It's never safe to spend too long with your own thoughts, especially when those thoughts have a tendency to get out of hand at times. Months upon months of waiting are finally at an end. Hannah's been busy, busy, busy, usy- John's been hounding her at every turn and potions are a lot more dangerous then Wizard-Burger's use of them would have you believe. The new season starts here folks! Let's see what the gang's been up to...

 

“Ari...”
My head snapped up harshly from the round thingy I was fiddling with on my work table and my jaw dropped open in shock.

“...M-mum?...”

“Ari”

“MUM!”
With a kick my stool crashed to the floor behind me and I broke into a sprint out into the void that surrounds my workshop.
“MUM?!”

“Ari”
Her voice seemed to echo slightly off in the distance to my left but all it did was encourage me to run faster towards her.

It felt like I was running too slow, the endless void of darkness around me playing tricks on me from its uniform abyss no doubt, but eventually a light formed up in front of me, growing progressively larger until I finally burst through it back into the bright daylight of the more publically accessible areas within my realm, only to come to a grinding halt as the bottom fell out of my stomach in fear.

“Ari...”
My body stumbled backwards away from her and I ended up tripping over my own feet, crashing heavily to the ground with a whimper.
“Ari-”

The face, the hair, even the dress was right for the last time I saw her.
It was my Mum without a shadow of a doubt... everything but her eyes?

In place of those warm, caring eyes that I came to know and love all over again in the month I got to enjoy being her ‘youngest daughter’ there are the same cold, dead looking milky-white eyes that have haunted my nightmares for months now.
Eyes that burned themselves into my memory when I saw a sea of their accusing glares staring up at me as John took me away from Wizard Island, the place where I committed the first atrocity of my current incarnation in truly awe-inspiring style.

“Ari”

“This is a dream, it’s just a dream, you fell asleep! You fell asleep you stupid, STUPID-”
Mum reached out towards me for a hug and I froze for a moment at the warm smile that crossed her lips before melting away into an angry sneer as the world around us darkened dramatically to match her sudden change in mood.

“You killed us Ari, why would you kill us?”
My mouth went dry at the hurt look that crossed her face as a single tear fell out of those horribly empty eyes to leave a bitter trail down her cheek.
“Why did you kill me Ari?”

From the growing darkness behind her, shadows started moving and slowly, one after another, bodies with recognisable faces shuffled forward into the light, every one of them staring with those same cold, dead, accusing eyes as they reached towards me in a terrifying mockery of life itself.

“It’s just a dream! It’s just a dream!”

“Why useless girl?”
My head snapped up again to stare broken-heartedly as a shade of Edith moved out of the darkness with a glare on her tired old face.

“Why Han?”
A shade of Sarah stepped out next, dark black lines burned all over her skin like a spiders web as her cold white eyes glared down at me in anger.

“Why Mom?”
To Sarah’s side a tiny shadow moved into the light and Eris’s beautiful little face glared out at me with those same eyes, her neck bent at an unnatural angle that made me nauseous just from the sight of it.

Almost subconsciously I shuffled my butt further back across the floor to allow some distance between us, both physically and mentally, not that it helped much at all as they all bore down on me as one group with Eris in the lead.

“I didn’t do it, it was all Arista! I didn’t do it sweetie, I didn’t, I’m sorry!”
I got lost in the moment when faced with everyone that I’d failed, everyone that I’ve been hiding from for so long, all accusing me of things that even I truly didn’t believe I was innocent of.
I fell apart into a desperate sobbing mess on the floor instead of fighting back as my rational mind was screaming at me to do.
“I didn’t do it, Arista did! I killed her, she’s gone! I stopped her, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry but I stopped her!”

They all moved a few more steps closer towards me and I frantically shuffled back once more until my back hit something that halted my progress with a startled grunt from me.

“Oh, did you now?”
My mouth went dry again and slowly I turned my head up to stare into the maliciously grinning face of Arista’s adult form.
“You didn’t really think it would be THAT easy, did you Alice? You’re mind is mine and nothing you do will EVER change that fact... darling..”
A scream of unadulterated fear ripped its way past my lips.

As everyone surged forth to grab me the world fluctuated and stretched wildly before finally falling to pieces with a deafening crash.

======

A jolt shot up my spine and I surged away from my desk in a cold sweat, my arms flailing wildly in a useless attempt to fight off Arista and her army of the undead.

Several more things crashed down to the floor from their precarious positions around me to join the box I’d been working on, which I’ll assume was the source of the big crash that finally helped me wake up at long last; a thing which has become worryingly hard to do as times gone on in my nightmares.

“Just a dream, it was just a dream Hannah, stop being a stupid idiot you useless-”
My hands came up to frantically scrub through my hair in frustration at my own weakness.

“Al never had problems like this! Stop being such a bloody girl about it and grow up you stupid-”
When they’d finished turning my hair into a mess of, admittedly already dirty, red tangles my hands dropped heavily to my side for a moment before shooting back into action as they reached almost unconsciously towards the rack of test-tubes I ended up sticking to the table permanently after the first few times I knocked it over while distracted.
“-never forget to take a dose idiot, what the hell was I thinking?!”

