are still connected to the stump I'm using for my work. How each tree is supposed to be, what it's to look like and how much it's to grow are all described to each individual dryad's specification. I mark out a place for me to stand without interfering, the Script to draw in energy, and end with where the Script story begins.

A last check over everything and I'm ready. A nick to my thumb and pressing it to the start, I begin to sing. And as I sing, the trees grow. The trunks widen and grow upwards. Branches sprout and stretch out from the trunks, bark thickens and toughens. Roots, something I would have forgotten about completely if not for the dryads, snake downwards. All of this is powered by the ambient energy drawn through my Script, so all the nutrients in the soil are still waiting there to be used. As the trees reach their full growth, their branches start to meet each other over my head, my song and Script weaving them together to make a roof over the open center of the clearing.

I'm panting as I finish. Rocking back on my heels I set my hands on my hips and turn to take in the results of my work.

Only to be taken off my feet as I'm tackled by a horde of grateful dryads. I'm laughing and about to shoo them off me, only for soft lips to crash into mine. I manage to push the first dryad away to try and escape, or apologize, or ask for more, I'm not really sure, but the first dryad's lips and tongue are quickly replaced by another's. I might have lost some time at that point, and probably would have been there a lot longer if not for Cait pulling me out from under them.

All I really remember of my trip back to the faerie trode is Edenia calling after us that I'm welcome to come back and be a guest of their grove any time.

I don't say anything on our way through Faerie because I'm too embarrassed for words at how the dryads had gotten to me.

Cait giggling the whole way doesn't help either.

###​

The orphanage is a very large Victorian building, three stories high, and sitting in a very nice suburb of... somewhere. I still don't know where I am, but at least in civilization I could find out and find a way home if I need to.

We're met at the door by an elderly woman who's slender and tall. Her iron grey hair is done up in a severe bun that goes well with her perfect posture. I expect her to be stern from the look of her, but that goes away almost immediately when she sees us. A warm smile blooms across her face and she pulls Cait into a hug. A hug that the fae returns enthusiastically.

They talk happily to each other for several minutes in a language that I don't recognize. Eventually, I cough quietly into one hand, reminding them I'm here. The two straighten up quickly.

As soon as they're composed, Cait introduces us, "Mrs. O'Mera, this is Ericka. I think she can solve your Tulpa problem. Ericka this is Mrs. O'Mera." I'm getting the impression that this woman doesn't actually have a first name.

I step forward and hold out a hand, which Mrs. O'Mera shakes with a grip like iron, "Well, then, dear, thank you for coming. Let me show you the problem." Her accent is interesting. Very faint, whatever it is, but given how familiar she and Cait are acting, I'm betting on something native to the British Isles that isn't English. More than that I'm not willing to speculate.

The interior of the building is very clean. Spotless hardwood floors with old faded carpets that look pretty good, even if they are ancient. Antique chairs and tables are scattered along the hallways and staged in rooms in a manner that makes me wonder if they're meant to be used. Mostly though, the place feels empty. Our footsteps and conversation echo through the well preserved house.

Mrs. O'Mera speaks softly to Cait during the brief trip, but addresses me again as we reach a long hallway with three doors in it at the far end. One on each side and one straight ahead.

"These are the little one's dorms," the older woman explains, "boys on the left, girls on the right. The door at the end leads to an old boiler room. It still holds some of the heating for this wing of the house. It's old enough that it makes noises that can sound like something other than just pipes. The other part of it is that, because of the ventilation that the old boiler required," Just then the door jerks and rattles in its frame, sounding very much like something is trying to get out. Or just remind everybody that it's there, "that happens.

"The story started like most such things do. Older children trying to scare younger ones. The tale goes that the house is an orphanage because the original family that lived here had a child, Oliver, who was so bad they had no choice but to lock him up." The woman points at the door to indicate where the fictional child had been held, "The couple then took in other children to soothe their guilt about what they had done to theirs.

"Of course, Oliver was still there and quickly began banging on the door," the door in question rattles again, "jealous of the children that his parents now paid attention to instead of him. One night the boy got out of the boiler room, stalked the halls and found the worst behaved child in the orphanage and dragged that child back into his prison with him.

"What happened to the kidnapped child is never defined clearly, but the implication is that Oliver ate the child he took. Oliver taking him in the first place was because he thought that's what happened to very bad children. Just as his parents did to him. From that point forward, Oliver's parents took the worst behaving child in the orphanage and gave them to Oliver to keep him quiet, and protect the other children. Of course, if nobody is that bad often enough, somebody gets sent in anyway. Or that's the story."

I listen to the tale as I watch the door bang and rattle at distressingly appropriate points in the narrative. "So the collective belief in this story congealed together into an actual being mirroring the fictional Oliver?" I ask, making sure I have the idea straight.

"Indeed. We had never really given much credence to the story of course, we know the actual history of the house. You can never get rid of this sort of thing entirely, and as such stories go, this one was pretty harmless," Mrs. O'Mera explains. "But then about two weeks ago Samira, one of our volunteer caretakers and in fact one of our former residents, woke to the sound of screaming. She came running, of course, and arrived just in time to see something dragging a boy out of the dorm, and towards the open boiler room door. The thing fled into the boiler room upon being seen, the door slamming shut behind it. Since then we've had five more attacks."

"And you can't just bar the door because that would encourage belief and make the thing stronger," I sigh, looking down the hallway at the door. "So I think I can get rid of it, but I'll need a couple of things. And you're going to need to have the kids see it go, or they'll just dream it back into existence. If they see it go, they'll believe it's gone, so...?" I shrug. It's the only solution I have for how to get rid of a monster with belief based re-spawning.

Cait nods at me from behind Mrs. O'Mera, who looks thoughtful, "I can see why you say that, and I suppose if you're certain what you do will work, it can be arranged."

I wince, "Honestly ma'am, I have no idea. I'm pretty sure what I have in mind will work, but I've never dealt with a Tulpa before. I can only try, but if the belief that made it in the first place doesn't go away," I shrug again, "I can't imagine that you won't get another one pretty quickly."

The old caretaker sighs, "Very well. What do you need?"

"Well... A picture of the Tulpa would be nice, what the story calls the thing, as I doubt it's Oliver, and if it has any weaknesses. Anything that according to the story hurts it more than usual."

"We do have a picture as it happens. Samira needed something to prove to the rest of us that this was actually happening. And no, they don't call it Oliver. Bloody Olly does have a sensitivity to light after spending so much time in a dark room, you understand." Mrs. O'Mera smiles for a moment before her face falls. As though she's used to finding the story amusing, and suddenly can't. To be fair, the story probably had been amusing to the caretakers here for quite some time. Right up until the story came to life and started trying to drag off their charges.

The picture is surprisingly clear. Taken with a flash polaroid, it shows a figure maybe the size of a very skinny seven year old. However it's an indistinct black, the edges of the figure are fuzzy and blend into the shadows. It has no face, just a pair of glowing yellow eyes. It has a hunched posture that does something to disguise its overly long limbs and that its fingers are more like claws, but not nearly enough. Overall, it's a very effective boogeyman and not something that I'd want in my closet.

With all the information I think I'll need, I get to work. The main Script goes on the floor in front of the boiler room door. This acts first as the trap. Using a description of Bloody Olly derived from the picture, and symbols as close as I can get to its name, I create a circle that will trap the Tulpa, and hopefully only the Tulpa, in place. Next come other Scripts on the walls and ceiling that will create natural sunlight, and will be triggered once the trap goes off. The last part of the trap is in the original circle. Once the Tulpa is illuminated and weakened, the Script will drain away any energy in the circle, hopefully unraveling the Tulpa. And not doing too much damage while freezing the floor.

An application of blood and song activates the trap. "There," I say turning to Mrs. O'Mera, "that will keep until activated, and hopefully take care of your Olly problem." My head is beginning to hurt, and my throat definitely is. Activating Script takes a lot of focus, and I've never done more than one Script in a day before. It's beginning to wear on me, and I have one more to do.

Fortunately, it's the one I expect to be easy. Wards are something I've had a lot of practice with, warding and rewarding my home and room.

Mrs. O'Mera takes pity on me and insists that Cait and I stay for lunch.

The food is excellent and Mrs. O'Mera takes the opportunity to tell me stories about Cait. Cait is a changeling, as it turns out. One of the fae that's left behind in the place of a child that the fae rescued from an abusive home, left behind specifically to punish the abusive parents. After Cait successfully drove her abusive foster parents insane, she was placed in Mrs. O'Meara's orphanage. Which was how they met, and how Cait ended up with a much better opinion of humanity than most changelings have. A good enough opinion that she decided to stick around rather than returning to Faerie. I get the impression that there's more to Cait's story, but either Mrs. O'Mera doesn't know or isn't telling, and I feel no need to pry.

Fed and with an opportunity to rest, I feel much better by the time Cait and I set off to our last stop for the day.

###​

This time Cait starts talking almost as soon as we move onto Faerie's paths, "This next group is a little unusual. They're extremely reclusive, and are only letting you in because I vouched for you. What you do will reflect on me, so don't fuck up."

I swallow and can feel my hand sweating where I grip Cait's tail, "No pressure then."

Cait continues as though I haven't spoken, which doesn't fill me with confidence, "They're descended from a native American tribe, and dedicated to hunting various native American monsters."

"Skinshifters, and Wendigos?" I ask, naming the only two American native monsters I know of.

Cait nods, "Exactly. Those and a lot of other things you've never heard of. Some of them you won't know because they're just that uncommon, others because knowledge of them has been deliberately suppressed. You ready?" she asks, looking back at me.

God dammit, after that talk I'm nervous as hell. I nod anyway, though, and Cait takes us out of Faerie.

We arrive in a dirt floored room very similar to the one we left from in the book store. A large man of native American descent is waiting for us. He's dressed in a nice business suit with a bolo tie and his long hair is pulled back into a ponytail much like mine is. I don't think bonding over hairstyles will work, though, given his very serious expression.

"I am the shaman in charge of this facility," he introduces himself, not offering a hand to shake or any greeting at all as he leads us out of the room. "There are no names here, Miss Rhostana," except for mine apparently, "you will address us by position." I glance at Cait but she shakes her head, so I decide not to ask.

He leads us through a few hallways as he explains what they want from me, "We have an opportunity to capture a very elusive monster. One that has never successfully been killed, studied, or even held before." His voice is even but I can hear a hint of excitement in his tone, "Its power," whatever that is, is probably another thing I won't be told. Or told why I won't be told, "can only be stopped by wood. However it has more than enough physical strength to smash any hardwood to splinters."

"Which is where I come in," I say, nodding. It's something I can definitely do. The front door to my house can probably take an RPG at least once before it gives. With something better to work with I can make it even tougher and last longer under pressure.

"Indeed," the shaman nods, opening a set of double doors to reveal an expansive warehouse-like room. It's entirely empty save for a large, steel banded wooden box, big enough to hold two grizzly bears comfortably. "The wood is iron wood and almost a foot thick. The banding is an inch thick and three inches wide." And this, apparently, is nowhere near enough.

Okay, I can work with this, "I'll need some specific materials, but I can write a self sustaining Script onto the wood that will make it invulnerable as long as it lasts. With enough silver wire..."

"There can be no additive power," the shaman interrupts me, "anything unnatural in the substance of the cage will compromise the wood's ability to stop the beast's power."

What.

I knew I'd jinxed myself. God damn it!

I glare at Cait who simply shrugs, "You said anything."

"Can you help us?" the shaman asks expressionless. He doesn't expect me to be able to, I realize. They had tried before, and failed, but something about this is important enough to try again anyway. And Cait had gone out on a limb and told them that I could give them a miracle.

So what they want me to do is somehow make the wood, without running any energy through it, able to hold up to their monster.

I have no idea how to go about doing that.

But that's what I have to do.

I can try altering the wood in some way, but if just running energy through the wood stopped it working, altering it too much probably won't work either. I run my hands over my hair making a frustrated noise, "Let me work on this for a bit, and I'll let you know."

The shaman nods and turns to Cait, "We can wait in one of the studies, it will be a more comfortable place to talk."

"Sure, it'll give us a chance to catch up." Cait takes him up on the offer, and the two of them stroll out the door without a care in the world. Meanwhile, I turn back to the box.

I pace around it, knock on it, even climb it a few times. The problem is that I need the wood to have the properties of something not wood, while staying wood. Which makes no sense. If it doesn't behave like wood, it's not wood! That's the way it works! It was the old if it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, then it's a fucking duck!

I groan and sit down, lean my back against the box, pull my knees up to my chest, wrap my arms around them, and bury my face in them.

This is the important job, I realize.

The dryads are out in the middle of nowhere, who would they tell about me? And who would listen to them? The orphanage was almost more a favor to Cait. A mundane, if aware, woman running an orphanage won't have many people she can tell about what I can do, and won't have the reputation for her words to carry a lot of weight.

An obviously old and powerful mage society, though? One that probably deals with a lot of other supernaturals as they did their thing hunting monsters? And probably has a good reputation because of it?

This is the important job, and I'm fucking it up.

The day had been going so well too! And now, at the finish line, I'm going to fail. Cait had taken a risk on me, given me this chance, and I'm going to blow it.

My trap Script would work, I'm sure. Or as sure as I can be without testing it. But I can't think of a reason why it wouldn't.

And I helped the dryads! That had been straightforward and easy.

And had come with great eye candy.

I blush slightly as I think about Edinia's invitation to return to the grove and be their guest for a while. It's really tempting, and something I might actually do if I can find my way back there without Cait.

Cait would just mock me incessantly, and I don't need that.

It would be a great way to experience certain things without getting attached to somebody I'd just have to leave. Some part of me knows that I'm rationalizing but I ignore that part 'cause damn if those tree girls can't kiss.

I mean, wow. For a first kiss, that was not a bad one to get.

My brain keeps circling that idea. Which is frustrating, because tree girls, as nice as they are, are just distracting me from my current issue...

Tree. Girl.

Tree girl.

Tree girl!

I snap upright and bite off a curse as I smack the back of my head into the hardwood I'm leaning against and scramble for the door. Dryads essentially are their trees. Both tree and girl at the same time. All the time. They can be as hard as the wood of their trees when they want to, or soft flesh...

I stop the thought there with another blush.

The point is that I'm not bound entirely by the physical world as science understands it. I'm in fantasy land, and I've put a lot of effort into making physics my bitch. Ripping the door open, there's a young man there that appears to be waiting for me. Probably just in case I need something or to keep me from wandering around in their super secret fortress.

He smiles at me, "Hello there. They didn't tell me that the visiting mage was such a vision of loveli..."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. I need you to go get your boss," I cut him off before he can get going. Now is not the time for flirting even if he had parts I'm interested in. I feel like I'm on the edge of something big. For me, if nobody else. However, given what this bunch are asking, I'm pretty sure that this, if it works, will be unique. That feeling combined with the exhaustion from the rest of the day is making me a little manic.

I slam the door shut, and dive for my bag. Pulling out the Script dictionary, I start paging through it rapidly, trying to find some concept that will work for what I'm after. What seems like moments later the door swings open again and the shaman and Cait enter the room.

I look up at them and apparently I'm looking a little crazy because they both stop dead upon seeing me. "Dryads!" I cry out and bounce to my feet.

"Dryads," Cait agrees soothingly like she's trying to calm down a crazy person.

"Yes, dryads! Don't talk to me like that. Dryads are one with their trees, how?" I demand startling both of them with the non sequitur from the looks of it.

The shaman is the one who answered me, "They share essence with their trees, making them both." The man says slowly, "You think you could do this? Make the wood both wood and something else?"

"Essence!" I dive back into my book looking for the symbols I want, "Maybe, but that's not really what we want. It's probably the easiest way, but if we stuff steel essence into the wood it still won't be wood any more. Or at least I wouldn't want to bet on it still being wood for your purposes. And from what you've told me about this thing, we shouldn't take chances."

"Then I must confess that I'm lost," the shaman admits, but I'm not really paying attention to him any more.

I'm pretty sure that from what I already know, and what I'm looking up now, I can do what I'm thinking of. "I need you to get something, something with the strength and hardness that you want your box, cage, vault, thingy to have." I pull out my notebook and a pencil and start scribbling down ideas for how to arrange the Script.

I can totally do this.

I don't notice the shaman leave. I notice him return with several more people in tow, carrying something heavy between them. I glance up as they come in and point at a spot near the box, but not too near. I'll need room to write around it after all, "Put it there!"

They drop the dull black metal ingot with a thud. It doesn't ring, or rattle. Just thud. There might have been a faint tremor when it hit the floor.

I dart to my feet, carrying my notebook as a reference in one hand and a fresh stick of bone chalk in the other, and I go to work. It's my largest Script to date. I surround the ingot in one circle, describing what qualities I want to copy from it. Another around the box, some of it traveling up onto the box, describing how what is transferred would be integrated. That turns out to be easier than I thought, but I can't find anything wrong with it so I move on. Lastly, a lot of connections between the two describing how what's copied will be delivered to where it'll be used.

Finally it's done, and I step back sweating and breathing hard, "There. That should do it." This will not be a short Script.

I've acquired an audience of several dozen, but I try not to pay attention to them. It takes me several minutes to catch my breath, but once I have I'm ready to begin. For the third time that day I approach the beginning of a Script story, apply blood from my poor sore thumb, and sing.

Light trickles from my blood to the absorption Script, and then burns through the symbols, following my song. It flows through the circle around the metal, then down the channels to the circle around the box. The light surrounding the square wooden cage crawls up it and sinks into the wood.

I stop singing, the Script done. My head is pounding, and I'm gasping for air. The room is silent as I turn back to the shaman and nod. He gestures to one of the other members of their wizard order, or whatever it is.

The young man steps forward, carefully stepping over the bone chalk that remains. Taking out a small knife he reaches forward to try and notch the wood.

I, along with everybody else, hold my breath.

Then the knife carves a small groove into the wood and my heart plummets. It didn't work.

The room erupts into pandemonium.

"I knew it would never work," a young mage says to the mage next to him.

"It's an outsider, what do you expect?"

"Never should have wasted our time."

"Waste of time."

"You told me that she could do this." That's the shaman.

"I thought she could." My ears start ringing as Cait replies, "She's managed everything else today. Maybe this was just too much for her."

The volume of the chatter seems to rise until it feels deafening, "We trusted." "Shouldn't have bothered." "Failure." 'Victim' My own mind supplies.

"Shut up!" somebody screams. I look around to find out who... why is everybody looking at me?

... Oh, because that was me.

I take a few deep breaths to center myself. "We are trying something entirely new here. Something that apparently has never been done before. You'd be lucky if something worked the first time you try it even if you know exactly what to do. We don't have that luxury here. Now shut up, and let me figure out what went wrong so I can try again."

Without waiting for a reply I turn and stalk forward to examine every bit of my Script. I'd seen the light travel through the entire Script, so it's not a grammatical or connection error. Really there are only two places it could have failed. The places where I'm making things up. The places where it wouldn't be obvious if the Script didn't work. Either copying the qualities we want from the metal, or giving them to the wood.

I start with the box. The light from the Script had sunk into the wood evenly from what I saw, and the Script had described the process well. I can't see anything I would change. I kept it simple so it's unlikely that the Script has done something other than what I had intended.

Which means that the failure is at the other end.

Hopefully.

The Script around the metal is by necessity more complex than that around the box. It describes precisely as I can what qualities I want to copy. The information on those qualities should have traveled with the light to the box.

Maybe that's the problem? The light can't hold the information to copy? No, I think the problem is that you can't just stick information into an object and expect the object to know what to do with it. I could probably write a Script to use the metal as a template and alter the wood to match... but that comes back to altering the wood in a way I'm not sure would leave it wood. Essence is the answer...

If I can't copy it, can I take it? Sacrifice the metal to give its properties to something else?

Sacrifice.

The word clicks in my head. I'm sacrificing blood and power from the world around me to achieve a temporary effect. A trap that will vanish once it's sprung, or a tree that's accelerated, but not really changed in a way it wouldn't have on it's own. Even my reinforcements and wards will only last until the Script overloads, then vanish as though they had never been. But if I want to achieve something more permanent, a larger sacrifice would be needed.

I don't have any idea if that's how it really works, but it makes sense to me at this moment. So I go with it.

I erase large portions of the Script surrounding the metal ingot, and start again. This time I'm not copying. Not looking, remembering, and moving on. This time I'm taking. Ripping the hardness, and strength from the metal and leaving the rest behind. Whatever happens to the metal, happens.

I check over my changes, making sure they don't conflict with any of the unaltered Script. Steadfastly ignoring the soft murmurs in the background, I bite my thumb to start the blood flowing again, apply it, and sing one more time.

The light flows again, everything looking exactly as it had before. Until it reaches the metal. Instead of flowing over it, the light rushes through the ingot. The metal cracks, saggs, and begins to ooze into a puddle. No longer possessing the tensile strength to hold itself together, or any hardness at all. The light rushes through the channels and into the circle around the box, and from that circle, into the wood once again. The wood groans audibly as though under some strain, but there's no visible change.

The room is silent as the same mage as the first time moves forward again. My head throbs from the panicked focus that had led to my new changes. I watch with baited breath as the knife reaches forward again, and scrapes along the wood without so much as scratching it. Even rapid subsequent tests with larger sharp objects fail to make an impression. When a strike with an axe brakes the axe against the wooden box, we all finally accept it has worked.

I let out my breath in a rush and stagger. I feel dizzy as the pressure of expectations, both mine and those around me, vanish with my success. I manage to wobble my way to scuff out my power draw Script, and the Script that ripped apart the metal. The rest of it isn't that special, straight forward really. But if I can use Script, then anybody can, and those two bits are my invention. I'm unwilling to let go of any advantage, especially as I'm sure there's something special in this one. Those two Scripts I'll be keeping to myself.

I shuffle my way over to my bag as the several hundred mages... When did they all get here? And how did I miss them arriving? The mages quietly, or loudly depending, debated and discussed what I had just done. Several of them are examining my Script, convincing me that I made the right choice destroying the pieces I had.

Having collected my things, I shuffle over to where Cait and the shaman stand watching the rest of the room, but not participating in the chaos themselves. They turn to look at me as I approach, "I think I'm ready to go home now." I tell them, swaying on my feet.

Cait smiles at me, it's a new smile, not smug, or amused, or even just pleased, "Good job, Kitten. You did real good." Oh, she's proud. Of me. I think I'm blushing again.

