Mmmh, tanuki girls. My favorite.
Unaware of the predator lurking in this very room, she maneuvered clothes onto her frame. Six eyes watched as her back contorted, her leg flexed, her bicep defined and redefined itself.
The creature under the covers twitched, and lunged!
“Ack! Sam, what are you — akbgth!”
The jumping spider, having calculated its leaping trajectory correctly, envelops its prey in comfy covers, and goes in for the kill.
First, a kiss on the mouth.
“Mhm? Mhhh! Mhhh…”
Then, a kiss on the neck. And then…
“Sam… Sam! We’re gonna be late.”
“Awww, but I was having so much fun roleplaying,” I said.
Addy kicked away the blankets around her head. Her hair looked even more messed up than usual. “As what?”
“... as a spider?”
Addy gave me a thin-lipped look before breaking out into laughter. It was a genuine, happy laugh. I never heard her laugh before, not like this.
“Unbelievable.” With contemptuous ease, she broke free of my embrace and tossed whatever clothes on the floor had the highest likelihood of belonging to me at my face. “C’mon dorkarella, let’s get some breakfast.”
“And a short shower.” I added. “Together.”
“That is going to go terribly and you know it.”
I pouted prettily at her.
“No, no! Don’t make that face. I swear, you dorksaster you — fine! But only a short shower.”
It was not a short shower. By the time we emerged, it was… nine o’clock. Huh.
“Aaah, please don’t kill me!”
Both of us turned, wearing only towels around our hair and body, to Orianna, who was holding plate of sunny-side-up eggs and blood sausage in front of her as if to ward off evil spirits or enraged Addys. Either or.
The eggs were holding on for dear life. The sausages had already given up, tumbling in a freefall.
Addy’s eyes narrowed to slits — when did she give herself slit eyes? — while the vampire girl was busy catching sausage pieces with ‘eeks’ and ‘acks’, showing off her long, pointed canines more by accident than any purposeful provocation. Her gaze though, that was quite provocative as it flitted away from Addy in fright, before roaming up and down me with barely disguised…
Oh great, she’s into girls too. That’ll make Addy trust her, for sure. Not.
Someone with a sense of cute moments would have hugged me to communicate affection, possession, and dominance. Addy was not that someone. She got in front of me as if she was ready to catch a bullet. Thank you Addy, but that won’t ever be necessary, I hope!
“Peace, peace!” I said, putting myself between the two. “Addy, this is Orianna. She lives in our dorm, and while she has some preconceptions, she does not need to switch to a different one because we bully her out of here. We’re all reasonable adults, we can handle some personal differences, no? Anything you want to add, Orianna?”
Orianna pointed at Addy. “That’s a lot of hickeys.”
I was expecting Addy to blush. Instead, she just shoved her chin forward, pride on her face.
“Anything productive?” I asked.
“I, uh, well.” She cleared her throat. “I have put some thought into what you said the other day. I would like to accept your offer, if you’d let me.”
The offer to start anew. I gave her a hand, then when she took it pulled her into a hug. “I’m Sam. Let’s be friends.”
“Oh, ah, s-sure? I’m Orianna.” When I let her go, I could practically feel Addy vibrating next to me. So I swept her away too, enveloping her in a deep and passionate kiss. Was I getting addicted to those? Maybe.
“Addy,” she said after we parted. Some of the blank hostility on her face was replaced with mere suspicion. Baby steps, girl, baby steps.
There was an awkward silence.
“So,” I started, “I know there might be some bad blood between a certain pair of individuals here, but as an outsider, it all seems rather contrived. My personal theory: Someone or something is setting people against each other. I’d like to do something about it.”
Orianna coughed into her hand and looked away. “Coincidentally, I did some digging; statistics, Academy history, the works. Turns out there was a notable uptick in complaints about cabal-lodge hostilities starting in February 2035, four years ago. This coincides with the chinese new year, a major Society-league hockey game, the return of a Cauldron expedition, a redefinition of trade terms between earth and faeworld, and the sudden return of the elder vampire Cuzco.”
A peace offering. I gestured towards Orianna, showing Addy that ‘see, this vampire is friend-shaped’.
“How’d you get all this information?” she asked, suspicion lacing her voice. “The library is a mess of misorganization, and the deans squabbling over what is and isn’t forbidden to students doesn’t make access any easier.”
Orianna pushed up her glasses. “Librarian pass. Had to do a lot of reading. Luckily, I’m Mind-focused. It wasn’t a breeze, but it was doable.”
