I'm on Miss Rando's couch,
still working to get her to shut up and kiss me already, when-
"
Cherie Vasil, what would you be willing to do for a wish?" Comes popping into my head, feeling like it's coming from my right.
My head jerks toward the window, where I promptly spot some weird rabbit doll thing sitting on the windowsill. What the hell? I don't remember-
The thing fucking moves, tilting its head! "
Miss Vasil?" That same voice intones into my skull while still feeling like it's coming from the area the creepy not-a-stuffed-animal is sitting. My power isn't reporting anything there, no choir of feelings to let me know what it's thinking.
"What the FUCK," I screech, scrambling away while simultaneously trying to blast the thing with depression and also scan for if anybody in my range is reacting to what's going on. The thing itself just tilts its head the other way. It would be adorable if only its weird button eyes weren't soulless and my power could actually read the damn thing. Creepy fucking power.
The only signature I'm sensing reacting to this room is my latest excuse to be away from Daddy for a few days staring at me in confusion, asking, "Melody? Are... are you okay?" She intermittently glances at the window, but she doesn't seem to be seeing the white-and-red doll of creepiness, and my power is confirming she's confused and concerned. God fucking- it took TWO HOURS to get her to stop trying to mother me! All that work down the goddamn drain because of whatever asshole cape this is perving on us! Why can't she see this power thing?
Fuckit, I start slamming Random Schmuckette with as much apathy as I can as fast as I can. This date is ruined and I don't need her getting in the way. I'll... figure out how to silence her later. Not sure, don't care, focus on the cape. Power manifestation, really.
I point an accusing finger at the doll. "Why the fuck are you ruining my hookup, asshole?"
Schmuckette briefly manages to feel confused and mildly skeeved out, muttering vaguely about how I'm a minor and she's not into girls anyway, but whatever, I don't give a shit. The power manifestation tilts its head back in the first direction, and I still haven't detected a signature that fits in my range. Immune to my power? Has a longer range than me? Why zero in on me in the latter case, how did that happen? "
Your Potential is rapidly rising. Typically, this is an indication of approaching a peak, past which Potential drops off rapidly, never to go up again."
Still a flat delivery, clipped in a way that sounds like an odd accent, but I can
hear 'potential' being emphasized anyway. It's weird, because the voice in my head doesn't have the 'audio' vary at all. Power shit. Concerning power shit, suggesting a Master component to this thing, something to make me perceive things a certain way for no obvious reason. I'd flee, but for the moment this asshole is at least pretending to be interested in cooperation or something, and I have zero idea what else this invisible mindbending apparition might be able to do. So let's fish for info, first.
I'm not remotely calm, but I resettle myself as if getting comfortable while adjusting the pocket knife sewn into the inside of my skirt. Let this jackass think I'm not worried, but still be ready to tear the knife loose and go for the stab in case that seems relevantly useful. "Okay, I'll bite: what does any of that mean?"
"
It means you are in your optimal period to make a wish, becoming a magical girl, with all the power that entails."
I stare at the stupid doll projection, so completely thrown by the stupidity of this angle I forget to pretend earnest belief. "Holy shit, you must be the biggest nerd ever." I cannot believe I'm being targeted by a cape indulging some weird fantasy of being a goddamn animal mascot. That genre
died after Kyushu, I only know about it because I spend way too much time in libraries, reading old crap. What kind of nerd would get powers and go 'I know, I'll pretend to be an animal mascot!'?
"
That is a different species. The preferred English-language term for my species is 'Incubator'."
...
I really wish I'd found this guy already so I could tell whether they're fucking with me, that deep into staying in-character, or that stupid. The projection's weird mind voice thing is too flat to make a guess. It could be a deadpan joke or completely earnest, I have no way of telling, and I
hate it.
Rando Hookup is staring vaguely in the direction I'm looking, managing to muster up some curiosity and concern through the waves of apathy I'm shoving her way, and it's
annoying. I give her a brief shove in frustration, but while depression is
usually more effective than straight apathy I don't need her being one of those weirdos who can talk themselves into suicide when
extremely depressed, or for this to go some unexpected direction where I don't have the opportunity to pull her out of depression with no opportunity for suicide. I don't need to go through one of Daddy's punishments for getting someone killed in a suspicious way.
Again.
So I do my best to ignore her anyway, still keeping a mental eye on her husband and kids. Still on the other side of the city, hanging out at a park or museum or whatever these people do for fun, I've got time. Okay, so power projection asshole is deep in character or pretending to be or something, how do I play this? I do not buy for a second this line of crock, but I might still have the option of pretending, given that reaction, if only by them playing along with me playing along while we all actually know everyone is a lying piece of shit. (God, that's always so painful to see when I'm people-watching) Wish they were giving more tells, though. Will they flip out if I explicitly reject them, and reveal their projection can spit fire or turn itself into a deadly projectile, or whatever? Also frustrating that I can't detect them. If the reason I can't detect them is that they're staying out of my range, they probably are a fucking
stalker who picked me out ahead of time and has been waiting for a good moment to ambush me, all while carefully keeping their body out of my reach for long enough nobody in recent memory seems a plausible answer. In that case, they're probably not going to be open to a rejection: too much emotional investment. On the other hand, if they're just immune to me as part of their power, they may have dropped in on a random...
... wait, they know my name. I haven't even told
Schmuckette my name, I claimed I was 'Melody Roadsdale'.
Nobody has used my name today, Pauline was still doing her makeup when I left and nobody else in the fam' uses my name aside Daddy, not unless they're mad, and I didn't piss off anyone this morning. So... stalker, definitely. Still a question of whether they're immune or out of range, still a question of how long-term the stalking is, but 100% a stalker, no question. Rejection: dangerous. Let's not.
Fortunately, the projection doesn't seem perturbed by me staring at it in offended silence for a solid thirty seconds or whatever. I think. It hasn't
said anything, anyway, and its tail tick-tocking is the only moving bit of it. Really fucking creepy power, I really hope the cape didn't
design it this way, that'd be a lot more worrying than if the power itself just came with this demented puppet design and they ran with it. Anyway, I consider smiling, decide that's probably not appropriate, and cautiously ask, "Alright, let's say you're not bullshitting." Which they are, no fucking duh. "Why
me."
The head-tilt again. I'm starting to think that's an expression of confusion, but it's really hard to say given my power isn't providing feedback
and no other part except the tick-tocking tail is
doing anything. It's not even pretending to breathe. "
You currently have the highest Potential in the city of Toronto."
Uuuugh
fine I'll do the obvious thing and ask about this made-up 'potential' shit. Was trying to not feed their stupid-ass delusion, but they're not giving me
real information. Maybe they'll slip up, get excited to spin their stupid lie and drop something meaningful in it. "Yeah, uh, what
is this 'potential' thing you're talking about?"
The tail stops tick-tocking, and the doll-thing adjusts its gaze ever-so-slightly to be looking right at me with its beady eyes, instead of staring straight ahead in my general direction like it was earlier. Not sure if that's more creepy or less creepy. "
Interesting. Most don't ask." Most? This asshole has done this
before. Hmmm. Useful data, not sure how to fit it in just yet. "
Potential is a measurable quality of what humans call 'souls'-" Oh. Great, they're bringing
religion into their spiel. That's such a
great sign. Not. "
-that current studies find strongly correlates to a tendency, when not contracted, to go on and become a figure of influence on a large scale." Oh god, really? You're
this transparent. Going straight to the 'I picked you because you're important and special on your own merits, I'm sure you have self-esteem problems and will lap this right up and do whatever I want you to do so you can feel special and important'. Probably runs a fucking cult. Jeez. "
There are secondary theories, but they are rated as much lower probability at this time. I'm sure you're not interested in them." That feels condescending, but I can't quite think of an angle for why they'd bother to say this stupid shit.
Okay, yeah, cult leader, probably some kind of power like... what was his name, he got Birdcaged for this shit... fuck, I don't remember. That guy who gave out powers but they included, like, subtle mind control or a drug addiction thing or something. There's three different cults in city limits right now, one of which has two probable capes and one definite cape in it, I'll be working through those as soon as
this interaction is done with. Such a fucking obvious angle, why do people fall for this shit?
I paste an innocently confused look on my face. "You think
I'm going to be a big deal someday?" I mean, yeah, I am, because I'm awesome and Daddy's
got to be ready to tell me what he's
really planning, like,
soon. If he's been waiting for me to seem like a trustworthy minion before spilling the deets it's been more than a year since I last seriously irritated him, and he's been pretty consistently happy with the results when I help him scope a new aunt. It would be
so cool to conquer Alaska, I read once they make so much money off the oil they
pay their citizens when tax season comes instead of demanding money from them. Or I'd be okay with going and carving some territory closer to home, whatever, there's gotta be a pretty cool plan given this whole harem-leads-to-powered-kids-galore plan is a
two-decade-long plan at minimum. Nobody commits
that long to a lame plan.
"
The probability is high, but not guaranteed. 1 in 8 who refuse to contract live the rest of their lives in relative obscurity." There's a pause, just long enough I'm thinking it's deliberate, not so long I'm ready to formulate a response. "
It would be preferable for you to make a wish and contract, though."
I manage to not roll my eyes, but barely. Yeah yeah, cult leader dude, of
course you'd say it's preferable for me to join your goddamn cult. This is pathetic. He's already trying to claim I'm special and important and will probably go on to be great, so what's supposed to be in it for me if I sign up? Who falls for this shit? Instead, I say, "I dunno. This sounds like a big commitment. I'd need to talk it over with my family, first." That was supposed to be a believable lie, but actually saying it maybe I
should mention this shitshow to Daddy. He'd probably be all for co-opting a cult with powered members. More minions for whatever cool plot he's got, right? And having Pauline along to break anyone we can't control, Juliette to keep others down, and so on, would be a lot easier than me handling this myself.
"
I would not recommend that course of action, but there is no particular hurry to the decision. Typically, it takes at least a week for Potential to peak, and usually another twenty days to start rapidly decaying. You may even be noticeably stronger if you wait a week to contract." I'd say this sounds rehearsed, but that goddamn flat, emotionless voice makes it impossible to say. Still inclined to think it's just because they didn't wait at all to deliver this response, I was expecting at least a
brief pause, but maybe there's something else going on here. Also not surprised they're trying to dissuade me from talking to the fam'. Cults work by isolating people. Usually they target people who are
already vulnerable, mind, but they probably came after me because I'm a cape. Hmm. Maybe they're thinking my power will make this cult recruitment process go a lot faster, so they're being a bit reckless? That makes a fair amount of sense: let's put a pin in that thought as the most likely possibility.
... not sure what direction to take this now. I wasn't really expecting them to actively encourage me to wait a bit and come back to them. It
could be a mildly sophisticated psychological trick, people commit stronger to decisions they feel they made on their own so backing off and letting them firmly decide on their own time can be more effective than pressuring them for long-term results, but I'm a bit skeptical given how sad this effort has been so far. The vibe I'm getting is that they usually prey on
serious ignoramuses, like teenagers with no friends to let them know what normal looks like, in abusive households so this doesn't seem sketchy as fuck to them, where sophistication is completely unnecessary and so they haven't learned how to bring an A-game to this. Or even a B-game, really. So I'm... not sure what to make of this turn of events. Raises the possibility their goddamn puppet has already gotten their power's hooks in me. I... may want to have Daddy do something to overrule that. I hate the idea, hate the idea of doing it on just a suspicion, but it's something I'll definitely be keeping in mind. It worked for Aunt Sherryl, when she wanted to stop compulsively chewing her nails.
The silence -aside Miss I Don't Even Care Anymore mumbling about therapist phone numbers and shit- drags on for an uncomfortably long stretch. The stupid projection is back to tick-tocking its tail, but otherwise it's
still completely immobile, giving me nothing to work with. God, I'm not looking forward to running into other projection-based capes, this is awful. At least it doesn't.... really look like anything my power works on. That's always so fucking creepy, when something looks like a thing my power works on but my power isn't giving me anything. Uuuugh. Um. God, I guess... I'll... politely disengage? "Well, I'd still rather have some time to think it over."
"
That's fine. I can accompany you until you're ready to contract."
That sets alarm bells ringing. I put up a hand in a stop signal. "No, uh, that's... no thanks. I like my privacy. We can meet in a public space a week from now or something, but no fucking way are you
following me." Wait, shit, this might set them off. Fuck, should've thought this through better.
"
If you prefer it that way."
I stare at it a bit longer, nonplussed at this bland willingness to go along, doubting how genuine it is but not sure how to react. Eventually I rattle off the address of the park nearest our current apartment -well, pair of apartments- and ask the damn thing if it's okay with meeting there in a week, noon-ish. (I picked this time arbitrarily: no fucking way am I actually going) The thing actually nods in agreement as it speaks right into my skull in bland agreement, and to my
intense relief it actually hops out the window, the alarmingly quiet tread of its paws moving away afterward.
I keep staring at where it was, not trusting this at all, before being reminded Miss Whatever exists and I need to deal with her by her leaning forward a little and asking if I'm alright in spite of all the apathy I'm jamming her with. Right. Goddammit, this hookup was supposed to be an opportunity to relax for a few hours and then give Daddy a story about a woman who pushes all his buttons but who is thoroughly married with pre-existing brats and thus not a target he'll grill me about the possibility of grabbing. Not
more fucking drama.