"Indeed," the shaman nods, "Ericka Rhostana. It is as you said Caitríona, a name to watch for."

 

[WHM Sukamia]

Oh, you're reposting it here now. Neat.

 

[Tersin]

Age Seventeen​

Running is probably my least favorite part of keeping myself in fighting trim. People wax poetic about the open road, just you and your thoughts. I just find it the worst mix of boring, tiring, and necessary. Really, it has only two redeeming qualities, it lets me fight harder longer, and it gives me the opportunity to meet with contacts that can't really approach me at home or at school.

Like the brain meltingly pretty, naked figure with green skin waving me down from the grove of trees up ahead. I turn off the path I'm running on and head in her direction, slowing from a run to jog, then to a walk.

"Morning, Jas," I greet the dryad that has become my principal connection to the bottom rung of power in the supernatural world.

Contrary to what I thought at the time, most of my jobs don't come from the mage society. Instead, most of my referrals can be traced back to the dryad grove, with Mrs. O'Mera a... not close, but decent second. I seem to have found my niche in helping out the lower end of the supernatural world. The small spirits, like dryads, brownies or other house and nature spirits. Creatures that either have limited power, or limited ways they can apply it. Thus, they are ignored by the larger players.

No devil, angel, fallen or otherwise, or god, cares about the little nature spirits, or housekeeper fae. Which also makes it hard to get things outside of their specialty done. Devils might help for a contract, if they're desperate. However, while few of the little spirits feel comfortable asking a devil for help, they don't have any such problem with me. From them I get jobs like the dryad grove. Or helping to hide a cave. Or in one instance, I spent a month purifying a swamp and making sure it couldn't be polluted again.

Similarly, Mrs. O'Mera sends me the mortals that run into things they don't know about or can't understand. These people have nothing to offer the supernatural world and so, are ignored by it as anything but prey. For them I do a lot of exorcisms, a stiff business on protective charms, chasing off gremlins, and on one notable occasion, removing a curse from an Egyptian sarcophagus for the museum it was housed in.

My rapidly growing relationship with the lesser supernaturals means I have somehow tripped my way into a surprisingly effective intelligence network. If the lesser spirits and fae are good at anything, it's hiding, which means that they tend to overhear things people say when they think they're alone. After all, who worries about talking in front of a tree? Or rock?

On the other hand, you never know when that was a dryad tree, or an oread rock. They're happy to pass on gossip.

"Good morning, Ericka!" Jasmine squeaks and gives me a hug in greeting. By now I'm used to most nature spirits' aversion to clothes. So as much as it might be enjoyable to squeeze the strangely soft tree, it doesn't stall my thinking anymore.

I get free from the hug and start stretching to avoid cooling down all the way, even as I give the dryad the majority of my attention. "What brings you out today? Are you girls having Sater problems again?" I growl. Despite all being in the same boat, not all of the small spirits are very nice to each other. I had set a trap ward at Jas' grove's request, and also at their request I'd made it non lethal, just painful. If the girls are still being bothered though, I won't be talked out of making an example again.

"Oh, no!" Jas hops backwards and shakes her head and waves her hands back and forth, "Nothing like that. We just got word from a city spirit that overheard something we thought you might be interested in. Apparently, a couple of exorcists were really hurt, but they were saying how that didn't matter anymore because they had a saint in the Vatican who could heal them!"

I stall.

A saint?

"Uh huh." Apparently, I said that out loud. "They called her the Holy Maiden!"

A Holy Maiden. In the Vatican. Who heals.

There are only so many people that can be.

Asia Argento showing up means I'm running out of time. Canon hasn't started yet, but I can see it from here, and I don't know how far away it is. I'm nowhere near ready.

I look up and give Jas, who was looking at me worriedly, a slightly forced smile, "I'm okay, Jas. Just surprised." I give her a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek. Dryads are very touch oriented, physical affection would convince Jas that I'm okay more than any words, "I very much wanted to know that, so I owe you guys one. That city spirit, too!" I shout over my shoulder as I turn and start running back home, "I'll see you later, Jas!" She waves after me happily, all right in her world. Less so in mine.

I have to get ready.

###​

"Ericka!" I freeze at my mothers shout, standing on one foot, a shoe half on, the other hanging from my fingers, "More college applications are here!" I groan in despair.

"Mom..." I start, only to be interrupted by my mother striding into the living room. She has a bundle of papers in one hand and both hands on her hips.

"Don't start with me, Ericka. You are going to college, young lady." This is an ongoing argument. My parents, quite understandably, want me to attend further schooling. I, on the other hand, have already been to college in my last life. I got a degree and everything, and have absolutely no desire to do it again.

Besides, I'm still leaving. Who knows if the next reality I land in will even have college? Even if it does, I doubt a degree from one of this reality's would be accepted. I already know how to think critically, thanks to my last time, though. Which is the only universally useful thing college offers. So I figure my time is better spent practicing combat and perfecting my Script.

Of course, I can't exactly just tell my mother that. So instead, I'm trying to push for a year off for traveling after high school. Once I'm out there I can just... not come back, keep wandering until I figure things out. College deferred indefinitely. Sure, I'll be a legal adult before then, but anybody who thinks that alone is enough to win an argument with your parents has either never had parents, or never argued with them.

Doesn't help me now though, "I'm not arguing that." And I'm not, that's a losing fight and I try to avoid those. I finish putting on my shoes as I reply, firing for effect, "I just want a chance to... not drive myself so hard." That's a low blow and I know it, but when arguing with your parents there are only so many winning tactics.

My mother grimaces, which means I've scored on that one, and sighs, "If you stop now, you'll lose a lot of the impact of having so many extra curriculars. I just think..."

"Mom," I cut in, earning me a disapproving look and a huff, "I'm going to be late for work." The only guaranteed way to extract yourself safely from a parental discussion/lecture. Being responsible about something else.

Mom huffs again, "Fine. But don't think that this conversation is over, young lady!" I wonder if I'll ever be old enough for my parents to stop calling me 'young lady'. Somehow I doubt it.

I escape while I have the chance and make a break for freedom. My old beat up junker starter car is waiting for me at the curb. An ancient Volvo that had been vomit yellow when I'd first gotten it is now an intense shimmering blue.

I hum happily every time I see it. It's proof of my increasing skill with Script, and every bit of skill I acquire brings me one step closer to having achieved goal one.

Now if only it drove anywhere near as good as it looks.

###​

"Good morning, Kitten, working here today?"

I smile at Cait as I push my way into the book store, "No. Just... here to pick up a few things, then I'm off again." Cait is quite probably one of the best things that has ever happened to me. After that first night she decided to take that kitten joke I'd made about her tail literally. She isn't really mothering me, but she is taking care of me. At least with regard to the supernatural.

She frowns, but doesn't stop me as I head for the back. Cait set me up with a work room in the back of her store where I can practice and experiment. It's the second door on the left, past the faerie trode and is fairly simple.

It's a large room that I've filled with three tables and a desk. My routine on arriving starts just inside the door, where a small table stands with a box on it. The box is where Cait dumps the write-ups for all the jobs she's found that I might want to do. So, mostly requests from small spirits, some from desperate mundanes, and a very few from larger players.

Next thing to check is the largest piece of furniture here, the table that takes up most of the center of the room. That's where I do my experiments, and I have a lot of them. Once I'd discovered sacrificial Script rituals, I spent a lot of time trying to discover how to turn them into something useful.

Mostly, I've discovered limitations.

I can't just steal something else's magic.

I'm not about to start experimenting on myself, which means that over the last two years I've done a lot of bad things to animals. My first experiment was simply trying to move power from one creature to another. So Cait got me a jackalope from someplace called the Forest of Familiars and I tried to move it's magic into a normal rabbit.

The rabbit exploded.

I tried a dozen different times in a dozen different ways to simply give a mundane creature a supernatural one's magic. It never works. A normal body can't handle having magic pumped through it any more than it can handle making out with an electrical substation, and trying ends with similar results in both cases.

I can't transfer skills.

I got three dozen rats. A third of them learned to navigate a maze, the rest didn't. Then I tried to move the accumulated knowledge from one of the rats that knew the maze to one of the rats that didn't, leaving the last dozen as the control group. There's no difference between the 'ritually enhanced' rats and control rats.

I ended up giving all the rats to Cait, and I have no idea what she'd done with them. Really, I have no desire to know what a cat fae does with two dozen rats.

What I have discovered however, after two years of work and hundreds of experiments, is that I can move traits.

Inborn abilities that perhaps require skill to use effectively, but none to use at all. For example, I made a hawk's feathers soft and soundless like an owl's. I changed the kind of silk a spider produced, making a common Orb Weaver produce Darwin's Bark silk. And I changed the color of a dozen things. The first success had used a butterfly's wing to change the color of a colored pencil. The second had used that butterfly's other wing to change the color of my car. The last was a volunteer from my 'mortal's in the know' client list who'd been tired of dying her hair. She's now a natural blond, and quite pleased with the effect.

The moving of traits? I can work with that.

The next stop in my office routine is a table up against the right side of the wall, and what Cait has really done for me. It's piled high with books on the biology and anatomy of supernatural species. As I figured out what I can do with my Scripts, Cait had started handing me books that helped me build a wish list. The list is long and I doubt that I'll get much that's on it, but it will give me a starting place when I finally get to that point. I'm also making a short list that I feel is more likely.

The desk is last, and where I do my actual work on my Script. A place for the Script dictionary and room for my notebooks. Generally, a comfortable place to figure out how to do what my clients want. I've enough of them now that I have to pick and choose who gets my time. That's the other great thing about working with the small spirits, they're the opposite of entitled. Instead of being pissed that I'm not fulfilling their requests, they seem to understand that I have both a life and a limited amount of time. So they're usually thrilled when I actually show up. In return, I try to prioritize the clients that actually need help.

I'm not here for any of that just now, though. With the revelation that Asia is active, I have a limited amount of time to be ready for canon, and I can suddenly feel the pressure of the on-coming deadline.

Well no, that's a lie. I've felt pressured from the moment I was born into this world. Now though... I have no idea how old Asia was when she started working for the church as the 'Holy Maiden'. Or how long after that she got excommunicated and started the wild ride that ended up with her as a devil in Japan. However it's the first sign of canon that I've come across. Which brings everything into stark relief.

The power creep is going to start, and if I hang around for too long after that, I'm screwed. That's the problem with being a magically talented mortal in this world. As the pressure is turned up on all the major factions, devils will start looking for better peerage members, and get less picky about how they get them.

I'm caught in a Catch 22, I have to get powerful as fast as I can because of the limited time before I catch the attention of somebody I can't deal with. The more powerful I get, though, the less time I have.

Which is why I'm about to do something stupid. I know how to integrate a new trait into a living thing and how to take it from a sacrifice. Cait's not sure I'm ready to use this knowledge on myself, though. Hell, I'm not sure I'm ready. The ticking clock, though, means I don't have time to be more sure.

Which is why I'm here grabbing bone chalk and a notebook before heading to my other job.

Cait's watching me with a concerned frown when I reach the front door, "Are you sure this is a good idea?" Her voice makes me pause at the door.

"No. But I also don't see that I have much choice."

She sighs. She doesn't know why I feel that I'm working on borrowed time, I can't exactly tell her that I read fanfiction about the future. She doesn't pry and doesn't try to stop me, though. She just nods, "What are you starting with then?"

I grin, she'll like this, "I'm going to give myself a cat's night vision."

"Well at least you have good taste."

###​

I got my other job when I realized that what I intend to do will end up with me killing a lot of animals, and I needed some way to handle that without looking like a serial killer. So I went to the largest vet in the city and volunteered for the most shit job there.

Oh, I cleaned cages and washed animals kept there. The thing that really sucks and is useful for me at the same time though, is I volunteered to help put animals down and deal with the bodies afterwards. Which, as terrible as it sounds, is perfect for me. I can easily slip a few extra dead animals into the incinerator we use to cremate the animals that either don't have owners or whose owners don't want to take the bodies home.

The part that's important now, however, is the other part of my job. I clean the procedure room before anything else happens, hold the animals down while the vet and the tech do their jobs, and clean up afterwards.

I hate this job, but I also know that the way I'm going, I'd best get used to this sort of thing. My hating the job also actually helps me get along with my coworkers. Apparently at first, with my volunteering for this, they were worried that I'd be getting off on it or something. My clear disgust with myself after the first few times though seemed to settle them.

I park my Morpho Blue car in the employee lot and let myself into the back. The first part of my day is very boring, as I wash dogs, cats, and kennels. Also the most ornery hamster to ever walk the earth.

Seriously, that thing does more damage to my hands than any three cats.

Through all of this, I try to act as normal as possible and not like I had a stick of chalk burning a hole in my pocket. I don't think I succeeded, but from what I overhear during lunch between two of the receptionists, they think that I've 'finally' asked Sarah out. Or she's asked me out.

Sarah and I have been starring in their imaginary soap opera since she picked me up from work a year ago. For some reason they don't believe me when I say I'm not interested in her. They do believe me when I say she's straight, though. Painfully enough, they also don't argue when I point out that she's out of my league. Then they're convinced that I'm pining... it's a thing. One I haven't managed completely to squash yet.

They have given me an excuse though, and I'm in no way above taking it. Even if I do glare at their giggling as I leave the lunch room.

Finally though, it's time for me to clean up the procedure room. I scrub down the table and make sure that there's a box of gloves available. Only then do I get to my real work. With great care I draw a script circle on the underside of the stainless steel table right where I'll be holding the cat in about an hour. Getting the other side of the table to count as 'in the circle' had been a nightmare. Especially with how little space I have to work with. Also the part of the Script I haven't had a chance to check yet. I'm not too worried though, if that part of the Script fails the whole thing should just not work. I can't imagine how not having anything to take traits from would have unintended consequences. As long as a fly doesn't land in the circle at just the wrong time or something.

...Note to self, make sure no flies land in unfortunate places during this.

The connecting channels run down the inside of the table's legs where they won't be easily spotted. Last is the delivery and integration Script that goes right where I'll be standing. It's pure dumb luck that the room is floored in off-white tile, so the chalk is almost invisible.

I double and triple check everything. I probably would have quadruple or quintuple checked things, but before I can, I run out of time.

The tech comes in first, a taciturn man who's version of a friendly greeting is a grunt, a nod, and no swearing. I can't really blame him. Given I get a grunt and a glare today it must mean that the meeting with his divorce lawyer went well. Whatever 'well' looks like when it involves a divorce lawyer.

The doctor sticks her head in a moment later. Doctor Fawn Perrin is in her early thirties, blond haired, green eyed, and I would say depressingly straight. I'm not interested in more than eye candy though, so it doesn't matter much. She's the new vet, hired at around the same time I was, so because she gets all the shit vet jobs and I get all the shit grunt jobs we end up spending a surprising amount of time together.

She glances around the room, gives me a nod and a smile before leaving to get our patient and my sacrifice. She comes back moments later with Simon. Simon is a twenty year old tomcat who is mostly blind, four-fifths deaf, and has arthritis in every joint bad enough that he can't move. Even sitting still, he's in constant pain.

I take the loudly purring old man from the Doc and lay him down on the table right over the Script circle. I stand in mine and hold him down, resting a hand on his shoulders and hips. Holding him isn't really necessary, Simon can barely move, but it's the right way to do things and it lets me scrunch my fingers in his fur to give him something like petting.

Seeing the Doc and the tech ready, I brace myself as they go to work. One of the new innovations I've made during my experiments is a way to make a Script activate from the death of the sacrifice as opposed to my blood. This has several beneficial effects. In situations like this it's subtler, I don't have to do anything unusual to make things happen. Another is that by some strange cosmic accident, the life of a sacrifice always provides just enough power to move one trait. The more powerful the trait, the more power it needs to be moved. The more powerful the creature that holds the trait in the first place, the more power is released upon its death. So no need to draw ambient energy to run the Script, which also contributes to that subtlety thing. Lastly, being self contained, the entire Script runs much quicker. Which I can't imagine won't come in handy at some point.

Simon lays still under my hands, purring away, eyes closed, as the tech and Doc Perrin do their thing, and I try not to hyperventilate. I'm about to experience the culmination of ten years of my life, I think I can be forgiven for being a little distracted. The Doc inserts the needle and I close my eyes, silently thanking Simon for helping me with his last act.

The old cat's purr slowly quiets, his heart under my hand slowing until finally it stops. I open my eyes again and look down as Simon's last breath wheezes out of him. Out of the corner of my eye I see the Script circle on the ground shimmer with the subtle light that the new way of powering the Script produced.

My vision goes blurry as I feel something begin to change.

Then my world is made of agony.

...My knees hit the floor.

...I clutch my face, screaming.

...Red hot coals are driven into my eye sockets.

Nothing has ever hurt this much.

Some part of my mind, oddly clear even as I writhe on the ground, wonders if this is Simon's revenge for taking his night vision.

After what feels like forever, my screams have devolved into sobbing. I feel the prick of a needle on my shoulder, and blessed cool numbness spreads from that spot.

In that moment before the darkness takes me, I think that if it had been the same needle that the Doc had just used on Simon...

I don't think I would have minded.

###​

I... am on some great drugs.

Like really really good.

The agony of my eye sockets has faded to a persistent ache, but with the power of my IV drip I! Do! Not! Care!

It's awesome.

I just hope I'm in the hospital. I'm pretty sure, what with the IV and all... But I can't see, which makes it hard to be sure.

The bandages over my eyes let me pretend that I'm just blindfolded. I know what that's like. Once when I was younger, nine I think, I tried to get around blindfolded so that I could learn to function and fight without sight.

It didn't work well.

I walked into everything and only kept it on for an hour or so before mom made me take it off. Dad had thought it was hilarious. My Muay Thai instructor didn't even let me get it on before telling me no, and Sarah smacked me on the shoulder and told me to stop being silly.

I don't think it's that ridiculous. I'm in Fantasy Land! With pretty nature spirits! That I never did get to see again by myself and in private.

And dragons!

Gods!

I see no reason why I can't be awesome too.

I cross my arms and pout to display my displeasure to the world.

The world doesn't care though, it never does, and there's nobody else in the room...

I think...

Hard to tell while blind.

But I can hear the doctor outside the door to my room, and he (why can't I get a pretty girl doctor? I won't be able to see her, but still!) seems to be talking about me so I try to listen in. It's rude to eavesdrop, but it's rude to talk about people behind their backs too, so I figure it evens out.

"...Never seen anything like it," the voice that I think is my doctor says, "her eyes look like they... ripped themselves apart. The iris, lens, and retina have been literally shredded."

"What could have done this?" That sounds like mom's voice. Mom is here!

Maybe I can get a hug.

Mom hugs make many things better and I could use one about now.

"I honestly have no idea," the doctor says, "The closest thing I can think of is some sort of... pressure differential. Like if the pressure on the interior of the eye spiked suddenly causing it to burst. However according to what the paramedics got from witnesses at the scene, nothing unusual happened. No lead in pain, no stress that might have caused a blood pressure spike. Just fine, then on the floor."

"However it happened, how long until she recovers." That's dad!

Hi dad!

"Sir, you need to understand, the front and back of her eyes have been reduced to shreds. Even if we could piece everything back together, and somehow managed to stitch or glue it in place long enough to heal, the scarring would still render her blind. The only thing we can do now is remove the rest of the eyeball to prevent infection." Oooh, I don't like the sound of that. I'm pretty sure regenerating my eyes wholesale would be much harder than just fixing the damage.

Maybe Cait will visit me before that and she can help me sneak out!

I bet she'd do that.

She likes being sneaky.

Sarah wouldn't.

She'd be too worried about me and want me to stay with the doctors.

Sarah's a good friend.

There's more conversation, but focusing is hard.

"Ericka? Honey? Can you hear me?" That's mom!

"Hi mom!" I try to wave, but the IV is in that arm, so I wave with my other arm.

"How do you feel?" Mom asks.

I think for a moment, then giggle, "High."

Somebody in the room sighs and I feel a weight settle on my bed and a pair of hands take one of mine, "Honey, we need to tell you a few things."

"Okay!" I chirp.

I haven't chirped since I was in single digits!

Really good drugs.

My parents then start to explain what had happened to me. That my eyes had for some reason shredded and burst. That there is no real way to fix them. That I would be blind for the rest of my life. Then there's silence, the feel of my mother clutching my hand, as they wait for my response.

I blew a raspberry.

Possibly not my best move, but it's too late now, "I'll be fine. I just need some magic healing." I try to wave a hand dismissively, discover mom is holding onto it, and so waved the other one dismissively, "Just take me home with what's left of my eyes and I'll take care of the rest."

There's another moment of silence which I fill with humming.

Then my father sighs and my mother starts sobbing.

Was it something I said?

###​

I don't end up staying in the hospital for very long, only a day. My loud protestation that the remains of my eyes should stay exactly where they are manages to convince my parents that they should at least wait until I know what's happening to decide anything. Which from their perspective, I clearly don't just then. Since other than my eyes I'm uninjured, and there's nothing else the doctors can do for me, they send me home.

I'm wheeled out to the car, and helped into the back seat by the nurse. The drive home is... fascinating. The doctors had given me pain pills, but I grow more reluctant to take them as my mind clears. Which it does slowly on the way. Gritting my teeth against the gradually increasing pain, my stomach becomes increasingly unsettled by the combination of fading drugs and driving while blind.

I start seriously thinking about how to fix this. I don't think that Cait can help me. She doesn't have any healing powers herself. She can't take me anywhere because there's no way I'm trying to walk faerie paths without being able to see them, at least as much as I normally could. It would be way too easy to put a foot wrong and end up cursed to be a donkey or something.

I don't have a surfeit of options though.

My parents help me out of the car when we arrive at home and lead me upstairs to my room. Mom helps me into bed and I settle in to think about what I can do. As much as I don't want to, I'm probably going to have to use that devil flier I've been sitting on for the last nine years. I really hope that I get the nice Yuki Onna, my research with Cait finally clued me in to what she is, and not the dick noble.

I just need somebody to go with me since I'm blind, but who would be willing to...

My thoughts are interrupted as my door slams open and I levitate at least a foot off my bed.

"I've had enough!" Sarah shrieks, and kicks the door shut. "You will tell me what the fuck is going on and you will tell me right the fuck now!"

"I don't..." I try.