After a bit of blind fumbling my hand pulled sharply back to my chest clutching the thin vial of mouldy-green looking liquid I’d been searching for, I didn’t even hesitate to pop the top and down the nasty tasting potion at this point, the novelty of it’s disgusting taste completely outweighed by need and necessity after weeks of use luckily.

As I felt the liquid slowly make its way down my throat into my stomach a warm, happy haze of numbness settled over my mind once more, setting the world back to the way it should have been from the start at long last.

The final stages of the potion kicked in, forcing my eyes to roll back for a moment or two as the haze cleared leaving only the numbness and a stark feeling of clarity that comes from being wide-awake, which all flooded through my system in seconds.
It may be potentially dangerous and considered bad form in most places around the world but sometimes you’ve just got to love self-medication in all its completely ill-advised glory!

“Now to clean up this mess, get some more food while everyone’s asleep and water Bitey. It’s gonna be a busy day, busy, busy, busy day, busy da-”
My hand flew up to slap myself across the cheek and break my brain out of the loop it had unhelpfully decided to settle into quickly, much to my surprised delight.

“Thanks hand!”

With one final giggle and a gentle stroke of appreciation to said helpful appendage from its other, less helpful twin that I call ‘lefty’, I set to work on today’s tasks at last with an enthusiastically happy hum of anticipation towards the fun day ahead of me once more.

I think it’s a Tuesday? Feels like a Tuesday, I LOVE Tuesdays!

======

“Hannah’s log, supplemental, these are the voyages of the Starship Hannah, her continuing mission to... something the something?... I forget, but it’s very important so listen up!”
If he could I’m pretty sure my chlorophyll infused roommate would have rolled what passes for ‘eyes’ to his, admittedly one of a kind, species.
“Anyway, progress has been slow as always, everything's too slow, and food is just... I miss food?”

It’s difficult, the hour or two that comes between the end of my last dose and the time I can have another one without killing myself, talking to Bitey is pretty much all that keeps me sane in moments like these. Everything is too clear to be fun, too real to be imaginary and too much for me to handle without sinking into that same horrible state of lost depression I suffered through until I finally worked out how to make the wonderful, horrible tasting, potion at last.

“I can't keep what food I get down too well anymore for some reason, not that you’d know how that feels, would you Bitey?... and I miss it I guess, and... Ugh, never mind, carrying on!”
If he could I’m sure he would have agreed with me.
As it is, he nodded his bulbous little head in what I suspect is actually an automatic response to me breathing near him but one that looks appropriately close to a conciliatory nod for all I care at this point.
“The math isn’t working out on my thrust calculations still, I have NO idea why. Everything else is working fine but I’m missing something on this one... honestly, if I wasn’t scraping the bottom of the barrel on projects to keep my hands busy and my mind from drifting at this point I’d probably just give it all up as a bad job and move on.”

Bitey’s overly large, for his size, head split open to let the leafy appendage I’ve come to think of as his ‘tongue’ flop out stupidly in response.

I sat there for a moment or two feeling almost disappointed over his reaction, not surprised, but disappointed all the same.
Considering what he is and how he came into existence I can’t blame him if he doesn’t understand me honestly, it just helps to talk in general really, until he came along I’d practically lost my voice from a mix of disuse followed by a lot of use whenever a nightmare caught up with me.

“You could at least pretend you care... asshole, I should have named you John!”
His head, still eerily reminiscent of the larval stage to a certain ‘Audrey II’ from a certain little shop filled with horror which Sarah used to love watching along with Grease and anything else with music we could sing along to as a kid, certainly isn’t the most expressive of faces to work with but I’m pretty sure he’s offended now.

Either that or he’s come to associate the word ‘John’ with ‘food’ considering the amount of times I grumble about him whenever I try to get some edible sustenance at this point... that’s all under the assumption that he even CAN hear me, let alone understand any of the noises I make of course..

Speaking of noises I make, my stomach decided that now would be the perfect time to growl loudly with almost bone deep hunger.

“Everyone’s asleep at this point usually, no harm in me grabbing something real quick while John’s distracted, right?”
Yet again Bitey was less than helpful on offering input of any kind but I took his vaguely ‘nod-like’ movement to mean he agreed with me if nothing else.
“Okay, think, feel, do..”

Those words have become my personal mantra of late.
Ironically I seem to spend most of my time trying not to do the first two parts of it but with my magic the way it is I have to rely on what abilities I can take from Ari’s, admittedly pretty brief, instructions on how to control my mindscape and apply them to the realm instead.

“Think-”
Destination, food, no people.
“-Feel-”
Determination, want, need.
“-DO!”

My hand thrust out in a punching movement and a hole tore itself in the space in front of it, floating in mid-air as if gravity and reality were mere suggestions... which now that I’ve said it is probably true in this realm, considering I’m in control of it.

As I unclenched my fingers to start searching for the nearest food item in reach something cold, heavy and metal landed on my wrist with an almost deafening ‘click’, followed moments later by a cheer of some sort which I didn’t really get to hear properly before yanking my arm back out of the rift and clutching it frantically to my chest as the rift snapped shut with a thought.