Addy huffed in disbelief. “Let me guess: the elder vampire returned, saw his power base diminished, and in a bid to regain it, created a strawman which vampires could rally against.”
“That is rather accusatory.”
“Yeah? Well the last elder vampire I danced with killed me seven times, then left me drained of blood in the middle of a convergence event. So yeah, maybe I’m a bit biased, but I better have the fuckin’ right to be.”
Orianna stared blankly at her pile of notes. “I’m sorry. I understand.”
Addy snarled. “Oh, how could you possibly understand?”
Orianna lifted her shirt, showing a series of bite scars on her armpit, right along the axillary artery. “Because the day I understood vampires existed was the day he turned me into one. He drank my blood until I was delirious, then forced me to drink his. Cuzco wanted a cabal of loyal servants, so the mental binding was strong right up until a Custodian tore his heart out. That Custodian saved my life. If a cult like Cuzco’s were to have any sway over this place, I would be the first to cry wolf.”
Addy and I just stared in shock for a long while.
Oh. That explains the paranoia.
Gently, I grabbed both their hands and led them to sit down on the couch.
“I assume that means Cuzco is out, as a starting point for this whole debacle?” I said.
“I dunno,” Addy said. “I feel more angry at the vampire cabals, not less angry now.” I elbowed her in the side. “But you have my sympathies.”
Orianna nodded, already immersed in the documents and notes she was sending in various longform pdfs to our interfaces. “The revelation of Cuzco’s cabal was shocking, but not enough to cause ripples all the way to today. Terrible things happen the world over, and Custodians see more than their fair share. They’re used to coping.”
“So, that leaves everything else as the starting shot,” I said. “We can probably discount the chinese new year since it’s neither controversial nor overly relevant. That leaves a hockey match, a treaty renegotiation with the fae, and a… cauldron expedition?”
“Someone could have brought something from the cauldron expedition that got past decontamination,” Orianna said.
“We won the hockey match,” Addy added. “Well, a canine team did. Their opponents, the Cabaliers, were pissed.”
“And the fae are… well, they could be involved. Maybe. It would be on brand.” I hummed to myself. “Whatever the reason, the wizards or deans or whoever are condoning it. Sounds like we have three possible suspects. How do we dig deeper into any one of them?”
I gave Addy a good long stare. She knew her way best around The Academy, or, well, as well as Orianna perhaps.
“I don’t know any experts on the fae personally, but I know people. I can ask around,” she finally said. “No chance about the Cauldron expedition though.”
“And you know that because…?” Orianna asked.
“My mentor came from the front lines.” Addy sat a bit straighter. “It’s… The Cauldron is ridiculously dangerous, even in the safest places. It’s a warzone. Most Custodians don’t get a quest to deploy themselves there until level 60-ish, and then only for a short time to check their psychological and power-compatability with longer term deployments. The Academy generally graduates their Custodians at around level 40.”
“And from there, it’s twenty levels of normal, earth-side deployments.” The implication that those were the easy part of Custodian life left me shivering. “So, we’ll work on gathering information for both fae and the Cauldron expedition. That leaves the hockey match… actually, are we seriously considering a hockey match as a prime reason for four years of Lodge-Cabal hostilities?”
“Yeah,” Addy said. “It’s hockey.”
“Hockey’s serious business,” Orianna said, nodding wisely. Addy and her shared a momentary stare, which she broke tossing up a new document on our collective interface jam-session. It was an invite, hand-written, dotted with adorable yet clean doodles of various animals and animal-person hybrids “There’s a series of parties hosted by the Canine Lodge every month, and one by John’s Cabaliers this weekend. You can ask people there. Problem is, it’s invite only.”
“How do you get an invite?”
“Do something notable. They’re always interested in scouting new dedicated people for sports events, catering, or just to hang out.”
“Oh. I can do something notable—aaaah!” Addy punched my boob. She punched me in the boob!
“So, my girlfriend,” Addy said, which whoop whoop! Girlfriend mentioned! All is forgiven, “has a chronic disease in which she feels the need to help even the most pitiable wretch out of whatever hole they have dug themselves into.
“Which is how she found me. Now, she’s decided to help you, us, everyone implicated in this stupid tribalistic mess. She’s overzealous like that, even when she’s supposed to be laying low.”
Addy turned to Orianna. “If I catch you being disingenuous, slacking, going behind our back, or anything else… I will end you.”
“Eek!” went Orianna, squeezing into the far corner of the couch while I tried to pull Addy back by her collar.