"No! Shut up! At first I just thought it was the way you are. You work yourself to the bone at everything you do. But then that thing at your school happened and you got worse. You practice all the time, you drive yourself even while injured. You're jittery and paranoid around new people or large crowds." I'm not, I'm just healthily cautious. You never know who's a supernatural after all, "You draw your little weird symbols and swear at yourself when you get one 'wrong'. You're terrified of something and you will tell me what right now so I can help, or so help me I will beat it out of you, blind or not!" She's breathing hard, I can hear the controlled panting she gets when we spar, so I kinda think she would.

Which I really don't want. My eyes hurt, I'm still at least mildly high, and Sarah hits hard.

"You wouldn't believe me." It's all I can think of to say.

"Try me," she growls. I feel a weight climb onto the bed. It settles on both sides of my hips, and I feel a warm weight press down on me.

Was...?

"Are you sitting on me?" I don't quite know what to make of that. Except that picturing it is not what I should be doing right now.

"Just making sure you don't get away," Sarah says sweetly, "Now talk."

Well... this will be awkward.

###​

I explain everything. Remembering my past life. Being aware on the day of my birth. Realizing that there's magic out there, beings that can scour continents clean. My determination to be more than fodder, and realizing I had literally nothing going for me.

I tell her about finding 'The World Script' in Cait's book shop. My struggles to make the Script do anything.

I tell her about the stray devil at my school, and discovering how to make the script work.

I tell her about gaining skill with the incredibly complicated and fiddly Script. About breaking into the supernatural world once I had something valuable to offer. And discovering at last how to potentially boost myself enough to actually compete.

I tell her about my experiments, and about my concern that there's something coming, that I'm now too involved in the supernatural world to avoid completely. How this belief drove me to try and put my solution to my weakness into practice... perhaps sooner than I should have.

I finish talking and wait for Sarah to say something. Anything.

After far too long quiet, she finally speaks, leaning forward to put a gentle hand on my cheek, "Ericka," That doesn't sound good. That's the tone of voice she uses on children that she babysits who're throwing a tantrum when she's trying to placate them.

I sigh, grimacing slightly. Both because of her tone, and because by now the painkillers are completely out of my system and my eyes have graduated from ache to stabbing burn, "I told you, you wouldn't believe me."

"Ericka, I love you, but you have to admit it's pretty unbelievable." Her weight settles back on my hips.

"Yup. It is. Which is why I need you to do two things which will prove what I'm saying." My smirk dies before it can really appear as I grit my teeth, and I resist the urge to press on my empty eye sockets.

She doesn't say anything, but that doesn't stop me from hearing Sarah's incredulity.

"Yes, proof. Get me my pain killers, a glass of water and..." I hesitate blushing.

"And?" Sarah demands flatly.

I sigh, which turns into a groan, "In the top left drawer of my desk is a sheet of paper with a weird design in the middle and... and naked girls in the corners."

"Naked girls, Ericka?" And now she's amused. Bitch.

"Get me my damn drugs, woman. Then we can worry about anything else," I get out through clenched teeth.

"I swear, if this is just some strip club you don't want to admit to having been to." She starts to move off of me, and then faster when I start to swear at her.

As if I have time for a strip club.

Sarah grumbles all the way off the bed, and probably all the way to the pills, water, and flier, but I'm in too much pain to really pay attention.

She's back quickly enough though, and helps me take the meds. We have to wait a bit for the pills to kick in, during which Sarah holds my hand and lets me squeeze it as much as I need to. She doesn't even make any jokes about pregnancy, which I'm grateful for. Trying to hit her while blind would have been a pain.

Pun not intended.

Eventually though, my eyes calm down from red hot stabbing to a throbbing ache, and Sarah once again decides that she's been patient enough, "So why do I have a cultish stripper flier, and what does it have to do with magic?"

I try to roll my eyes and regret it instantly. I hiss clutching my face for a moment as I wait for the pain to stop screaming in my skull, which it fortunately does quickly, "All right, look around. Is my stuff here? Or was it left at the vet?"

"You mean the place you got a job at for socially acceptable animal sacrifices?" Sarah asks dryly. "Yeah, I picked up your backpack before I came over."

"Good, in one of the side pockets there should be a small folding knife. Get that." Not being able to see is really frustrating.

I can hear Sarah moving around and opening zippers before returning, "Got it."

"All right, now we just need to put some blood somewhere on the circle." I hold out a hand so that she won't have to cut herself. I'm used to it after all.

"What."

I grit my teeth, "Sarah. I am trying to show you what I'm talking about, but I'm in pain, and what I'm trying to show you will fix my eyes. So, stop. Stalling. Either cut me, cut yourself, or give me the damn knife and let me do it."

After a moment or two of silence there's a soft hiss, "There," Sarah's voice is somewhat muffled and sounds irate, "I've cut myself and put my blood on your stupid flier... What the hell?" I probably shouldn't be taking malicious satisfaction from this, but validation is sweet.

I just wish I could see her face, "Well, don't keep me in suspense, what's going on."

"Your summoning was successful, child," a friendly voice that's palpably cold answers, instead of Sarah. The only reason I don't jump is that I've been half expecting it.

"Oh good, it's you," I sigh in relief, "I was afraid I'd get your king."

"I... What?" The verbal trip makes me smile, "You... you remember...?"

Her surprise makes me smile wider, "Yeah. Jackass' fucking with my memory didn't stick."

Another pause in the conversation. Those are really annoying when I can't see the expressions that go with them. My devilish guest snorts softly, which I guess means she can't have been too upset, "I guess my prediction of you being unable to avoid trouble was correct."

"In my defense, we don't know if that's true. I did this to myself, so it was trouble I went looking for. Whether or not I can avoid trouble has yet to be tested." I'm bantering with a devil, it's bizarre. I blame the drugs. I take a moment to refocus, "So if I understand how this works correctly, I ask you for something, you do it, and in payment you get a little bit of my soul or life force or something. Theoretically, a small enough piece that I won't notice it missing?"

"Essentially," the devil agrees, "though if you want help healing your eyes, I'm afraid that there is only one way I might help."

I'm pretty sure I know what that way is, and I'm about to tell her 'no', when Sarah speaks first, "What way is that?" Her voice sounds more than a little faint.

"She could consent to join my peerage, become a devil herself. The process heals all wounds," the Yuki Onna devil explains.

"First of all, congratulations on the promotion," I cut in. "Second, not only no, but hell no. Keep your damn chess pieces to yourself."

"Ericka!" Sarah almost shrieks, only lowering her voice to a pissed off whisper at the last moment. My parents are still down stairs after all. Not that it seemed to bother her earlier, "If this can heal you...!"

"I'm not giving up my free will for anything," I tell her, and toss a "No offense" at the devil in the room. "Besides, I didn't get you to summon her to heal my eyes."

"What?" I think Sarah is nearing her limit on weird for the day. Her voice is the most bewildered I've ever heard her.

The devil speaks almost on top of her, "I must confess I am confused. If you did not summon me for your eyes, why did you?"

"I need you to give us a ride."

"Us?" Sarah whispers.

"You want me to play taxi?" The devil sounds incredulous.

"How else am I supposed to get to the Vatican and back?"

###​

******
The Yuki Onna devil queen, whose name turns out to be Yasu, drops us off and agrees to pick us up a distance away from Vatican City in Rome. Apparently about as close as a devil can get to the center of church power safely. From that point forward, it's just me and Sarah.

Sarah agreed to come along just as soon as her mind rebooted enough for her to realize that the alternative is me wandering around a foreign city on my own, while blind. Which leaves us now on our own, walking quietly down a sidewalk, my hand tucked into Sarah's elbow so she can lead me around.

Sarah is thinking.

I dropped a lot on her in a very short period of time and now she's trying to process it. She did the same thing the first time we were taught where babies come from in health class. Normally while she did this sort of thing, I'd people watch or read something while waiting for her to boot up again. Now though, all I can do is wait.

I'm really bad at waiting.

I'm about to break down and start asking questions about what's around us when Sarah speaks up. She speaks softly, and sounds a little sad, "You're planning on leaving, aren't you?"

I... what? How? I have quite deliberately not told her about my goals. Pretty much for just this reason, it didn't seem like a conversation to have in the middle of everything else going on at the moment.

"What..."

"I know you better than you know yourself, remember?" She laughs slightly, the normally bright sound is more than a little wet, "You don't pick fights you don't think you can win. And when you can't avoid them you get away as soon as possible. You said yourself that you think that there's something coming that's out of your weight class. You also said that you've delved too deeply into this magic stuff to just ride it out. So, you're planning to leave just as soon as you can."

I'm kind of speechless. As it turns out she really does know me, and is really good at deductive reasoning. At least when it comes to me. Sarah isn't the sort to cry often. And that I can hear tears in her voice and it's because of me, makes me feel kind of horrid. I welcome the burning feeling my own tears produce falling into my damaged eyes, as a sort of penance for doing this to the best, and possibly most important, person in my life.

"That's why you never asked anybody out, even when I knew you were attracted to them and I told you they were attracted to you. It's why you were always against making new friends. You knew you were going to leave, and didn't want to abandon anybody."

Both of us are holding our composure together by a thread. "Find us someplace private to talk. We shouldn't be having this conversation on the street." My own voice is thick in a way I've never heard it before. Being older than my body resulted in my having not cried much as a child. The things that normally drove kids to tears weren't that big of a deal to my larger experience. I'm pretty sure this is a first.

Quickly, Sarah leads me in a sharp turn and I can hear the environmental sounds around us change in a way that leads me to believe that we're heading down an alleyway. We walk in tense silence for what feels like far too long. When the sound and the air movement opens up again, Sarah pulls me into a fierce hug.

"When were you going to tell me?" she demands quietly into the top of my head, the two of us holding each other close. "Were you just going to vanish one day? Leave me wondering what had happened to you?"

"No!" The very idea of doing that to my one constant companion since the age of five makes me feel sick, "I would never...! I don't know how I would have told you. It's something I've thought about a lot and I've never found a good way... I would have told you! I would have!" My voice is catching and I'm crying openly now. Sobs rack my body and the only thing I can do is clutch Sarah harder.

Sarah slowly eases us both to the ground, settling me into her lap and whispering soothing words into my hair. It's all too much for me in that moment. The constant pressure to improve my skills, to discover a way to empower myself. Constantly looking over my shoulder for when some devil that won't take no for an answer decides that my skill with World Script is too valuable to not have. The isolation that I've voluntarily condemned myself to. My parents, Sarah, and recently Cait as the only bright spots in the void of my social life. Getting so close to finally fixing my weakness, being able to maybe relax a little. Only to have my efforts destroy my eyes in a way that I still can't explain. Finally being forced to confront the reality of what running from this reality would mean. It's all too much, and all I can do in response is sob like the child I've never truly been in this life.

Somehow, Sarah knowing that I would be abandoning her, and her not only not blaming me, but trying to make me feel better, makes me feel so much worse.

###​

Eventually, we cried ourselves out.

Sarah helps me to my feet and tucks my hand back into her elbow, "A perfect gentleman." I try to kiss her on the cheek and get her ear instead, which reduces us both to giggling insensibility.

We spend the rest of the trip to the Vatican entrance reminiscing about various silly things we'd done with each other growing up. I also point out the various events where what was going on was actually magic. This results in an epic 'I told you so' when I admit that my sketching is really practice for drawing Script symbols.

Also a small beating about the shoulders.

Cruel woman, taking advantage of my inability to escape.

Getting into the Vatican and finding Asia is both easier and harder than I thought it would be. I didn't really think that we could just walk in and wander around until we found her but... I guess I really haven't thought past getting here.

My eyes exploded yesterday, I'm allowed to make mistakes.

They ask us why we've come and I don't think they expected the answer to be, "My eyes exploded, we don't know why." Which fortunately is the truth. I have no idea why my Script had done this, and I hurt too much to really give it any thought now.

They have a doctor examine me to verify the diagnosis. I'm pretty sure that there are a few tests to determine if we're devils or magicians or anything else that might be trying to sneak our way in as well. Honestly, it takes long enough that my pain meds start to wear off again and I quickly lose track of what's going on around me.

Thank god for Sarah. I can vaguely hear her talking to people, and I'm sure that I wouldn't have been able to talk to anybody in a coherent fashion, never mind convince them to help. I'd be pretty much screwed without her.

I'm sitting on a chair, face down on a table, regretting crying with every fiber of my being. It may have been cathartic and good for my mental health, but that much salt water in open wounds is just... it made everything worse.

"Ericka?" A hand on my shoulder and Sarah's soft voice help me push through the pain giving me something immediate to focus on, "The Holy Maiden is here. Can you sit up?"

Holy Maiden? I thought we were here to see Asia... oh... yeah, that's what they call her. I lever myself upright in my chair, Sarah's hands helping to stabilize me, and turn my head, as though looking around, out of sheer habit.

I hear a gasp, then something in Italian. "What happened?" It's a sweet voice, soft and young, speaking heavily accented English.

"'Dunno," I sort of slur through clenched teeth, "was at work, everything was fine, then wasn't."

"I see." Small soft hands cup my cheeks and for the first time since yesterday I see something.

First it's just a green light, then slowly other colors appear. The splotches of color resolve into a small face with bright green eyes, blonde hair, and a gentle smile. The pain vanishing is enough to make me dizzy. The world spins and because of that I almost miss the shocked look on the young girl's face.

Everything is so much brighter than it had been.

I blink at her as the world steadies, "What? Did something go wrong?" I'm seized with worry that even the famed Twilight Healing hasn't been able to fix everything, or that my Script has done something irreversible.

"Oh! No, it's just... um... well..." My god, she's adorable.

But clearly there's something wrong that she's having trouble with. I twist in my chair to look behind me, where Sarah still has a hand on my shoulder. I meet her eyes and they widen in shock. "Ummmm..."

"Somebody tell me what's wrong?" I very carefully do not shout. I assume that there are guards outside waiting to do something bad to us if we act at all suspiciously around their living saint.

All Sarah manages is to point off to one side. Looking around I find we're in a very well appointed room, luxurious in the way only really old money can achieve. Thick carpet, wood paneled walls, the chair I'm sitting in is rich leather, and in the direction Sarah points, on one wall, is a mirror. I stand, wobbling as the last bit of dizziness fades, and make my way over to the mirror.

I look myself over, and my own eyes go wide. Mostly I'm unchanged. The same pale skin that doesn't want to tan, the same plain features, the same boring straight brown hair. Where my eyes had been hazel though, now they're an impossibly bright leaf green, with slit pupils. I literally have cat's eyes.

I can't help but feel this is a hint as to what had gone wrong.

"Well," I turn back to the room, "it could be worse."

"I'm so sorry I don't know what went wrong I didn't mean to I'll fix it I mean I don't know if I can fix it but I'll try I promise..." Asia devolves into panicked babble. She really is too cute for words.

I'm across the room and in front of her on my knees in two strides. She's actually taller than me like this, curse you mom for the short genes, but we're much closer to looking each other in the eye. "Relax, you didn't do anything wrong." I reach out and tilt her face up to look at me, "I can see again. Even if my eyes are different, I'm not in pain, and I can see again though doctors told me that I never would. I actually think they're kind of pretty." I wink at her and get a giggle. Mission accomplished. "Thank you." I hug her and she lets out the most adorable little squeak when I do. After a moment tiny arms wrap around me and she hugs me back.

After a moment we separate, and when I can see her face again she is smiling and blushing just a little. Too. Cute. For. Words, "You're welcome," she chirped at me.

I can't help but smile back, "Here," I reach into my pocket and pull out a pad of paper I always keep on hand and write on it quickly and clearly, "It's my phone number, complete with country and area code, and my email address. If you ever need anything, even just to talk, don't hesitate to get in touch with me. Okay?" It's a long shot but...

"I will!" I blink at the unexpected and enthusiastic response. Asia's smile gets even bigger as she clutches the slip of paper to her chest. She has stars in her eyes as she looks at me, nodding. Dear god, it's like she's never had a friend before. I'm a bitch and I still have to fend them off on occasion. Okay, more often it's desperate guys hitting on me. And she's eight or nine. All right, maybe it's not that unreasonable for her to be socially isolated enough to consider a stranger as a long distance friend.

I gave her my number in the hopes that when she gets excommunicated, she'll call me for help and not get taken in by the fallen angels. If I remember anything about canon, it's that Asia, out of everyone, got a raw deal. Hopefully, I can help her get a better future than being used by Fallen and ending up a devil's harem girl.

I stand and look at Sarah, who has that little grin she gets when I do something that proves I'm not as mean as I try to act to our peer group, and just shake my head, "Where are the bandages?" I ask, looking around. Sarah holds them up and I quickly wrap my eyes in a single layer that I can still kind of see through.

"Um... why are you blindfolding yourself?" Asia asks in a quiet voice. She's looking down and fiddling with the piece of paper I'd given her, "I thought you liked them?"

"Oh, sweety," I'm going to end up with diabetes if I keep hanging around with this girl, "I like them just fine, but that doesn't mean I want to explain them to anybody else. You've probably noticed by now, but a lot of people aren't very nice to people who are different."

Asia nods solemnly. Damn, that's probably another reason she's so isolated. The way the church treats her would make her different in the extreme. I can't imagine kids reacting well to that. Not everybody is lucky enough to find a Sarah, after all.

My eyes hidden again, we exit the room... Come to think of it, what is that room for? I never realized how disorienting going to a strange place could be when you can't see it and are too out of it to listen to explanations. We leave, escorted by the frankly ridiculous looking Papal Guard. I manage to wave to Asia before she's escorted out of sight by another group of the Guard, and get an enthusiastic wave back.

Soon enough we're outside the Vatican and back in Rome. I glance at Sarah, who's smirking at me, "What?" I demand.

"You were pretty cute with that girl back there. Though isn't she a bit young for you to be giving her your number?" Sarah teases.

"Oh, shut up."

###​

"They do look good on you," Yasu tells me as she delivers us back to my room via her magic circle. I'll admit to having delayed us leaving by taking the opportunity to examine a teleportation spell ready made in Script. It's interesting. but I'm not sure I can make it work in the same way. It seems to depend on the way devils interact with magic to work. Still gives me some ideas about how I might achieve something similar.

"I just wish I knew why they happened. I'm not really upset, though I will need to invest in a lifetime supply of sunglasses. I just wish I knew what went wrong." I move over and sit in my desk chair, Sarah flops on my bed, and Yasu stands primly where she had arrived, "I mean some of it is obvious. Clearly I didn't do a good enough job of separating the physical components of the essence I tried to take from the essence itself. But why that resulted in..." I rotated a hand trying to think of the words I want.

"Your eyes spontaneously self-destructing?" Sarah offers.

I snap and point, "Yes. That. Why that resulted in my eyes spontaneously self-destructing, that I don't know."

"Well," I glance over at where the devil queen still stands, a little startled by her speaking. I hadn't quite forgotten she was there but I hadn't really thought about it either. I'm not sure I want my methods getting out, but it's not like there's much I can do about it now. Besides, it's not like I'm explaining how I did it, "if you wouldn't mind a suggestion from an outside source?" I shake my head. "It seems fairly clear to me, the human body is not very mutable. It's possible to change things if you are patient and start early enough. Give the body time to grow into its new shape. At your age though, and all at once?" She shakes her head.

What she says makes a certain amount of sense. My eyes tried to go from matte retinas, round pupils, and hazel irises, to reflective retinas, slit pupils, and bright green irises. In doing so, the tissues with no mechanism for change pulled themselves apart.

How do I fix that, though?

I glance at the Yuki Onna. Devils turned humans into more of themselves all the time. Devils have a radically different physiology than humans do too, but I've never heard of a reincarnated devil exploding. So clearly there is some way to do it. I doubt that she'd just hand over an Evil Piece for me to study for the asking, though.

I'm trying to figure out how to obliquely ask about if they lost any pieces and where they might go, when we're interrupted. The sound of the front door opening and slamming shut accompanies the sounds of my parents arrival and the sound of them arguing.

Loudly.

I glance at Yasu, "Thank you for the help, but you should probably make yourself scarce. This conversation is going to be hard enough as it is."

The queen nods and hands both Sarah and me another flier. "As insurance," she says and winks at me, before vanishing along with her spell circle.

Sarah and I settle into silence as we listen to my parents yell at each other downstairs. It's something both of us are unfortunately used to. It's only when they start accusing each other of being responsible for my disappearance, that I realize this might be somewhat more serious than normal.

"Sarah, how long were we gone?" I ask in a choked whisper.

Sarah's eyes go wide, which is really enough of an answer. I spring to my feet and dash down the stairs, Sarah follows at a more sedate pace. I burst into the living room to see my mother glaring at my father, face red. Meanwhile my father has his arms crossed and is looking up at the ceiling and gritting his teeth.

"Mom! Dad!" I yell quickly to take advantage of the moment of silence before they start in on each other again.

Both of their heads snap in my direction, and mom comes running up to me and pulls me into a hug, "Oh Ericka, baby! Where were you? You just disappeared and..." She trails off looking up at me and noticing my new eyes, "Your eyes! What happened, they're...?"

"Yeah... Sorry I disappeared on you, but Sarah was taking me to get them fixed. I uh... I have a lot of explaining to do."

We settle into the living room with my parents on the couch and myself in an armchair. Once we're all comfortable, I start once again, explaining to them everything that I had explained to Sarah earlier. My past life, magic, my attempts to become more than I am.

Mom's face is going through a gamut of emotions. I think she's going over every time I've used magic as an excuse and realizing that I've been telling her the truth. Dad might as well have been carved of stone. Compared to mom's look of horror as I got to the 'school shooting' and the risks I've taken, dad's face only twitched. I told them about what my job at the bookstore really involved, and how I spend most of my time helping the second class citizens of the supernatural world. I end with what had happened to my eyes, and how I called in a favor to get us to Rome where there's a miracle healer who had fixed my eyes.

"Oh, you poor thing." My mother has her hands clasped in front of her mouth, tears in her eyes, "You didn't have any help at all? You must have been so scared..."

"Get out." My world stalls.

"What?"

"I said get out!" Dad thunders surging to his feet.

"I don't..." This can't be happening.

"You are not my daughter," dad snarls, closing in on me.

"Dad..." Mom is saying something behind him. She may have been shouting, but all I can hear is my dad's voice condemning me, and a ringing in my ears.

"You are some... thing that took my daughter's body, what did you do with her? Where is my daughter?!" I've never seen him so angry before...

"Daddy..."