I stop slamming her with apathy, turning to look her dead in the eyes, and wait a minute as the light slowly returns to her eyes. Right as her forehead starts scrunching in confusion, probably her finally thinking to question why the hell she let a strange teenage girl into her home on zero notice, I
slam her with absolute fucking
terror and casually inform her, "If you tell
anyone about me, I will make sure everyone you know and love dies a slow, horrible death in front of you. I
will know." Funny thing is, the only part of this that's a real
lie is the idea that I'd bother. I totally
could make this threat happen, I know exactly who all she cares about and it wouldn't be
tremendously difficult to manipulate them into coming with and letting me strap them down while I get a chainsaw or whatever, but it'd be gross and so much more effort than convincing her I'll do it so I don't have to bother actually doing it.
Anyway, she's shrinking into the couch like it'll hide her from the menacing predator stalking the room some inane part of her brain is insisting must be about for her to be this terrified, nodding her head wildly as her eyes dart furiously about, looking for exits or a weapon or whatever it is exactly that she thinks will help. I lean forward and smile, easing off on the terror, and say, "Good girl," as I slap her with a dose of as much happiness as I can manage over a five-second period. Then I frown, ceasing with the happiness and ramping the fear back up as I say, "Make sure you
stay good."
Then I pick up my purse and leave, keeping her terror ramped up until she's out of my radius.
Goddammit, I
hate doing that. It
works, but it's such a Daddy way of handling a mess. I really prefer making them
happy to keep my secrets, or setting it up so there's no way anyone would believe it actually happened. (Or at least that they're so convinced of that they'll never speak up) Fear takes long enough for the adrenaline to level off and all she might still be jumpy by the time her family gets back, and she might give something away even while faithfully trying to stick to my instructions.
I console myself with the knowledge that having the fam' help me deal with this goddamn cult nutjob will be satisfying as all hell. Our first big op!
So looking forward to it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"-DID YOU
LOSE HIM?!"
I pause partway through opening the door. Daddy is yelling. That's... concerning. Daddy doesn't usually yell. He usually uses his power if he's upset. What could possibly be getting him to
yell?
But then I continue. Door needs to be closed so nobody can hear whatever is happening -we don't need the cops called on us, that was
so close to being an unsalvageable mess the one time it happened before- and I really want to know what the hell is happening. Daddy wasn't angry on my way over, this started...
seconds before I started opening the door. What the hell? Door closed firmly behind me, I slowly pick my way toward the living room, where Daddy's raging, while I'm trying to not look too nervous.
"You better not be lying, Flor'." Florence. On the phone with Florence? Why is he on the phone with Florence? "How long?" A pause, as I start getting an angle on the living room. The aunts in there are all concerned. It's... all but Aunt Naomi, out of the ones in
this apartment. Why? Daddy doesn't usually have them all together. The rugrats aren't in here, shoved into the other apartment so they can't bother Daddy, but now I'm noticing the siblings assigned to this apartment that aren't out somewhere are making their way to the living room, and with very little curiosity and a lot of fear.
Why? What's going on? "
HOW THE HE- you did
WHAT?" I freeze in place, not breathing, flashbacking to when Daddy put me in the coffin, and then gulp and start on deep breaths.
He's not talking to you, Cherie, he's talking to Florence. Florence is the one who might be buried today, not you, and she's an evil little shit so that would be a pretty good result all things considered. Might stop trying to sneak commands on you if Daddy's wrath falls on her! No reason to worry!
Nonetheless, I can't bring myself to walk any closer, even though I was wanting to get at least enough sight on Daddy to see his body language. "Is she still there?" A pause, while I start on shallower breaths, in part trying to not be heard by Daddy if my breathing turns ragged. "He planned this." Another pause. Wait, Florence is out of my
range? When did
that happen? "The little shit
planned this." Oh, that pause earlier wasn't Daddy waiting for a response from Florence, that was... yeah, rising disbelief, anger. He's shocked by... whatever he's talking about. "Flor', get everybody else, get here, put a compulsion on a taxi driver if you have to, but get everybody home right the
hell now." I'm getting really alarmed on a more abstract level at this point. Daddy doesn't usually let Florence do shit to strangers without him right there to see exactly what she's doing. He doesn't trust her enough yet, she's terrible at making sure things don't go horribly wrong as a result. "Yeah, I still love you Flor', Daddy's not angry with you."
I boggle at that for a minute, because he
was just a minute ago and
is on a pretty regular basis. What the hell did she
tell him that he's stopped being mad at her? Because he's being completely honest. Seriously,
what is going on?
Then an arm goes over my shoulder and
grips.
Ah shit, not Pauline. "Father says everybody must come to the living room, right now." Goddammit, yes, it's Pauline.
I do my best to turn to look at her. Power doesn't fucking read her so that's no help, gotta rely on body language and shit, not that it's much help either given how she doesn't emote when she isn't talking to
boys. Gotta take what I can get, though. Aaaand yeah, she's doing the gormless, sorta-stone-faced look. Figures. "Got it," I croak out, because Pauline is many things, but a liar isn't one of them, and whatever Pauline would do if I resisted doesn't begin to compare to what
Daddy would do if she
told him I resisted. Which she would.
Which is how I end up dragged into the living room with everyone else, where Daddy proceeds to rant and rave about what happened and how it's never going to happen again, looking... a bit unhinged.
Long story short? Jean-Paul escaped. He was
supposed to be watching over some siblings, goofing off and having fun away from everyone else for a bit. Hitting an aquarium, among other things, staying overnight at a hotel. Instead, it turns out he'd gotten control of one of the D-lister capes I vaguely recall hearing about once or twice before, and he'd talked the siblings into going up there because said D-lister cape
worked at said aquarium, and while Florence doesn't know what,
exactly, this cape does, Jean-Paul somehow had them remove all her compulsions on him, then he puppeted the sleeping siblings into some shack in the middle of nowhere and bailed, all this in the middle of the night while I was sleeping, hence why I didn't detect any of it even though the hotel and aquarium they went to are in my range.
I'm surprisingly numb. My power makes it hard to
not be aware that several siblings hate this whole situation and would leave in a heartbeat if Daddy hadn't already set it up so that's not an option. Got too many older siblings like me and Pauline around, ready to tattle on each other in hopes Daddy will be pleased enough to cut us some slack, or maybe Pauline just has that much filial loyalty I dunno it's hard to tell with her. Point is, escape is pretty well impossible when Daddy
isn't catching you in the act and slamming you with so much terror you forever associate leaving the family with overwhelming fear. (Nicholas is still a little shit and I'm glad he got hit first so
I know not to risk it, but...
god. Having to listen in on his panic attacks is almost enough to make me feel sorry for him.
Almost) Otherwise there'd be more siblings already out of here: Daddy doesn't make us all unquestioningly love him the way he does the aunts. I'm not entirely sure
why that is, but I assume it has to do with the older brother we used to have that nobody talks about for fear of Daddy's wrath.
But Jean-Paul is not the one I would've expected to make a break for it. Of all of us, he seemed the most happy with what we were doing, the most comfortable with Daddy's dictates, the most... willing to coast. I dunno, maybe the other siblings would be less surprised because he came across as more of an enigma to everyone else, but I read his feelings directly. They were... pretty fucked-up and not as strong as most, and I'm not sure how much of that is his power vs him being naturally not big on feelings vs Daddy's actions shaping him, but he
had them, and they seemed pretty content. And... I was the sibling he was fondest of. My power means I can't be misinterpreting this, seeing something I want to see that isn't there. So I always thought if he did jump ship, if Daddy went completely whacko or something, that Jean-Paul would want me on board. It hurts a little to have been left behind, and the planning involved... this wasn't a spur of the moment thing, Jean-Paul having a bad day and cutting and running in a somewhat thoughtless way. Jean-Paul carefully thought it out, and decided he didn't trust me, or didn't like me, or whatever, and built a plan to
specifically cut me out.
Unfortunately, I only get maybe an hour to process, watching Daddy pace, occasionally muttering to himself too low for me to catch anything except the tone. (Which isn't much help when I
already know his tone is unstable, scarily mad, protective, thanks power) Once Florence shows up, a half dozen other rugrats in tow, Daddy phones up the other apartment, calls everybody in, and starts laying out the new rules.
Some abstract part of me clinically notes that Daddy is clearly even more bothered by Jean-Paul's escape than I would've expected from his twitchy, angry muttering or from what my power is feeding me. Daddy has always had rules to keep the kids in easy reach: I've got a cell phone so he can always call me, for example, not because
I wanted one. The new rules are... alarmingly constrictive. No more traveling alone, not even for the kids he's historically given a bit of leeway... such as myself. No more doing much of
anything without Daddy's permission.
Halfway through his rant, he sends Aunt Chloe to get him a cigarette pack, which is also alarming. Daddy dropped that habit when I was, like, eight, worried for his health. It's the only thing he enjoys I've ever known him to refuse to indulge, and even when we've done stuff like hide in the countryside for a year because PRT heat was too much he never gave in to this temptation. So... Jean-Paul getting away is
really getting to him.
I wonder if this is to do with The Older Brother We Can't Talk About?
I can deal, though. I've dealt for my entire life, Daddy has his mood swings, it's... not
fine, but I can ride this out. Daddy always gets distracted in short order anyway. Hell, he'll probably have me helping hunt for a new aunt in no time flat.
-------------------------------------------------------------
I cannot deal with this.
For the first couple of days, I was coping okay. Not being allowed to blow off steam on random people was less-than-thrilling, but that's a semi-regular thing when we're trying to lay low, so whatevs. Having to share a bed with Pauline sucked (Not least because she
doesn't sleep, what the
hell Daddy?), and it sucked worse having to share a room with three other powered siblings plus two aunts. Worse than usual, but not
too hard to keep them pointed more at each other without anyone getting firmly suspicious. I've been through worse.
Daddy didn't calm down, though. He ran through two cigarette packs a
day, was up all hours peeking into random rooms, was quicker to punish siblings for the usual reasons, and on day three he started the Canadian Inquisition. Kids using powers to check each other, confirming no one is considering running away, making sure anyone Daddy finds even slightly suspicious is further hamstrung by Flor', getting so paranoid he started having each kid interrogate each other kid individually, no one else in the room, so they couldn't coordinate their stories...
I made bitter jokes in my head about how ironic it was that Daddy's attempts to keep us close were precisely why I
desperately wanted an out. They didn't really help.
I tried casually prodding Daddy on the topic of looking for a new aunt, and he reacted like I was both nuts
and a seditious traitor for suggesting the idea. The only good news is that Daddy being immune to my power's manipulatory element was, for fucking
once, actually helpful. Otherwise my attempt to talk him out of setting Flor' on me might've been assumed to be power-backed, and he might've let Flor' go to town so thoroughly I'd be literally fearing for my life. I didn't even bother to
try raising the topic of hunting for the projection's stupid cult.
I tried getting Pauline to ask him when we were moving again -the neighbors were starting to get suspicious that Aunt Philly and Aunt Micaiah were not, in fact, coincidentally hosting parties constantly or whatever these people had previously thought- and while the part where I tricked her into thinking it was
her idea went surprisingly smoothly, Daddy promptly hit her with so much terror she hit the ground
foaming at the mouth.
On day six, I got the barest, briefest bit of relief, as Daddy decided we needed a grocery run handled, and also decided he trusted me
just enough that I only got a couple of aunts as escorts. I was still told I couldn't take more than an hour -never mind how many people I was shopping for, never mind that the nearest grocery store was fifteen minutes away by car- and I didn't need Daddy to spell out what the punishment for disobedience was. Not after Guillaume had been reduced to a nervous wreck for daring to ask if he could watch TV in the living room, on mute, during the night.
By the time me and the aunts had gotten all the essentials loaded up, it was already an hour and ten minutes after we'd left. The three of us stared in completely rational terror at the goddamn clock, paralyzed with fear by the idea of going back to Daddy when he was in this mood, later than we'd been told to come back. The aunts were still going to go back, of course, because Daddy had made them too devoted to
really consider leaving him, but their entirely natural terror was still managing to push so hard against their largely-unnatural love for him that they had locked up. It didn't help that Daddy... doesn't really
scale his menace. If Daddy is going to be mad about you being late, it doesn't matter much whether you're five minutes late or five hours late: the punishment is going to be brutal, overwhelming force, and if he's actually
trying to punish harder for more serious offenses even my power can't see the difference. So we all dreaded the idea of going back, and didn't feel an urgent pressure to hurry to lessen the punishment.
Eventually I croaked out, "Can... you go get the stuff we skipped as taking too long, while I... have a cry?" I'd like to say I was performing a masterful bit of acting, but
ha ha no.
There was a pause, while my aunts ruminated on Daddy's foibles and drew more or less the same conclusion I had, before they quietly agreed. Aunt Tabitha even gave me a comforting pat on one shoulder, genuinely feeling a little bad for me, before they both exited the car and walked back into the grocery store.
I then spent a solid ten minutes sobbing, head kept down so no one would be able to see me in the vehicle. Can't make the normals notice you, not even when you're having a nervous breakdown.
I can't say what
would have happened if that goddamn creepy cult projection hadn't talked to me. Maybe I'd have talked myself into going home and suffering through until things
surely got better. Maybe I'd have taken the car and fled for the border. Maybe I'd have turned myself in to the Protectorate, hoping Daddy's stories of what they did to Masters were... exaggerations or something. I was under no illusion I'd be reformed into a Ward, but maybe Daddy was wrong and they
wouldn't seal me inside a concrete bunker to starve to death? And maybe I wouldn't just be Birdcaged instead, which honestly sounded like somebody had decided Hell needed to be real? I doubt it, but I'm not sure.