“—In the dollhouse. Are we clear?”
Orianna would’ve made a good woodpecker, with how much she was nodding.
“The dollhouse?” I asked.
“The dollhouse,” Orianna answered with a shaky voice. “It’s a terrible, vile place full of monsters and treachery. The horrors!”
“What’s wrong with dollhouse?” Addy asked. “I love the dollhouse.”
“Yes, someone with your killcount might.”
I turned to Addy. “I’m sorry, killcount? Addy, am I going to have to start worry about cops barging through our door at 3 AM??”
“Don’t be silly, we’re Custodians. Cops can’t do squat against us. You only have to worry if you’re on the opposing team.” She stuck out her pink tongue. “It’s the only place where Custodians can safely let loose. It’s also where BatTac II is held.”
“What about I and III?” I asked.
“BatTac I is all theory, BatTac III is field practice.” Addy blinked. “Sam. How many BatTact courses did you take for your first semester?”
“I took all three courses.”
“Sam!” Addy cried in exasperation.
“I thought they were mandatory for a single semester, not the entire freaking degree!”
“You haven’t taken a single BatTac theory course,” Orianna muttered numbly. “They’ll kill you. They’ll rip you apart. Tear you to shreds and spread you around like confetti.”
“Been there, done that,” I said. “How’d you think I got to level, er… 7?”
“You’ll have to beat a bunch of level 20s and a few low 30s if you want to make an impression there. I think I heard two post-grads were joining in with this weeks sessions,” Addy added, and if fainting were still a thing in the year 2039, then Orianna would’ve been kissing the floor by now.
My girlfriend (tee-hee) fixed me with one of her contemplative stares.
“Cut BatTac III,” she said with finality. “Tell the lecturer you were accepted by accident. They’re always happy with less people per course, since that makes more soulcoins per person. You’ll benefit more from taking it next semester, when you’ve got the theory down and some understanding of how you fit into the general scheme of Custodian archetypes.”
“Archetypes?”
“Classifications. Boxes people put other people in to satisfy their OCD. There are more classification methods new and obsolete than fingers on your hands — yes, all of them. The only two that matter for you are: Role, and caster-type.”
“Role would be… I suppose something like healer, tank, damage dealer?” The classic trio of every dungeon-delving game.
“More like frontliner, artillery mage, logi, intel, pubsup. The last three are generally clustered under a ‘support’ category. Mentor Irina always said nobody appreciates logistics, intelligence, and public support unless you’re working in it. At this point I’m supposed to say that you should be sure to stay polite even towards people who aren’t risking their lives every day, but somehow, I feel like that won’t be a problem.”
“Not at all, ma’am, girlfriend ma’am.” I shot her a mock salute. “I suppose as a girl spider vampire thing with guns I’d be somewhere between frontliner and artillery mage?”
“Do you have homing bombardment spells?”
“I have an anger-seeking bazooka.”
“You’re a frontliner,” Addy said. “A frontliner multicaster.”
“And I’m a multicaster because…”
“Because you use anticipation, joy, and fear to cast your spells, putting you at three or more separate emotions. Varying Custodian philosophies declare that to be either a very good or very bad thing.”
“Ooh, I think I know why. Let me guess… channelling only one emotion is easy, and the more you channel it, the more your ECC-efficiency grows in it.” Addy nodded.
“That is part of the prevailing argument for monocasters, the counterargument being that not every emotion can channel every type of spell. Surprise spells are quick, almost always chantless, but lack oomph. Anger spells are strong, but have you ever tried healing or repairing something with anger?”
“By that line of arguing, joy, anticipation, and fear are…”
“Buffs and healing, prepared, charged, or automatic spells, and mobility and disguise, with a hint of disabling abilities.”
I checked my spell list. Yup, that checked out. I focused my attention back on Addy, who was vigorously recalling debates on whether only training one, two, or three emotions had historically proven more effective. Y’know, over the course of the short history Custodians had amassed. It was a bit hard to determine whether possible paths were also optimal since we were all effectively beta-testing this savior-of-the-world stuff.
“... and so, despite monocasters showing highest peak-effectiveness, their lack of flexibility makes itself noticed among their death-statistics. While supporters of dualcasting have declared themselves the solution to the problem, disrupting two emotion streams isn’t much harder than disrupting one. So what about three and up? Well, opinions vary and they are fiercely debated, but the general problem multicasters have is that their ECC-efficiency is on average lower the more they spread out, and grows slower due to a division of attention…”
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
I imagined myself at the twin peaks of opposite builds: One side was Sam the joy caster, always trying to feel happy, always stacked full of buffs and with a handy magical bandaid on hand. It was a nice image. But the idea that the world could be saved by smiles and bandaids was a delusion, if a comfy one.