I should have seen it coming. It's slow, sloppy, and telegraphed as hell. My coach would've been so disappointed in me for letting it land, but right up until his palm hits my cheek I can't believe that my daddy would actually slap me.

My head rocks to the side just enough to dissipate some of the force, but otherwise I don't respond. Just like taking a hit in boxing, I try not to let the fact it landed show.

"You don't get to call me that!" He reaches back to slap me again, and as he does I realize numbly that this one is probably going to land too.

Then Sarah is there catching dad's hand. She tosses him back away from me with a technique from Jiu Jitsu that I remember helping her learn. Mom is red faced with tear tracks down her cheeks, I think she's probably screaming at dad from the way she looks. Sara puts an arm around my shoulders and leads me out the door. She puts me in the passenger seat of my car, she had gotten my keys from somewhere, and moments later she's driving us away.

###​

I haven't been home in weeks, and in some ways my life has gotten easier. No more arguments about college. The only reason I still go to high school is because Sarah is there. We somehow manage to get even closer after my confession about what's really going on, and we spend most of our free time together, doing homework and then just chatting while I work on Script. She, unlike me, is getting ready to go to college, and I help how I can by telling her what I remember about my first time through college in my last life.

Mom and dad separated pretty much the moment Sarah and I were out the door. According to mom, they had been staying together for the sole purpose of providing me a more stable home life. Once dad had thrown me out mom saw no reason to stick around. So she'd left to move back in with her parents, leaving my father alone in the house. I would have found it odd that mom didn't demand that I follow her back to my grandparents' place, but the first time I spoke to her after the... incident, was a day later, and mom was talking to Cait when I wandered into the store.

I never did get a good explanation of what the two were talking about, but I'm pretty sure Cait said something convincing. Mom never mentioned me moving in with her. We visit a lot. Many lunches are had as we talk about how the divorce is proceeding, what I'm doing with my time, and if I'm taking care of myself. We talk about everything, except me moving back in with her.

In the end, I don't feel like I should ask. Cait's people skills don't actually involve fae magic of any sort. She's actually just really good with people. So my bet is that she somehow... talked mom around? There's a first time for everything, and I really need the space. Mom, as much as she tries, can't really go more than ten minutes without saying something about dad. Which is a reminder I really don't need right now. Since nobody is getting mind controlled and the outcome doesn't end with me in a parental pressure cooker, I leave it alone.

Instead, Cait takes me in without even so much as blinking. She set up a spare room in the back of the store near my workroom for me. I also continue my job at the vet, it'll be too handy once I fix the exploding problem. I wear sunglasses everywhere now, and use the excuse that my eyes are hypersensitive to light after whatever happened. Everybody just nods sympathetically and we get on with our frequently depressing jobs.

Most of my coping mechanism though, is working on Script, trying to figure out how to fix the aforementioned exploding problem. I know that the devils already have it beat, so I figure the easiest option is to see how they did it. To that end, I ask around to see how hard it would be to get my hands on an Evil Piece. Not even to keep, just to put through an analysis Script to see how the damned things work.

As it turns out, it's not hard to get one. One of the comparatively few contacts I got through the recommendations of the mage association came through for me almost immediately. As it turns out, every time a stray devil is killed, it's Piece is left behind after the rest of it dissolves. So any bounty hunters that deal in strays are all but rolling in the things. The devils pay a bounty for the return of the Pieces, so given that I just want to borrow the thing, fulfilling my request basically means they get paid twice.

I have a rook piece the day after I make the request.

Rather than dumping into my mind, I have the results of the analysis Script print themselves out on a ream of paper. Devil magic shapes itself as World Script for whatever reason, so that's convenient, no need to translate into something I can understand. Unfortunately, I end up needing three reams.

So I deal with the way that my life has imploded by losing myself in the work of understanding what goes into the Evil Pieces. The good news is that my fluency in Script has shot through the roof. I'm pretty sure that I can actually write, read, and speak Script like an actual language now.

The bad news is that Beelzebub deserves every bit of his reputation as a genius. Even if he doesn't have to work with actual Script, and I'm not betting against the idea he does anyway, I've learned more about Script and how to make it work from reading the analysis of his work than I have in the last nine years. Which is kind of depressing. And I still haven't found how they convert humans into devils without also turning them into a fine red mist.

I've been reading Script for the last three weeks straight, and I'm still only a third of the way through what the rook had produced. It's ridiculous.

My head thuds against the stacks of paper on my desk and I groan in frustration. "Still no luck?" Sarah asks from where she's been writing essays for college applications on my experiment table.

"No," I moan, "it never ends. I'm dreaming in Script now, but still no idea how they make the human form mutable."

"If it was simple it wouldn't have taken Beelzebub to come up with it," Cait mentions from the door, making us two humans in the room jump.

As soon as my heart rate slows I turn to look at her, "You think it's just beyond me? An 'I'm not Tony Stark' situation?"

Cait snorts and moves around the room to me and pats my head. "Kitten," she likes that nickname even more now that I have cat eyes. She 'wore' hers more often now as well, in some act of solidarity, "The man has millennia on you. Given what you've figured out in the twelve years I've known you, if we give you a century I think you'd figure it out for yourself. That being said, there's nothing wrong with having somebody else catch your dinner for you." Her eyes gleam with pure feline amusement, "That's what lesser creatures are there for, after all."

"I have always been more of a cat person," I admit with a small smile.

"See? I always said you were smart." She leans down and rubs the top of my head with her cheek and starts towards the door again, "Don't let what's happened with your father stifle the determination that got you this far. Still say you should let me see if I can still do my old job."

I flinch slightly at the idea. Cait had been a changeling after all. A punishment delivered by the fae to parents who can't be trusted with their children. In cases like that, the child is taken and a changeling like Cait is left in their place. The changeling then proceeds to do terrible things to the parents until they aren't a problem any more. Usually this ends with the adults in question dead. Cait however had been gifted enough to leave her 'foster parents' alive, just insane.

I'm flattered that she wants to take up old habits on my behalf, but I'm not sure I'm quite ready to have my father condemned to madness. Sarah has hit me harder, after all. She claims that it's not at all the same thing, but I'm having trouble internalizing that for some reason.

"She's a little weird, isn't she?" Sarah asks, looking over her shoulder at where the fae had been, and I turn back to my reading.

"Little bit, but I haven't met a supernatural that isn't."

"Then you'll fit right in."

"Shut up."

"Now, now, it's important that you accept these truths. Self delusion..."

"No really, shut up." I'm frantically reading through what I just found.

"You've got something?" Sarah sounds just as excited as I am. She's been my sounding board for the last several weeks, after all. She's probably more excited to see this search end than I am, if only so I'll stop babbling at her about it.

"Yeah, let me just get through this..."

It takes me another hour to finish the section in question, and it does indeed look like the answer I've been searching for.

"It's the soul," I explain, sitting back in my chair and rubbing my eyes. I'm beginning to get a headache, but hopefully this marks the end of this particular search.

"I thought the soul was the only part of this that was working as expected," Sarah frowns.

"That part is working fine. The soul has no trouble integrating the new essence. Which is exactly the point. What the pieces do when they turn somebody into a devil, is they take that person's soul and... merge it with the physical flesh, granting the body some degree of the soul's infinite adaptability." I'm getting excited, I have an answer. An answer that violated goal six, but that's fixable.

Sarah looks a little disturbed, "What happens when the body is destroyed then?"

I hesitate for a moment, then shrug, "I guess the soul would be destroyed as well."

"I'm not sure that's worth it," Sarah shivers.

I shrug. "There's a reason I'm going out of my way to avoid it," I agree.

"So what are you going to do?"

I settle back to think about it. It's an awkward issue. On the one hand, this will get me a lot of the advantages of devildom, at the same cost. My soul. Which I'm not willing to give up.

So... my first thought is, does it have to be my soul?

And if I can use somebody else's, am I ready to kill another human being for my own advancement?

"Ericka?" Sarah calls softly, and I look up.

I shake my head and sit up again, "Right. Sorry. My first thought is to use somebody else's."

Sarah stares at me, "What."

"Take a soul, scrub it clean of lingering influences, and then use the method provided," I point at the reams of paper filled with Script, "to perform the merge. The virtue of devil magic expressing as Script is that I just have to copy the right parts of that," I wave a hand at the stacks of paper, "and it should work as intended."

"So, you're going to kill someone?" Sarah doesn't sound all that comfortable with the idea.

"That's certainly... an option. But there are other things we should probably try first," I admit. I know that I'll have to kill somebody eventually. It's just how the world I'm heading for works. Especially as I'm operating mostly on my own. Without anybody to make killing me seem like a bad idea, I'll have to make the attempt seem ill advised on my own. Still, I feel no real need to rush that particular first. "Before we go to murder lets see if there are other sources."

Sarah looked relieved. I'm not so sure she should relax just yet.

###​

My first try is Cait, she seems able to get anything else I've asked for with minimal effort.

The look I get from her when I ask about purchasing black market souls doesn't fill me with confidence though. "Ericka," she starts slowly, "this thing you do with moving essences around? Pieces of them even? Nobody else does that. Removing and storing souls is... Look, the Evil Pieces don't really move souls. They just manipulate what's already there. Even when devils still ate souls they did it quickly using flesh as a medium. Souls without an anchor don't last long. They move on. I mean, how would you do it? Store a soul I mean?"

She has a point. I have no idea how I would go about storing what I'm manipulating for any real length of time. Lesser essences I think I can do. With enough time to work on it, but souls?

This kicks off a several month research and experimentation binge. Souls are the order of the day, and once again my job at the vet proves its worth. Animal souls are the first thing I try. They aren't... big enough, however, for lack of a better term. Infinitely adaptable they may be, but apparently not infinite in substance.

I try composite souls next. Stitching multiple animal souls together like Frankenstein's monster. I'll admit I'm glad when I can't get the things to hold together. Even scrubbed clean of any trace of what they had been, the animal souls don't merge with each other, or even stick close together. And I really don't want them to be one with my body when they inevitably fly apart. I suppose it's possible that flesh would hold them in place, but I'm not exactly willing to take the chance. Besides the damned things are creepy as hell.

Sarah finds me at the end of the three month flurry of experimentation once again face down on the table, "Nothing?"

"Not quite nothing. I've learned a lot. Just nothing useful," I admit looking up at her, "The only thing I haven't tried is getting a bigger soul and paring it down to fit. But even Cait can't smuggle me an elephant or a whale, and the only other sources of correctly sized souls bring us back to murder."

"So you're going to kill somebody?" Sarah asks again, still not looking comfortable, but much more resigned to the idea after having watched me try everything else I can think of.

Am I? I'd already resolved to kill nonhuman supernaturals, even if they are intelligent. So then the question becomes, is there a difference between supernaturals and humans? I... kinda want to say 'no'. Saying that killing is less murder because the victim isn't my species seems wrong.

So if it's the same no matter the species, and I'm already going to kill supernaturals, "Yeah... I kinda think I am."

Sarah stares at the table where she's fiddling with her fingers, "Who...?"

"Who will I murder?" She flinches slightly, but nods. "Well... My first instinct is to put on some really slutty clothes, wander around the bad part of town late at night, and wait for somebody to try and rape me," I shrug as Sarah jerks her head up to stare at me. "I figure anybody willing to attack and sexually assault a teenage girl only falls short of Nazis in terms of acceptable targets."

There are a few moments of silence before Sarah dissolves into laughter and I follow shortly behind. It seems my logic is valid. I'm glad that Sarah is still with me. I don't think I could have handled her leaving me too.

###​

It takes a few weeks for me to isolate the part of the rook's Script that I want and rewrite it into a Script that will work for what I need. I spend a lot of time putting every purification, cleaning, renewing, and anything else of the sort that I can find, into the Script. I'm making really sure nothing of the person I'm taking the soul from will stick around. The last thing I want is any part of the sort of person I'm planning to sacrifice, influencing me.

Once that's ready though, it's time to actually do the deed.

Getting dressed for this particular outing is bizarre. I've never really been one for shopping or clothes, always too busy training to really relax into it. Now though, with clothes being necessary, I find myself actually enjoying the process of picking out an outfit. Trying on various combinations and seeing how it all worked together is actually a lot of fun, with the right company.

Of course, there are still problems. My wardrobe is severely lacking, as most of my clothes are still at my parents house. A place I am, I think understandably, reluctant to visit. Sarah's clothes don't really fit me, her being taller than me, curvier than me... they just didn't fit. Which means I end up dressed mostly in Cait's clothing.

The final outfit has me dressed in a shoulderless leather corset cinched tight enough to give me something that actually resembles cleavage. Not a lot, but it's there. An impressive optical illusion. A miniskirt that doesn't restrict my movements simply because there isn't enough of it to restrict anything. Rounding it out are a pair of knee high boots with a low broad heel that's more like what I'd expect to find on work boots. They won't slow me down or mess with my balance at all. Sarah does my make up, another thing I've never bothered with before, and I'm ready to go.

I stand back and do a twirl, "How do I look?"

"Somewhere between a street walker and a clubber looking to get laid." Sarah isn't overly thrilled with my choices in the end, especially when we had managed several much nicer looks.

I shrug, "Subtlety and class will be wasted on my target audience."

Sarah snorts, "Fine, but now that you're not fighting me on this, we're going clothes shopping later."

My mouth opens for my traditional denial before I pause . It had been fun, it would probably be more fun with more options. I would probably also be able to pick out things to stuff Sarah in as well, unlike this time which was all focused on me. And I do need more clothes. "You know what, sure. Assuming I don't manage to make something else go horribly wrong tonight, we'll celebrate with a shopping trip."

Sarah bounces and squees happily. I just roll my eyes, grab my tiny clutch purse with bone chalk, a cell phone, and a knife in it, and head for the car.

"Good hunting!" Cait calls as we leave the bookshop. I'm pretty sure that she's proud of her 'kitten' going out to get her first kill. It's something I'm not looking at too closely

###​

The bad part of downtown where I'm dropped off is... well bad. The streets are uncleaned and the gutters are choked with debris overflowing from the storm drains. And even though it's what I'm after, the looks I get from the various people hanging out on various stoops and staircases make me shiver.

I establish a pattern where I wander down a street for a ways then turn down an alleyway, my head down broadcasting 'victim' as hard as I can. When nothing happens, I emerge back onto the street and go another stretch before heading down a different alley. This results in an S like pattern of movement, with plenty of opportunities for me to be ambushed.

As I'm literally asking for it, it doesn't take long for me to get a bite. Of course, the plan was immediately trashed. When I had imagined how this would go in my head, it was a single person following me down an alleyway. I'd knock them out, and they'd stay unconscious through the rest of the procedure, leaving me undisturbed while I worked.

So, of course, I get four, two at each end of the alley and closing rapidly. I don't have a lot of time to decide how I'm going to handle this. I'd need to drop them all quickly, there would be no time for banter or anything else, and I can't let all four of them reach me at once. I would have to end each fight fast, and in such a way that I don't have to worry about them again once I put them down.

I keep my head down and walk faster, trying to pretend that I only noticed the two behind me. When I'm the right distance away from the two in front of me, I lunge forward, slamming a jab into the first man's throat. The punch is jerky and awkward as I force myself to ignore the habits I've gained in sparring, to only hit in certain places or so hard. The crunch the man's throat produces almost freezes me.

Fortunately, only almost.

I drive the edge of my foot into the side of the second man's knee, collapsing it. Much more smoothly, I pivot to deliver a hard straight to number two's jaw right below his ear. His jaw dislocates and he slumps to the ground unconscious.

I spin on the ball of my foot to face the last two. Both of them have wide eyes, staring at me in shock. I guess they didn't expect the scantily clad five foot three girl to drop their two compatriots, never mind that quickly.

One of them seems to be trying to get something out of his waistband, struggling to get it untangled from his shirt. That one becomes number three and I rush him before he can free whatever he has. A push kick slams the ball of my foot into his stomach knocking him backwards, and knocking the wind out of him, from his pained gasping.

Number four is more on the ball though, and a hard punch slams into the side of my head. I stagger sideways, "Yeah! Take that you bit..." I turn and interrupt his posturing by breaking his nose. He staggers backwards clutching his face and swearing. I pull the knife in my bag free. Forcing myself not to think about what I'm doing, I drive the knife upwards into the man's left armpit, severing a major artery. A follow up hard punch to the solar plexus keeps him from making noise until he finishes bleeding out.

Movement out of the corner of my eye makes me duck and turn. Number three has regained his feet and pulled free a snub-nosed revolver. I throw my knife at him almost out of reflex. It spins past him, missing narrowly, which is honestly better than I expected. I have no idea how to throw a knife after all. But it does make him flinch, which is what I'm really after.

I close as fast as I can and kick the gun, still he manages to get a shot off. The report is deafening, and I manage to get to the gun at the last possible moment. I feel a line of fire along my ribs that I force myself to ignore, and stomp on the man's ankle. A sharper crunch followed by a high pitched scream tells me my distraction worked.

While number three rolls on the ground clutching his ankle, I have all the time in the world to retrieve my knife, stab it into the side of his neck, and cut out.

I stand there trembling as the adrenaline fades. It takes me three tries to get my knife back into my purse, and it's only then I notice that my hands are covered in blood. I force myself not to throw up, as much as I want to. I have no idea if vomit contains enough DNA traces to be connected to me, and I'm unwilling to take the chance.

Moving in a daze, it occurs to me that I can't perform my ritual here. With the gunshot and the screaming, somebody will have called the police, and I don't want to be found here.

So with a grunt of effort, I shift the only one left alive into a fireman's carry and get the hell out of Dodge. Fortunately, isolated alleys aren't uncommon in this part of town, so I find another that will work for my purposes pretty quickly.

I drop the soon to be corpse far enough away from where I'll be working that he won't be able to ambush me, and get to work. The Script circle takes far longer to draw than it should have, with the way my hands are trembling. I have to go very slowly to avoid mistakes, which I can't afford. I nearly ruin everything anyway, when I jump at hearing sirens in the direction I came from, but they never get any closer so I manage to ignore them.

Finally I have everything written out and triple checked. My cell phone has pictures of the relevant parts of the rook's Script that I check against as well. Everything looks accurate, which is good, because I'm exhausted. I kick the man in the head again just to make sure that he won't wake up inconveniently, and carry him to his place. I take mine next to him, grab my knife, and position it over his heart ready to stab... and hesitate.

Both my hands grip the handle of the knife hard enough for my knuckles to turn white. Where they aren't red from punching people or from my victim's blood. The blade trembles in my grip. For some reason this is much harder. I've already killed three people, why would a fourth make a difference at this juncture?

Because I'm not fighting? So far everything I've done could be argued as self defense. Sure, I had put myself into a situation where I needed to defend myself, but they still made the first aggressive actions. I had legitimate reason to fear for my life, and had acted with sufficient violence to make myself safe.

Now though, my victim is unconscious on the ground, no threat to anybody. Never mind me, who put him there. Without adrenaline and with time to think, this is a very different act.

I close my eyes, and the image of the broken children the stray devil left behind fills my mind. Specifically, the little girl who'd been stepped on, her legs crushed. In my mind, when she looks up at me, it's my face at that age I see. That could have so easily been me, maybe should have been me with the way I'd followed them.

It still could be me.

The knife drives down. The man dies, and the Script activates. Something unfathomably large and profoundly small is thrust into my body. With a feeling like being set on fire, it fuses to my every cell.

Moments later the feeling fades and I collapse to the ground breathing hard. I feel sore all over, but manage to force myself to my feet and collect the knife and my purse. Fishing the cellphone out of my purse with great difficulty I, smearing blood on the screen, call Sarah to pick me up.

###​

Sarah swears when she sees me, but helps me into the car and drives me to her house, like we planned. Like she insisted, she really didn't want me alone the night after I'd done this. She manages to smuggle me inside, and upstairs to her room. I strip my bait clothes off, handing them to Sarah so she can hide them until they can be washed the next day and returned to Cait. I almost miss her hiss at finding the ripped part of the corset, and the corresponding gash in my side, where the bullet grazed me.

She pushes me into her bathroom with a bar of antibacterial soap and tells me to wash thoroughly. The door shuts behind me and I find myself again staring into a mirror at myself. Aside from my new eyes, I don't look that different. I feel like I should, though. Whether from the soul fusion, or having killed four men, it seems like there should be some change.

There are injuries though, more than I remember. The black eye, and the slowly seeping rent in my side are expected. A handprint bruise on my shoulder, the extra bruises on my ribs, the second bruise on my cheek, I don't remember getting hit there. Which I'm pretty sure is a bad thing.

Still, I manage to shower, scrubbing myself and my wounds clean. Sarah has pajamas waiting for me and helps to bandage my side. It'll scar but I sort of feel like it should.

As a reminder of some sort.

After dressing me in my night clothes, Sarah leads me to her bed and climbs in behind me, holding me close. For the longest time I just lie there, but slowly the night and everything else catches up with me, and for the second time Sarah quietly holds me while I cry.

 

[DaGeek247]

I'd=ve

Click to shrink...

Missed a spot.

Man, this one hits different the second time around. I was expecting the usual power fantasy when I first started reading this story, and it's not too far in that we get this scene. But dang, the attitude shift from the first half of prep to the aftermath is a heck of a good characterisation. As a bonus, we see more of who Erika is as a person too.

Everyone has a spot where they draw the line, but premeditated murder isn't Erika's, it's merely a bump on the road.

 

[Tersin]

Age Eighteen​

Fighting is a very different experience than it was even a few weeks ago. Watching the blunted steel coming down at me through my visor slit in almost slow motion is just odd, and the speed of my reactions threw me rather significantly at first. Now, though, it feels like I have all the time in the world to move my own sword at the perfect angle. A moment of impact, before I roll around my opponent's blade, pushing it down and out and sending him off balance. My armored hip crashes into his armored hip, my forward leg slides forward between his, and my off-hand latches onto his gauntleted wrist. A simple twist sends him over my hip to the ground. Of course, this isn't entirely unexpected from me, so he rolls to his feet smoothly.

Rolland, my opponent, is huge. He stands well over six feet and if he weighs less than two hundred pounds out of armor, I'll be shocked. He's a giant, and bats anybody who stands against him around like they're tennis balls. My five-foot-one self has no business trying to match strength with this man, though because of my muscle mass, I do weigh more than one might expect.

Rolland is also my favorite sparring partner.