Whatever
might have happened otherwise, I
had met the little freak. They
had asked about... a wish. I
had agreed to meet them, albeit tomorrow. And unintentionally, I'd gotten the aunts to go away for a few minutes.
So I opened the car up and headed to the park I'd specified. It was only a couple blocks away, as it happened.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"
A day early. So typical of humans."
On a better day, I wouldn't have startled. I was expecting the little shit to do something like this, if they were here at all. I was too fucked up for it to matter, though, jerking violently toward the tree where the voice in my head seemed to be coming from. The projection was sitting at the base of the tree, licking at one paw and running it through the fur on its head repeatedly, like a cat grooming itself. Fortunately, the park was dead, late enough in the evening it was too cold and dark to be much fun. Joggers used this park even late in the day, I'm pretty sure, and I'm pretty sure I've overheard drug deals going down here after dark, but right
now it was empty aside some rodents I probably wouldn't have known about if it weren't for my power.
"Whatever," I said, too stressed to really care about pretending to go along with this asshole's nonsense. Sure, sure, you're an 'alien', with the flying saucers and abductions and men in black suits hiding everything,
fuck off. Part of the stress was worrying the aunts would find me too quick, or that they'd call Daddy instead of searching for me themselves, or that I'd hit one of Flor' compulsions. She'd put enough on me I wasn't completely sure I remembered them all, and my notes were on the laptop Pauline and I shared, ie back with the fam'. "So how's this wish shit work, what do you want in exchange, hit me."
The stupid puppet stopped pretending to groom itself long enough to tilt its head in apparent confusion. "
I don't understand why you'd want me to strike you."
It would be so satisfying to kick this stupid thing in its stupid face. I might have even done it if I'd been standing closer. As-is, I had enough distance to think about all the reasons that was a dumb idea, starting from the fact that hurting projections
generally didn't accomplish jack and ending with the fact that it was, in fact, possible this asshole was autistic or something, and not
deliberately fucking with me by staying 'in-character'. So I ignored that. "Tell me what this wish shit is and what I need to do."
The projection went back to fake-grooming itself. "
In exchange for a wish-" I tensed up, thinking
here it comes, the cult wanting its hooks in me. Which of the three is it? What stupid initiation test will they try to pass off as an essential part of the process? What will be the part of this their power actually needs? "
-you will be expected to do two things. The first is that you will find it necessary to fight beings known as 'Witches', which prey upon your fellow humans invisibly." My eyebrows furrowed slightly in spite of myself, because if they were going to make up some shit about heroically fighting the good fight for the good of humanity why the hell didn't they throw that nonsense at me to
begin with? Cults
love to spin bullshit about how you're helping to save the world by doing whatever sketchy-as-fuck shit they ask you to do, yes indeedy satisfying the cult leader's fetishes is
totally somehow, like, delaying global warming or making the Endbringers attack less often or ensuring the sun rises each day because stealing ideas from the Aztec totally won't be noticed by your average shmuck. What the hell? "
You will additionally be expected to endeavor to strike down the being known as Zion, for the good of the universe."
I stare blankly at the stupid doll. Looks like something Flor' would've loved back before she triggered, aside the creepiness. Okay, scratch that, looks like something Flor' would love
now. "I don't know a cape calling themself Zion." What, had that one park in Utah decided to sponsor a cape? And then this cape pissed off this cult, I guess? Wait, they haven't even mentioned which cult they want me to join. That's... weird. Oh, wait, maybe they're waiting until I've let them use their stupid power on me? Fuck, I really hope it doesn't compel loyalty or something. I... maybe this is a bad idea-
-I sense Daddy punishing an aunt and two of the unpowered rugrats, inflicting so much nausea on them I'm pretty sure they're immediately puking what the
hell Daddy-
...
"Okay, fine, whatever, kill some cape, fight monsters, whatever, how does this 'wish' shit work?" I catch my fingers twitching into air-quotes, then decide I don't care.
The puppet doesn't
seem to notice, but its stupid blank face doesn't give away anything and this asshole is
still either immune to me or out of my range so I don't know how meaningful that is. "
You just need to clearly say 'I wish' and then specify what you are wishing for. I handle the rest, assuming your Potential can handle the wish."
Blah blah blah, I'm hearing more lies to excuse why they won't or can't give me a given thing I might ask for. 'Oh no, you can't be made Queen of Quebec because you're, uh, not that important? Yeah, that's the ticket.' Whatever. Still not asking me to swear myself to their cult. Not sure if the implication of
needing to say 'I wish' is more bullshit or if their power actually has esoteric bullshit involved. Powers can be
pretty fucking weird, so I can't rule it out, and it sure seems like there's
got to be some requirement for me to hand myself over willingly or something or else why would they bother with this rigmarole? Just scoop me up before I know what's hit me and have yourself one Cherie Vasil, Awesomest Cape That Ever Did Live, to point at your enemies.
Okay, on the one hand:
bullshit. Probably. On the other hand, if it is bullshit there's really no harm in wishing for something I actually want, and if it's
not bullshit, or at least not
entirely bullshit, I really ought to wish for something I want instead of joking about how I totally wish I was a xenomorph only to discover this asshole can do that and doesn't know a joke when they hear it. I suppose I should technically also be careful what I wish for in other senses, but I'm already pretty sure this is some fucking trick and am just in a miserable space where the alternatives look... worse. So whatever, get me the fuck away from the fam', hopefully out of Canada
entirely (Maybe it's actually a cult over the border?) so they can't follow me easily, and I'll deal with the strings as I find them.
So. What
do I want, if I'm just... wishing? Wishing to be away from the fam' seems dumb. If I'm even marginally correct in my suspicions, going along with this nonsense will help make it happen
regardless. Wishing for powers also seems dumb: I
have powers, and I wouldn't want to lose 'em for something else, however cool super-strength and flight might be. Wishing for self-improvement of some kind is lol, I'm already perfect thank you very much. (And if I'm not, I don't need
this asshole's idea of improvement, so shut the fuck up disagreeing parts of my brain) Wishing for assorted material goods is sorta pointless when I can just get a lot of it myself. Who needs a wish when you can just drop in on someone and convince them they're
happy to dump whatever you want on you?
... not gonna wish for happiness. I'm me
and have lived with Daddy my entire life. I know 'make someone happy' can mean 'make them absolutely
thrilled to be your slave'.
...
"I wish Jean-Paul hadn't run away." Then I slap my hand to my mouth, horrified.
Shit! That was supposed to be a thought in my head, not a thing I said to this lunatic!
... then I calm down. It doesn't matter anyway, capes can't do
real time travel and whatnot, at worst I've embarrassed-
"
That is within your Potential."
-myself-
what?
The freaky puppet starts floating, big fucking surprise there, crazy ear... what the hell even
is going on with those? Why are they reaching out to my ches-
you fucking perverted little shit-
And that's about when I start screaming in agony.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Query?
Query?
Status?
Location?
Status?
Report?
Repo-
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Coming to takes... a minute. Everything feels off. Like my skeleton was designed for a different skin. Like my brain had some essential bit pulled out, swirled around with a fork, and then shoved back in.
Memories... also take a bit. Initially I'm just woozily taking in the cold, wet grass against my skin, vaguely feeling that's concerning but not quite able to remember how I got here to arrive at any specific concerns. Bits come to me in a dumb, unhelpful order:
yep, I was in a park for... some reason... grocery shopping before... cried somewhere in there?... talking dolls?... fuck, right, Daddy!
I try to bolt upright, suddenly remembering that the aunts or Daddy are liable to be hunting for me-
-suddenly remembering Jean-Paul wanted to spectate the next time I went prowling-
-um.
Leaving aside the part where 'bolt upright' utterly failed and I'm still on the ground, eyes closed and feeling like utter shit,
what the fuck was that? Jean-Paul
left, brain-
-
to get groceries with a couple of aunts, and Pauline was being especially temperamental so I went out to the park because why the hell not-
-WHAT ARE YOU DOING.
I try, once again, to get up, though more carefully this time. Double-check everything has feeling and can move right, slowly lever myself to a sitting position, wrinkle my nose at how this outfit is going to be
ruined by the cold water soaking in it, then put one hand to my
clearly malfunctioning head. "What the
hell happened," I mutter to myself. Fuck off, of course I talk to myself a lot, it's not like the fam' makes for great conversational partners.
"
My records are unclear, but you appear to have contracted."
I yelp, scrambling away from the freaky-deaky voice
in my goddamn head, more memories entering working order. Not many, I've only met this freak twice, once when they
stalked me, and again for the wish-
-
for the wish-
-okay seriously what
is that? I'm even
more confused by having two different memories of making a wish with this asshole, given they seem... identical? Sorta?
Really sorta, one of them is a complete experience with fucking Jean-Paul running away putting me under so much stress I came here, while the other is... unclear. No idea what I was wishing for there. Sketchy logic for
why I came here. Like a dream, or a badly-written novel where the characters are doing shit because the writer wants them to do it and not because they have any motive to do it. In spite of its fuzziness, it
feels like a vivid, real memory.
Which means power bullshit.
"What the
actual fuck did you
do to me? What is this shit you shoved in my skull?" I attempt to point accusingly at the puppet I still can't fucking sense, but my body is still not responding quite right and I end up pointing kind of vaguely to their left. Before I can course-correct, I notice there's some kind of sphere on my lap, distracting me. It looks... like one of those cats-eye marbles, the kind with the colored streak going through the center. This one is a pale yellow with a red streak through the center, which
kinda calls to mind what I do with my hair, I guess? Looking at the damn thing has a half-formed memory scratching at my skull, but I can't quite recall it before the projection responds to me.
"
As far as I'm aware, nothing. It's possible in the original timeline I did do something, but I find this an unlikely scenario."
Original time- now this asshole is pulling stupid scifi cliches out their butt! I glare at this moron, starting to suspect they really are a delusional nerd living out their dumb-as-fuck fantasy, not connected to a cult at
all. It seems
marginally less stupid than if they're a cult leader spinning an insanely stupid story on the idea I'll eat it right up like an utter moron. Then my eye catches on the jewel again, the memory scratching finally properly registers, and I recognize it as the thing pulled out of me-
-
pulled out of me-
-after I 'made a wish'.
Ignoring that baffling doubled-memory nonsense, um, what? Why the... I point accusingly at the jewel. "What the
hell is this thing?"
The puppet resumes grooming, like a cat pretending it has no idea its owner-slash-devoted-slave is scolding it, but
does answer the question. Kinda. "
It should be your soul gem, though I confess my records have discrepancies, presumably resulting from your wish in the original timeline."
Fucking- "Stop talking about fucking
timelines, there's no
timelines, there's just-" Wait.
Wait, it's not just this asshole I don't sense.
I- I don't sense
anything. The city is silent, the orchestra on break. I can't track Daddy, or Florence, or Guillame, or any of them -not that this is anything new with Pauline, but whatever- or any of the villains or heroes or capes-on-the-down-low, or any of the animals or... all of it
gone, my power shoving a whole lot of
nothing into my skull.
"WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY POWER?!?" I screech, finally managing to haul myself to my feet, shoving the jewel into a pocket without really thinking about it. And then remember I
really shouldn't be shrieking to the world that I have powers, entirely too late. Shit. And
since my power isn't working, I can't even tell whether or not anybody heard me to then run down and deal with any who
did.
I am so going to dropkick this bastard, I think viciously as I stumble toward it, incensed by it continuing to pretend to groom like it's an actual animal. "
Those that humans call 'parahumans' have frequently reported temporary malfunctions in their 'powers' after contracting. It rarely lasts more than twenty hours, in the three hundred and fifty-seven reported cases so far."
My fucking god this nerd cannot give up their stupid-ass story. I slip for a second on the wet grass but catch my balance, only to immediately misstep and land butt-first as my foot launches itself away from me.
Ow. Fine, whatever, I
won't dropkick the bastard. Not because they don't deserve it, but because I don't need to further embarrass myself. "Whatever. Who the fuck is this 'Zion' character, and why the hell do you want them dead?"
The projection pretends to blink innocently at me. It's more creepy than anything else with those beady red eyes. "
You do not know about the gold-colored humanoid? I was under the impression every human knew of them."
I
gape. "Wait, you want
Scion dead?" Holy shit,
why. Wait, is this asshole one of the Fallen? 'cause I'm struggling to imagine a cape who'd want Scion dead aside those goofballs. What the hell, that's not just across the border, aren't they supposed to be, like, just north of Florida or something?
Another faux-innocent blink. "
That is not what it calls itself, but yes."
'It'. I note that odd choice of language. Not
he. Not
himself. If my fucking power worked on this asshole, not to mention
was working at all, I'd be able to make a reasonable guess whether this is emotional distancing or a blandly factual-type belief. I'm not
calling this jackass on it, but I make a mental note regardless. "WHY." I just seriously cannot get past that part. Even the Fallen aren't stupid enough to
actually attack Scion, however much they might like the
idea of a meteor smiting him for them so their stupid fetish for the Endbringers gets to play out without his interference. (So this asshole probably
isn't a Fallen recruiter)
The cat-looking thing resumes pretending to groom, and I can't quite recall when it stopped that. "
It is currently estimated that its kind will-"
I bring a hand up immediately, head starting to pound. "Hold up,
kind? What kind of racist bullshit are you
on?"