For one heart-stopping minute there I thought John had managed to get one of his suppression handcuffs on me somehow but that idea quickly fell apart when the rift actually managed to close, a certain lack of a connecting chain holding it open being the biggest hint, naturally.

Carefully I eased my fist back away from my chest to stare down at an oddly shaped, bulky metal band which is apparently now sealed around my wrist like an over-inflated bangle of dark blue metal in confusion and worry.

As I twisted my hand over to check the underside for a seam of some sort a trail of previously unseen runes lit up in a ring around the bangle in a worryingly familiar shade of red, the same red my runes used to take on whenever I activated them using m- using Sarah’s stolen fire core!

The runes flared so bright that I had to wince my eyes down automatically and that was all the warning I got before something heavy, loud and soft appeared out of nowhere to land right on top of me, sending us both to the ground in a pained tangle of limbs.

“HA! I knew it would work, suck it John-boy you owe me a free coffee!”
Past my throbbing head and currently rather crushed lungs I could do little more than stare up breathlessly at the grinning face of Sarah as she supported herself above me on one arm while holding her other, bangle-sporting one, up to her mouth as she shouted out in victory.

“I’ll get you you’re stupid coffee, what about Hannah? Is she alright?”
Sarah’s smile slipped and her eyes cut down to mine making me freeze like the terrified ball of nerves that I am.

“Hi Han, it’s been a while, miss me?”
Even if she wasn’t sitting on my chest right now I doubt I could have drawn breath properly anyway from the warm glow that seemed to come from her face as she stared down at me so lovingly.
All I could do was stare as a smile I honestly never thought I’d see again, either by her choice or... or worse reasons, beamed down at me from Sarah’s normal, unmarked face.
“Han?”

My body tried to take in a startled gasp or two I think, all I know is that a few seconds later I was hyperventilating and Sarah’s smile had disappeared into a worried frown.

“Shit! I think she’s gonna-”
I didn’t get the chance to find out what she thought I was going to do because with one more half-hearted gasp the world faded to black and I passed out into oblivion, from shock I’d assume.

======

“-not going to slap her John. She looked like I was going to eat her or something before she fainted, she wakes up to me doing anything violent and I think we’re in for a meltdown of epic proportions which, after seeing what’s left of Crater Lake, I do NOT want to witness in person!”
Sarah’s voice was easy to pick out as I slowly came back to reality from my blissfully dreamless spell of unconsciousness.
“No harm in looking, I guess? Looks like she’s been busy at least... lot of stuff here I don’t want to even touch considering the power I can feel pouring off of them, the ominously glowing runes and utter mess around them as well come to that.”

I couldn’t make out what response those words got, however she’s communicating with John right now must be pretty damn quiet for me to not even make out anything above a dull mutter.

“She’s got some green junk in vials on what looks like her main desk and... some sort of plant too?... I dunno John-boy, botany was never my thing. It looks kinda weird, familiar but I can’t really put my finger on wh- AHH!”
My eyes flew open and my body jerked into motion at Sarah’s startled yelp.

Before I knew it I was across the room, crouched in front of her protectively as my brain struggled to process the scene around me until it all clicked in my head at last and I broke out into a fit of relieved laughter.

“Y-yeah, I’m fine John... it’s not funny, the bloody thing tried to BITE me you asshole!”
I couldn’t stop laughing as my little green roommate seemed to flex his two largest leaves as if shrugging his ‘shoulders’ before settling back down into his pot properly to wait for his next chance at food to fill his non-existent, yet somehow ravenous stomach.
“Yeah, that’s her laughing, she’s awake apparently... no, I’m not gonna slap her now either John... She’s not hysterical, she’s just laughing, for powers sake!”

The laughter wouldn’t go away and with Sarah’s watchful eyes on me I couldn’t exactly sucker-punch myself back to normal like I usually would without some rather awkward questions, so I went for the easier alternative and moved quickly over to my desk to snag up one of the vials left on there.
I’m a bit early, but having a second dose at this point isn’t going to kill me as long as I don’t make it a regular thing.

I cringed as the green ooze passed down my throat but that quickly faded away as Joy, anger, sadness and disgust all became rather abstract things for me to consider when the potion kicked in fully with the almost customary roll-back of my eyes that left me clear and laughter free at last.

“Han?”
My eyes cut over to Sarah and I put on an appropriately sincere smile for her.

“Hello Sarah, how have you been? I’ve been fine, I’ve been busy, busy, busy, busy, bus-”
Faithful old ‘Righty’ flew up to smack me around the back of the head and break that annoying verbal tick that keeps happening after I take the potion lately.
“-Better! You’re looking well? I was expecting to find you looking like you sunbathed on red-hot chicken wire or something? Reconstructive surgery, magical fix or just a boring old glamor?”

Sarah leaned away from me with wide eyes for some reason but that didn’t deter me in the slightest as I moved over to grasp her face in my hands and inspect her possible glamor for flaws.
Finally something new to focus on which isn’t those stupid thrust calculations!