On the other peak stood Samantha the every girl: One arm for every problem, one tool for every type of enemy. The investment alone would be staggering, and besides, how could I handle the mental load of having as many arms as there were problems in the world?
The optimal route lay somewhere in between. The answer was likely different for everyone. Sometimes you did need those bundles of joy, righteous anger, or carefully anticipated planning. But I already had half of my build set in stone; going back to just happy or sad or angry Sam was impossible. The question then became: Spread out, or focus on what I already had.
“Synergy is the solution,” I muttered.
“It often is,” Addy added. “Good luck finding something that fits. At an average level of 40 to 50-something, we’re looking at five hundred thousand separate essences that have already been chosen, not accounting for duplicates. It’s not an infinite amount, but it’s a lot; you might find something on the market right now. Which is we should sell the vampire essence—”
“No, Addy, no. Not right now, please.” I rubbed my face. It was her essence dammit! Why couldn’t she just take the praise and accept it? If we were graduating in our level 40s, then she could buy herself a rare for just that time. She was only like five levels off as well. “Thank you, for the explanation. Anything else we have to deal with right now?”
Addy pondered for a moment before nodding. “About your overzealous coursetaking. If you’re serious about this investigation, you’ll have to slash some.”
Orianna was looking less pale by the time we’d switched from gym-talk to other magical girl talk. Mainly, how I’d loaded my semester with about twice the average course load. Apparently the debate on what was and wasn't important to learn before becoming a full time Custodian was enough to bridge the gap between weretanuki and neurotic vampire, if for but a moment.
“You don’t need Cultures of the Worlds,” Addy said. “Cut that.”
“It could be useful for someone without any context,” Orianna hedged. “She might learn some general features and weak points.”
“She can look those up,” Addy countered. “If it were my choice, I wouldn’t take anything but the combat courses. You don’t need anything beyond that.”
“But the fact is that if I’m offered the chance to learn, then I will, ” I shot back. “I won’t cut it, even just to make a statement. Learning about other people is as important as learning about myself, and the power of friendship is real if that friend happens to be a half ton murdermachine.”
Addy gave me an uncertain look. “Why thank you.”
“An adorable murdermachine.” I enveloped her in a big hug, poking and prodding her until she couldn’t help but laugh. “My murdermachine. And besides, we’re diving into faeworld next lecture.”
Once we were done, Addy just continued to stare at my schedule for the semester as if it had done her some personal wrong. It wasn’t my fault the literal magical academy was filled with so dang many novelties.
“I’m tempted to take a few tinkerer courses just to see how the sausage is made for, say, time bandaids, or magical ammo, or what-have-you,” I said. Addy shifted her glare to me. “... maybe next semester.”
“Yes. Maybe.” She sighed. “You’re going to burn yourself out.”
“Maybe. But half of these courses are under-attended, so I’m not taking a spot away by getting signed in now, and possibly dropping it later on.”
“You have a point, both of you,” Orianna chimed in, chewing on her pen. “Addy is right, you need to find something you want to focus on, and laser in on it. Become the best in class at that one specific thing, and the system won’t ever have trouble assigning you to tasks it knows only you can do. But Sam is also right, in that the general education of most Custodians is… lacking.”
“I’m not dumb,” Addy growled. I grabbed her and hoisted her back onto my legs, hands running through her hair and massaging her shoulders.
“Nobody is saying that,” I whispered calmly. “You’ve already found what you’re really good at, and laser-focused on it, right?”
“You should see my dollhouse high-score,” she mumbled back, melting into my embrace. “I challenge you to beat it.”
“That’ll be a bit hard. I’m scheduled to complete this three year education in… two semesters.”
“Two semesters!?” Orianna and Addy cried.
“I don’t know if the world will still be there if I finish in six,” I countered calmly, yet firmly. “The world is ending, or is slowly crawling towards a tipping point. I needed to be ready yesterday, but I’ll accept now as well. Or, barring that, in about a year.”
“You’ll never make it,” Orianna said. “Sorry. It’s just… not realistic.”
“Oh yeah? Watch her.” Both her and I looked down at Addy, who at this point was melting into a happy puddle while I rubbed her ears. “She’s a genius. Ooh, right there.”