The projection waits a second, probably wanting to see if I'm going to say anything else, and then continues as if I hadn't interrupted. "
It is estimated that the universe will be driven to a permanently unusable state in roughly 7% of the time that the natural heat death of the universe will take. Or 9%, by a different definition of what constitutes the heat death of-"
"What the fuck does any of that
mean," I say, reconsidering my prior commitment to not getting up and dropkicking this lunatic. I am seriously running out of patience for their shit.
"
Do they not teach this in your schools?" Yeah, I'm starting to think this is the nerdiest nerd that ever did nerd, refusing to ever break character. And probably the most autistic nerd to ever be an autistic nerd. This is just... difficult to imagine a cult leader or recruiter sticking out like this. They
still haven't tried to make the pitch for going and helping the organization that
totally isn't their cult but please sign your name in blood when you arrive please and thank you.
I heave the most put-upon sigh in the universe, because this is the stupidest, most agonizing shit. "I never
went to school, you asshole, and even if I did I'm pretty sure 'the heat death of the universe' is something you just made up because it sounds cool."
"
The heat death of the universe is the inevitable result of entropy in a closed system. You do know of entropy, yes?"
Okay, that's at least a real word, but holy shit shut the fuck up no one
cares. "No, fuck- no, this isn't the fucking point, shut the fuck up, explain the bit about killing Scion because
what the hell."
Supporting my increasing suspicion of 'autistic nerd staying real hard in-character', the projection doesn't seem at all bothered by my increasing use of invective, or general rudeness. 'Really committed actor sticking to the story of being an alien' fits that neatly enough, 'autistic nerd who does not into emotions on other people' fits slightly less well but decently enough, and 'both at once' fits
really well with just bowling on through my rudeness without acknowledging it while spinning their nonsense story. "
Zion is one member of a race of beings that are currently seeking out worlds with intelligent life on them, performing elaborate games whose purpose remains unclear, and then violently destroying the civilizations involved, as well as acquiring the local energy supplies for itself, which are then expended in tremendous quantities on future such games. We have attempted to explain the idea of entropy violation to them-" oh god the nerd just can't stop "-
but attempts to communicate have been consistently met with tremendous violence. Three Incubator colonies have been completely destroyed, and some members of Zion's species appear to be actively hunting for other Incubator worlds."
Okay, this is more scifi bullshit nonsense, but at least
part of it makes any fucking sense. "So basically you're saying you're an alien, he's killing all your fellow aliens, so you want revenge."
"
That is not at all what-"
"Got it!" I cheerfully interrupt. The cheer is mostly faked to be obnoxious, honestly, but whatever.
"
I can see further discussion on this topic will have to wait another day." Whatever. Stupid nerd. "
Zion is not an immediate priority anyway. If it holds to typical patterns for its species, it will take one hundred or so revolutions around your star for it to move into the final, most destructive phase of its game." I haul myself to my feet, starting to feel vaguely comfortable in my skin again. "
You will need to hunt a Witch much sooner." I roll my eyes. Wow,
witch-hunting. Lemme guess, you want them burned at the stake, right? So fucking original. I brush some grass off my dress, then sigh. Seriously, the grass stains are
never going to go away. I
liked this dress. It's part of why I was wearing it for this trip, to relax-
-
to show off-
-eeergh what the fuck did this asshole do to me,
god. Whatever! Fine, this was a waste of time, my power is ruined, possibly forever, this asshole is
useless and
insane, and now I have to go back to Daddy being a complete-
-
ly normal for him, expressed interest in hunting for another aunt tomorrow-
-I pinch the bridge of my nose, but it doesn't help with the headache. Or make these stupid double-memories stop happening. I'm not
sure, but they feel... weirdly limited. I dredge up some pretty old memories, like my...
fucking trigger event, but nothing weird happens in my skull. It's only this... weird insistence of the alternate pair of memories where Jean-Paul didn't leave and nothing bad happened.
Whatever, fuck this.
"
You will need to take out your soul gem-"
"Later, loser," I call behind me as I start walking home, already plotting how I'm going to spin this to Daddy. There's
got to be a way to sell this that gets him to let me off light, and I can't afford to even
try to run away from home with my
power goddamn busted...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I end up having to hitch a ride with a maybe-friendly face, some old lady who's so concerned I was going to freeze to death she refuses to take 'no' for an answer, foisting a fur coat off on me. Wish my power was working so I could tell what her real reason was. It's almost never
actual concern that motivates this shit.
Point is, the aunts have already left the parking lot, so I can't hitch a ride back home with them, and walking would take... a while, when it's already so late Daddy is definitely going to be-
-
mildly annoyed-
-probably convinced I ran away and ready to sic Flor' on me the instant I come through the door.
So anonymous stranger's aid it is.
Fortunately, she isn't pushy about coming with me once she's dropped me off. Just asks once if I need a hand, probably noticing I'm still not walking quite right, but when I wave her off and point out the door we're, like, ten feet away from as being my apartment, she backs off. Still insists I take the jacket, but fine, whatever, it's not like I haven't
stolen more valuable coats. It'd be ridiculous to feel guilty about being
given one, especially since she probably is... I dunno, a pedophile? Whatever, I'm too exhausted to care, and my power isn't working, and I'm
double-dreading meeting Daddy...
... so I'm pretty confused when I enter the living room, braced for impact, and Daddy is watching television with two aunts snuggling against him. He briefly glances at me, grunts out, "Call if you're going to be late, I've told you a million times," and then just... ignores me.
... what the hell?
I so
desperately want to know what the hell is going on, but sometimes Daddy's mood improves for... no real reason that I've noticed, I think he might have some kind of personality disorder to be honest... and
asking him why he's in a good mood is a sure recipe for ruining it and getting him to ruin
you. So I just briefly give a -confused- apology, claiming I forgot, which is... pretty much the truth, really... and then do my best to flee without looking like I'm fleeing and-
-WHY THE FUCK CAN I HEAR JEAN-PAUL'S VOICE FROM THE OLDER BOYS' ROOM?
The door is open, because of
course it is, and four of the older boys are together playing some murder simulator, a head exploding on-screen as I'm getting a view in. One of those boys is Guillame, because he can't get enough of this shit. I technically know the names of two of the others, but they don't have powers yet and they don't make waves (Unlike Guillame, who just last month was throwing fireworks at cops with some local assholes) so I don't really give a shit. The fourth turns to me, cocks an eyebrow, and blandly comments, "If you're that appalled, why are you watching?"
I don't bother to respond, slowly edging away from the hallucination as Guillame makes some jeering comment in agreement, and once I've broken line of sight with it I turn and
flee.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Once I'm safely hidden under multiple layers of blankets, I allow myself to start shaking violently.
What the
fuck is happening? I
know Jean-Paul escaped! I did all this because-
-
it seemed like a good idea at the time?-
-of the
absolute shit Daddy was putting us through, I'm ready to hyper-ventilate just
thinking about what he was doing, might've done to me,
probably would've done if another week had passed like this,
so why is Jean-Paul here like nothing happened?
Did Daddy somehow manage to retrieve him in the...
I check the clock.
... three hours I was gone, and now everyone is in on some insane conspiracy to fuck with me?
I hear Pauline enter the room, identifiable by her gait and weight. Tallest girl in the fam', weird, almost robotically-even tempo to how she paces her footsteps. I have a minor panic attack, some elemental part of me expecting her to punish me for being late, Daddy has her do that sometimes, but then I can hear her sitting at the desk, booting up our laptop, apparently content to ignore me. This sparks a thought, and after a minute of screwing up my courage, I poke my head up out of the blanket and ask Pauline, "Hey, uh, Pauline?" Her head twists in place in that eerie way I've never seen any other real person do, entire body completely still aside the bare minimum necessary for her neck to turn her head.
Normal people have their upper body tilt about a little as they turn to look at something, or even turn their entire torso, or hell, rotate their
entire body. Pauline moves...
just her neck. Regardless, she doesn't say anything, but I know Pauline well enough to know this is her 'I am listening intently' response, as opposed to her 'you have bothered me, and I'm considering what is merited as punishment that won't get Daddy mad at me' reaction, so I ask my question. "Do you remember what Jean-Paul did on the, uh, field trip, not quite a week ago?"
I'm pretty sure this is an absolutely shitty way to phrase this question for avoiding seeming like a loon, but I already feel nuts, and I'm tired, and stressed,
and my power isn't working, so... I don't care. Fine. Whatever. It's not like Pauline is liable to behave any differently if she thinks I'm nuts. I'm not even sure she
recognizes the concept of sanity.
Pauline finally interrupts my moody ruminations by answering my question with a lengthy, overly-detailed rendition of the schedule Daddy made Jean-Paul draw up, edifying with the two times he deviated from the schedule (Disapproval audible in her voice even as her face remains essentially still, schedules being one of the few things Pauline seems to give a crap about), and concluding with... him coming home and being mildly rebuked by Daddy for being late, before being slightly praised for how well he handled his duties as a big brother. Then Pauline pauses, stares directly into my eyes, and asks in her eternally bland way, "Why do you ask, Cher'?"
I briefly consider complaining for the millionth time that my name is
Cherie, not 'Cher', but Pauline didn't listen the first nine hundred ninety-nine thousand and nine hundred and ninety-nine times, talking with Pauline is always stressful, and the main point of this has been accomplished: the idea of
Pauline being a participant in a family-wide prank on me is so utterly unbelievable I reject such a reality entirely.
Which leaves... weird power shit.
I tell Pauline, "You know me, always forgetting important stuff, no big," and promptly go back under the blanket, hoping Pauline won't grow a sense of curiosity. I'd really,
really like to be left alone now. Especially by Pauline in specific, but in general.
Fortunately, after a minute the sounds of a keyboard being typed at start up, indicating Pauline has lost interest in me.
I'm expecting to be up the remainder of the night, kept awake by nightmares and wholly-rational terror about the situation, but to my surprise I start drifting off in... nearly no time flat...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Status?
Status?
Statu-
Statussss.
Confirmation. Location?
L-location.
Confirmation. Readiness?
Read~y.
Confirmation. Connecting.
Connection r-r-r-registerrrrrrr-
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When I wake up, it's to the sounds of the younger kids making a hell of a racket. And not the screaming, terrified kind of racket, or the screaming, gleeful racket that happens when some of the worst of them have a new victim to play with. The kind of screaming small children do when playing tag or hide and seek or whatever other dumb shit small children get up to.
Normally, that would be only mildly noteworthy, as Daddy will sometimes okay playtime of that sort, especially if he's in a really good mood, and of course it also happens when he's not around to punish the kids for irritating him.
But I'm still remembering Daddy's control-freak response to Jean-Paul getting away, adrenaline pumping at the possibility of Daddy deciding
all the older kids are at fault for not controlling the younger ones and punishing us all as a result, so I jerk awake.
And then get confused when it turns out my power is working again, and everything is just
wrong.
Like, right away? Jean-Paul is in my range. So yeah. He's... he's somehow back, or never left, I guess? I just... 'timelines' is
so dumb, no, fuck off... but then what the hell
did happen?
Even more noticeable is that Daddy is at home and being tolerantly amused. I think he's bouncing that one younger girl, I forget her name, she's
weirdly cheerful and I still can't believe
Cordelia spawned her, but I think he's bouncing her on his knee and actually kind of enjoying the interaction? And he's okay with all the shrieking younger kids running around making a racket?? And he's
home during all this? And
everybody is acting like everything is normal???
I just... even with asking Pauline last night, I can't. I just
can't, this makes no
sense, what the hell is going
on.
But the weirder thing is the...
other things I'm sensing.
Yeah, weirder than timeline nonsense.
Like, there's... five.... yeah, five of these...
things in my range I absolutely have never sensed before in my life. My sense of space is distorted and wrong with them, like they feel
huge and yet tiny, like they
should each span several streets' worth of buildings but I'm very clear they're each sitting all compact in a tiny space, tucked away between groups of people they ought to be
enveloping. And their emotional choruses are just so
bizarre, the most intense despair I've ever felt from
anything in my range acting as the centerpiece to various secondary feelings that... trend toward the kind of range I'm used to hearing from children who don't have any sense of how bad the world can be? If it weren't for the font of despair pouring its cacophony of chalkboard-noises into my mental ears, I'd be reading these as sheltered children playing with toys in their parents' mansions...
... but for extra-weird, they're all concentrated in unpleasant parts of the city, places where the desperate and angry are congregated for whatever exact reasons.
And for the final bit of weird, as I'm listening in I'm realizing there's...
hundreds of little choirs contained inside them, the larger emotional pattern writ very small, like if the world's tiniest violin gag wasn't a gag and instead someone decided to
actually make an itty-bitty orchestra and have it play in the middle of a regular-sized orchestra, only every single seat in the house has its own copy of these miniature orchestras playing almost exactly the same tune as the regular-sized orchestra.
...
What the fuck?
I'm rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, too overwhelmed by the sheer weirdness to generate a coherent thought, let alone a plan of action, when that
fucking voice shoves itself into my skull. "
Cherie Vasil, you will need to hunt a Witch before the week is out."
I quickly confirm nobody else is in the room -with my
eyes, because
Pauline- and then focus on where I heard the voice coming from, and lo, I find that goddamn puppet doll thing sitting in the window. On
this side of the glass, even though the window is closed and no way would Pauline open it to let an animal in-
...
Okay, maybe she
would let it in if it was a talking doll thing that said
please and she couldn't think of a rule that explicitly forbade such a thing. I could buy that from Pauline.