As I ran my hands over her skin, finding nothing but smooth-ness on all sides I gave up the glamor theory with a frown.
No-one as new to magic as she is could ever make a glamor that covers touch, it’s practically impossible as it is and I really doubt her lines are in any way ready for something THAT complicated yet so it must be... Hmmm..

Almost subconsciously I squeezed her cheeks in to create a rather amusing ‘duck faced’ look while trying to work out how to test other possible hypothesis in detail.

“W-eva you’ gon- do John, ‘urry, sm-onthing’s wrong wit- Han.”
I paused in my inspection of her left ear for surgical incisions and stared at her for a moment or two in confusion as my brain parsed her words through a filter that allowed for the way her cheeks being squeezed would affect her speech patterns, but even then they didn’t make a whole lot of sense?

‘John’s going to do something and there’s something wrong with me?’
There’s nothing wrong with me!
I’m calm, and clear, and busy, and calm, and... something?... I forget.

======

“Why am I squeezing your cheeks Sare?”
She looked up at me with possibly even wider eyes then before for a moment or two as I pulled my hands away from her face in confusion.

In practically the blink of an eye she’d pulled away from me but I wasn’t really paying attention at that point as my eyes locked on the spiralling patterns of my fingerprints in fascinated awe.

“John! John, get here NOW! Something’s seriously wrong with Hannah, it’s like she’s stoned out of her head or something?!”
Heh... something..

Something, something, something.
So many something’s so little time.

“My hands are all swirly..”
I twitched my thumb and the swirls and curves of my fingerprints hit the light just right for a moment or two before going back to normal again.

A new goal and plan in mind, I set to work with renewed energy.
Finding the exact position needed to bring that absolutely PERFECT lighting back into existence!

At last, a challenge!

======

“No, she’s still doing it, how much longer John?”

I barely gave Sarah’s words a moment’s thought before moving back on to much more important things. The light just won’t cooperate for some reason!

Maybe if I... no, that wouldn’t work, as if the sun would cooperate with me?!
Maybe I can see if Bitey can get rid of my... no, that would make it hard to repeat the experiment at later dates past the initial two attempts available and-

Slowly my attention drifted away from my thumbs to stare at the wall to my left.

Something about it doesn’t feel right?
Has it always had so much built up magic behind it or am I just-

With an almighty ‘BOOM!’ which shook the floor beneath my feet, the wall I’d been staring at fell away into an interestingly messy pile of assorted dust and debris as a heavily breathing male form stepped his way through it all with a forced calm on his face which didn’t reach his eyes or his magic sadly.

“About bloody time!”
Ah, I guess this is what Sarah meant when she said John was doing ‘something’.
One something down, many more to go at least!

“Give me a break here Sarah, I worked as fast as I could, Han didn’t exactly build this place to be destructible and the endlessly dark abyss outside is hard to navigate. If it wasn’t for the bond I’d never have gotten here at all an-”
In one relatively twitch-free movement I was up out of my crouch and standing nose-to-chest with John, my eyes squinted in what I think is a glare of some sort, although I could be wrong on that one because my face has never been as cooperative as Righty tends to be.
“-uh... Hi, Han?”

A long awkward silence stretched out between us as I glared up at him and he stared almost nervously back down at me in return.

“You broke my wall”
Statement of fact.
“You’ve broken my wall before”
The house, my safe little bolt-hole in Russia, that tree house thingy he put his foot through when we were nine.
“What do you have against walls John? Is it a personal thing or does the reason behind your actions go deeper? Does Max hate walls? Did he try to stop people from building them back in the prehistoric era maybe or did he invent them and now just looking at a wall fills you with rage at other people stealing credit for ‘your’ ideas?”

For some reason the awkward silence was back as I stared up at him in consideration.
His mouth had dropped open in a weird way that left me wanting to calculate the angles involved to see if they were entirely possible on a normal human body or not.

“Um... I think I see what’s got you so worried now Sarah?”
He turned his head and the fact that he felt the need to speak annoyed me because it ruined the lines I’d been busy calculating in my head.

With an angry growl I reached up, snagged his cheeks in my hand and turned his face back into position without a second thought.

When that didn’t work I huffed loudly to myself and forced myself up onto my tip-toes before pulling his face closer with a hard yank so our lips could collide.
He made some weird noises of surprise but they were irrelevant at the moment because I was rather busy using my tongue to reposition his mouth into the appropriate shape, which his annoying lips didn’t seem to want to take up again for some reason.

In the end after about thirty-seconds of battle we reached a relatively acceptable compromise which, while not as wide and open as before, was formed in a similar shape to what I needed to finish my calculations at last if I factored in the changes inherent in a re-test of this kind.

With a jerk I pulled us apart and settled back on my feet properly so I could get to work memorising his mouth for study before he messes it up again.
It took a few seconds but I eventually realised that my hand on his cheeks would skew my result so, after a squeeze or two to test the elasticity of his skin for future reference, I fixed him with another glare before letting go with a sharp tug of my arm.