He's not quite the same as fighting a devil, who can shatter a skyscraper with a punch, but after a certain point, a larger difference in strength is simply academic. My method of dealing with the disparity is all precision, speed, foot work, and trying to be as much like smoke as I can manage. I dodge when at all possible, deflect when it isn't, and try to hit them first to make them think twice, when I have to. I stop-blocked Rolland once, and he tossed me a good three feet.

Now, though, everything I experience during a fight is beginning to change. After I recovered from my... bloody adventure, and I did a little further testing on dual souled animals to make sure nothing had to change too much with the Scripts, I went a little nuts.

Another cat for reflexes, a hawk I caught myself, for even more improved vision, a bat for hearing, a bloodhound for sense of smell, and a lizard for a start on improved healing. I'd considered sacrificing a pit viper of some sort for it's thermal sense, but decided that adding new senses might also alter my brain to process them, and any brain change is more than I'm comfortable with. I did sacrifice a gecko to try and get the ability to climb on walls, Spiderman style. Unfortunately, the attractive force isn't nearly strong enough to overcome my body weight.

It also took a few more tries to completely remove the physical bleed-over with how much more my body is willing to change. The hawk turned my eyes a very unnerving, almost primary yellow, and the bat added a point to my ears that I'm not quite sure what to think about. Fortunately, it took only the two more tries to fix the problem. The eyes are off-putting with the slit pupils, but Sarah assures me that my ears are more Tolkien elf than anything else. I think it looks odd, but the ears are easy enough to hide under my hair, and sunglasses solve the eye problem. Besides, the benefits I'm already seeing are more than worth the degradation in my looks, which were never really something worth mentioning in the first place.

My ears let me get an almost constant three dimensional awareness of Rolland as he comes to his feet, his back to me. He starts to twist, even as I lunge forward, into a wide backswing to make me keep my distance. Two months ago it would have worked. Now, though, I can hear the swing coming. I can smell the lactic acid build up in his muscles, showing how much harder he's having to work to keep up with me. The sword seems to move in slow motion, giving me all the time in the world to duck under it by dropping to one knee. My return stroke cuts his leg out from under him, and the world speeds up again as he again crashes to the ground, this time flat on his back.

A quick twist on the balls of my feet lays my sword across his chest and neck. The tap of my sword on his breastplate causes both of us to pause, then with a groan, Rolland goes limp on the ground, arms flopping out, sword dropping, and shield falling flat .

"What the hell have you been eating the last few weeks?" His voice is a pleasant rumble, muted slightly by his helmet.

I shrug, standing and offering a hand to help him up, "Dunno. Just having a good month I guess." I'm grinning. Rolland and I have fought a lot, and he usually wins. The difference in reach and strength too much to overcome. Now, though, with just improved reflexes and senses, and none of them supernatural in nature, I'm breaking even in wins and losses.

I can't wait to see what I'll be capable of once I get a few real boosts.

Rolland groans, "Does that mean I can expect another two weeks of this?" He sounds grumpy but I can see his smile under his helmet's face cage as he takes my hand. I plant both my feet and lean way back, pulling with my entire body to provide any aid in getting him upright. Fortunately, once there, he's more than strong and massive enough to casually tug me back onto my feet.

"Nope," I shook my head, "that's actually something that I wanted to talk to you about. Now that high school is over I've decided to do a bit of traveling. I'm leaving with Sarah to help her move into her new dorm in LA, then I'm off to places... well, not unknown, but certainly not here."

There's a moment of silence as we stare at each other through our helmets. Then Rolland pulls off his, running a gauntleted hand over short cropped blond hair, and raises an inquisitive eyebrow at me. Probably repeating the gesture he'd just made under his helmet, only to realize I couldn't see it.

"Yes?" I pause, "You can't see it, but I'm raising an eyebrow back at you."

Rolland laughs, "Of course. So you're running off and only telling us about it now?"

I shrug, "I only knew it was happening a few days ago."

"Hmmm." The big man stares at me with narrow eyes. Then a truly evil grin spreads across his face, "Listen up everybody!" he booms into the large space. We practice in a small refurbished warehouse. Which still means it's huge on an individual level. It easily fits thirty people, twenty of those are in armor, and right now every single one of them is looking our way.

"Rolland, what are you..." I try to ask, but the giant just ignores me.

"Ericka has informed me that she will be leaving us for an unknown period of time to travel the world." The loud 'aww' sound is heartwarming. I've been practicing with most of these guys since I was five or six years old. I've known most of them for practically all my life. I've never connected with them the same way I have with Sarah, not for Rolland's lack of trying. Sort of. There had been one ill-fated attempt to ask me out that we don't talk about any more. It had resulted in my first kiss, though, as I grabbed another female fighter that happened to be walking past to demonstrate what I meant when I said, 'not interested'. She'd slapped me but had laughed afterwards, so it was all worth it. "So since this will be her last day with us, we have to say goodby in the traditional manner." What? No! No nonononononono! I start backing up to try and escape only to bump into somebody behind me. While I had been thinking, they surrounded me, "That's right folks! It's time for the Goodby Gauntlet!"

The loud cheer does nothing to raise my spirits as I watch the rest of the fighters form a line along the back wall. Rolland waits in the center of the clear area strapping his helmet back on, that evil grin having only gotten worse.

This is going to suck and, for some reason, I can't stop smiling.

###​

"All of them?" Sarah giggles next to me, taking joy in my pain.

I'm sore all over. I've never fought so long without a break in my life. "All twenty," I confirm, "twice."

"Twice?" Sarah dissolves into giggles again, and I just sigh.

"Yes, twice," I confirm again and push through the crowds. We've just disembarked from the short-hop flight to LAX. I spent most of the flight asleep, and Sarah, wonderful girl that she is, left me undisturbed until we landed. Which means she was getting her schadenfreude at my beating the night before, now.

"None of the places I trained at had fun going away traditions like that," Sarah pouts.

I roll my eyes, "Don't sound so disappointed, I feel tenderized." I keep moving. If I stop, Sarah would take the opportunity to poke more fun at me. My best move is to make her chase me, that way she won't be able to build up a full head of steam.

We make it to the baggage claim with Sarah only getting a few more digs at my willingness to fight forty times in a row for the sake of tradition. Not that I'm putting up much of a fight in the end. I'm doubting my intelligence as well. She collects her suitcases, and I grab my bag, and a last carrying case. It's the sort of thing that you carry full sized painting canvases in. Large, square, and awkward as hell.

We grab a taxi for the sake of convenience and are quickly at the mercy of LA traffic.

Moving into dorms is the same no matter where or when I do it. Dorm rooms are pretty much the same, too. Lots of carrying heavy, awkward things up and down stairs to a tiny room. Sarah seems pretty happy, though. Not that I don't understand, it's the first time that she has a place that's independent of her parents. That's always something special.

"Soooo..." Sarah drops onto the bed as she puts down the last of the bags she carried, "what's in the giant case? You've been cagey about it since mom picked you up."

"First of all, I wasn't being cagey, I was resenting my upright posture," I tell her primly. "Second, in this case," I pat the giant square container, "I have safety, peace of mind, and company."

"If you're offering me a 'toy', I don't want it," Sarah says, waggling her eyebrows, trying to keep a straight face, and failing dismally.

Calmly, I stand and collect one of her pillows, and respond in the only way I believe to be appropriate. I smack her in the face.

Sarah shrieks, laughing, grabs a pillow of her own, and the battle is joined. We're enthusiastic enough that pretty soon we're in the hallway, and attracting a bit of an audience. Two girls, one very attractive, who have been practicing martial arts and acrobatics for most of their lives? We may have shown off a bit.

More than a bit.

Once the RA chases us back into Sarah's room and we close and lock the door, we turn back to the case. The first things to come out of the large carrying case are six palm-sized discs of intricately wrought Script symbols, in silver wire. They are by far some of the most complex pieces of Script I've ever created. It would have been impossible if I hadn't figured out a Script to make things shrink. However, with that, I can make the things a size easy to manipulate, and then shrink them to a size more convenient for being subtle.

I activate each of them, then Sarah helps me place one on each wall, the ceiling and floor, "These should keep anything supernatural or intending you harm out of the room," I explain to her as we set them up.

The next thing I pull from my case of tricks is another intricately crafted piece of silver. This one, only the size of a quarter and hanging from a chain, "This'll give you some protection out of your room, and should let you know if anything supernatural is nearby." I wave her over and put it around her neck. "I'd have done something with the chain and the clasp, but even with the shrinking trick they're a bit too small to put anything on," I shrug, but Sarah, blushing slightly, turns and hugs me.

"Thanks," she murmurs and I hug her back.

"Don't thank me yet, there's one more thing in there." I gesture at the case that still looks entirely full.

The last thing to emerge is a three foot by three foot square of particle board. On the surface of it I've carved a Script circle and inlaid copper wire into the grooves.

"Okay. I'm confused, not silver this time?" Sarah asks, taking the board.

"I did this one first and used copper because even though silver is a better energy conductor, I thought copper would be cheaper and I'd need a lot of it for this," I wave at the board. "I really should have checked prices first. Anyway, this is the result of my efforts to figure out teleportation."

Teleportation by Script is a textbook example of why one should never confuse 'simple' with 'easy'. Script teleportation is very simple. All you need is a very detailed description of where you want to go. The entire script reads 'there is a place where the rocks lie in this way, and the trees grow thusly', on and on. Eventually, when sufficient detail has been provided, the place you are describing becomes the same as the place where you are for just a moment, and then you're there. The problem? It's really hard to get a sufficient description. I'm pretty sure that devils get around this by way of their damned imagination-magic. Their intent for a specific place is enough to skip over all of this. Unfortunately, I don't really have that option. So instead, I cheat. What Sarah's holding is basically a phone number. Instead of trying to describe the location where I want to go, I just tell my Script to find that unique Script beacon and take me there. Poof, instant travel. It still isn't quick by any means, but it's much faster than any mundane method of travel, and unlike the first descriptive method, it's possible.

"So, with this..." Sarah trails off.

"I can pop up at any time. It'll take me thirty minutes, forty five at most," I nod. "From literally anywhere on the planet... in theory. I haven't actually tested that yet," I finish with a shrug.

Sarah hugs me again, "I'm surprised that you didn't have some magic method for us to talk to each other."

I smirk at her, "Cell phones seem to be doing a pretty good job of that. Good enough that I felt no need to try and reinvent them." Not to mention that I have no idea where I'd even start trying to recreate a cell phone network via prose.

"Fair enough," Sarah laughs. "You know what we should do tonight?" I shake my head. "To celebrate before I'm drowned in college and you vanish into the wild?" Now I'm getting nervous. "We should go out." Nervousness increasing to dread, "Clubbing!" Yup, there it is.

"Sarah," I whine, "I didn't pack anything remotely appropriate for clubbing. I don't think I own anything remotely appropriate for clubbing."

"Then we'll have to get you something." Determination, thy name is Sarah. Pretty sure that's stubbornness' name too, "Come on! We can shop until a few hours before the clubs open, come back here to get ready, then see the nightlife!" Sarah puts her hands over her head and does something that I assume is a dance move. I'll admit it looks good, her hips swing back and forth. Not something I would want to try and imitate, if for no other reason than my lack of hips would make it look somewhat silly.

"Fine," I sigh. There's no way I'm winning this argument, so I figure I might as well capitulate so I won't lose tired.

###​

I'm so glad that I'd shelled out the cash for first class for my second flight. Clubbing the night before was almost a disaster. We found Sarah and me acceptable clothes easily enough, but finding an acceptable club was much more difficult. The very first club we went to, Sarah's new amulet activated in warning of supernatural presence.

As it turns out, some things are cliche for a reason. There were vampires everywhere, bouncers, bartenders, patrons. They were like ants, you spot one and pretty soon you see them everywhere.

In a way it makes sense. Dark rooms, lots of prey, and the prey normally mentally impaired. Not to mention that most people are looking to get close to someone, and let's be honest, not too many guys will object to a hot girl sucking on their necks. It's pretty much the perfect hunting ground.

Eventually we found a place with a minimum mosquito population. Dancing happened. I'm not sure if I'm grateful or depressed that every guy that tried to be suave, sliding up to us, hit on Sarah. On one hand, guys. Ew. On the other, not one? Really?

...

Anyway, we got back to Sarah's dorm room. I hooked into the wi-fi to send an email to Asia. By the time I came up for air from all the shit that had happened right after meeting her, she'd already sent me three emails. A quick apology for not replying very quickly, and an equally quick explanation of why, and we were back on track. Once I convinced her that I was really okay after getting thrown out of my house by my dad, we struck up a pretty good pen friendship. She didn't have a lot to contribute, she didn't get out much, and was too young to have much to talk about. So I told her about the world she couldn't get out into and she asked questions. We actually had a lot of fun. Her questions made me actually think about things that always just... were, before. That night's email was more about warning her that if she ever found herself in LA to watch out for vampires.

The morning had come far too early, but I dragged myself to the airport and made my flight. I'm on my way to Hawaii, the Big Island. Hopefully to meet a very unique couple of people.

After the sacrifice there were some... consequences. My normal human clientele completely vanished, almost overnight. While I had managed to get out of the alley without really leaving any usable evidence for the cops, somebody had recognized my Script under the very deliberately placed corpse.

Suddenly I wasn't one of them anymore. I wasn't a knowledgeable normal, I was one of the 'other'. I was one of the things that they used to call me to protect them from. That... that kinda hurt. A lot.

Strangely, though, or perhaps in the same theme, I did gain more new clients than I lost. Greater fae, not quite Sidhe but close. Greater nature spirits, hamadryads, mountain spirits, the larger nature spirits in general seemed to be more comfortable with me. Similarly, I got more work from mage associations. I have no idea why exactly. Some part of my confusion is certainly not being willing to think about how that one murderous act in that alley had changed me.

Still, over the last year, as I refined my trait theft Scripts, I quickly realized the biggest weakness of the technique is how long it takes to make them work. Anything that I want to take a trait from, I would have to beat, keep whatever it was alive, contain it, draw the Script, get the hopefully still subdued thing onto the Script, then kill it.

Yeaaaah... I don't really see that working.

So I need something to make all that happen faster. The key I found is the alteration of the ritual to trigger when power is available. With more work, I crafted a Script that would... hang, for lack of a better term. Remain permanently on the edge of activation and trigger every time it's given the energy to do so. This'll come in two parts, the first being a Script tattoo for the part which integrates new traits. The second, of course, will be a more mobile, and hopefully flexible, extraction Script.

I haven't figured out everything I want for the extraction just yet. That will take some trial and error, so I focused on the tattoo instead. I started by looking up what I could on magical tattoos and quickly discovered that magical tattoos are complicated. You can't just slap one on generically, each tattoo has to be adjusted both for the person and the purpose.

Magic tattoos work by adding new, permanent energy flows to the body. Energy flows that are shaped in such a way as to produce the desired effects. The problem comes from the issue that if your tattoo doesn't take into account the way your native energy flows already run... well, the term I found is 'destructive resonance'. I'm really glad that there were no pictures involved.

In an act of uncharacteristic brilliance, upon finding how delicate this type of magic is, I decided to consult an expert. My new contacts with the mage associations came through for me and pointed me in the direction of one Pua Ke'Kua'Okolani, an Hawaiian Kahuna. I had to look it up, but apparently 'Kahuna' is a Hawaiian shaman/doctor/wiseman/sorcerer/psychologist. Something like that. Pua being female is unusual for the position, but after finding out more about her, I'm not overly surprised she got it anyway.

Pua is acknowledged by most who know about her, which is largely limited to human mages with no infernal connections, as the most knowledgeable and skilled magic user on the planet. To the point where she should be mentioned in the same breath as Merlin and Morgana le Fae.

The reason she isn't, is because she simply doesn't have the raw power to move in such rarefied circles. She isn't in the top ten, or the top hundred, or even the top five hundred. She isn't a pushover in human terms, but in the wider supernatural world, she's a featherweight power-wise. Which is why she doesn't really get involved with anything that the top ten, or anyone associated with them, are also involved in, as a rule.

What she does do is travel the world with her brother, one Ku'uaki Ke'Kua'Okolani. Ku, as he liked to be called, is a cultural anthropologist who specializes in martial traditions. What he does in the supernatural world is learn martial arts, empowered and otherwise, and reconstruct dead ones. He is to physical combat what Pua is to magic. Ku would travel to a place, learn the martial art there over the course of a year or two. While he does that, Pua absorbs all the magical traditions in the region. Then they go home, integrate what they learned into what they already knew, and then do it all again.

While I'd love to have the chance to pick up some pointers from Ku, Pua is why I'm making the trip. She knows more about magical tattoos than anybody else alive, and after some emailing back and forth has decided that something about what I'm doing is interesting enough that she's willing to help me out.

After some careful vetting.

The only reason Pua's even willing to talk to me is that I'm distinctly and loudly uninvolved with any major faction, and in fact have even less power than she does. These two things and my own reputation, and who my reputation is with, convinced her to invite me to come visit her village. Which is a good thing as it's apparently impossible to find her if she doesn't want to be found.

Hiding has very little to do with power, after all.

###​

Finding the Ke'Kua'Okolani village is more awkward than I think it really has to be. There's no address attached to the place, so all I have to go on are directions and descriptions. Honestly, I half-believed that the sign I was told to look for was some kind of joke. But nope, there it is.

I actually have to stop and stare for a moment through the window of my rented car to make sure what I'm seeing is real. Next to the entrance of a dirt road that quickly winds out of sight towards the coast, is a hand made wooden sign. The sign reads 'Kapu!' which my handy Hawaiian/English dictionary tells me means 'forbidden'. Perched on top of the sign post is a bleached, white human skull.

How welcoming.

The dirt road winds from the interstate towards the coast. And why does Hawaii have an interstate? What other state does it go to? I shake the perfectly reasonable question from my head as I travel through groves of coconuts and bananas, and over a bridge that shows small fish-breeding pools set into the sides of a river that meanders through the village.

The village itself is the size of a small town. The majority of the houses are the local ranch style. The village is centered around two places, the first a large, two-story sprawling house right on the beach. The second is a pile of stacked stones at the top of the village just past the most far-flung house. The edifice of stone looms over the rest of the village and gives off a feeling that's more than slightly unnerving, though I have no idea why.

The road takes me into the middle of this little slice of idyllic paradise. An open dirt lot with far fewer cars than I would have expected for the population evident, makes parking easy. There are plenty of people, though. They move around performing various tasks, or surfing. Surfing is very popular. The majority of people I see under fifty or over fourteen are in board shorts or board shorts and bikini tops.

The views presented are quite nice. It seems like everybody there is a swimsuit model, or if too young, one in the making. They all have naturally golden brown skin, dark hair, and bodies that are in fantastic shape. It actually makes me somewhat self-conscious.

I climb out of my car and I'm immediately almost run-over by a stampeding pack of giggling children. They're being chased by a girl who looks to be about fifteen, in the local uniform.

The pack of kids skid to a halt in front of me, staring with wide eyes. They look at me, I look at them.

There's a profoundly awkward silence.

The girl chasing them catches up, panting slightly, "What are you lot doing?"

One of the boys turns to look at her, and points at me, "Howle, Tima!"

The girl, Tima apparently, slaps him upside the head and shushes him, "Aloha, are you lost?" She pushes some of her hair behind an ear, looking shy.

"Ah, no... I was invited here. I'm supposed to meet with your 'Kahuna', if I'm pronouncing that right."

The girl blinks, studies me suspiciously for a moment, then shrugs, "You want that house there." She points at a two story house next to the sprawling, central one.

"Thanks." The girl nods to me and herds her rampaging hoard towards the beach. I watch her go for a moment, then head towards the house indicated. It looks nice enough, has an open front porch, it's walls have the look of raw wood, and there's a tall, red plant at each corner.

Taking another moment or two to center myself, I knock on the door. "Un moment!" a voice calls from inside. The sound of striding footsteps approaches the door. When it opens I look up and up and up. "'Ello? May I help you?"

I stand about five foot one, the woman in front of me has to be at least six foot. Long slender limbs, perfect figure, luxurious brown hair, dressed in a white peasant blouse and skin tight Capri pants, with a French accent that's simply unfair.

"Uh..." I shake myself, "Yeah, I'm looking for Pua?" I'm distinctly uncomfortable.

"Oh!" The woman gives me a blinding smile, "Yes, I am Thea, Pua said you were coming. Please, come in." She stands aside and waves me in. The inside is open and airy. Most of the walls are polarized windows, currently open and covered with mesh, giving the place the feeling of being outside. An impression helped along by the smell of flowers and the sound of birds.

I'm waved to a seat, which I take, and Thea strides off shouting something in French. Soon enough, she returns accompanied by another woman. This one is short, my height, Polynesian, and dressed in a sarong and bikini top. Her shoulders, arms, and a good portion of her torso are covered by tattoos. Black symbols and designs whorled and danced across her dark skin. The tattoos alone are enough to convince me of who this was.

I stand, forcing myself to smile naturally, and hold out a hand, "Ah, Kahuna... Pua... I'm sorry I'm not entirely sure how..."

I'm interrupted by Pua dashing forward and catching me up in a hug, "Oh, you have no idea how happy I was to get your email!" She doesn't squee, I'm not entirely sure how the noise she makes isn't one, but it's not. I suspect dark powers. "Do you have any idea how few people who use magic are concerned with anything aside from more power? It'll be great to talk to somebody else interested in the actual mechanics of what we do." She pushes back her hands on my shoulders and looks me up and down, "And my height, too. That's rare." Well, she's not wrong. People our height are rather uncommon. "Come on, show me what you've got so far and what we're trying for."

She is right about one thing though, it will be nice to talk to somebody who actually understands what I'm saying when I talk about my Scripts.

###​

Working with Pua is a dream. She's every bit as skilled as advertised, and I thoroughly enjoy the back and forth. I'll also cheerfully admit that without Pua I would have done something awful to myself long before I figured out how to do anything on my own.

We start with two mapping projects. The first is to map my own energy flows. The way my body directs what meager power it has naturally. Pua is somewhat surprised that I have only just enough energy in me to keep myself alive. That's what the majority of people have, all the mundanes, but typically mundanes don't sit in her living room and discuss biological ley lines.

I just shrug, not really sure what to say.

The second is mapping how my Script would influence and produce energy flows inside a living thing. This results in a lot of exploding chickens. Apparently, when you ask a Hawaiian 'what animal is okay to use for potentially lethal experimental magic', the answer is chickens. It's enthusiastically chickens. In fact they typically follow that up with, 'can you use more chickens?'