Regardless, I wander over to the window and hiss as quietly as I can, "Not in the
apartment." If it
is invisible to the fam' -which I'm skeptical of- then I don't need them thinking I'm talking to myself. Uh. More than I already do. Shut up, I know how it sounds!
If it
isn't, I don't need one of them seeing it and... I don't even know... resulting from that.
The idiotic autistic nerd's puppet that I'm suddenly reconsidering my interpretation of just blandly says, "
None of them has the Potential to see me, and if you delay for long it will end badly for you."
Is- is this little shit
threatening me? Am I
finally seeing signs of it having an agenda it cares about? Hmmm. Interesting. I whisper to it, "Look, I'm
not talking with you-"
"
You can speak to me telepathically. You will need to accept a... 'friend request', I believe humans call it?"
I stare at the stupid doll-thing, remembering my concerns about power-gifting Master effects and all. "No. Just... if you're
sure you're invisible, wait until I'm not with the fam', and then we'll talk."
"
If you insist."
I'm not entirely sure whether I'm imagining a hint of reproach in its mental voice or not, but I don't get any 'friend requests' in my goddamn
brain so I guess it's accepted that it's not getting that foothold in me, at least not yet.
That settled, I stand up, then make a face as I realize I never actually changed out of my grass-stained clothes.
Great.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I shoved the stupid doll in the closet while grabbing some clothes to change into, because while I'm not
entirely sure it was being a pervert before I'm not
entirely sure it
wasn't, and regardless of whether it's an alien or not I'm not letting it see me in my undies without a good reason. And then I went and had breakfast, thanks Aunt Naomi you're still the best cook in this godforsaken family, hid the grass-stained clothes in one of my larger purses and promptly took it with me so I can dispose of the clothes without anyone ever the wiser (Except Pauline, probably, but this isn't a rule so she won't tattle), managed to clamp down on my shocked response when the damn doll-thing somehow made its way from the closed closet in the room whose door I'd closed behind me to my
shoulder, and made my excuses about where I was going today.
Yes, Daddy gave a contented grunt at me asking permission to go on a 'date', focused mostly on the little tyke on his knee. I'd read that correctly. I'm too shocked to even jokingly play up my own awesomeness.
I'm still confused as to what's going on, but am willing to work with the fact that things are inexplicably better.
Once I'm out the apartment, I Immediately home in on my target, a boy I've profiled before who's going to college and living in a tiny apartment on his own and is completely convinced he's a Forever Alone loser. (This is because he's a Forever Moronic Loser; there are at
least three people who are interested in him at his college, and based on what I've been hearing I'm pretty sure two of them have outright tried to get a date and he's
completely failed to recognize 'let's go eat together or something' as a
fucking date you moron) He will be
thrilled to have an attractive girl not far off his age dropping in out of nowhere,
before I use my power on him, but he's also so completely clueless on romance and anything even vaguely in its vicinity that if I don't openly and explicitly propose something he will just sit around awkwardly, unwilling to initiate for fear he'll be... labeled a creep or something? I don't get this particular brand of cluelessness, even after people-watching five different examples.
The walk isn't
too far, maybe a half hour away, not really worth the effort of shanghaing someone into taking me there, which ends up being convenient because it lets me see how the freakazoid on my shoulder keeps eyeing girls.
Just girls, adding points to my 'absolute pervert' theory. Only one of them is a cape, too, which is interesting, especially because the puppet spends a
lot more time staring at one hot waitress than it does staring at the mildly frumpy Protectorate heroine in her civvies. I'm not sure
what it means, but it's interesting. Either it doesn't know the Protectorate heroine is a cape or it
does know but is more motivated by 'pretty girl' than by 'cape girl'. At least, those are the main possibilities...
Usually I amp people up before they open the door, make them excited so they'll be more ready to be molded into being happy to see me, but for funzies I decide I won't bother with Forever Alone Because Moron. I wanna see what his honest response is, see if I'm on the mark like I think I am.
As it turns out, I am
totally on the mark. Forever Alone Because Moron starts out confused -because lol he doesn't have
regular friends, either- gets more confused but slightly excited when I call out, "Excuse me!" through the door, and is absolutely
thrilled (And baffled) when tearing open the door does, in fact, reveal an amazingly pretty girl standing on the other side, wanting to be let in. (ie
moi, the eternally humble and gloriously amazing Cherie Vasil) By a similar token he's quick to let me in when I lie and claim I'm touring apartments for college myself (Nobody ever questions it when I act like I'm over eighteen. I'm not sure if it's because I'm pretty or if it's something about how I carry myself), is perpetually doing the gentleman thing of showing me about as if he has zero self-interest while actually hoping this will go somewhere (Not that he does
anything to hint at such a possibility: I'm only aware due to my
power, holy shit how does he expect
regular girls to pick up on his interest?), and when I lie again and make like I'm hungrier, thirstier, and more tired than I thought, he's
really quick to offer to shovel out his fridge for me,
thrilled at the ongoing excuses to talk to a pretty girl.
I only have to turn to my power when I decide I want him
out and so convince him to go bring back steak so we (By which I mean
he) can cook up something with more style than an infinite pile of ramen, cola, and two whole sports drinks. And even that is a pretty light touch once I shove a couple hundred dollar notes in his hands to cover the meal, his eyes bugging out at how casually I treat the cash. Ah, poor college students: too quick to cease questioning when presented with a sugar mama, even when she's clearly younger than they are and has provided zero hint of why she'd have that much money. I'm not sure whether they're just assuming I'm, like, an heiress (Which... wouldn't be
wrong, exactly...) or if
thinking is just not a thing that is happening because they're too busy being thrilled by being temporarily Not Poor.
The instant he's out I focus on the stupid puppet thing, currently staring at some abstract art shit hung on one of the walls of this ugly place. Probably not actually owned by Forever Alone Because Moron; this is an engineering geek, and his room was plastered in some of the newer anime posters from Aleph, he's not a high-brow culture sort of man. "Alright, real talk time, I'm admitting I was too quick to judge last night,
clearly you're more on the up-and-up than I thought, but I
really want straight answers instead of nonsensical babble about the universe's heart dying or whatever."
"
The heat death of the universe-"
"DON'T. CARE."
The puppet turns to face me properly, instead of talking to me with its back to me like it was. "
Fine. You'll have to be more specific, though. What humans consider important rarely makes sense to me."
I point one long-nailed finger dramatically at the puppet. "
That. That's one of the big things I'm talking about, the 'wooooo I'm an alien' thing. I am
slightly more willing to give that the benefit of the doubt, but the more believable scenario by
far is that you're some nerd who triggered, got a power that let you project an animal mascot, and are now living the dream of pretending to be in an Aleph anime because your own life is an empty and terrible thing you wish you could escape."
The puppet's tail starts tick-tocking. "
I do not lie."
I roll my eyes. "Uh-huh. Sure.
Everybody lies. Even if you
are an alien, you've probably lied to coworkers to hide mistakes you were trying to fix so you didn't get fired, lied to family when you thought it would hurt their feelings-"
"
What you call emotion is only found in the mentally disturbed, in Incubators," the puppet interrupts me with, which is
interesting. Hit a nerve? That would be hilarious, if it was getting emotional
while trying to claim it doesn't have emotions.
"I
doubt that, but sure, okay, that's at least
believable. 'Doesn't lie' is not. Some people are
real good at presenting things in a manner that is technically truthful in a literal sense but still a lie in the, ah, spiritual sense, but they're still liars." Though it does occur to me that my power giving me nothing from it
would be kind of consistent with 'no emotions'. Not
particularly meaningful given goldfish don't ping my power and only a moron would try to argue they don't have any feelings, but still an interesting data point.
The tail is tick-tocking faster now, and the puppet remains silent for much longer than when it's previously responded.
Really hit a nerve? I'm just considering what angle to press it on when it changes the subject. "
You will need to hunt a Witch, and it would be best if I was present to educate you."
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm hitting nerves and it doesn't have a better response than desperately changing the subject. Which, uh, would be fully consistent with some socially-challenged dude struggling with me questioning their story, so not very helpful. Points for me, though! But okay, this... 'witch' nonsense. I blow a bit of hair out of my face and ask, "Alright, fine, why do you want me killing women whose only crime was unnerving a bunch of ignoramuses, some portion of whom were hopped up on moldy bread?"
"
What," the puppet says in its weird flat way, where I can't hear the lilt of a question.
I cross my arms, irritated. "You know, witches? It's just historical assholes being assholes to cool-as-shit women who knew how herbs worked and all, and deciding to fuck 'em up because they were insecure and fuckin' murder was apparently the way ye olde people made themselves feel better."
There is an
extremely long pause while I frown at the stupid puppet sitting completely still in front of me, before it finally speaks up, its tail slowly tick-tocking again. "
That is unrelated. A Witch is a being of madness that feeds on human suffering. It is the duty of magical girls to fight them, protecting humanity."
I roll my eyes. Come on, even
capefiction doesn't do the dumb 'evil that feeds on human suffering' nonsense. "Please give me a real explanation instead of melodramatic nonsense." Sure is melodramatic for 'not having emotions', huh?
The puppet's tail is tick-tocking faster and I'm almost completely certain that's some kind of emotional tic at this point. "
I believe a demonstration may be more effective, in this case." There's a brief pause as the tail slows down, making me think the puppet is getting itself under control. "
Please pull out your soul gem."
My what? I'm thinking as my left hand wanders vaguely toward the left pocket of my dress, honestly not having any idea what the puppet is talking about until my fingers touch on a round thing and I abruptly remember the... marble thing the puppet... pulled out of my chest? Wait, am I remembering that correctly? Hell, I have
two memories of that happening!
I don't even remember switching the marble over into my new outfit. When
did I do that? I pull it out, confused, and look closely at it, still kind of liking the coloration -wait. Was there always black shit in it? 'cause now there's some at... the bottom, I guess, looking like some roiling ocean of murkiness frozen in time. It's not a
lot, like maybe an... eighth, I guess? Of the bottom of the marble, and admittedly it was night when I saw it... could've sworn I could see the whole jewel clearly, though, no black stuff.
"
As you can see, Grief has accumulated."
My attention jerks to the puppet. "Who-what-now?"
"
Grief. It is the darkness that accumulates in the soul gem as you use magic, or as you experience negative emotions."
Oh goody, just hitting
all the dumb fantasy clichés. Psh, 'negative emotions'. But okay, the puppet is... well, indicating the stress I've been under has made magical goo accumulate in... what the
fuck even is this soul gem thing, anyway? Holy shit, I just realized it's been calling the marble a
soul gem. What, are you trying to say my
~immortal soul~ is contained in this marble? Dumb as fuck. Let's gloss right on past that, focus on the meaningful bit: that what they're saying
is kind of consistent with the observable info. That could be a well-spun lie, of course, or them using their power to... manipulate the color of the rock... okay, it does cross my mind that
usually capes have a pretty tightly-defined, small set of powers, and I'm kind of constantly having to hypothesize a new power to fully explain what the puppet is doing. Not that this means they can't be a cape, but it does
sliiightly tilt away from them being a cape, or more accurately tilts toward 'if cape, probably part of a team coordinating'. Which itself would mean... what, they're
all immune to me and/or out of my range? Possible, but pretty damn unlikely.
Okay, fine, let's go along with this. "Okay, uh, sure, 'grief'." I am
not doing that thing with my voice where you can tell this 'grief' shit is Special And Important And A Proper Noun. "It happens when doing, uh, magic-" lol magic "-and when I angst, I guess? You going somewhere with this?"
"
If you do not hunt a Witch and use its Grief Seed to clean your soul gem before it has fully filled, your life will end."
...
...
In an overly-calm tone of voice, the kind of tone I have heard from many a boss who is pretty sure they just heard they need to fire someone but wants to make absolutely sure before actually doing so, I say, "You never said that making a wish would set me up to
die if I didn't do as you wanted."
"
It is a side effect of becoming a magical girl, and you never asked."
...
Oh, this fellow is one of
those. Don't tell
explicit falsehoods, but leave out critical info and then act like you should've known to
ask about the thing they deliberately obscured from you.
I mean, assuming this isn't them spinning a bullshit yarn. Either way they're a liar, though,
just like I said, it's just a question of which
kind of liar.
"
This is why I have told you this cannot be put off. I do not understand human emotion, but your soul gem has filled unusually quickly, whatever the exact reason. If this rate were to continue, your soul gem would completely fill in perhaps two days." What, not going to make up some scifi-sounding nonsense about 'rotations of the planet'?
Whatever, fine.
...
God, I'm tired.
"
Where are you-"
"To take a fucking nap, fuck off you perverted midget!"
I slam Forever Alone Because Moron's bedroom door behind me.
-------------------------------------------------------------
I wake up from some nightmare about Jean-Paul to the sound of knocking and a male voice nervously informing me that the food is nearly ready, uh, ma'am?
It takes a long minute for my confused brain to catch up with current events.
Right, right, I crashed at Forever Alone's place, and he was getting food, and wow he's a good little boy because he just started making the food instead of trying to kick me out of his apartment. He'd have
failed, mind, but still kind of neat. I might have to actually give him some help on recognizing those people are interested in him!
Then I notice the puppet is somehow in the room, staring with its dead eyes at me from atop some kind of trophy stand. My startled shriek freaks out Forever Alone, but fortunately I'm me, so that's a very temporary state as I twist him to not be concerned, not even bothering to give him an excuse.
"
Your soul gem is now one-quarter full. You should hunt a Witch soon."
I turn bleary eyes toward the marble, which I'd set on the stand next to the bed. Yeah, uh, more of it is darker. Still not sure I believe it's happening on its own, but fine, whatever.