“Stay!”
He didn’t listen obviously because he’s John and he’s a jerk like that sometimes but luckily all his uncooperative mouth did was fall open slightly more which could actually work to my advantage as I work on my hurried calculations.

“Still think she’s just a little stir-crazy from being shut up alone in here for a few months John-boy?”
Sarah’s amused but still obviously worried and more than a little annoyed question distracted both me and John at a crucial moment, making both my train of thought, my completed calculations and the reasoning behind them crumble like sand through my mental-fingers all in one foul move.

======

“What were we talking about?... and what happened to my wall?!”
Sarah groaned loudly for some reason, bringing a hand up to her face in a universal sign of disbelief often called a ‘face-palm’, meanwhile John stared at me like I’d grown a second head for a few seconds before his eyes shifted down into angry little slits and he took a step towards me.

Instinct screamed in my head to run away but I was slow to react and in a matter of moments he had me secured to a surprisingly well-conjured chair by equally well-conjured leather straps while Sarah watched over me like a guard-dog and he carefully stepped around the room looking over my previous projects with an assessing eye.

“Are we having a peer review session? I’ve never had one of those before, I hear they’re annoying usually but- Wouldn’t touch that if I were you John-boy! -but I’m always interested in trying new things. Variety is the spice of life and life is a spice that spices the spic...e... um, what was I saying?”
Sarah knelt down at my side so that we were practically on eye-level again and let out a long gusty sigh of discontent.

“I honestly don’t know Han. I have no idea what you were trying to explain or what’s going on with you right now but we’re here to help you so just sit back and try to relax, okay?”
My head cocked to the side in confusion as I scanned the area around me for some kind of social cue on how to respond without upsetting her again.
“Jesus Han, what the hell have you done to yourself?”
Ah! I know this one!

A bright smile split my face and I stared into Sarah’s eyes with all the joyful banality I could manage.
She stared at me in shock for a moment or two for some reason before turning away to glare at John’s slowly approaching back.

“Speed it up John-boy, she’s not getting any better!”

“Well, I’m TRYING to be quick about it but this place is a mess, how the hell do you expect me to find out what’s wrong with her, let alone fix it, when I can’t even tell where an inactive doomsday weapon ends and an enchanted toaster begins thanks to them apparently being one-and-the-same item?!”
My eyes cut between the two of them and another social cue became obvious.

I giggled to myself obnoxiously, breaking the tension nicely as they both turned, once angry but now worried, eyes toward me at last.

“Want me to give you a Tour?”
John’s eyes practically glowed at the airy tone of my voice but instead of lashing out at me in frustration he took a deep breath in before plastering an almost painfully fake smile on his lips instead.

“That would be lovely Han, what’s this thing here do?”
Despite his insincerity I cocked my head to the other side and hummed to myself thoughtfully for a moment or two before answering him anyway.

“That’s the prototype communication unit I made to go along with the satellite.”
Yet another long awkward pause stretched out around us as the pair of them tried to process that idea, three awkward pauses since they got here, I never had this problem when it was just me!

“Satellite?... no, wait, nevermind..”

“Why does it have a sixteen-inch long blade sticking out the front of it that’s glowing yellow if it’s a communicat-”
John glared at Sarah until she stopped talking.

With a heavy breath he stepped over to the next item on the desk in front of him and waved towards it while fixing me with that same, painfully fake, smile of encouragement.
I shifted my head over to my other shoulder again and hummed happily to myself.

This peer-review thing is actually quite fun?
Bitey never had such interesting reactions so obviously on his face when I showed HIM my finished projects, even that one time I accidentally got googly-eyes stuck to him and he spent the day rolling them at me angrily..
“THAT is my auntie-matter recalibration stone!”

“Don’t you mean ‘anti-matter’?”
I rolled my head over to stare at Sarah thoughtfully and a grin split my lips slowly at her nativity.
After a few seconds she shuddered in response for some reason.

Honestly, she really needs to think things through properly sometimes.
What else would you name a stone which can flip someone’s biological gender through several concentrated blood magic rune arrays and an unhealthy dose of liquidised Aconitum injected straight into their heart, when you have an ‘Auntie’ who needs her ‘matter’ recalibrated by it and happened to be the one that inspired its creation in the first place?

“Let’s try to keep things simple and not question what she says until we come to a possible answer on why she’s like this, shall we?”
With that almost growled statement, hidden as a request, John snapped his fingers to get my attention again and purposefully took one step forward before waving to the next item on display.

This is almost like some kind of game, isn’t it?
I LOVE games!

======

“-and this one is?”
Before I could answer him on what the vials on my desk contain, Sarah let out a gasp of surprise and slapped her hand to her mouth in horror.

“She drank one of those vials before she started going insane John! That must be it, I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner, everything’s just been so overwhelming and... and..”
John didn’t really answer one way or another on that point, unless you count annoyed growling under his breath as words at least, but either way he turned away from Sarah to focus on me instead.

“What’s in the vials Han?”

I slowly blinked my eyes at him in boredom.
This game got boring ages ago, they shot down my suggestion that we play something else already and now he’s glaring at me while asking the questions too..