Orianna blinked in disbelief. “It’s not just the course load. You have excursions, practical exams and workplace experiences, possible exams to take and retake. And on top of all that, you don’t just want to find out why vampire and werewolves are at each other's throats, but you want to fix it.”
“I’m very good at multitasking,” I said shamelessly. “I have a whole year. It can’t be that hard.”
“See? Ambitious. Daring.” Addy’s eyes had taken on that dreamy, far-away state as I rubbed her cheeks and ears while redoing her slumping towel. “But even if you point out the obvious evil, people won’t believe you.”
“Hm?
“You’re not powerful enough,” Addy muttered. “Clever. Unorthodox. But Custodians my level are already like a small flying artillery battery. They’ll squash you like a bug if you don’t take every advantage you can get.”
“I’m not exactly flush with soulcoins.”
“You’ve got some ivory for upgrades, and the vampire essence.”
“Your—” she shut me down with a stare. “Our. Our essence.”
Orianna perked up. “Really? Who’s it from?”
“Nezahualcóyotl.”
“Huh. Never heard of them.” Orianna scratched her head. “But I suppose that won’t put you on any cabal’s side. There’s benefits to being neutral-ish.”
Addy perked up. “You have inter-lodge, er, cabal conflicts too?”
“It’s been getting worse over the past year,” Orianna sighed. “I just want to study, but it’s always ‘don’t sit next to that person’, or ‘don’t attend this professor’s lecture, he’s not on our side’. I don’t care about the politics of it, but I need their support, and in turn I need to show that I’m actively furthering our cause. Sorry about that, again.”
I waved her off, while Addy hummed in appreciation. That happened yesterday. Old news.
“So, I’m still split on whether I want to use the rare essence or not—”
“It’s RARE?”
“Shhh,” Addy shushed Orianna. “Let her cook.”
“—because while I wouldn’t say no to some more durability and pain resistance, that’s not exactly what my build is about.”
“What is it about?” The vampire looked genuinely curious. No duplicity here, or so I hoped.
“Close-in skirmisher, versatile toolkit. Joy-Fear-Anticipation.” I pondered for a moment. “Definitely tool and gadget focused. I’m pretty crap at charging spells, relative to the average Custodian.”
“That… honestly checks out,” Orianna shivered as I shrugged with all six hands. “No details, please.”
“Afraid?” Addy chuckled, grinning at the vampire.
“Fear helps me cast spells, so yes. Surprise too. Fear-Surprise dualcaster over here. I make orbs.”
“The orb-bound,” I said. “So that’s how you get your title.”
“What do they do?”
“... I suppose you knowing won’t matter for gym class since you’re so much lower level than I am. The surprise ones are hard and quick, the fear ones stun you when you get hit. You can extrapolate the rest.”
“That’s not all you have—” Addy said.
“Excuse you, I am not revealing every secret of my build.”
“— which would be good to know if we’re going to make a team for the dollhouse.”
“You can make teams?” I asked.
“They’re team games most of the time, since the really threatening convergence barrier-domes require a good 2-3 person team to complete. Training reflects that.”
“Right.” But that was making a lot of assumptions, when I could just… ask. “Orianna, want to make a team with Addy, Becca, and I?”
“The slime?” she asked.
“The one you’ve been holding in your hand for the past ten minutes.”
Orianna shrieked as her notepad turned translucent and flopped lazily onto the floor, expanding in size. Wow, Becca was getting really good at the whole mimic thing. I only recognized her because she was actively shifting the bottom side of the notepad. Hopefully she didn’t eat the original notebook.
“I…” she hesitated. “I want a good grade.”
“Uh-huh.”
“The best grade. If I’m to be seen actively working together with a weretanuki, I need to score top of the freaking class to make this worth it.”
“That can be arranged,” Addy yawned lazily. “‘S just a little friendly sparring.”
[Charging emotion: Fear]
Why did that just activate my fear response?
“The plan was always to make a statement on the first day's games,” she continued. “Sam needs clout, if she wants to worm her way into a lodge and a cabal at the same time.”
“Which also means she has to make sure she doesn’t overtly rely on powers one or the other favor or abhor.” Orianna turned me, staring at my extra arms and eyes. “I’m afraid to ask, but if your level 5 essence is your vampire essence, then what’s up with those.”
“Oh, I, uh, was bitten by a radioactive spider as a child,” I said.
Orianna shot me a flat look. I threw up my arms. “Fine! I was born with them.”
“So, you're some sort of werespider?”