Food first, though. I leave the... 'soul gem' on the stand and haul myself out of the room, ignoring the puppet. It'll keep, and I'm increasingly suspecting it has less control than I was expecting it to have. I dunno, maybe it'll get pissed and reveal some trump card, but whatever, I'll deal with it when I deal with it.
Forever Alone proves to be marginally more appealing than I was expecting over the course of the meal. For starters, he can cook. Not
great, not like Aunt Naomi, but I've raided more than a few college students, and most of them seem to struggle with sophisticated concepts like 'stick it in the microwave and turn the damn thing on for the time listed on the fucking package'. Forever Alone at least understands what a stove is, how pans work, and that sufficient application of heat and spices will turn pre-cut beef into something edible. I upgrade his nick' appropriately, dropping the 'because moron' part.
Conversation with him is not so hot, but more because I don't give a shit than through any major, obvious faults of his. When he starts asking some questions about my plans, it takes me a minute to remember the spiel I spun about apartment-hunting for college purposes, brain getting caught on the idea he's asking about my plans as Cherie Vasil, favored daughter of future ruler-guy Heartbreaker. (I still can't believe he goes along with that, come on Daddy, it's a shitty name the Protectorate stuck you with to make you sound uncool) That my brain muzziness leads to me having to cover for mistakes by slapping Forever Alone with apathy and shit is because I'm thrown by this entire mess, not because Forever Alone is an incarnation of stupidity.
He is kinda socially lame, but in the process of nerding out about anime and his studies and I dunno what all I do manage to gather that his issue is probably more a blind spot than actual stupidity. He's here to be a Good Student, and it doesn't seem to have crossed his mind that his fellow college kids might be scoping the grounds for potential mates and all. Which, uh, explains why one of the people crushing on him has so consistently had hopes go up and then ended up disheartened; he's probably being invited to, like, study dates where that's
meant to be in air quotes and he just goes, 'oh yes fellow consumer of education, I would be thrilled to become ever more educated by working alongside you in a completely platonic way'.
I toy with the idea of blaming his parents, but he doesn't let slip enough for me to say either way.
He doesn't think they're terrible, but I have had some of the
worst conversations with teens being gaslighted by their parents into thinking they're the greatest thing since sliced bread, and not, you know, abusive assholes sucking their own child's blood. So I don't credit these opinions much nowadays. I
used to, back in my naïve days when I thought
surely anybody with parents like Daddy would be able to recognize how shitty that is, but then reality ensued...
In any event, yeah, I'm helping this guy to recognize that he can stop being Forever Alone
effortlessly. It'll be a way to pass the day.
I spin some bullshit about how I'd like a tour of the campus 'cause I
totally think he made it sound appealing (He didn't, I've scoped his college before, it's dull as dried beans), end up taking the jacket he offers because sure why the hell not, and then-
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Status?
Location?
Status?
Status?
-atus.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I wake up to a mouth on my mouth, which isn't exactly unusual but it's not normally being interrupted by chest compressions. (The sobbing is slightly more normal)
I sit up, shoving Forever Alone off of me, ignoring him crying out, "Oh thank god!" What the fuck? Why am I back in Forever Alone's apartment, laying on his beat-up couch, with my last memory being of stepping out the door?
I rasp out, "Wha' happened?"
"I
don't know! You just
collapsed a few feet out the door! You
stopped breathing! Do you have a medical condition? Should I have called 911? God, I should've called 911, but I needed to do CPR and you can't do both at the same time-" Forever Alone is wringing his hands and has got tears running down his face. Huh. Wimpier than I thought. Wonder if I'd have guessed it if I knew anything about those anime he was rambling about?
I wave him off, swallowing to clear my throat. Feels weird. Whole body feels weird again. "No, I'm fine, uh, now."
Forever Alone abruptly stands up. "I'm calling 911, if you don't know why you collapsed this could be-"
I tune out the rest of his rambling, half-focusing on making him stop fucking
caring with my power, half-focused on trying to work through what happened. Seriously, why would I collapse like that? Why so
briefly? I don't
feel like I collapsed from exhaustion, and I woulda stayed asleep for longer, and also didn't he say I stopped breathing?
... what the fuck did that little rat bastard
do to me?
Forever Alone is starting to lose his trail of thought, half-heartedly digging around for, I guess, his cell phone? I dunno, but the apathy is working. Whatever, I keep just a little bit of focus on that and stumble back into his bedroom, where the rat bastard himself is sitting on that stupid trophy case still, tail tick-tocking and gaze locked on the 'soul gem'. I don't bother to close the door behind me, but I do get in the puppet's stupid, ugly face and keep my tone low. "What just happened, you little bastard?"
"
You wandered too far from your body," the thing responds in its bland, matter-of-fact tone that still hasn't really varied.
I take a second to turn that sentence over in my head. "Hmmm, nope, doesn't make any more sense than it first sounds.
Explain."
"
The soul gem is your body, and it can only control your old body within a limited radius."
I turn to look at the innocuous marble. "The fucking
rock?"
"
It's actually made of-"
"I don't
care. You're saying I'm a
bauble? A bauble controlling
this-" I gesture expansively at my extremely attractive self. "-like some kind of RC toy?"
"
I suppose that's an accurate enough summation, yes, if 'RC' is short for 'remote control'."
I snort. "It's actually short for
radio control, but whatever." I take a moment to let this sink in. "Why the
fuck did you not
mention that I'm a goddamn rock and I can't leave said rock lying around? Lemme guess, the rock being smashed
kills me as well?"
"
Most do not arrive to the obvious conclusion so readily. Yes, that is correct." I can't tell if I'm imagining it seeming pleased. It feels like its voice is the same, so
probably it's my own expectations coloring my interpretation, but this is a goddamn voice in my head, how can I be sure?
I also note it didn't answer the actual question. "
Why did you not
mention this?"
"
Prior experience has shown that newly-contracted magical girls generally take the information poorly, either refusing to believe or committing suicide. Sometimes both."
I put one hand to my forehead, frustrated. "No you absolute dipshit, why didn't you mention it
before I made the goddamn wish?" Then I hold up a hand in a stop gesture. "No, wait, lemme guess, you didn't mention it because you didn't want me to be put off by this disclaimer." Manipulative little shit.
It tilts its head slightly, tail tick-tocking at a slow, almost hypnotic rate. "
That has been a problem in the past, yes. I don't see why so many humans become so distressed by the idea of changing their concept of who they are."
I mutter to myself
me neither, and then speak to the stupid rat. "Shit like the thing that
literally just happened needs to be fucking
known! And
having to cart around jewelry is all kinds of complications, like maybe you go to a fancy-pants school with rules about your clothes that mean you're
fucked! Of
course you're going to have people refusing with all these strings attached! Fuck, the more I learn the more it seems like this is all downside, I got one shitty wish I
still don't get and now I'm a
goddamn rock and will
die if I don't fight elemental evil or some garbage on a regular basis?"
"
You have consistently prevented me from educating you about your new state."
I pause for a moment at that, because okay that's...
kind of a point, but I don't think it really undercuts the issue here at all. Admittedly I'm not sure I'd take
back this wish if it was an option, 'cause holy hell the... timeline, fuck, fine,
whatever... that seems to have been aborted was
awful, showing no signs of getting better anytime soon, but this dumb puppet keeps talking like I'm far from the first person it's pulled this shit on, and it's outright
telling me people were, you know,
not happy to have this sprung on them! "When I ask you
real questions you jabber about inane nonsense or get evasive. I'm not missing out on anything, seems like."
"
You still haven't learned how to perform magic."
I stare at the rat, noticing in the back of my head that Forever Alone has finally hit the point of not doing anything. Okay, easing off on the apathy, switching to... contentment and shit... "I already have a parahuman ability."
"
Magic violates entropy, conservation of mass and energy-"
I roll my eyes. "Yeah, that's called a parahuman power."
The ears on the puppet twitch slightly. That's a new one. "
Parahuman abilities are obscured by several layers of deception, but fundamentally obey standard physical laws."
I roll my eyes
harder. "Whatever. I'm already a cape, you're not selling me on this nonsense, this raw deal is stupid and awful and you're a shitty sales...thing." I scoop up my... soul gem... me... whatever... and eyeball it. "Should I be concerned this is already, like, halfway up in dark, tarry garbage?"
"
Most contractees would be," the puppet responds, ears twitching again.
I heave a big sigh. "Okay,
fine, what'shisname can get a girl-and-or-boyfriend another day, point me to your dumb elemental evil nonsense." I'm pretty sure Forever Alone is just into girls, but some of the gay guys are
really good at keeping that on the down-low, enough so I've been fooled a couple times even
with my power.
The ear twitching gets momentarily worse, and then the puppet shakes its entire body violently, like it's trying to drive off a really irritating fly. "
If you mean a Witch, you will have to find them yourself, using your soul gem."
I heave another sigh. "Of course. Fine, whatever. Let's get this over with."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I still cannot believe this is a game of Marco Polo, I think to myself as I follow the increasingly insistent blinking glow of my soul gem.
What happened to being a sophisticated alien species giving me fucking magic? Where's my tricorder? My tricorder that doubles as a magic wand?
I stopped making these complaints
aloud half an hour ago, because while I'm
pretty sure the stupid puppet is wrong and totally does get annoyed, once I set out on this Witch-hunting expedition it seemed to become genuinely unflappable. I think it's too pleased by me finally cooperating to care about my snark. Or maybe it's gotten used to the snark. I don't hang with most people long enough for that to happen, but I know it
can happen.
Though the other reason I stopped snarking aloud is because I noticed that we seemed to be heading pretty directly toward one of the... weird-ass things my power has been detecting ever since it came back online. I didn't want to say anything initially because I was initially wondering if maybe it was a coincidence, and the closer and more certain I got the more I wondered, given what a completely unhelpful jerk the puppet has been, if maybe I should just...
not mention that detail to it. I don't think it would've taught me this dumb Marco Polo routine if it thought I had a more precise, longer-range option. I'm not
entirely sure withholding that ability from it could be useful down the line, but I'm not entirely sure it
wouldn't be useful, and the more I see of the puppet's personality the more I suspect unpleasant scenarios are the correct ones to expect. Stuff like 'if it realized you could do this cool trick, it would promptly try to get you killed', or 'if it realized you could do this cool trick, it would promptly try to abduct you and dissect you to steal your secrets'.
Eventually the puppet tells me to stop, the fever pitch on the soul gem's blinking apparently indicating we're right on top of the 'labyrinth'. Which I'm... yeah, not surprised by, 'cause my power is reporting the weird thing as, like, ten feet ahead and two feet to the left, more or less.
(I am still
intensely weirded out by the revelation that most people can't see the soul gem. I didn't believe the dumb rat initially, but a bit of innocuous testing proved that no, really, the rock is invisible. What the hell? It even fails to show up on recordings!)
"Okay," I bother to say aloud. "Now what?"
"
The Labyrinth will reveal itself once your soul gem is close enough. It is also possible to learn how to reveal it from further away, but I do not believe I can explain the experience in a useful way."
I roll my eyes again, not that the rat can see me doing so from its position atop my head, but obligingly pretend to wander blindly in the general direction my power is pinpointing. I'm not at
all surprised when, roughly two feet away, a mark appears in the air. Well. Kind of surprised.
I look around again. Construction lot that hasn't seen work in years, looks like. It's pretty sheltered, and I can see signs that homeless people have been camping out here. Or maybe just teens goofing off with alcohol and shit. It can be difficult to tell the difference when I'm just going off of physical evidence instead of supplementing that with my power. No blood, which seems a bit weird. The puppet has been filling me in on the way over about the 'Witch's Kiss' and how they push people to suicide and blah blah blah, but there's no corpses or anything. Not sure how much I believe the rat, but after the scare with conking out when I wandered away from my soul gem I'm at least provisionally trusting it on 'if you don't do X, you will die, and if you do Y, you will also die'. Just... not so much trust when it comes to other topics.
Then I go back to eyeballing the mark. Just kinda... hanging in the air. Experimentally, I hold my soul gem further out toward it, not really expecting WHOA SHIT-
When things make sense again- well. They don't. Make sense, I mean.
Some kinda transition or something ends, though, and now I'm in... a freaky-deaky place. It looks like a slaughterhouse, distorted and exaggerated, thousands of hooked chains writhing like snakes, dangling from a ceiling some obscene distance above me, pigs dressed in police officer uniforms squealing at the ends of maybe a fifth of the chains. There's snatches of words amidst the piggy squeals, pretty sure I can hear
arrest in there, maybe
stop? I can't see very far horizontally, because some kinda icy mist hangs over everything, like this is a freezer as imagined for an ancient video game with zero draw distance. What I
can see is humanoid assemblages that look an awful lot like they're made entirely of needles. The medical syringe kind of needle, for drug injections, complete with plungers.
I also note with mild nausea that the info my power is feeding me has changed in a weird, disorienting way, where most of the city feels far away, so far away at least
some of it should now be out of my range, yet isn't, while the compact space I was staring at is... now all around me. Particularly skin-crawling is the part where my power is indicating I'm
inside an actual being, in addition to the dozens of signatures in this...
place.
"Oooookay, you didn't mention this part," I say to the puppet, not even slightly surprised to once again have been given horribly inadequate information.