“Guess!”
John’s head sank down into his hands with a frustrated groan, mirrored shortly afterwards by Sarah on my other side as my eyes took both of their reactions in with great attention.
I like this new game, new reactions from them, new things to study and do, new things and new things, new things, new th, new, new new-

Eventually the running chain of fractured repetition stopped of its own accord but that didn’t stop me from cutting my eyes down to ‘Righty’ who, for the first time ever, had failed to slap me out of a bad verbal tick and deserved the angry glare on my face for it in return.

“Traitor!”
The now apparently useless appendage in question went limp against the chair in a show of submission that you tend to see a lot in pet’s that have failed their masters as I glared down at him, meanwhile ‘Lefty’ amused himself by twisting in the leather restraints enough that he could face his twin and flip him off in a sign of utter amusement no-doubt.
“How do you two handle this sort of thing, are there training schools for hands somewhere or something to make them behave properly?”

For the fourth time since they got here, we all fell into a long awkward silence, much to my frustration. I can’t believe I’m actually starting to miss being alone, tired, hungry and utterly depressed?
Oh... looks like the potions wearing off again..

It’s always obvious when I start remembering why I remember feeling the way I do about remembering the things that I don’t remember that I do want to remember, remember, remember, remember, member, member, member-

DAMN IT!

“Say, John, bestest of the best man-bestys ever. Don’t suppose you can toss me one of those vials from the desk real quick can you?”
He actually had the gall to look at me as if I was the crazy one, when HE’S the one who’s got me strapped to a chair playing guessing games inside my realm, as if I can’t just command the world around us to break me free anyway!
“I’m asking nicely here John, give me a vial before I stop asking nicely, okay?”

He took a step back away from me and I growled low in my throat as his eyes cut nervously from me to Sarah for a second.

He’s gonna do something stupid!
That’s his ‘I’m gonna do something stupid’ face.
That’s the face he wears when he knows he’s about to be an idiot but can’t stop himself anyway because he’s a bloody idiot!

“John... whatever you’re planning... don’t.”
His eyes cut around him one more time before, with a wild lunge, he snagged up all four of the remaining vials from their holder and sprinted over to grab Sarah around the waist.

She barely managed to let out a surprised squeak before, with a flash of blue light, they both vanished in a warp of some description.
For a painfully long few seconds I sat there in stunned disbelief.

Tha... that utter BASTARD! He stole my potion?!

He stole my bloody potion and he left me strapped to a chair that I’m not COMPLETELY sure I have enough mental-fortitude to get myself free from at this exact moment, despite my self-contained bluster a few moments ago!

How the hell do I get out of this thing?
Cheating?... yeah, cheating sounds about right at the moment!

“You’ll pay for this John-boy... oh, You. Will. PAY!”

Potions, as with most things, rarely improve once past their sell-by-date apparently. Even if it is a very pretty green potion, potion, -otion, -otion... You know, I think the effects might actually be getting worse? Events unfold including but not limited to: Chairs being forgotten, along with many other things. John's trying to do... something?... And Sarah gets a temperature controlled fashion upgrade!

 

The wall to my left exploded outwards for the second time today.
For a few moments I stared at it thoughtfully before turning back to the wardstone in my hands instead, it’s only John after all...

“You fixed the wall?”
After a moment’s pause to make sure he was talking to me I let off a huff and dropped the stone back on my desk while turning to face him with a mildly frustrated frown.

“And you broke it again, color me surprised... asshole...”

John let off a huff of his own and slowly made his way into the room as if he expected some trap or something to be sprung just by his presence.
I’m not entirely sure why but if he wants to act like a fool then let him, I’ve got more important things to focus on at the moment.

“I thought the chair would hold you for longer than that?”
My hands hesitated, half-way back towards the wardstone I’d been working on before his first interruption about an hour ago.

I can’t really remember what happened between those two points very well, side effect of the potion I guess, but I’m clear now and able to work again so why does he have to bother me so much?

“I own this space John, there’s nothing I can’t do in here if I try.”
It’s a good enough explanation as any.

I’m pretty sure whatever I did to get from the chair he mentioned to my desk probably involved the magic of my realm in some way or another, it’s not like I could use my core for anything at the moment anyway so it’s pretty much the only option left on offer.

My eyes flickered over to the once-again broken wall as Sarah carefully stepped her way through the opening and offered me a nervous smile.
Something in my chest ‘thumped’ heavily for some reason but I turned away from her quickly to ignore the annoyance in favor of working, working, working, -rking, -ing-
DAMN IT!

Focus, stop letting your stupid body with it’s stupid reactions and stupid faults control you Hannah or else I’ll... I’ll... uh?... what was I saying?

======

With a twitch my head shot up to stare at the two invaders inside my workshop.

Why are they here? John’s probably just hanging around, he does that sometimes, but Sarah wouldn’t be here unless...
AH HAH! It must be testing day at last!

A wide smile practically split my face and I jumped off my chair in a flurry of activity and with a sweeping gesture I moved past them both, snagging Sarah’s wrist in my hand to tug her along behind me.