“I guess.” That seemed more believable than anything else I could come up with. “I was adopted by a friendly family after hatching from an egg during fall. I never met my real parents.” I was cranking the drama up to eleven here, and Orianna was gobbling it up.
She put a hand to her mouth. “Oh. You poor thing.”
Inwardly, I cringed. Addy just shot me an approving look.
<
“Aaanyways, since Nezahualcóyotl is such an unknown, using his essence’s ability won’t turn too many heads, will it?”
“Probably not. Unless it’s something incredibly obvious, like blood bending.”
“That sounds terrifying.”
“Ever seen Avatar?” Orianna asked.
“The movie with the blue cat people?”
Addy and Orianna stared at me with equal looks of disappointment. A bond seemed to form between them, then, a force more unifying than any worldwide apocalypse.
“We’re going to watch that.”
“After we’ve settled on an essence for you.”
“Sure, but I promised Addy to watch Doctor Who first.”
“We’re watching Avatar before Doctor Who.”
“What? It’s only got thirteen episodes.” Addy cough-whispered into her hand. “In the first season.”
This is getting too much. I would be happy if they weren’t enemies.
They weren’t supposed to become friends just like that. And they certainly weren’t supposed to team up on me.
+++
Battlefield Tactics II started early, at eight in the morning on a Saturday. It was scheduled for the entire day until six pm, which I thought was a bit excessive. Then again, this was gymtime for superhumans who could cast spells near indefinitely. It took quite a bit to exhaust us. Well, if you had a few points in Body at least.
We were forty-odd Custodians, all between levels twenty and thirty-five. Those with access to and means to purchase from the system shop had ridiculous costumes on. Those that didn’t also had costumes, though theirs were considerably more slap-dash. Some people just decided to show up in normal gym-wear. Addy counted to that group, as did Orianna and I, though I was wearing my uncuttable black bodysuit beneath it. Then again, Orianna was wearing an awful lot of ball-shaped jewelry.
The cliques and groups that were so prevalent everywhere else on the Academy grounds crystallized themselves clearly on the sports field. Werefolk groups on one side, vampires on the other, loners and miscellaneous combinations strewn throughout.
One of the werepeople — a tall, slender girl with artfully-pierced fox ears growing out in front of an auburn ponytail — approached me.
[Momo, Fox of Attraction, Level 32]
“A fellow shifter, or perhaps you call them werepeople? Peace, spider-friend. I offer a truce, Sam-san, until the other teams have been—”
I waved her off. “Thank you, but I prefer to compete against my competition. Honestly.”
Her brows furrowed. “Unwise and… unexpected. I would feel terrible if me and mine were forced to go after someone so… underleveled. Can we not agree on a truce until—”
I held up my hands. “Sorry, really sorry for interrupting twice in a row, but no. I’m pretty sure mimics and murderbots don’t care what level I’m at when I have to face them outside. It’s nothing against you personally, it’s just… this is Battlefield Tactics II. Emphasis on the Battle. ”
“Emphasis on the Tactics,” she countered. “Diplomacy is a preferable tool to violence and can be applied, given the right opponent.”
I gave her a genuinely sad smile. Oh, how I wanted to agree. She seemed like the diplomat of her group. We could probably be good friends.
“I’ve yet to see a mimic accept a truce.” Then I leaned over my shoulder. “Hear that, Becca? Miss Foxfire wants a truce. What says you?”
Becca wobbled on the floor. Two wobbles, a sign for no.
The foxwoman seemed oddly perturbed by the exchange, returning to her group with haste.
“What’s with her?” I asked.
“Probably scared shitless of our little mimic queen here.” Addy was in the middle of doing stretches. And wow, could she stretch. “That’s a level 60 threat, minimum, in the wild, y’know.”
“Ooh, I suppose that makes us look quite dangerous,” I said, to which Becca wobbled happily. She seemed giddy, excited, anticipatory, like a cat ready to pounce on a kill. To be fair, so was Addy, but she was… Addy.
I’d expected Becca to be at least a tiny bit as nervous as Orianna. Becca was a calm person, in the way that a meteor was calm until some object had the freaking gall to cross orbits with it. I’m not saying she could’ve been the reason the dinosaurs went extinct… but they would have definitely remembered her.
Suddenly, Addy perked up and, with a running start, jumped right at a big wereperson that had just arrived. “Mason!”
Mason? Right, she had a friend of that name. And he’s better now. Good. Very good.
I wish she’d jump at me like that.
I’m not envious. Nope. Not at all.