"
You didn't ask," comes the completely predictable, vapid, flat-out lie. I
did ask. The little shit told me a bunch of garbage about labyrinths being barriers Witches throw up to keep the rest of the world outside because somethingsomething psychological bullshit something, but aside the making-more-sense-in-retrospect comment about each labyrinth being different it did
not at all hint at...
this.
I'm too moody and tired to really argue, though, especially since I'm increasingly convinced it's all completely deliberate. They're not going to stop being a little bastard just because I point it out if they're
meaning to be a little bastard. Like Nicholas, if Nicholas was less socially intelligent but a lot less stupid otherwise. "Whatever. I'm here, now what?"
"
Now you transform and start learning how to use your magic."
My jaw works for a moment, the stupidity of what has just unfolded so thorough I don't even know where to
begin. Even
Daddy didn't just hurl me at the Protectorate the day after I triggered and tell me to learn on the job.
... and when he did it to Flor' it was kinda a desperate, shitty situation, not something he
planned. Pretty sure. Mostly sure.
Whatever, fine, I'll dropkick it later. Or try blasting it with something unpleasant. If it
is an alien, and that thing about mentally disturbed ones having human-type emotions is
true, then it's entirely possible that aspect of my power would work on it. I just... didn't think about that because I've been under a lot of stress, and I'm tired still, and...
... what spidery bullshit did I just see and hear skittering through the fog, far enough out I only kind of made out a silhouette?
Right, explanations.
Now. "Okay fine how the fuck does that nonsense work."
"
I do not know the experiential element. Other magical girls have said that desiring to be transformed is sufficient. Some will use a phrase in conjunction, possibly as a learning aid. I can speculate on your possible abilities some-"
I've already tuned the puppet out, dully unsurprised that it's being useless again. Of
course. Fine, transformation, have to want it, uh... fuck, that's not working... god, this would probably be easier if I had a magical girl to study during their own transformation, could try to replicate their feelings if that's relevant. Okay, fine, close eyes, uhhhh, hm, this is kinda hard to
really want given I already have a superpower, uh, you know what let's arbitrarily assume I need to be transformed to get the grief whatchacallit so I can avoid dying-
-aaaah
shit, I'm pretty sure the... Witch, I guess? I'm pretty sure it's noticed me, there's signatures getting... some are angry, most are curious, excited, playful, but they're approaching.
Okay seriously transformation please happen I
really don't want to die and am not sure emotional detection and manipulation is going to be a good answer to whatever the fuck these things are come on COME ON
HURRY THE FUCK UP-
This isn't working, and the things are circling closer. Fuckit, I can detect them with my power, maybe the influence part works on them too.
Trust blast on you, fear blast on you, anger out the wazoo for you, happiness for that thing over there, contentment for this other one, spike the anxiety for whatever that is...
... okay, my power is at least
claiming to work on them. Ish. The trust blast reports a near-zero response, the anxiety ostensibly provokes a runaway spiral into some kinda nervous breakdown even though I stopped pushing it almost immediately, the happiness and contentment cases injected into their soundscapes with minimal disturbance so I don't trust them, the anger and fear both seem to have morphed into some kinda... protective instinct-y feeling? I've felt this from, like, parents diving in to save their kids, that kinda thing.
"
Most magical girls have transformed by now."
"Shut the fuck up I'm busy," I shoot at the thing without paying much attention to it, though I do briefly note that it hopped off my head at some point and is now...
pretty far away from me. Wow, this asshole has no faith in me. Maybe I'd be doing better if you were
less of a complete fuckup? Whatever, let's... walk closer to the closest signature, hitting it with happiness and trust the whole time. It's already in range, why not.
As I approach, the fog-y stuff pulls away like... seriously, it's
exactly like draw distance in an older video game.
So weird. Anyway, I get close enough, I can see the thing I'm approaching, it's some kinda... quadrupedal thing that if I squint looks a little like a dog or a horse or some such, but its limbs are made of bloody butcher's knives chained together by chainlinks, the torso is a partially carved log and the head-analogue is some button-eyed cloth thing incongruously stuck atop the morbid mess, the pink cotton looking far more friendly than the rest of the contraption. Why the
hell does my power register this?
How the hell?
Sort-of-kind-of-but-not-really answering my question is that a few seconds after I first started being able to see it the thing starts
moving. It's, uh,
disorienting, a stutter-stop effect where bits of it are moving, stopping, then suddenly being a bit further along their motion as if the stopping never happened. It reminds me of animation strangeness I saw a few times before I triggered, only weirder because it's not the whole thing stop-starting as a whole, it's all the individual bits doing so in a desynched, stuttery wave. It's also kind of threatening in that it makes it harder to keep track of what all its blade-bits are about to do, where like one limb apparently changes direction in a significant way partway through but freezes
before the change in direction happens and so if I was up close I suspect I'd potentially end up with a blade in my gut with zero warning.
"
That is a Familiar." Oh god shut the fuck up who
cares. "
They are the first line of defense in a Witch's Labyrinth, and are invariably aggressive toward intruders."
... did the puppet just say something
useful? I mean, it's still sitting down on a chunk of concrete waaaay away from me like it expects me to be killed any second now and doesn't want to be caught up in the mess, but that's an improvement over its showing so far. So, keeping an eye directly on the weird twitchy why-does-my-power-think-this-has-feelings
thing in front of me, I ask, "Okay, that's slightly useful, got any other insights?" The...
thing twitches, its head-analogue looking toward me, and there's rising curiosity and a spicy bit of anxiety, like the thing is intrigued by me but mistrusts me by default for being new or something.
"
They vary too much to say much specific. They're always less dangerous, individually, than the Witch itself, but they come in countless forms."
...
... I still need to dropkick the rat.
The...
thing in front of me seems like it's maybe studying me? Its emotions are doing the kind of thing I associate with people intently observing something, and its 'face' is pointed my way and all. I'm reminded, just a tiny bit, of a dog, which seems ridiculous but after a few seconds it starts... uh, barking? Sorta? I guess? It's this weird cacophany of voices, sounding like multiple small children saying 'arf', like they're aware that's supposed to be an onomatopoeia for a dog barking but have either never heard an actual dog in their life, or maybe like they don't know 'arf' is supposed to be the sound of a dog barking and are just faithfully reading it aloud? The emotional profile is... mostly pretty consistent with a yappy dog going the barking route, too, like the thing has decided it's concerned by me and wants everyone to know it but isn't committed enough to that opinion to try to start biting me.
More concerning is that clearly several of the other things can hear the 'barking' and are moving to investigate. Most of them don't seem particularly
upset, more curious than anything else, but there's one signature in there that has a protective parent streak a mile wide that makes me think of some of the scary-overprotective parents. And not Daddy-style overprotective where that means nobody he cares about is let out of his sight, but the kind of overprotective that has in fact ended in murder. I
immediately start trying to jam that thing with apathy, and my power
does report that as working and it
does seem to slow down, but it... doesn't completely stop. These things confuse the hell out of me.
The other things I try jamming with anxiety, and some of them... self-destruct. Like, I'm not sure if they're committing suicide or what, but their signature winks out after a bit, like they're dead or have gone very far,
very fast. A couple of them accelerate instead, and I stop that and start hitting them with depression, which works better, while the remainder start... circling? I don't know what to make of that. This place is weird and I hate that the rat baited me in here on inadequate information with no plan and no idea how to use my quoteunquote 'magic'.
Whatever, I hold out a hand toward the... dog-thing Familiar... and simultaneous to all that other stuff try hitting it with a dash of hope.
It feels
hungry in response to that, which I'd wonder if my power was misreporting but the thing fucking sprouts what looks like fish-hooks where teeth ought to be and lunges, growling. (Well, it's actually the voices of small children saying 'grrr', not even managing to sound angry or threatening, but close enough)
What the fuck?
So, uh, I start scrambling backward and try hitting it with fear on reflex but that just provokes that protective instinct and it keeps coming for me so I jam it with depression and while it
kind of stalls for a second, doing this odd little pose where I can
almost see a real dog doing the cute pose of doggy curiosity, it's only a like half-second delay before it keeps coming my way.
"You fucking useless asshole!" I yell at the stupid puppet as I turn around so I can run full speed ahead, rapidly cycling through all the emotional effects I can readily induce but this
goddamn thing is never stalled for more than a moment and when I go to repeats I start getting the sense that it
recognizes the artificiality of the experience and
does not like it.
Naturally, the dog-thing doesn't give a crap about the dumb puppet, and
also naturally the assorted signatures in the area are getting less listlessly self-absorbed and coming to investigate. There's some I have a pretty thorough handle on, but having like one in ten of these things firmly sitting down still leaves me with the other 90% lurching their way toward me.
There's a
slam just a bit ahead and slightly to my right as one of the pigs in police uniforms somehow detaches from its hook, which if I thought they could do
that I'd have made more of an effort to avoid passing nearby these things, and it stands up on its hind legs even though that's completely fucking bonkers with a pig's body, pulling a vaguely badge-like object from its jacket which
it throws like a goddamn shuriken at me, silver spinning through the air.
I drop to avoid that, stumbling and hitting the cold, concrete floor a bit painfully, but fortunately scramble to my feet before the dog-thing can gain too much ground, the pig-thing's jowls wobbling as my power reports that it feels like a small child who's playing a game of fucking tag or something and wait what the hell how is it throwing
more of those damn badge-shuriken at me???
I'm just starting to consider looping around to find the puppet so I can at least drop-kick it before I die, when a signature outside this space I was completely ignoring transfers
into this space. And it's not a panicky, useless civilian wondering what the hell is going on. It's somebody who is buoyed by self-confidence, looking forward to letting off some steam, relaxed and ready to enjoy a fight. So I promptly adjust my trajectory, turning right even though that means moving closer to the pig temporarily, thankful it's
really bad at throwing these goddamn things with any accuracy as I can see the first one it threw has bitten into the
concrete ground, and there's a bit of a tense moment as I pass almost within arm's reach of it because I'm
trying to get the dog-thing to crash into it, but the stupid piggy face only briefly has a moment of comprehension before the dog-thing does, in fact, slam into it, bowling the two of them over into a mess that devolves from there into the two of them fighting each other.
(Moi? You think
moi exaggerated their irritation and other unpleasant feelings aimed at each other so they'd go right to -yes you are right it worked perfectly I'm
awesome)
This is still not nearly as much space as I'd prefer, as I'm having to weave about to avoid having any other pigs drop from the sky and there's
dozens of signatures still trying to close on this area, some of them
distinctly not happy with what they're hearing apparently, but it buys me enough time and space to run like hell toward the human signature that's still getting its bearings.
When I get close enough that this stupid fog garbage stops obscuring them, I, uh, what?
What? WHY?
The girl in front of me is... first of all;
girl. Not woman.
Girl. If she's older than twelve I will buy a hat and make Forever Alone eat it. Then there's her costume, because that is a cape costume and it's...
baffling. Even from a distance I can see it's high-quality, probably sewn by hand for
days by some expert, the sort of material even Protectorate goobers don't blow that much budget on because what kind of moron would dump that kind of cash on something that's guaranteed to be ripped, burned, and otherwise damaged, inevitably requiring expensive repair and ultimately replacement? The outfit itself seems to be inspired by the Havergal uniform, given the teal color, the tie, and just generally vaguely resembling a men's suit aside the skirt, but as filtered through the lens of someone who thinks lace and butterflies are the best and most important things in the world. It is
covered in lace butterflies, so much so my brain latched on
that well before noticing the similarities to the Havergal uniform, and as I get closer I notice that there's detail-work
on the detail-work, like some of those old-school medieval things that someone spent literally
months carving.
The girl herself has straight black hair held together in at least eight different braids by dozens of butterfly-shaped hair ties, and a face I usually see get called 'cute' but have always personally thought of as 'going to be statuesque in a few years', which is about all I can see through her insane costume and honestly I'm still stuck on how
tiny she is she better have a
damn good power and-
...
I slow down my walk as I approach, suddenly reconsidering this plan, because my eyes finally focus on the hands (
The well-manicured, long nails covered in unicorns, zero-calluses hands) and notice that the pair of small cymbals the girl is carrying have their edges terminate in whirling hook-like blades, like someone decided they wanted to take a sawblade and then turn it evil and cymbal-like for some damn reason. What the
fuck am I looking at? And hold up, I
know this girl's signature, she's
not a fucking cape! Oh god she actually
is a Havergal girl, isn't she? And she goes and plays with a friend on the regular, pretty sure it's an older friend, but they don't do
cape shit. At least, I
thought I knew that. How- how the hell did I
miss this?
Then the girl notices me, eyes lighting up and power confirming a flood of relief. Uh. Okay? "Oh thank goodness you're alright!"
... whossawhatnow?
She starts jogging my way, which has the alarming quality of pointing those death-cymbals' murder-edges my way, and continues with, "I'm so sorry, I tried to come as soon as Kyubey told me but Missus Sullivan is
so strict- are you okay? Why aren't you transformed?"
The girl radiates innocence and genuine good cheer, thrilled somebody she could not
possibly have known existed is fine, genuinely concerned for my well-being or possibly faking real well but if so she's foiling my power too but hey I somehow missed she was a cape so
who the fuck knows, right? Seriously, how did I
miss this?
"Uh," I start, very smoothly. "I dunno?" God, I'm being
so lame, but I'm just too confused.
Anonymous Havergal's concerns deepen, and she makes an adorable face of childish concern I cannot take even slightly seriously even though my power insists it's 100% genuine, while trying to stand on her tip-toes to scrutinize me. "You... you haven't been kissed, have you?"