Hawaiians really don't like chickens.

Also, I know what 'destructive resonance' looks like now. Really wish I didn't. On the other hand, I'm really, really glad I got expert help. I don't sleep very well for a few days after the first test. Or the second. Or... yeah.

Of course, Pua can't spend all her time with me, she has duties to her village. When those duties involve magic, she sometimes invites me along to observe, and I get to see first hand how she gained her reputation.

She lays fragile and complex spells into seeds or saplings that are then planted where needed. As the plant grows so does the spell, gaining power as the plant or tree ages. Illusions, deceptions, and wards are woven into almost every bush, koa tree, and tea plant in the village, making it indistinguishable from the surroundings whenever she wishes.

A more physical barrier is laid around the village, conceptually tied to what Pua called Nalu. A word meaning unstoppable force, or inevitable, specifically in regards to the ocean. Her power matters little as the inevitable nature of the sea itself reinforces the 'immovable object' of the barrier. As long as there are tides that barrier would stand.

Even the village layout itself has its roots in Chinese geomancy, bringing all sorts of benefits to the people who live there, all powered by where the buildings and roads are, and the people themselves moving along those roads and paths.

The weather for the village is planned out months in advance. Pua can't summon up a storm at will, but with a little effort she can make one seem to show up on its own a month down the road.

Watching her work, how she achieved with a delicate touch, and excessive skill and knowledge, what any of the greater supernaturals would have just brute forced, gives me so many ideas. Both for new things I can try with Script, and for new ways to do old things.

Some things I'm not allowed to know about, though. I still have no idea what she's doing on top of the stacked-stone step-pyramid once a week. I ask, but I'm told that it's a temple and only the Kahuna and the Ali'i, or Chief, can go up there.

Pua negotiates with spirits, and deals with local dragons that sound more like Mephistopheles than Ddraig. She acts as doctor and therapist to the villagers. Adviser to the Ali'i in supernatural matters, and is the spiritual center of the village, settling ghosts and calling on the spirits of ancestors.

More and more frequently she lets me help with various things around the village, when she lets me come along.

When I can't come along, I try to advance our project without her. I can make some progress on my own while waiting for her to finish her duties as Kahuna. When I can't do any more without Pua, I try to advance what I can do with Scripts on my own. When I can't sit in one place anymore, I wander. This leads to me meeting her brother, Ku.

Pua is my height, and adorable. Ku is some inches over six foot and built... well like a Pacific islander. He's all muscle and smiles and is more than happy to kick my ass whenever we both have the time. Even better than just being a very skilled sparring partner, he figures out pretty quickly that I'm struggling to integrate new capabilities into my fighting.

He sits me down and asks what I have that's new, and what I plan on adding, and gives me a series of exercises to help me more rapidly acclimate to improved senses, reflexes, speed, and strength. Even just with my new senses, using his advice produces dramatic improvements.

Of course, not everything is sunshine and rainbows, and both of the siblings are far more perceptive than I would have wished they are. Pua notices within days that I'm always working, which really shouldn't be too surprising. Sarah figured it out when she was, at most, fifteen. She probably had earlier and she just hadn't worked up the courage to confront me about it sooner. Pua is a trained psychologist as part of her duties as Kahuna. She knows something is up the first time she tells me to take a day off while she works on other things, and I come back beaten all to hell.

For the first few months Pua is subtle. She's trying to hint at something, that much I can tell. The way she emphasizes her reasons for not being available for our projects on certain days. Or her enthusiasm to have me join her in her more magical duties, which can't be entirely explained by my willingness to look at whatever she wants to show me, and listen however long she wants to talk. However, I am stubborn and dense. Even worse, stubborn in my denseness. So eventually Pua sits me down in the living room with a cup of tea and just asks, "What's wrong?"

"What...? I don't..." Prior to this, aside from some suspicious looks, she's shown no real indication that she's really concerned with anything, so this comes as something of a surprise.

She sighs, "Ericka, one of my duties is to tend to the mental and spiritual health of the village. Granted, you're not one of the villagers, but I'd like to think you are a friend." Her attitude is very different from the cheerful academic that I'm used to dealing with. I've never talked to a priest before in either of my lives, but I imagine it must feel something like this. The calm aura of comfort is... relaxing, "There is clearly something wrong, you push yourself harder than anybody I've ever seen, you watch the calendar like you're on a deadline. Fear drives you, though it's not a fear of something concrete. I have a feeling that if it was you'd have done something about it already." She leans forward and lays a tattooed hand on mine, "Tell me what's wrong."

I stare at her, I'm not really sure what to say. It had taken years to tell Sarah, or my parents anything, and even then I didn't tell them everything, "I'm not..."

"Does it have something to do with your reincarnation?" If I'd been taking a drink I'd have done a spit take.

"How the hell do you know that?" I don't mean to sound that aggressive, but really what do you say to that?

Fortunately Pua just smiles, "You're hardly the first person to be reborn. I would guess that something from your past life has followed you, and now you're trying to prepare for something that you've already failed at once." She squeezes my hand sympathetically, and just like that I'm back on an even keel. If she had actually known everything already, I wouldn't have known what to do with myself. But I still have some control, which serves to center me somewhat. "With the vague memories that usually accompany one through lives, it can be even more difficult. Can you tell me who you were...?"

She trails off as I start shaking my head, "Who I was doesn't matter. I wasn't anybody special, and even if I was, nobody from my past life matters here." Pua looks confused but doesn't say anything, just waves me on. I hesitate, am I really going to do this?

I think I am. Unlike anybody else who I might have told, Pua both has a responsibility to others who might be affected, and more importantly the capability to do something about it. That, and given what else she dealt with, she might not dismiss me as insane as quickly as most would. She both needs, and is likely to believe, a more complete explanation "I... Are you familiar with the Many Worlds theory?"

The Kahuna blinks, but nods, "That every way something could have gone creates a parallel universe where it did. Are you saying that..."

"How about the World of Fantasy corollary?" I cut her off, I'd get to answers in a moment.

"That one I haven't heard of before." Pua answers, after a moment of thought.

I sigh, this is where it would get either really interesting or really awkward, "The theory states that with infinite variations, such as presented in Many Worlds, everything would be true somewhere." I pause for a moment trying to think of how to explain the next part, "I want you to think of a TV show. One of those with lots of power creep. Where every season everything is just bigger and more over the top than the last."

"So basically, every shonen anime ever," Pua offers easily. Something about the look in her eye tells me I've found a perhaps not so closeted fan.

"Yeah. Exactly," I have to chuckle. She's not wrong, after all, "Now imagine that one day you wake up in that show. And you're not a lead, you're not even a side character or an extra, you're just there. Unpowered, waiting for the disaster that you know is coming. What do you do?"

Pua's silent for a long moment, "I live in an anime. That's either the most awesome thing I've ever heard, or the most terrifying." I just snort, I know which way I lean. "So you've seen what's going to happen?"

"Not to you," I admit, "you weren't in the show. But I know who the next Red Dragon Emperor is going to be. I know some about what's going to happen with the Biblical factions. I know a few other events that have happened or are about to."

"Like what?" Pua leans forward, gaze intent.

I squirm slightly, "What are you going to do with the information? I'm sort of relying on my fore-knowledge, if you start messing with things..."

Pua sits back and nods thoughtfully, "If we act on anything you tell us then you lose one of your only advantages." After a moment or two of intense thought she sits forward again, "I obviously can't assure you that we won't act on what you tell us... But let me talk to the Ali'i and maybe we can work something out."

Pua stands and I stand with her. I figure she's going to go talk to people so we can settle things as quickly as possible. Instead she moves forward and hugs me. Getting hugged by somebody my own height is a novelty. Pua is also very pretty, something that I immediately feel guilty about noticing since she's married to Thea.

Sure, same sex marriages are neither traditional nor legal in Hawaii, but Pua is the one who would be performing the ceremony and her Ali'i doesn't care. So as far as her village is concerned, they are married.

"You are no longer alone," she whispers to me. Nothing is special about the words themselves, but the concept she puts forward with such absolute certainty makes me tense up in shock. "You have carried the burden of your knowledge and figuring everything out, alone. This is no longer true. If the meeting with the Ali'i goes how I expect, and you agree to share your secrets, the Ke'Kua'Okolani will owe you a debt. And even if it does not, you are my and my brother's friend." She pulls back from me and presses a palm to my chest and smiles, "We will help you as much as we can, regardless."

I'm more than a little stunned. I stare at the woman in front of me. Just the idea that somebody knows what I've been through has tears leaking from my eyes. I don't know what to say, the idea is so foreign that presenting it has almost put me into shock.

Sarah always has my back, but she doesn't really have any interest in getting more involved with the supernatural. If she hadn't known me, she would have cheerfully let all the magic and monsters deal with themselves, not getting involved at all. I always feel a little guilty about what she's done for me in light of that, and so try to keep her out of everything I can. Cait provides some information and space, but otherwise leaves me on my own. That I have somebody in my corner that not only can, but would, help with the supernatural everything is a revolutionary concept.

I try to say something, but words aren't coming no matter how hard I search for them.

Pua, though, just smiles and squeezes my shoulders before heading out the door. I stand where she left me while my brain reboots. Once I can get myself to move again I head out and, for the first time that I can remember, sit on the beach and do nothing.

I watch the waves roll in, watch kids learn to surf, and watch teenagers showing off. I don't even watch the girls specifically, I just... watch the world go by. Still, for perhaps the first time since I had been reborn.

Pua gets back to me as the sun is beginning to set. She smooths out her sarong and sits next to me in the sand and for a few minutes we watch the sunset together. When the disc of the sun vanishes behind the horizon, I glance over at her. I kind of expect her to ask why I'm just sitting around. Not because she objects to my laxity, but it's so foreign to my nature that even knowing what's happening, I'm almost wondering what's wrong with me.

She doesn't though. She just smiles at me and takes it as a signal to start speaking, "So after talking to the Ali'i and the rest of the nā mākua, elders, we have decided that if you're willing to tell us what you know, we will warn you before we act in such a way as to change things. If we interfere with a plan of yours, the Ke'Kua'Okolani will work to make up for what was lost. Depending on what you tell us, we may owe you a debt. The nature of that debt will depend on what is revealed. What we may do to repay that debt will depend on what the village must do to protect ourselves. Is this agreeable?"

I'm silent for a long few minutes. This is so different from the way I'm used to acting. To operating. On the other hand, I can use the help, Pua knows a great deal, and Ku is a fantastic teacher and sparring partner. What's more, they are both willing to help me develop what I've already accomplished. I don't know anybody else who could or would help in the same way.

One of my goals had been to gather allies.

"I... Give me some time to organize things in my head. There's..."

Pua smiles sympathetically, "It's very different from what you're used to or what you expected. Of course, take all the time you need."

"It won't be long. I'll tell you tomorrow. I just... need to think." I don't really feel right making them wait on my dithering.

So that night, instead of sleeping, I spend the night in my bed staring at the ceiling and trying to recall everything I can about the future. Or theoretical future.

###​

The next morning I sit down with Pua and Ku and tell them everything I can remember about High School DxD. Who has the Boosted Gear, and that Lucifer's little sister would get him for her peerage. About the stolen Excaliburs and Kokabiel's plan to restart the war in heaven. About the Khaos brigade and the hero faction. That Ophis had founded it to kick the Great Red out of the dimensional gap, and to that end was recruiting every strong person she could lay her hands on and empowering some of them with her own magic. That Cao Cao had both plans of his own and the True Longinus. About the plan to kidnap the only child of the Yokai faction's leader. Even a few things that I only vaguely remember mentioned, like the original Lucifer's kid throwing in with the Brigade, and an eventual war with Hades. Though who the sides were aside from the Boosted gear on one side and Hades on the other, I can't recall.

Then I point out that most of what I told them about, I'm pretty sure, is season one stuff. So just imagine how much more insane and ugly all of this is going to get as time moves forward.

Pua turns pale at several points along my explanation, Ku just frowns deeper the longer I talk. When I finish they look at each other and engage in some bizarre form of sibling telepathy.

"So what will you do?" I ask after the silence stretches further than I can stand. I think I do pretty well to only fidget for as long as I have.

"Well... I can't give you specifics, but we're probably going to hide," Pua says after another moment of thought. "We'll keep track of what's going on, but in general we'll layer as many defenses as we can over the village and try to disappear. Wars with the kind of people you're talking about are... well they're nothing that we want to be exposed to." She smiles at me slightly, "That's not an option for you though, is it? No, like I said, for this the Ke'Kua'Okolani owe you a debt."

Ku nods at his sister's words. "Pua and me, especially. We're the kind of people, much like you will be," he smirks at me, "that a lot of folks will try to recruit whether we want to be or not. Lots of the villagers would be appealing in various ways, actually."

"This warning will save a great number of our people," Pua finishes, "thank you." I blush slightly, and muttered a 'your welcome'. Pua takes pity on me and changes the subject, "Now we have a lot of work to do, we'd best get started."

I can't really blame them for not wanting anything to do with what's coming. Hell, I don't either. Still, I really hope that they manage to hide effectively. If for no other reason than having a secure location to fall back to, where none of the no-doubt many enemies I'll make can find me, sounds pretty nice. Pua and Ku as resources I can tap sounds even better.

After the explanation not much appreciably changes. Pua still works with me designing my tattoos, though she's absent more often as she starts to set up whatever defenses would make this hunk of the big island of Hawaii effectively disappear. Which, interestingly, leaves me in the position of doing a lot of the minor magical work that she'd normally handle for the villagers. It's slightly awkward, but good Script practice, and the people are friendly enough that I don't mind helping them.

At the same time, Ku starts having more time to help me out with my fighting. It's Ku that takes what I learned in dojos, studios, and the ring and starts turning it into something that will have me winning with blood, not points.

It's also Ku that introduces me to a smith on the island who can help me with the second part of my plan for combat-speed trait theft. The man in question is nominally a farrier. He has a portable forge that he works with out of the back of his truck. He turns six old, iron railroad spikes into knives for me. Working with Pua, when we can't stand to look at tattoos anymore, I develop six different versions of the extraction Script to acid etch onto the knives. We even manage to get something like intent targeting for the extraction Scripts.

So theoretically, once the tattoo is put on me, I would be able to stab something with the knife, the death would activate the Script, which would rip free whatever trait I'm focused on. The knife would then feed the extracted trait into the tattoo which would integrate it into my soul. The alterations of my soul would then be reflected on to my soul enhanced body.

Instant trait get.

Unfortunately, the script on the knives will take some testing to see which one works the best, especially with the intent targeting. Pua is sure it will work, we just aren't sure how... cleanly it will work, and the only way to know will be to try it and see.

In the end, it takes almost a year and a half of work between Pua and myself to get to the point where Pua declares the tattoo ready to be put on me. It's broken only by working with Ku, and the occasional visit to Sarah, Cait and my mom. I also send a lot of pictures to Asia. I think I've convinced her that Hawaii is actually a slice of heaven that got dropped on earth.

The tattooing itself is painful as hell. And we have to shave my head. The tattoo started on the palm of each hand with the Script to connect the tattoo to a matching piece of Script on the knife. The script then forms a line that wraps around both sides of each forearm, reconnecting at my elbows. The Script line then runs up the outside of my arms to my shoulder where it splits again. Along my front, the Script lines run along my collar bones to a Script circle around the hollow of my throat, then continue down my centerline to connect to circles around my heart, solar plexus, and just below my belly button. Along my back, the Script lines connect at the back of my neck, then run up and down my spine. Downward, the Script line eventually ends at a circle around my tailbone. Upward, the line runs to circles at the crown of my skull then continues forward to the last circle around my third eye. Every chakra was covered giving the Script even access to each spiritual center, to allow for smooth and even integration.

With long experience in mystical tattooing, Pua somehow manages to make the work look beautiful. The whole experience still sucked though. Single needle strike tattooing is horrible and takes forever. Actually putting the tattoo on me takes six hours a day, every day, for a month. When it's done and healed though it's all worth it.

I'm finally there. Everything I've worked for since literally the day I was born is finally here and starting to work.

That short list of useful targets that I can actually expect to get is finally going to see some use.

Right at the top?

Trolls.

 

[RyubosJ]

It's troll hunting season.

 

[Tersin]

Age Twenty​

Trolls are miracles of nature, as I learned going through Cait's books. They regenerate incredibly fast, regrowing a limb in as little as a month. Which is twice as fast as a lizard can regrow a tail, and a troll arm is a lot bigger than a lizard tail. They can eat almost anything organic and extract useful nutrients from it. To top it all off, their large size, dense bones, and incredibly efficient muscle tissue makes them stupidly strong. A male troll averages ten feet tall, a female is closer to twelve, though these numbers don't include their hunched posture. A fully grown troll can break a bull's neck, sling the corpse over one shoulder, and run off with it. At full speed, with no visible effort. Adult female trolls have been recorded ripping trees out of the ground to bludgeon each other with.

The thing that makes them so amazing is that all of this is purely biological. Sure, their regeneration has nothing on, say, a Phenex, nor does their strength measure up to any acceptably powerful rook. But they do all of it with no magic involved. Honestly, why trolls are hidden with the rest of the supernatural, I have no idea. They are, though, which will make poaching them much easier.

So my thinking is that if I'm eventually going to get supernatural boosts to my physical abilities, then it makes sense to get the highest starting base that I can. After all, if the rook enhancement multiplies the recipient's strength by ten, then ten times a troll's strength will leave me much better off out of the gate than my five foot one female self.

The plan was simple. I know where Troll country is in the British isles, I'd get Cait to drop me off there with a backpack, camping supplies, and everything I'd need to make Script traps. Then using my bloodhound given sense of smell, and some help from the local spirits, I'd track down some trolls, restrain or nearly kill them with Script, finish them off with one of my test knives and call it good. I wanted eight trolls total. Four for strength and four for regeneration, since Pua thinks that taking the same trait multiple times might reinforce the new part of me, if not have an outright additive effect on performance in some circumstances.

I am also, on occasion, a moron.

The plan starts to fall apart almost immediately. Cait refused to go anywhere near the British Isles for reasons she refused to explain. The best she'd do is drop me off in France, which is still better than just flying the whole way.

The second problem didn't appear until I was already in the middle of nowhere, in a British forest. While I have the sensitivity to scents of a bloodhound, my brain, thus the part processing the scents, is still entirely human. I can get all sorts of information from the scent of things. Health, age, emotional state, and a hundred other things. What I can't do is track like a bloodhound. With time, I'm learning to identify all those scents and what they mean, but the subtle gradient of scent age that indicates direction and how far behind a target I am, are utterly beyond me.

Also, I have no idea what a troll smells like.

And the last part where the plan died is the idea of eight trolls. Somehow, in all my research, I hadn't put together that as large, territorial, omnivores with predatory leanings, they would have huge territories. Thus be pretty rare and miles apart at any given point in time, at best.

Which leaves me where I am now, camped out in the forest with no real clue where I'm going. I would have been utterly screwed except once again my friends, the little spirits, came through for me. As it turns out, dryads and hamadryads have a vested interest in knowing where trolls are at all times. Just in case one comes along and tries to rip up the wrong tree.

They're more than happy to point me in the direction of as many trolls as they can find for me. Which is two. Not nearly as many as I want, but enough to get everything I want out of them.

Which means, for the moment, the most useful thing I can do is sit in my camp wishing I knew more about staying in the wild, and waiting for some nature spirit to get back to me. The early morning light is somewhat spectacular to see, but I'm cold enough that I wish I'd thought about what England is like in early autumn. So instead of drawing the fantastic scenery, I huddle next to my anemic fire and clutch my lukewarm chocolate.

Waiting is not something I'm really suited to, so I'm practically vibrating in place, or shivering, when the sound of buzzing wings fills the air. They look superficially like butterflies or dragonflies, brightly colored gossamer wings carrying the giggling creatures in a swarm around me.

Slightly awed, I hold out a hand and one of the colorful four inch tall fae lands and holds on to my thumb for balance. Soft looking lavender skin under a simple looking dress and dark blue hair make the pixie look absolutely adorable. Even for a tiny flying piranha, I think as the little fae smiles hugely up at me revealing shark like teeth.

"Big thing looking for smelly huge?" she asks, tilting her head cutely. Her voice sounds like a tinkling bell.

"Smelly huge! Smelly huge!" the rest of swarm cheers.

"Uh..." They're kind of stunning. The sound of their voices combined together with the visual cacophony of their wings to make something almost hypnotic. Shaking myself, I refocus. If I'm a 'big thing' then I guess the trolls would be 'huge', "I don't know how they smell, but huge would be an accurate description."

They cheer again and several of them grab onto my clothes and try to pull me along somewhere. Laughing, I gently pull myself free and head back to my tent, stretching as I go, my limbs stiff from the cold. "Hold on, let me get my stuff. I wouldn't want to run into the 'smelly huge' unarmed."

Ignoring the perching pixies, I collect one of the knives that Pua, the smith, and I prepared, and the Script supplies. I figure that I can figure out where the troll goes frequently and set up an ambush. Failing that, set out some bait with the same plan.

The pixies lead me into the forest in a swirling storm of colorful wings and giggles. The route they lead me on has no path attached to it and I hope they'll be willing to show me back to my campsite. Because between my own lack of knowledge and the way the pretty colors of the flitting pixies keeps drawing all my attention, I have no idea where we are.

###​

The music is something of a surprise.

I have no idea how long I've been walking, but the forest has changed as we go. The air has warmed, and bright sunlight streams through the emerald green leaves of the trees. Bird songs fill the air, providing the perfect accompaniment to the mesmerizing harp music that draws me forward. Vaguely, I wonder when the pixies had left, but it doesn't seem important.

I break out of the trees into a sunny clearing, and for a moment I'm blinded by the sudden light. I flinch backwards, holding up a hand to shield my watering eyes. Hissing, I wait for my eyes to adjust, blinking furiously.

The clearing is covered in long grass and wildflowers that fill the air with their scent. A stream meanders its way through the break in the trees, adding the pleasant sound of running water to the ambiance. In the center of the clearing is a blanket made of rich, beautiful cloth that looks as soft as clouds. A feast is laid out across it, sandwiches, meats, fruits, and pies for dessert that smell so good my mouth begins to water. Sitting on the blanket playing a lap harp is the source of the heavenly music, the most beautiful man I've ever seen.