“Akh! Addy, you’re getting blood over my spines,” the mountain of a man said. Eventually, he gave up trying to peel her off his back and penguin-walked over here as she steered him towards us. “Sup. I'm Mason. Addy’s my cousin.”
“Oh. Cousin. Right.” A grin grew on my face. “I can barely believe it.”
“What?”
“That you managed to make any friends besides me, Addy.”
She jumped off and grumbled, trying to punch me in the side, but I caught the playful strike with the palm of my hand. That only encouraged her to keep punching, treating my many hands like boxing gloves.
“So, heard you’ve recovered from a bad place.”
He nodded. “Feeling alright after a two year stay at the deep wards.”
“People rarely come back from there,” Orianna whispered, hiding behind me before addressing Mason. “So, are you here to cheer us on?”
“Nah. I’m participating.”
Orianna blanched while Addy swelled with pride. “We want to win. I called in backup.”
“And I volunteered as a complicating factor,” the large werehedgehog said with a grin. “Got permission from the instructor. I heard an old rival thought to do the same, so I’m here to even the odds.”
Idly, I checked his level. He was level 41. Whoever his opponent was, I was not envying his position.
“So, how does this whole gym-time work—”
Something heavy hit the gym floor behind me. The wood creaked; I could feel it bend and rebound under the weight of a colossal figure. It was a titan of a woman. She was massive, rippling muscle groups on her arms coiling like serpents. I was one of the tallest people in the room, and I barely rose to her chest. Her skin was a checkerboard of scales, brilliant blue and fiery red, and a nest of horns curled up so much I almost mistook it for her hair, which was indeed very short. She was a dragon, but if I had to guess, she was the type to breathe a cold sort of fire instead of the hot kind.
[Custodian Blazeblue, Indigo Tyrant, Level 69]
She dusted off camo pants and a gray tank-top before looking at the assembled throng of Custodians like they were children.
“Get down on the ground and give me two hundred, maggots!”
Huh. This seems awfully familiar.
Most of the Custodians got down and did pushups within a split second. What I assumed was our instructor walked around, nudging people into form with her heavy boots, or just putting extra weight on their backs.
Very, very familiar.
She arrived next to me and kicked out four of my arms. I continued with two, then slowly swapped to one while keeping eye contact. I saw her nod in approval through my rearward eyes.
Soon, the gym was filled with those gasping for breath, those who had completed the set of two hundred, and those who were lying flat on the ground like beached whales.
“Looks like we’ve sorted the Body-havers and the not-havers then,” she said with a dispassionate stare. “Your first lesson is that you can’t function as effective soldiers if you can’t even catch your breath. I am BlazeBlue, and I am your instructor for the year, for real for real. Welcome to BatTac II. This is a two-semester module; by the end, you’ll hopefully have the sense and ability to not catch a bullet in the first two minutes of your deployment, and the stamina to keep that level of exertion up for the rest. If you don’t have even one growth-point in Body, then our short friendship might seem like I’m trying to pull you through The Fun Place and back. Which I will if I catch you slacking, on God.”
… On god?
Oh god, she’s a zoomer.
Except somehow, her delivery lacked the proper casualness, the familiarity with an ever-morphing slang.
Oh god, she’s trying to appeal to zoomers by pretending to be one. That’s not even the right generation!
Zoomers are, in all aspects, obviously inferior to gen alpha, especially late-gen alphas, which are entirely different to early-gen alphas. This is an established fact. Everyone older than me is cringe. Everyone younger… also cringe. Except Addy of course, bless her. Age gaps of a year or a half seemed insurmountable in high-school; now, it was like we were basically always the same age.
The Custodians gathered themselves. Some cast spells that likely aided in recovery. Orianna walked over to a lanky guy with a drooping wizard hat who seemed particularly out of it, and poked him with a light-blue metal orb floating beside her. He woke with a shock, body vibrating with energy, yet frowning as she extended a hand, demanding payment. He handed her an entire soulcoin for what was likely a sort of magical pick-me-up.
I see. So that’s how she makes soulcoins outside of convergence events.
Instructor BlazeBlue watched Becca wobble in place. By definition, Becca was either constantly doing pushups, using her entire body as a hand, or, because her bodyplan was so vastly different to a basic humanoid template, she was incapable of ever completing even a single one.
Better forestall any miscommunication.
“Hey, uh, hi.” Slowly, I inserted myself into the instructor’s field of view. “Becca is… having problems with outbound communication. I think she dissolves parts of the system hardware whenever it enters her body.”