I blink in silence for a moment, because
why the fuck is this child asking me that, but some part of my brain idly notes that her gaze is
not on my lips but rather on my shoulder or thereabouts and on the one hand that's completely consistent with her question but on the other hand it's in a way that does not at
all fit what I've heard of her personality through my power so, um,
what?
Then the stupid puppet comes to the rescue, having apparently followed me. Or whatever. "
She has not been subjected to a Witch's Kiss, no."
Oh. Right, the dumb puppet did mention Witches 'kissing' people to provoke suicide.
Havergal's face collapses into such dramatic relief I'm genuinely wondering if she's faking even though my power insists it's still genuine. "Okay, um, we just need to sit tight until Miss Candy gets here-"
Please tell me your friend is not actually named Candy, please tell me that is a childish nickname or something.
I don't need another Candy in my life. "-and then we can all take on this Witch together!" She smiles brightly up at my face, gesturing vaguely at the morbid world around us with her murder-cymbals, and I begin to consider the possibility that I got really,
really high after Jean-Paul left and this is all just a drug-induced dream of insanity. It's... not
anything like
any drug-dream I've had before, but this is fucking
insane.
I gesture vaguely at... everything. Not...
quite willing to risk that the insanity isn't real. I nearly walked in front of an oncoming train one trip off
that kind of reasoning... "I have no idea what's going on anymore, the rat is terrible at explaining things,
who are you and what is going on?"
Havergal's face crumples into something so distressed I disbelieve it's real, and at this point I don't care that my power is agreeing with the visual assessment. "Didn't... didn't Kyubey explain things? Or make sure there was an older magical girl to be your, um, tutor?"
Who the fuck is 'Cubey'? Does she talk to her damn dog or something? Skipping right on past that. "No," I say curtly. "Explanations
before these things get here and start trying to kill us." Because yeah I'm pretty sure the ones that I can't make self-destruct aren't going to come frolicking with us. Goddamn ninja pig cop trying to murder me while thrilled to be having fun...
"I..." Havergal says, looking on the verge of tears. "I'm sorry!" She wails, the waterworks starting in earnest and goddammit
why. "I-I'm still learning myself and-"
I tune out the self-recriminating blubbering that ensues. I listen to angsty childish meltdowns a hundred times a day through my power, I'm not interested in listening to one in person. Fine, Havergal is useless, the puppet is useless, and I'm
awesome so I'm sure I can make this wo-
That's when another signature pops into this weird-ass space, and with Havergal's connection on my mind I
immediately recognize it as Havergal's probably-older friend who also goes to Havergal. Oh. Oooooh, I think I get it now. They're both...
sigh... 'magical girls', and before I became one myself all this shit with monsters was invisible to me, probably, and I never did detect these two spontaneously vanishing from my radius or else I would've thought they were capes. So... I guess I was detecting them even when they were inside 'labyrinths', and just completely misread all that as them playing cops-and-robbers or whatever?
Alright, theory-testing time. "Kid," I say in my firmest tone, practiced heavily on the less insane tykes in the fam'.
"M'name's Courtney," she sniffles out. Great, that's nice Havergal #1.
"You got a friend at Havergal who does magical girl things with you?" I ask, pretty sure the answer is going to be 'yes'.
"Uh, yeah- wait, how did you-" falls out of Courtney's mouth before I grab her by one arm and start dragging her toward said friend. "Hey,
hey! What are you-"
"We're going to meet your friend," I say very firmly, ignoring the puppet trailing behind us just at the edge of my vision, grooming itself again.
"Oh," Courtney says, like that explains everything, and her attempts to put the brakes on stop for a second. Then she digs in her heels again, but only for a split second because we're
finally close enough to overhear... combat, from the sounds of things, though I don't trust any of my senses completely at this point. Fuck, did Forever Alone slip something into my drink? He seemed way too lame for that, but it sure would explain a hell of a lot. Regardless, Courtney squeals in excitement -genuine ear-piercing excitement, thanks power, god, why would you be this much of an open book?- and unexpectedly makes a break
toward the sounds of combat. I'm pretty sure I coulda held onto her, but the way those death-cymbals jerked about had me momentarily
really worried I was gonna end up with an artery sliced open and the brief loosening of my grip to avoid being slashed was enough for her to make a break for it, calling ahead, "I'm here, Candy!"
Well. At least I'll get to find out what her friend's name
actually is. Probably.
I slouch my way toward the fighting, listening in on both channels, relieved to notice the signatures are clearly focused on this brawl instead of hunting for me. Can finally kinda relax. Courtney is having the time of her life, absolutely thrilled to be taking the fight to these things, and while it's a bit difficult to parse without seeing the fight with my eyes it seems like she's accounting for herself decently enough. Better than I would've expected, given what I've seen of her. Candy
seems to be doing better, and is grimmer. More 'gotta get this shit done, dammit', less 'whoohoo, my purpose in life is this thing I'm doing right now!' With all this new info I'm kinda suspecting she's only 'friends' with Courtney due to their shared... job. I guess.
Eventually I come into sight of the fighting itself, and it's the most I'm-on-a-drug-trip-right? thing yet. A fat, jolly pig cop throws one last shuriken-badge before a cymbal slams into it edge-on, spins extra-fast, and then careens away to where Courtney catches it without even looking at it, focused on some kinda... shambling papier-mache mass I don't understand... while the pig cop fails to bleed from its gut wound that ought to be grotesque and is instead... static-y. And when it hits the ground its entire body collapses into a pile of, uh, cubes? I guess? Of static, while its signature winks out instantly. Kinda... melty cubes of static. Meanwhile, there's some kinda cat-flower monster that's one of the grimmer signatures I noticed, and it's... hacking up hairballs that are big ol' burrs. I don't even know.
This also means I finally get a look at Candy, who is, uh...
goth. Fishnet all over the place, eyeshadow so heavy it makes her look like she's dead on her feet, really pale skin though I
think that's just her natural skin tone, most everything is black or dark purple, combat boots with spurs on them (The spurs look like some kinda eight-pointed star, which feels like it should mean something to me...), what I can see of the hair is pitch black and kinda scraggly-looking in that 'I'm trying to look spooky' way I've seen a lot around Halloween and shit, dark satin-y gloves that poof out past the wrist, etc etc. It's not
quite as over-the-top-no-way expensive-looking as what Courtney is wearing, but I'm still pretty sure the stitching I'm seeing should be running in the hundreds sort of range at
minimum. What the fuck, I didn't think Havergal was a school for
uber-rich kids.
The only thing that's not, uh, traditionally goth let's go with, is how she's got a white-with-green-edges witch's hat with a cow skull on the back angled teeth-up and three different small bird skulls arranged in an outward-facing triangle on the front like some kinda talisman. I'm
pretty sure goths don't usually go for dead thing accoutrements except as, like, pictures on a T-shirt sort of thing. Well, and the weapon, but I kinda took that as a given. Weapon looks to be a big ol' stick, with... are those rat skulls? I think that's a bunch of rat skulls and a couple of cat skulls at the top. Uh. 'kay.
I decide to just sit down at the edge of this nonsense and take a breather. Courtney and Candy don't seem terribly worried, and they
do seem to be winning, and I'm starting to seriously run out of fucks to give.
"
You will need to siphon your Grief soon, Cherie Vasil."
I look tiredly at the stupid muppet, and without me really thinking about it my gaze slides to the marble. Huh. It is, like, three-quarters full. Why does it keep getting faster? Is this some plot of the muppet's? God, I don't know, I'm just emotionally wrung out, this is all shit, I just... I just want to close my eyes for a minute...
...
..
.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
"Hey," says a voice I don't recognize as my left shoulder is violently wobbled about by some asshole my power casually identifies as Candy. "Get up, get in costume, don't just lay down and- don't give up."
Blearily, feeling like my limbs are encased in lead, I open my eyes and look at... yeah, Candy. "Please tell me your name isn't actually Candy," I say, the world too dull and pointless for it to seem worth my while to censor myself.
Candy's jaw sets briefly like she's trying to not show how mad she is (And yeah, she's mad, thanks power), and she grinds out, "Take it up with my parents," before unceremoniously trying to haul me to my feet with the hand of hers that isn't occupied with her... staff... thing. Why is it covered in the skulls of small animals, seriously? "Costume.
Now."
This is all so dumb. I look Candy dead in the eye and semi-defiantly mutter, "Nobody told me how."
Candy briefly closes her eyes, looking pained, mouth moving in an unconscious way that makes me think she's thinking something prayer-like -'lord give me strength' or the like- and not aware her lips move when she does it, while my power confirms she more or less wants to slap the taste out of my mouth but is restraining herself due to some... urgency of some kind. Whatever. Don't care. "Get out your soul gem," she demands.
I momentarily consider asking why I should, but that seems like an
awful lot of effort. I mean, pulling the marble out seems like an unreasonable amount of effort
too, but
sliiiightly less so. Probably. Whatever, I pull it out, probably with a mulish look on my face if historical patterns are anything to go by. God, this is all so dumb and pointless.
Candy lets go of my shoulder for a second to lightly backhand the marble, causing me to notice the incredibly flat, elongated dark green jewel on the back of her right hand, but I'm promptly distracted from that by the flash of light and the
weird as fuck feeling that washes over me at the same time as a lightshow does. Next thing I know, my old outfit is gone, but whatever, I didn't like it anyway, and in its place is some... other thing. I see red, and glitter, and it feels like a dress of some kind, and for some reason I'm suddenly holding something in my hand? A pole?... I look at it, gaze trailing along the whole thing, starting out thinking I'm looking at a fishing pole, which would be weird but then I get to the end and wait isn't this one of those... things medieval assholes clamped around the necks of criminals they were running down? Oh god, there's spikes on the inside of the ring. Why is this in my hand?
... oh. Huh. I think this is that transformation thing the muppet failed to show me how to do. I... think I might be able to repeat that feeling? Weirdly warm and pleasant, like nothing I've ever experienced. Odd.
Then Candy resumes hauling me by my shoulder, mumbling nonsense to herself while Courtney frets in the background about how she didn't know I was 'so Grief-y' and apologizing endlessly and god just shut up already and I casually slap her with cheer just to make her shut up. Candy comes to a
complete stop when Courtney's tone upshifts substantially, but then apparently decides she doesn't want to pursue that topic and resumes dragging me... somewhere. Why the hell did I come here, again? This has been a whole bunch of danger and stupidity and more of that stupid rat puppet muppet jackass being useless and obnoxious and I still haven't drop-kicked him-
-my gaze sliding around as I'm hauled bodily by Candy fails to spot the little jerk-
-and why the hell did I think I should do any of this, again? Okay, I made a wish, it... did something, probably, assuming I'm not on a trip driven by the need to forget Jean-Paul abandoned me, which, uh, past me is a moron if that's what happened I've persistently been a bit
fixated on his escape throughout this haze, so good fucking job hypothetical past Cherie, capital work, you're hired, and now you're fired and I'm letting every business in the region know what an incompetent fuckup you are so you'll
never work in this town again.
... okay, the metaphor-slash-joke is a bit strained, but whatever.
"
This seems likely, yes," the muppet says from somewhere to my left, my head automatically swinging to lock onto the incompetent jackass, but it's somehow gotten atop one of those massive hooks dangling from the ceiling, tail tick-tocking back and forth as it literally looks down upon us. Probably metaphorically does so too, going by its behavior thus far. 'No emotions' my
ass. I should... I should hit him with
shame-
-the little rat twitches, tail ceasing its movement, though my power still reads nothing from it-
-
hell-o there.
Experimentally, not really paying attention to whatever Candy and Courtney are doing -something about a door in front of us and planning for a big fight or something, whatever- I jam a note of
fear into the little rat. It twitches again, shrinking down ever so slightly before straightening itself out in a way that looks
awfully deliberate to me. Its beady little eyes slide toward me, and though no expression shows on its creepily still face, I'm just going to assume it hates me and wishes it had laser vision. Wait, shit, maybe it
has laser vision. It's either a power or an alien, and either way laser vision isn't off the table. Whatever, I slap it with anger, and it
floofs out, fur apparently standing seriously on end, before fading away like the goddamn Cheshire Cat, exactly zero sound signaling this vanishment.
Yeah, it doesn't like me making it feel things, and it figured out I'm doing it. I don't even care that it's probably going to stop helping me out of spite or something, its help was such shit the only reason I'm not assuming deliberate sabotage is how
thoroughly incompetent it was.
"Hey, new girl, how are you in a fight?" Candy abruptly asks me, one hand still clutching at my shoulder like she expects me to pull a runner.
There's a solid second while I try to think through how I should respond, but nothing comes to me. Today is too weird and I kind of don't
care. Whatever, default it is: "I can handle myself well enough." The complete and unabridged truth of how awesome I am, regardless of the fact that I'm not entirely sure what
kind of fight she's talking about.
My power informs me Candy is skeptical in the extreme, while Courtney seems to take my words at face value, getting excited about a 'three-girl team-up', but Candy's face remains in the same half-lidded stare she's had this entire time. Boredom. To be fair, she
is legit a bit bored, but this is an act. I wonder for who? I finally notice Candy has been smoking a cigarette for some indeterminable period of time, primarily by virtue of her crushing it with her bare hand to put it out, before tossing it to the ground and grinding it into a barely-recognizable smear with her left boot. My graze is briefly drawn to Candy's hand, where her lacey gloves show no sign of heat damage, but then Candy grunts out a non-committal, "Try not to die before we get the Grief Seed, then," before hauling the big door open and shoving me through.