Long, blond hair frames a finely sculpted face with the most intensely blue eyes I've ever seen. His clothes are finely made, stitched with patterns of vines and leaves in greens and blues that almost make him seem like part of the forest around him.

Then he smiles at me and it's like the clouds moved away from the sun. He stops playing, which makes me sad, then he speaks and his voice is more than musical enough to make up the difference.

"Hello, stranger, I find I have too much food and will need some help to eat it. Would you care to join me?" He waves a hand at the blanket and food.

I find myself hurrying over to him and nodding like a bobble head. I stop, blushing the moment I register what I'm doing. I don't slow down my fast walk to join him on the blanket, though. My cheeks are burning but I can't seem to stop grinning like an idiot anyway.

"Might I know the name of my lovely guest?"

"I'm... um... I'm Ericka, Ericka Rhostana," I babble out as fast as I can. Oh god, this is so embarrassing, but nobody has ever called me lovely before. I'm blushing even harder, to call me that when she... he, he's so pretty...

He leans forward and thumbs my chin, derailing any thoughts I might have, "And what brings you all the way out here, Ericka?"

Oh god, just the way he says my name makes me shiver. "I'm hunting trolls," I chirp. Ugh, that's so embarrassing.

I glance up at him through my eyelashes, fortunately he doesn't seem to hold my embarrassing noises against me. "Really?" he seems surprised, instead. Well, that's fair, who in their right mind goes hunting trolls?

I wonder what that says about me...

He slides next to me, and suddenly I can't think about anything other than how close sh... he is, "Only trolls? Not fae?"

I shake my head and smile, happy that I haven't embarrassed myself, "No. Nothing to do with the fae."

She pulls me into leaning against her side... his side, and holds a slice of some sweet tasting fruit to my lips. I bite into it letting the juice run down my throat, god that's the best thing I've ever tasted, another bite and the fruit is gone and I take another moment to suck the remaining juices off her fingers.

"Come now. Who does the Caitsidhe want you to find? You can tell me." She leans in, and I can feel her hot breath caressing my lips. My breathing speeds up, my heart pounding. I've never kissed anyone before! The one crashing of lips at HEMA doesn't count! And with the dryads that Cait introduced me to, I was more along for the ride than anything else. What if I'm bad at it? Oh god, I should have gone to more of Sarah's sleepovers, girls practice that sort of thing at sleepovers, right?

Wait, there was a question... Caitsidhe? Cait nearly tore my head off the one time I called her that. "No..." I moan, "Cait doesn't want anything here. Doesn't even want to come here."

I lean forward trying to catch her lips. She leans back from me though, teasing, just out of reach, "Now, now, I can't give you kisses until you tell me the truth." But I want kisses!

I try to catch her lips with mine, placing a hand on her chest and chasing after her lips. Hard planes of muscle under my fingers feel... not at all like a breast. My eyes snap open, I don't even remember closing them, and lips crashed into mine.

The lips are firm and insistent, sparking pleasure up and down my spine. The kiss tastes even better than the fruit.

Everything about it feels wrong.

I jerk back, a fog clearing from my mind just enough for blazing fury to ignite and burn away the rest. Blood pounds in my ears, and my fist is moving before I realize what's happening. A primal scream of rage fills the air in a voice that sounds a lot like mine.

The punch crashes into the strange man's cheek perfectly.

A crunching sound registers, and a moment later pain consumes everything from my wrist down. Right in front of me, my fist is still pressed against the strangers face, bruising already spreading across my hand, the back slightly deformed where metacarpals had visibly broken. They haven't broken the skin, fortunately, but they'd still need to be set.

The man hasn't even shifted his head. He sighs, looking a little miffed. "I've never had somebody break from an elf striking in progress from a kiss before," he comments, sounding put out. Faster than I can follow, he grabs me by the throat, lifts me from the ground, and slams me into a tree. My breath explodes from my body and my gasping for breath is halted by the hand around my neck, "How did you do that?" My feet are dangling off the ground and my hands scrabble at his arm.

Fortunately, he seems to actually want an answer as he relaxes his grip slightly, not enough for me to escape, but enough that my desperate gasping gains me some much needed oxygen.

"Don't... Like... Boys..." I gasp out.

He seems honestly confused, "Then what good are you? Don't worry, I'm sure I can fix your thinking."

What. The. Fuck.

I honestly hadn't thought that I could get any angrier, and yet here we are.

I see red.

He's standing too close to put into a standing armbar. So I try to knee him in the ribs instead.

It works better than the punch, but only in that I don't break my knee. He just sighs and slams me into the tree again. This time the back of my head connects with the tree.

My vision swims.

"Foolish little mud child." The condescension is thick enough to cut with a fork, "As if one so sad as you could harm a Sidhe of the Tuatha De Denan. Now you will tell me why the cat queen sent you. The feel of her power hangs about you like a cloak, so do not bother to lie. I will be able to tell, and you will answer my questions one way or another."

I really want to hit him again, but it hasn't really accomplished anything so far. I probably would have kept trying anyway, but something that he'd just said sparked in my brain.

Sidhe are fae.

Fae really don't like iron.

With a snarl, I arch my back to let my good left hand snake between me and the tree to grab the knife. At the same time, I try to spear his eyes with the fingers of my broken hand. Like I'd learned years ago, a poke in the eye is a poke in the eye. It also distracts him from what my other hand is doing. Yanking the knife from my belt, I pull my arm free as he jerks his head back and away from my clumsy fingers, and plunge the former iron railroad spike into the side of his neck.

Blood fountains across my hand, as a look of shock passes briefly across his face. I know the moment he dies, though. I see the slight shimmer of the subtler Script activation run from the knife and down the tattoos, just as designed. I can feel whatever the knife has taken sink into my soul.

I briefly wonder why it activated at all. I hadn't been focusing on anything.

Around me the world changes. It's early autumn again though later in the day, clouds cover the sky and the sun making the light weak. I start shivering violently, my body only now realizing how cold I am. What had been an idyllic clearing is now part of a bog, my legs are covered in mud from where I had knelt in it. There's no sign of a blanket or the feast, or even the lap harp.

I glance down at my victim as my knife slides out of my hand and he hits the ground with a thud, the look of shock still on his face... Oh god, I'd kissed him.

My gorge rises and I find myself doubled over and vomiting into the mud. I blink as brown sludge that tastes of acid and dirt falls from my mouth...

Oh god, how did that sludge get in my mouth... In my stomach? The only thing I've eaten is the fruit... what had that fruit he'd fed me actually been?

I fall to my knees heaving, trying not to see the mud and dead leaves I cough up.

I fail.

I heave until nothing more comes up, and then heave a few more times just for the hell of it.

My misery is interrupted by the sound of buzzing wings. I feel a little ashamed of myself that I can't remember where I've heard the sound before. Then I actually see the pixie swarm flitting through the mostly dead trees. I recognize the hypnotic patterns for what they are this time, and quickly look away.

"Strange big killed pretty big!" one of them shrills. I'm not an expert on pixie speak, but that doesn't sound good, "Strange big, stinky big!" Very not good, "Get stinky big!"

Well, crap.

Painfully pushing myself to my feet, I get ready to run, only to find it's too late. Earlier I had compared the pixies to tiny flying piranha. I had no idea how accurate that was until just now. They spin around me, a vortex of colorful wings and sharp claws and teeth.

"Stinky Big!" they heckle and shout, darting in and out, scratching and biting, then darting away before I can do more than swat at them. I flail, the skill that I worked so hard for my entire life abandons me in my panic, and from the cold and concussion. Desperately, I hunch my head and try to protect my eyes. I've lost them once already and doing so again doesn't sound like much fun.

I stumble backwards, almost tripping when my heel hits something heavy that certainly doesn't feel like wood. Cracking my eyes and glancing down I see my railroad spike knife still buried in the unnamed Sidhe's neck. It had worked on one fae, why not more? I quickly drop, actually avoiding a few of the little monsters with the unexpected movement. As soon as I get my hand around the hilt, I spring to my feet and start lashing out around me again, this time far more effectively.

Using the flat of the blade like a fly swatter actually works fairly well. The iron weapon does enough damage on impact to take individuals out of the fight. The pixies also left contact with the blade fast enough, that if I actually kill any of them, the Script doesn't trigger. Which I count as a good thing. I have no idea what I'd absorbed from the Sidhe.

Still, the little beasts are tearing me apart, when the entire forest seems to groan. The trees twist in a way that has nothing to do with the wind. Several branches seem to reach out and swat a pixie that got too close from the air. The wind shifts and grows cold, and a moment later a cacophony of sound fills the air as a flock of crows come over the tops of the trees and descend on the pixie swarm.

The swarm shrieks in fear and flees, leaving me barely standing, exhausted, shivering violently, bleeding from thousands of tiny cuts and bite marks all over my body, and covered in mud. I can barely hold onto the knife in my hand.

I look up and see a beautiful woman in a dress made of autumn leaves. I smile slightly at the hamadryad that had agreed to help me find the trolls. She walks casually across the bog, none of the mud sticking to her.

She quickly reaches my side and rests a warm hand on my shoulder, "I had thought the plan was for you to wait for me at your camp?" Her voice sounds pleasantly of rustling leaves, babbling brooks, and bird song. She also sounds something between amused and concerned.

"Yeah," I croak, "Damn pixies caught me with glamor or something." My vision is swimming and darkness is creeping in at the edges.

"Can you walk, young witch?" My reply is to begin falling over, forcing her to catch me and lower me to the ground. Somehow my addled brain produces the thought that, in other circumstances, this might have been rather romantic, her cradling my head in the crook of her arm while my upper body leans against her. "I'll take that as 'no'. I will carry you to your camp, then."

"Thank you," I wheeze, "I'll owe you one."


"Then I shall perform the task well, and remember the debt," is the last thing I hear before the darkness takes me.

 

[SCO]

I'm here for when book 2 starts, because i prefer SV. Meme watch.

 

[Young Pyromancer]

Then I shall perform the task well, and remember the debt." Is the last thing I hear before the darkness takes me.

Click to shrink...

Whoops.
...so either this was a minor thing, since a random minor fey isn't actually that bad, unless it trades her debt to something else, or this was PLANNED, and someone's in a whole lot of trouble.

 

[Tersin]

I awake feeling terrible, not knowing why, or for a moment even, how exactly. Slowly the day before filters into my brain and the world begins to make sense again. My stomach is cramping from whatever I'd eaten while under the effect of the Sidhe's illusion, and the pixies had done their damnedest to kill me by a thousand cuts.

In short, I feel awful.

I'm in my tent. Somebody has removed my muddy clothing and tucked me in. Outside my tent there's the sound of humming, which nearly sends me into a panic thinking the Sidhe has found me again.

After a moment, though, the way the humming lacks structure, blends with the sounds of the woods, and doesn't force my attention or awe, makes me relax. I still wonder who it could be though. So I slowly crawl my way out of the sleeping bag, wincing at the way the small wounds pull as I move. Already a lot of the little cuts and bites are beginning to itch in a way that makes me very nervous. I dress as quickly as I can, adding extra layers for warmth, then head out of the tent.

Outside the tent, the autumn morning light is bright and the sky is clear. My camp fire is going strong, casting much needed warmth into the area around it. Sitting next to the fire, tending it, is the hamadryad, humming softly to herself, accompanying the natural sounds of the woods.

The hamadryad is tending the fire, her soft humming accompanying the natural sounds of the woods.

"Good morning," she says, stopping her 'song', if it could be called that. She turns to look at me, smiling the way most nature spirits do that don't deal with humans a lot. Like they know what the gesture is and what it means, but it isn't a part of them like it is a human. Like they have to remind themselves they aren't baring their teeth, "I stayed the night to make sure nothing else tried to take advantage of you. I would have made breakfast, but human food makes little sense to me."

I shake my head and smile weakly back at her as I set about preparing the instant oatmeal I brought, "That's fine. I honestly didn't expect any of this. Especially not the fire, which is very nice."

She gives me a much more natural close lipped smile, "While a tree may fear fire, the forest knows it has its uses." I nod in understanding. Forest fires burn trees, but renew forests. A matter of scale, I guess.

"Do you know what you want for the debt?" I ask. A hamadryad isn't a fae, so I'm not too worried about owing her. Nature spirits are pretty alien, the things they want rarely make sense to humans, and even when they do they usually don't matter. I'd once spent a week figuring out how to shift the course of a river by two feet for a naiad.

I still have no idea why.

The exceptions, of course, are when they want something like a dam destroyed, or all the loggers in a lumber camp turned into beavers. I hadn't taken either of those jobs. The first, because just... no. Jobs like that are how you end up on terrorist watch lists. The second, because I have no idea where I'd even start trying to do something like that.

I have added transformations to my list of things to figure out, though.

The hamadryad shakes her head, "No. I will hold this until I have some task worthy of you."

I nod, that's fairly common. Using a favor owed from somebody like me to heal a random tree would be a waste, "Alright, let the debt for transportation to my camp while I was helpless, and watching over me while I recovered, while at no risk to yourself, lay quiet until called."

She nods, agreeing with how I define the debt, thus defining what I could be called on for.

"Do you still intend to hunt trolls in your current state? I have the information you wanted, if you wish to proceed."

I hesitate, thinking. My original plan was to get strength first, figuring that it would make taking down a second troll easier. Now though, I need that regeneration if I expect to recover any time soon. Or at all. I've only had a night's rest but many of the wounds I can see on my hands and arms are already turning red. Infections can be lethal out here.

I suppose that I can craft a transport Script and head back to Cait or Pua. Either of them would be able to patch me up. That would take time, though, weeks if not months of no progress, when I'm so close to the finish line.

I'll still go back if I can't bag the troll I'm after on my first try. I'm still largely functional, and if I succeed, I'll be fine in minutes at best, hours at most.

And I'm very much ready to stand on my own.

Still, I think I'll craft the transit Script now while I'm at my best, so if something goes wrong, all I'll have to do is activate it. Some part of me is reminded of pre-dialing 911 and then proceeding to blow myself up repeatedly in the kitchen when I was younger. I ignore that part, as it's clearly insane.

So I look up at my breakfast companion and nod, "Let me finish eating, and then get a few things ready, and we'll go." The forest spirit across from me only nods.

###​

The hamadryad really came through for me and found two trolls, a male and a female. I decide to take the male first, since it'll be the smaller of the two. Some part of me thinks that trying to differentiate between the ten foot tall mass of muscle and the twelve foot tall mass of muscle, when I'm five one and likely suffering from blood loss, poisoning and seemingly infections, is somewhat ridiculous. Still, it's a place to start.

The hamadryad delivers me to an open space on a game trail that the troll frequents, and I set about preparing my ambush. First things I put in place are a series of trap Scripts, all centered around a central point on the game trail. When activated they'll... chain, for lack of a better word, the troll in place. No physical chains will be involved, but each Script will exert a powerful attractive force on anything caught in their line of effect. Theoretically, between the dozen or so I'm attaching to trees, the troll will be caught in enough conflicting pulls to be rendered immobile. All of these are connected to what I call Script fuses. Long strips of twisted paper with nothing but connecting Script on them, that will lead back to the beginning of the Script story and the energy gathering Script, from where I'll be waiting. Theoretically allowing me to set the Scripts off from cover without having to confront the troll directly. The Script fuses are incredibly obvious, so I'm counting on troll's legendary stupidity to let me get away with this.

Now, Scripts activate quickly, but not really at battle speed unless they're fueled by a sacrifice. The energy gathering Script takes just a couple of extra seconds. In a fight, though, a couple of extra seconds are seconds too long. So I need some way of getting the troll to stand and wait where I want it to until everything goes off. For that, I turn to something I've only just started experimenting with, illusion Scripts.

Illusion Scripts are, honestly, extremely limited. Anything with any complexity at all takes days to write out, and even then they're very static. Whatever I produce can't be changed after writing it down, so the illusions very much followed a... script.

Ow.

Visual illusions are right out. Getting enough detail to make what I produce look like anything other than a cartoon is something I haven't managed yet. Auditory illusions are easier, especially if I can imitate something, but again, can't change or adapt or respond to changing circumstances. All of this would become much simpler if I could find or derive the Script symbols for specific objects, rendering the equivalent of pages of description down to a single symbol.

Those name symbols are very hard to come by, though, and even if I had all of them it wouldn't make the illusion any more flexible.

Scent based illusions, though, are something I've had a remarkable amount of success with. I never would have thought of them before I upgraded my own sense of smell, but they are surprisingly easy, and what I'll be using as bait.

Right where all my trap Scripts are pointing, I lay down the Script for an illusion of the smell of fresh meat. Trolls are absolutely willing to kill something for food, but if the opportunity presents itself, they are lazy enough to be perfectly happy for something else to do the work of getting their food for them. The smell of a free meal will draw the troll in. Hopefully, it will proceed to where the scent is strongest, right over the illusion Script, and then stand there trying to figure out where the free lunch is. Ideally, the troll will stand there at least long enough for the trap Scripts to activate.

Once trapped, I can take my time and pick one of a troll's few weaknesses to stick my knife in.

That was the original plan anyway. In my current diminished state, though, I think I might need some extra help. Destructive Scripts aren't something I use much. They take forever to set up and I have to be nearly on top of them to activate them, usually leaving me in the area of effect. My one experiment with the lightning-calling Script had been more than enough to encourage me to look for more subtle applications. They tend to both work better and be safer.

Now, though, I'll need something to soften up the troll for me. Fortunately, while difficult to apply, destructive Scripts are spectacularly effective. In this case, I need something that will get me through a troll's primary defense. Primary defense aside from being large, strong, and angry. So around the bait Script, I lay another that will, if it works, remove the skin of anything inside it's area of effect. An area I spend extra time defining very precisely.

It takes me most of the day to lay everything out. Once I have, though, there's nothing left to do but activate the illusion, lay out the fuses behind me as I move into a tree, trusting that trolls, like most other things, never look up, and wait.

###​

I wake to the sound of something crashing through the woods. It's dark and cold, but thanks to my cat's eyes, the dim light really doesn't matter to me. The cold matters more, especially since I strangely both feel hot and am shivering at the same time.

Pretty sure I'm running a fever.

Whatever's moving through the trees is very big and moving in my direction. I shift slightly, getting ready and watching where my illusion Script still produces the scent of a fresh kill. It seems a little odd to be excited about the giant thing headed in my direction. Like this is the point where the audience is yelling at the heroine to run in a horror movie. Not that my life is a horror movie. I still have fond dreams of getting powerful enough for monsters to run at the sight of me.

Off to one side of my hiding place a tree is pushed to the side, its trunk cracking and popping, as a large shape steps past it onto the game trail. It stands taller than me by a ridiculous margin, even hunched over. Claws drag on the ground from heavily muscled and too long arms, thick legs like tree stumps complement its movement, stomping with every step. Its head juts forward from its neck in a smooth line, it's skull almost bullet shaped. Small, beady eyes are set deep into its skull, and its large mouth hangs open slightly, drool dripping from peg-like teeth.

My gaze, though, is focused on the back of its neck. One of the few weaknesses of the troll species is that their spines haven't quite caught up, evolution-wise, with their hunched posture. So the spine is curved in a way that forces the vertebrate to separate. If you can get through the leathery skin, getting a knife into the spine there is relatively easy. I just have to remember to leave the knife there until the thing is completely dead, or it'll just get up again in an hour or two.

The troll pauses at the edge of the small open space, and some feline instinct that came with either the eyes or the reflexes, has me crawling on trembling arms and legs onto a branch that stretches out closer to where the illusion Script is.

The troll raises its snout into the air snuffling wetly. I freeze on the branch. The troll stomps closer to the bait Script and pauses. I lean forward slightly confused, what's it... it's looking at the fuse.

Oh crap... maybe trolls aren't as dumb as I'd thought, which could be a problem.

It leans forward to snuffle at the twisted strip of paper, then starts to look around.

I'm not here, I'm not here. I chant over and over again in my head and go completely still. I'm not here...

For a moment I feel like I'm engaging in some great effort. My lungs burn, my heart hammers, and sweat rolls down my face.

The troll looks right at me, then keeps looking around, sniffing, without pausing.

I have no idea what just happened, but at the moment I don't care. I'm not here, I'm not here.

Finally, the troll keeps moving forward, continually scenting the air, until it stands almost on top of the illusion Script. Carefully, I cut my thumb and began whispering the Script.

I'm not here, I'm not here.

Finally, the Scripts activate and the troll jerks, pulled in too many directions at once. The moment the Scripts light up, I press my bloody thumb against the second fuse to activate the last Script and hold my breath. For several panicked and strained beats of my heart nothing happens. Then the troll explodes.

Flesh splits and flies off the troll like scraps of a popping balloon. Skin is flung for distance, and with a not insignificant amount of force. The troll howls in pain as its armor is torn from it. Only my enhanced reflexes allow me to lean out of the way of a hunk of skin that continues upwards to shatter a branch as big around as my arm. I may have overdone one of the descriptors in that Script. That piece of skin probably would have taken my head off had it hit me. Still, a moment later the mass of leathery skin below me is replaced with an equal mass of strange, slick, wet, grey muscle and black bones.

I drop from the tree. The next knife to be tested is gripped tightly in my hand. I land on the creature's back and for a moment my boots slide across wet, exposed muscle, and then I fall. My knife plunges downwards, but skips off bone. For a moment I think I'll be caught in my own trap, but then the knife sinks into muscle leaving me hanging from one hand. The troll under me roars, throwing itself back and forth, barely moving at first, but gaining more and more slack as my traps slowly begin to burn out. I use the knife to pull myself up until I can kneel somewhat stably on it's hunched shoulders. Carefully, I line the knife up with the gap in it's spine now exposed, though for how long I'm not sure. I can already see skin beginning to regrow across its body. My arms tremble and feel weak, so I lunge forward and land on the knife with all my weight.

The knife sinks home. The troll goes limp where it stands, held up only by the trap, and I only just manage to hang on to the hilt as I slip again. I hang there across the troll's back, gasping, feeling awful, and focusing as hard as I can on what I want.

It takes far too long for the damn thing to die. By the time it does I've slipped into a state somewhere between meditative trance and fever dream. The idea of healing and regeneration is easy to keep in mind though. I'm shivering and aching all over and the desire to feel better is about all I can think of.

When the troll finally dies, the effect is dramatic.

Once again I feel the Script tattoos activate, something flowing through them, distributing itself to my chakras and sinking into my soul. Unlike whatever I'd gotten from the fae, though, this time I feel my body twist and writhe in response, a million little things altering spontaneously. It feels like ants crawling all over the underside of my skin.