What’s taking her so long? We’ve got toys to test out!

“Hurry up Sare, daylight would be burning if I could see daylight right now!”
She shot a nervous look over at John for some reason but slowly fell into step behind me after a few seconds of hesitation.

In the time it took for her to get her ass in gear my eyes had drifted slightly and with a thought the flat white roof of my lab folded away to reveal clear quartz with a bright, sun-filled blue sky above it for all to see.

I couldn’t help but smile happily as the rays hit my face, I’d almost forgotten what the warm sun feels like.

I wonder if the test bench over there could be used for sunbathing if I take the metal thingy off of it?
Oh well, something to do later at least, at the moment there’s more important things to do, like finally testing something properly at last!

“Have you eaten anything pork based in the last twelve-hours Sare?”
She looked at me like I’m crazy or something, which was both highly offensive and more than a little annoying at this point.
“I had to resort to using Hebrew for the cold protection runes on the suit because-”

Why did I have to resort to Hebrew again?
There must have been a reason, something about barking dogs and ‘Coke-la-vim’ or something, I think?
URG! Too many ‘somethings’ again!

“Are you okay Han?”

“Never better! Testing time, testing, testing, testing, -ting, -ing-”
A gasp ripped itself from my lips as I ran out of air which helped break me out of yet another annoying bout of that weird verbal tick thing that keeps happening.
“I’ve got a suit for you to try on!”
The look she gave me could charitably be called ‘skeptical’ at best but that’s also irrelevant.
The suit needs testing and she needs it too, she just doesn’t know she needs it yet, but she will!

The wall’s in front of us folded away with a thought from me and my second, storage workshop expanded outwards as its roof rolled back to show the same quartz that now sits above my main workshop letting that nice sunlight come pouring in.

Why didn’t I think to set that up before?... The sun feels really nice...

We came to a jerking stop in front of the matrix-encoding knitting machine thingy that I never really got around to naming properly.
It’s the thing that you put the thing and the thing into to make the thing make a suit, why would something THAT simple need a name for Powers-sake?!

With a deft flick I switched hands grasping Sarah’s wrist and used my now free Righty-hand to grab up the bundle of soft, stretchable black material with Sarah’s name stitched on the back of it.

My thumb ran itself over the material a few times just because it felt nice and a little hum slipped out of my lips before I could stop it but that quickly passed; allowing me to turn back to the important matters instead.

“Put this on!”

Sarah looked at me like I was crazy for a few seconds.
When it became obvious that she wasn’t going to take the suit from me I growled low in my throat and dropped her wrist to focus on the room around me instead.

It’s testing day! Why is she being so annoying and stubborn on testing day of all days, days, days,-ays, a’s, a’s?

======

Uh... What was I doing?
Oh! Sarah, the suit!

“I can’t believe you’re finally here to try it out properly!”
My grin seemed to make Sarah a bit uneasy for some reason?
It could have been the little bouncing motion I did when she looked at the suit in my hands too I guess, but my money’s on the grin.

Stupid Arista face!

“Well? Come on! You don’t have to strip or anything, I thought of that part already, you just gotta put it on over your clothes.”
She still looked at me weirdly for a few seconds before glancing back towards my workshop where John appeared to be slowly making his way towards us with careful steps.
“Don’t worry, it’s REALLY baggy! It’s easier to produce with the runes on it in large scale anyway.”

An awkward silence fell between us all with John moving ever closer like a Predator stalking a particularly jumpy deer of some kind and Sarah looking progressively more desperate for some reason.

“What’s the suit do Han? Has it been tested before?”
Sarah let out a nearly explosive breath of relief when John finally spoke up.

My eyes cut over to him automatically and my face scrunched up in annoyance.
Of course I’ve tested it!

What kind of amateur does he think I AM?!
I’ve got one of my own already and it’s not given me any problems at all in weeks, since that unfortunate incident with the vocal-control rune being a bit too sensitive when I was working on the dagger prototype at least.

John must have seen the expression on my face for what it was.
Either that or he read my mind somehow... or, maybe I said all that out-loud?...

Who knows? Not important anyway!

“Put the suit on Sarah.”
She jerked around to glare at him and a whole conversation played out on their faces in some weird dialect of twin-speak I don’t completely recognise.

Whatever they said, it ended abruptly with a head-nod from John towards me and a reluctant huff from Sarah before she snagged the suit with her name on it from my hand and shook it out to find the opening at the back easier.

I watched on with avid fascination as she carefully slipped one foot into each equally spacious leg of the black jump-suit and pulled the top part up to slip her arms inside.

When she had it on as much as possible I gestured for her to turn around with a giggle and quickly pulled seam, using the in-built nature of the seam’s runes to seal the suit shut right up to her neck.

“Okay Han, she’s got the suit on, now... what does it do?”
My hands kept themselves busy checking each junction point and wiping ambient magic across the practically invisible seams of the suit to activate the rune clusters centered around them, but it wasn’t such a hard task that I couldn’t answer him on that one at least.