The instructor raised an eyebrow. “You her translator?”
“Sorta. We’ve been trying to get morse code to work, but it’s quite difficult.” Becca wobbled in agreement.
“Custodian, explain exactly what in The Fun Place am I looking at here? Are those emotional system partitions playing another prank on me?”
A small system popup popped up in front of her face.
Everyone's heads turned as suddenly BlazeBlue burst into ear-shaking laughter. “Hilarious. Fuck it, we ball.”
She turned to the rest of the Custodians. One or two of them were giving us odd looks already.
“I see some familiar faces among you, but mostly unfamiliar ones. For the newbs: This course will be split into the first and second semester groups. Since the dollhouse is the only place rated for weapons testing, dollhouse-time is valuable, so both groups will be training side-by-side in the same timeslot. Newcomers, you might learn something from the second semesters. Second semesters, you better have learned something from last semester or so help you god I will cook you until your hair frizzes up into a ball of broccoli, no cap.”
An array of sports equipment was piled up behind her, featuring everything from half-ton barbells to spongy-looking balls. Some more esoteric stuff was sitting nearby as well; star-shaped rubix cubes, marbles representing the solar system tied together on string-orbits, a ball of floating, liquid color. I noticed a gnome in industrial protective clothing pulling a small wooden cart topped with glass bottles of what looked to be bees made entirely of light.
“Thank you, associate Pom. Now, we don’t need this, not this, not this… ah, there it is.”
The instructor walked over to a particularly baggy object and tossed the covering tarp away from it revealing… a dollhouse. A pretty big one, with an olympic swimming pool in front of a mansion, a golf course, an outdoor dollhouse in every primary color, and an adjacent forest of becca-sized plastic redwoods
“Now that introductions are over, let's play a little game. You’ve all signed the infernal contracts I e-mailed you? Good.”
Contract? I thought that was just a normal ‘we won’t be held liable for bla bla bla’ sort of thing.
She slapped the dollhouse. “This thing is pure gas, and it's our venue for the day: Dollhouse Oakside. Touch it, and you’ll be shrunk down and teleported inside. At those sizes and with the contracts in place, magic becomes ridiculously cheap. Death in the dollhouse equals a small cut on the real, big you, no life lost. Anything purchased inside the dollhouse cannot be brought out; let’s be generous and say you have a thousand soulcoins per person. It won’t always be this easy, but for today, we’re keeping it simple: Last person standing wins a hundred soulcoins in the here and now. Second place gets fifty. Third gets twenty five. The rest gets nothing.”
At that, everyone perked up. A hundred soulcoins was quite a lot while I was starting out. I had no doubt that instructor BlazeBlue could enter a convergence barrier and make that money in a couple minutes, heck, I could do that, given that the barrier wasn’t filled with murderous teddybears.
But for students who were not yet allowed to be deployed in any official manner? Yeah, a hundred soulcoins was the difference between having nothing, and having four Toothpicks.
I could take Addy on so many dates with that much.
“Instructor BlazeBlue?” Addy stepped forward, drawing the eyes of many.
“Ah, miss high score.” There was recognition in the instructor’s face. “I missed you at the final phys exam some time ago. Excuses?”
“I was gone gathering field experience on a personal initiative.”
“For two years?”
“Yes.” Addy opened a system screen and flicked it the short distance over to the instructor. “I have a proposal, if you don’t mind.”
The instructor’s eyebrows rose as she broke out in a wry grin.
“Change of plans ladies and gents. When I said I’d take you to the bottom of hell, I didn’t expect someone to bring a shovel. Blame shortcake over here for any physical or psychological trauma induced. We’re playing the mousegame.”
There was a murmur from the more experienced Custodians, but a sudden message on our interface cut through the noise.
[Cat & Mouse - REDUX: Contestants are divided up into three teams: Cats, mice, and poisoned cheese. Cats eat mice, mice eat cheese, poisoned cheese eats nothing. Contestants only gain points for killing contestants they eat, one point per person, five points for being alive after the timer ends. If there is a poisoned cheese remaining at the end of the time limit, both cats and mice automatically lose, and their points aren’t counted. The person with the highest point value at the end wins. Ties are broken with a coin toss. ]
Orianna’s lips twitched as she read it to herself. She came to the same conclusion as I did, as we shared a look of concern. This was an unbalanced game by design. Evil, some might call it. There was little doubt which team had it the worst, and yet the grin on Addy’s face couldn’t be wider.
“My team volunteers for team cheese.”
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