Then I start feeling better. My fever breaks almost at once, the red fading from the hundreds of little cuts and bite marks before they, too, fade away. Slowly, I can see the scar on my thumb, where I've cut myself over and over again to activate my Scripts, fade away.

A giggle forces its way out of my throat. Holy shit, it worked! Already feeling so much better, I pull myself to my feet, standing on the still upright troll. If I stay where I am I'll fall asleep, and I have no desire to sleep on a corpse. The hamadryad will be by in the morning to guide me back to my camp, so I can rest before going after the last troll she's found. I honestly can't wait, my sleeping bag sounds heavenly right about now.

Also food.

Suddenly I'm really, really hungry.

###​

After eating six power bars, a night's sleep, and another couple of bowls of oatmeal, I'm ready to get back to hunting.

Also, I miss showers.

I set up my next ambush pretty much exactly like the first one. It worked after all, and as my new troll healing has gotten me back to one hundred percent, it should be even easier. I'd done the last troll while in the midst of a fever that probably had me half out of my mind, after all. This will be a cinch.

The trap Scripts have gone up in good positions, the illusion Script is easily placed, and I find the descriptor I'd put too much emphasis on in the flaying script last time. I hide up in a tree again with the ends of the fuses and settle in. This troll even has the courtesy to show up much faster than the last one. Otherwise, its entrance is the same. Lots of stomping and snuffling the air. This one, being a female, is two feet taller and has tusks, but otherwise it really looks much the same as the last troll. It even spots the fuse like the last one had. I'm much more relaxed this time, though. The last troll hadn't spotted me even when following the fuses. I see no reason the same won't happen here.

Then it looks up and everything goes to shit.

It gives a howling roar and smashes the branch I'm on, and me, off the tree. I hit the ground and roll, narrowly avoiding getting clipped by the branch. I pop to my feet and have to immediately fling myself to the side again to avoid the charging troll. Rolling to my feet, I watch as the beast crashes through a tree, reducing it to splinters. It turns, digging its fore claws into the ground, its hind legs skewing around until it faces me again.

In spite of everything going wrong, and facing down something that I have no business fighting, I find myself smiling. Normally after a hit and fall like that I'd be bruised and sore at the very least, but I can already feel the bruises fading. I feel great, honestly. Which is why when the troll charges me again, I charge it back.

I have no intention of meeting the troll head on, but the unusual action actually causes the troll to stumble slightly. It's probably never seen anything charge it back before. At the last moment I dive off to the side, rolling back to my feet as fast as I can, and run after it. With it already slowing to turn, I catch up quickly and fling myself at its back. My leap lands me on the things lower back, but it does the skew turn again and I'm flung off.

That isn't going to work, is it?

The trick with trolls is that if what you hit them with doesn't at least disable them outright, then you're just wasting time, and there are only three ways to do that aside from overwhelming power. The spine, the weakness I'd used on the last troll, is less useful when I can't ambush it, and it still has its skin. The eyes, if you have something narrow enough to get through the eye sockets, which my knives aren't. Or going up through the mouth, which involves getting in its mouth. They tend to bite and while you'll still kill it, the hand you use is pretty much a write-off.

...Of course, I have just gotten some serious regeneration, so even if I lose the hand I'll get it back...

I can't believe I'm seriously considering this.

I duck the troll's claw as it swings at me and try to stick too close to it for a charge. I'll hopefully only need one shot at this. I'm not sure, regeneration or not, that I'll get the opportunity for a second. It flails at me, its swings big, looping, and obvious, which is the only reason I haven't been hit again. It honestly feels like riding a wave surrounded by rocks. I can't think about what I'm doing or I'll fall. I just have to keep going forward, staying ahead of failure by only the scantest of inches.

And like the wave, if I fall off I'll get broken badly, a thought driven home as I watch one of it's missed strikes reduce a tree to splinters.

Finally, it leans forward to roar at me, out of frustration I think, and I lunge. Before I can think about what I'm doing, I stuff my right hand, with the knife, into its wide open mouth. I drive the point of the blade upwards as hard as I can. I don't do more than nick it, the palate bone too tough for me to force my way through, even as thin as it is.

Then it bites down.

I scream as flesh tears, and the bones in my arm are crushed. At the same time it forces its jaws closed, sending the blade of the knife through bone and into its brain. It collapses to the ground, jerking me after it, causing me to scream again.

Broken bones and crushed bones in no way feel the same. A part of me, a large part, wants to just lie there and sob.

I can't afford to, though.

So I remind myself that it'll heal, and quickly. That the wound is nowhere near as bad as it would have been yesterday, I would recover, and unless I want all of this to be a waste, I have to move.

I carefully extract my right hand from the troll's mouth. I can't let go of the knife, I can't feel my hand. I can't grip the knife either, though. So all I can do is grit my teeth and pull as straight out as possible. The skin, thus the tattoo, is shredded. My hand flops, the bones of my forearm, reduced to powder, can't hold it up. I try not to think about how much that hurt and quickly thrust my intact left hand into the troll's mouth. Gripping the knife with an intact tattoo, I wait for it to finish dying, focusing on its strength.

Minutes later the Script activates. I'm getting used to the feeling of the tattoos working, it actually feels kind of nice. Though whether that's in my head or not, I can't say.

There's a ripping sound as my body changes again to match my soul. It felt like a really good stretch. Then I feel the cool breeze with an odd intensity. I open my eyes and look down at myself. Trying not to look at my injured arm.

I'm naked.

I'm naked, and surrounded by shreds of fabric that look suspiciously like my clothing.

I'm also ripped. I've always been in fantastic shape, but now I'm huge. Built like a female bodybuilder, really.

Rolling to my knees, I pull my left arm out of its mouth, and carefully let my injured arm dangle to keep it as straight as possible. With my intact hand and a foot, I pry the troll's jaw open with surprising ease. Recovering my knife is slightly more awkward one handed, but I manage. The knife is twisted and ruined, but I'm still not going to just leave it lying around.

Standing, I feel dizzy for a moment, like I've stood up too quickly, and something in my torso twinges painfully for just a moment. Shaking my head to clear it, both sensations fade and I swear softly. Female bodybuilder is an understatement and not at all what I want. This will have to be mitigated somehow, I'm going to be too bulky to move easily and...

I hit my head on a branch and stumble backwards.

...There are no branches low enough for my tiny self to hit my head on...

I have a terrible thought, and turn to look at the troll.

What the fuck!? I'm huge! Not as tall as the female troll by a good few feet still, but the difference isn't nearly what it should be.

I don't know how tall I am, but it has to be pushing the upper edge of what's humanly possible. I need to do something about this fast.

I also need to eat.

A lot.

Damn, I'm hungry.

 

[RyubosJ]

Ericka, Ericka. Your bad habits are showing.

 

[Young Pyromancer]

Hm.
Plot was a little predictable. Still, I don't see another way working, and both the Sidhe and the pixie attack were pretty cool and unexpected, so I guess being a bit boring's fine here.

 

[Tersin]

"You are still almost exactly nine feet tall," Cait says, rerolling the measuring tape and hopping off the chair she'd climbed onto to reach my head. There had been some concern that I would continue to grow. Neither of us can figure out why, if I had taken the troll's height, I'm only nine feet as opposed to the troll's twelve.

I'm largely ignoring her moving around me, though. I'm distracted by a sheaf of papers, the results of an analysis Script on myself, in one hand and a sandwich in the other. I've found that about five full meals a day keeps me running without issue. It's a lot of food, and I'll probably need to do something about it eventually, but it's workable for the moment.

"Have you figured out what happened yet?" Cait asked, apparently tired of being ignored.

I sigh through my nose and swallow, "I don't know enough about medicine to know everything that's happened to me. I know my bones and muscles are extremely dense, and no longer even remotely human. Probably a lot of other things that I don't know enough to spot. My theory is that somewhere in the back of my head, a troll's size was an essential contributor to its strength. So when I focused on the trait I wanted, I got everything that I thought made it up, too."

I start to sit, then stop myself. In addition to being nine feet tall I weigh considerably more than any of Cait's chair's load tolerance. I've already broken three without thinking, and Cait has promised me that if I break another she won't feed me any more until I replace them.

On an unrelated note, the floors of Cait's book shop are quite comfortable.

"So you got huge," Cait said, looking at me, hands on her hips.

"So I got huge," I agree. "So when are you going to answer my question?"

"What question?" Cait actually sounds like she has no idea what I'm talking about, in spite of the fact that I've already repeated the question three times in the last several days it's taken my arm to heal.

"Why did a Sidhe of the Tuatha De Denan want to know where you are so badly they'd try to scramble my brains to find out? And why were they so sure that I'm an agent of yours?"

"To be fair, you're human and have nothing that would make them hesitate. A Sidhe would try to enslave you to get a bucket of water. Humans have very little value to them," Cait points out. "So what's your next step?"


I glare at her. The expression might have lost some of its impact from the sandwich in my mouth, though. "You're not going to answer the question, are you?" I grumble.


Cait smiles at me. Stretching onto her toes, she bumps my forehead with hers before rubbing her cheek against mine, "No, Kitten, not yet. Hopefully not ever." She finishes quietly enough that if I hadn't enhanced my hearing I wouldn't have heard it. After a moment, during which my glare never falters even if I do keep eating, she sighs, "I know I fucked up Kitten, and I will make it up to you, I promise. Does the why of it really matter, though? You're not going back to Britain, and you killed the only one who knew your name or had seen you. It won't come up again. Let the past lie, please." Cait's gaze goes vague and distant, and she shudders crossing her arms, clutching at herself. I reach forward to touch her shoulder, worried. But she shook off whatever memory had consumed her and is back to normal in an instant. "Now, what's your next move?"

I sigh, but give up. It's hard to stay mad at Cait after everything she's done for me, and even more so with how she treats me. I can still manage irritated, though, so I glare at her again, an expression she meets with continued feline indifference. "I'm looking into things with supernatural beauty."

Cait raises a single eyebrow, "Beauty?"

I blush hard, and shrug. "Well, it looks like totally eliminating the physical alterations from this would reduce the effect massively. Especially because the size was an integral part of the strength in my mind when the trait was taken, separating them would be... difficult, and at best only fix this situation. So the best way to regain, and maintain, a mostly human appearance going forward, is to get something that will actively counteract negative mutations," I explain, not looking at Cait. "Given that reliable descriptions of most things with some form of enhanced appearance change to match the standard of beauty of the time, there must be some form of active effect on their appearance. Hopefully, that will work against negative alterations to my shape and appearance."

"And you want to feel pretty for once," Cait adds.

"And I want to feel pretty." Whatever, I'm still a girl, I'm allowed to be vain, even if I never have been before. Especially if it also helps me towards my goals, "At least, even if this doesn't work like I hope it will, I'll still look good however I end up. Unlike..." I wave to my body, currently 'dressed' in a bed sheet tunic.

"So what are you looking at?" Cait settles herself into my lap, sprawling like a cat and looking up at me.

I roll my eyes, but can't stop my smile, "You're enjoying this size difference way too much. The obvious choices are devils and fallen angels. But both tend towards the lush seductress look, which is very much not my preferred style. So I looked at other supernatural beauties. Dryads are more my preferred body type, the athletic kind of sexy. But..."

"But you have a lot of dryad friends, and they've helped you a lot," Cait finishes.

"That, and I'm kind of worried with what happened after the sacrifice. I don't really want the small spirits to turn on me. I know they're a lot more accepting of killing for necessity, especially if you only take what you need. But still."

"So no dryads," the cat fae prompts me along.

"So no dryads," I agree, "so I started looking at other things with a similar body plan, and found..." I try to reach where I've left the books on the floor but can't quite reach, and can't really move with Cait sprawled on me. "Do you mind?" I look down at her.

"Nope." She doesn't move an inch.

"Fine," I sigh, "I need to get some telekinesis. I found sirens, like the Greek monsters that tried to get Odysseus. Granted, most of their ability to influence people came from their voices, but they are described as having entrancing beauty as well. I'm working off the assumption that they have to make some concessions to aerodynamics so they can't be..." I made a gesture out from my chest.

"Too in the way?" Cait offers. I nod, my blush still hasn't faded. "So Greece?"

"Yup. Don't suppose you'll give me a ride this time?" I poke her in the stomach.

She bats my hand away and pops to her feet heading for the faerie trode. "You coming?" she calls over her shoulder.

Cats.

###​

Siren's aren't hard to find, their location is pretty clearly spelled out in the Odyssey. Also, unnaturally beautiful, winged, and bird-footed women hanging out on sea cliffs singing, are hard to miss. That being said, getting close enough to kill them is harder, especially for me. Or rather, getting close to them with my mind intact. My enhanced hearing means that Odysseus' solution for his crew of waxed cotton isn't really going to cut it for me.

Fortunately, modern technology has my back. Earplugs crafted to specifically fit my ear's internal geometry blocks almost everything, battery-powered noise-canceling headphones take care of the rest, and inscribing both with a Script for silence will hopefully be overkill.

Aeaea is a beautiful island, largely green, with sheer stone cliffs leading to hidden beaches protected by sunken rocks. Summer would be the perfect time to be here, but the Mediterranean climate makes it pretty nice even in early autumn. The air is warm and the water looks blue and inviting. Those beaches are also where the Sirens like to hang out, sunning themselves on the sand and watching for ships to tempt to their doom. Coming at them from the sea, while easy in the sense that they would come to you, is also deeply stupid. You don't sneak up on somebody from in front of them.

Which is why I'm slowly climbing down one of the cliffs towards where a flock of Sirens are lounging, trying not to be noticed. I'm not here, I'm not here, I chant to myself, straining more than I really should be climbing down this cliff. Then again, I am significantly heavier than I was the last time I tried climbing something. Sure, I'm stronger too, but strength to weight ratios are far more important in climbing than just how much you can lift. Hopefully this will fix that issue too.

Down on the beach, one of the Sirens glances around curiously, like they'd just heard something. I press myself to the cliff face, I'm not here, I'm not here, I'm horribly exposed clinging to the light colored stone. I'm pretty much depending on them not looking up to get the drop on them.

After a moment the Siren shrugs and turns back to the important business of getting as much sun as she can.

I let out a breath and keep climbing, wincing slightly as it feels like something inside of me catches against something else, and pulls painfully. The feeling fades after a moment or two, though, and I keep going.

I'm not here, I'm not here.

I drop onto the sand silently and start to creep in the Siren's direction. It's a little odd moving around not hearing anything. I've gotten used to my new senses with Ku's help, and now I feel the absence of my sonar-worthy hearing far more than I would have my normal hearing.

I'm not here...

Somehow, I manage to creep up right behind them without the Sirens noticing anything. They're really very pretty, I'm happy to see. Sleek athletic curves that go well with broad wings they have spread to catch as much of the warm sun as they can. Their lack of clothes also display everything, and I'm also happy to see that I was right about the... volume of their assets. The bird feet are a little off-putting, but hardly a deal breaker. Not something I'll be acquiring, but hardly the worst catch I've seen attached to supernatural beauty.

Their hair is intense, with colors that, while not natural on humans, aren't as overdone as some supernaturals I've seen. The hair also goes well with their eyes, all gorgeous jewel tones...

They're looking right at me...

How long have I been standing here admiring them?

Fuck.

They look like they are saying something, but my various auditory precautions seem to be working. The looks on their faces might be confused with something seductive, but with my various sensory enhancements I've gotten rather good at telling what people are feeling, and they smell pissed.

Getting angrier by the moment, too.

Fuck it, stealth is screwed. Maybe I can get one of them before they take off, though. I lunge forward, the next test knife smoothly drawn from my improvised belt. The Sirens open their mouths unnaturally wide, and mid-lunge I'm swatted away from them by the hand of an angry god.

My knife goes flying and I hit the ground a few feet back. My entire front side feels bruised, much like when I'd taken the stray devil's ribbit of doom. I pull myself to my feet as quickly as I can, the bruising already fading.

Note to self, they can do more than entrance with their voices.

This is turning out to be much harder than I thought it would be, and in a different way too. I figured that if I was going to be spotted, it would be while I was still on the cliff.

The Sirens have taken to the air and are hovering over the beach, their beauty marred by the snarling expressions and mouths full of very pointy teeth. We stare at each other for a long moment. I spot my knife out of the corner of my eye and lunge for it.

I short-stop myself as the sand in front of me explodes upwards from some sonic assault. The Sirens are circling me now, flinging pulses of sound at me from out of my reach. I really need to get myself some ranged options. In desperation, I grab a loose stone and fling it at one of the flying women as hard as I can. Which is a good bit harder than I'm expecting, I'm still getting used to my new strength. The stone misses what I'm aiming at, center mass, but punches a hole clean through the wing it hit instead.

The Siren plummets to the sand, and like it was a signal, the Sirens completely lose it. They dive at me swinging their taloned feet forward, coming after me like I'm a mouse or something, sending me into frantic dodges. I dive left, roll to my feet and immediately fall backwards, again narrowly avoiding talons, one of which could easily wrap around my head. I have to abort the roll as one further away nearly hits me with another sound blast.

In spite of the continual close calls, and the few times that they catch me, drawing deep gouges that ooze blood for a few moments before slowly pulling themselves shut or leaving bruises that fade even faster, I'm smiling. This is much more like the kind of fight I'm trained for. Really, they never should have come within arms reach of me.

Finally getting my feet under me, I slip the next dive bomb, my hand snapping out and grabbing the Siren by the ankle. A quick jerk downwards sends the bird-woman face first into the sand. The unnatural angle of her head tells me that her neck isn't up to taking her own momentum.

They come at me faster then, but I've hit my stride. I slip between a set of grasping talons, ignoring the lines of blood drawn across my chest and back, and throw my first punch in a fight with my new strength. I can feel her rib cage snapping like popcorn as my fist impacts her chest, with my muscle and her dive behind it.

I backhand another out of the air as she tries to take me from behind. I pivot around a third, duck under her wings, and send her into the beach with a hammer fist. A stomp on her wing makes sure she isn't going anywhere.

I turn just in time to take a pair of fisted talons to the face. The blow knocks me on my ass and breaks my nose. My return to my feet is somewhat slower this time, and not just because I take a moment to straighten my nose. Wait... do I even need to do that any more? I'm pretty sure that troll regeneration will set bones somehow, but at the moment I can't remember.

The Siren that's just gotten me is diving for me again, an ugly look on her otherwise pretty face. I manage to slip between her talons and catch her around her middle into a classic hip throw. I fall backwards into an ugly, but effective, modified arm bar on her wing that snaps it like a twig. The pain of the broken wing stuns her long enough for me to straddle her and begin a ground and pound. I get in two punches which she manages to mostly avoid by jerking her head to one side then the other, before she opens her mouth, and something hits me in the face.

It feels like every capillary in my face pops at once and the blow knocks me upright just in time for another Siren to snatch me off her flock mate. This time I scream as talons as long as my hand dig into both shoulders and pull me off the ground.

I try to reach up and break a leg or something to get her to let me go, but I feel something catch and pull inside my torso and I can't lift my arms enough to do anything. Instead, I'm slowly pulled into the air, jerked higher one wing beat at a time. Each wing beat also sends a burning lance of pain through me everywhere the bird woman's talons are driven into me.

Finally, the siren reaches the height she wants and dives, again taking me with her. Even through the haze of pain, what it's doing is pretty obvious. She's going to let me go and pull up at the last moment, cratering me into the beach. I have no idea how I can stop her, so instead I try to reach for the Siren's legs again. This time nothing catches and I get her by the ankles. So when she tries to let go of me, she comes along for the ride anyway.

I hit the ground hard enough to white out for a moment. Even half unconscious, I struggle to regain my feet, trying not to scream again as I pull myself off the siren's talons. If I look like I'm down for the count, or even sufficiently weakened, they'll either kill me or grab their wounded and flee. Either would be bad. My vision begins to clear as I gain my feet, which makes standing much easier. My headphones have been lost somewhere in the fight, but my ear plugs are still in place. The Sirens aren't really trying for anything as subtle as mesmerism anymore anyway.

The Siren that pulled me into the air had hit the ground in front of me and had broken like a bag of dry twigs when she did. I turn and glare up at the remaining flock. They hover there in the air, staring at me with hate, but they aren't diving anymore.

Which is fair. I just dropped five of them and I'm still standing, the wounds in my shoulders visibly closing. I'm careful not to show how my stomach is attempting to digest my spine.

We stare each other down for several minutes, before they turn and fly away. I'd say fled, but they don't really give off that impression, more like I've proven that I'm not worth the effort. They do leave me what I came for, though.

I retrieve my knife and move back over to the Siren that I'd been snatched off of. This is harder than the trolls had been. She looks remarkably human, aside from the wings, feet, and coloration. Her expression of pain is something that could have been on a human face.

I don't hesitate though. This is what I've committed to, what I've been driving for. I can't afford to stumble on this path or I'll never make it to the end. The knife goes into the Siren's chest, and immediately I feel the change. Much faster than having to wait for the troll to give up and die.

My body pulls inwards, less like I'm losing mass, and more like I'm being compacted. Hopefully I'll actually lose enough weight to sit in a chair again.

I really miss chairs.

Moments after it starts, the changes end. I'm swimming in the improvised clothing that Cait had found for me, so I've definitely shrunk. How much I'm not sure, but I'm definitely still bigger than I used to be, though.

I also have a chest! Not huge by any means, which is good, I don't want huge, but decently sized! Noticeable! Even if they are still on the small side.

Also, I'm even hungrier now with all the healing.

My stomach roars.

A lot hungrier. I'd be amazed if I have any blood sugar left the way my head is beginning to pound.

That had been a hard fight. Much harder than I thought it would be. I hadn't expected their voices to be such effective weapons. Physical impacts, shattering rock explosively. If my hearing protection wasn't as complete as it was, I have no doubt that they could have done a lot more.

I glance over to where the Siren that I winged is trying to sneak up on me. I do, do a lot of singing for my Scripts, and I had just noted the need for a ranged option. The last Siren snarls, then purses her lips. I fling myself to the side, but the skin on my rib cage is still ripped open. A moment later I'm on my feet and lunging for her.

With her injured wing dragging behind her and her bird feet not suited to movement on the ground, she doesn't really have much chance of evading me.

 

[Young Pyromancer]

...no trying to get Cait to help you figure out what you got from the fey?
EDIT: It's the iron weakness, isn't it.