“Thermal protection, heat and cold, it’s also a magical regulation system working as a secondary magical focus in its own right... like a wand, but not crap...”
Plus all the other junk built into it, of course, those important parts barely took up a space from the left shin to knee on this thing by the time I’d worked out how to make it in the first place after all.

The suits are important, and the faster I can get them both into them the better for everyone involved because... because...

Why am I doing this again?
Something, something... a lot of something’s but something specific, something to avoid yet protect at the same time, what is it that I- AAH!

The world around me exploded for a moment and like a cresting wave, memories that I’d practically forgotten thanks to the power of my little clarity potions crashed down upon me with all of the raw, unfiltered emotions attached to them that I could imagine.

Mum, being frozen solid before shattering into tiny fine particles of snow.
Edith’s wrinkled old face frozen, stone-cold in a huddled pose within the crater of Wizard Island.

Seconds later the world was back around me and I collapsed to the floor with a gasp of air.

“HANNAH!”
Two people screamed my name at the same time, one moving to help me despite the silly looking black onesie she had on and the other almost dropping whatever he’s got tucked behind his back in his rush to reach me.

My eyes fixed on the panicked face of my sister, my Sarah, and nothing else mattered anymore.
Not my fear, not my worries, not even the burning pain in my chest from my cores latest attempt to tear itself violently apart in response to my emotional distress.
All that matters is Sarah and that suit!

“...Must be prepared, must be safe...”
Sarah reached me in practically record time and hugged me tightly to herself like I’d fall to pieces if she didn’t.
“Be prepared Sarah.”

“Be prepared? Han, what are you saying?”
She shook me a little in her arms but it didn’t help the frustration building inside me at her ignorance.

She’s so slow! She’s always been slow, my slow Sarah...

“Han, breathe, okay? Breathe, come on Han.”
Her hand came up to slap my back harshly and with an explosive gasp of air that I hadn’t realised I was holding in, I lunged forward to slap my hand to her chest forcefully.

“Alice is bad!”
The voice activation spoken and my job done at last I sank into Sarah’s arms in relief.
At least she’s safe now, all I have to do is get John and Eris into their suits before I can finally stop all this insanity...

“Oww! Han, what the hell?”
...iN-saNity?...

Gah! I must have gone too long without my potion while strapped to that chair!
My backup batch I had to dip into must be a bit out-of-date too, I can’t even remember the last time I thought to replace it so the effects obviously aren’t quite what they should be and-
...Insanity...
How can I call all my w-work, ‘insanity’?!

My heads not w-w-working right and I’m acting irrationally, thinking too much, feeling too much, doing too much an-and...

“You okay?”
John leaned down between us but despite me opening my mouth to answer him, his eyes were on Sarah, not me.

When did they become friends?
They have their own form of twin-speak, and now he’s more worried about her welfare then mine!

“This is padded or something, but even so- Oh God, what's happening?!”
The suit shook a few times, vibrating its contents as it went, and before either of them could react properly it exploded into action.

Long draping sleeves flapping wildly and the legs inflating for the moment or two it took for the internal diagnostics to take effect before turning all her clothing beneath the suit into their constituent parts and storing them away in several rather tricky sets of transmogrification spells triggered by those same, ever so useful, spell storage rune-sets John came up with, for later use.

I worked out that, THAT little trick would be necessary to stop them from interfering with the process to come the first time I put my suit on weeks ago!

The moment that every last item on her person had finally disappeared was pretty obvious to anyone watching because, with a hiss of escaping air from the back of her neck, the whole suit grew taut and promptly shank from an almost spherical, at this point, bubble suit to a skin tight model that looked a thousand-times better in my opinion.

I couldn’t help but let off a relieved laugh of victory as the last few steps took place and magic rolled visibly across the suit on her skin in an array of elements until the suit regurgitated her clothing in a surprisingly smooth set of external transmogrifications to recreate her clothing from their stored parts before the suit promptly disappeared from existence as far as anyone watching it would be concerned.

The suits not really ‘gone’, it’s just invisible and practically intangible, John’s little trick with the self-sustaining runes having been refined by someone who actually knows what they’re doing for once in this perfect application of it in action, which is only mildly more impressive than the other ‘spell-runes’ it took for us to reach this point in the process.

“Success! Protection from heat and cold, no-one can freeze you alive in this thing for sure... Hell, if my math is right you could go to space for all it matters with a few minor precautions and some form of thrust device.”
I grinned proudly at the pair of them as Sarah slowly came down from her growing panic attack and John let out a gusty breath, obviously realising that Sarah was never in any danger to start with an-

...Oww?...

“Frozen alive? SPACE?! Han, what the hell are you-”
Sarah spun on the spot in her crouched position at my side and swung out her arm to slap my shoulder with painful force again just because she could.

“Did I say frozen, who said frozen? Sorry, not sure where my mind went for a second there.”
The pair of them stared at me in disbelief as the memories surged forth again and my eye twitched a little from the effort it took to hold them back once more.

In the end all I managed to do was give off a slightly awkward, off-key laugh for them by way of reassurance this time but it was weak at best honestly and I doubt even I’d be convinced by it given the circumstances.

I need another dose of my Potion damn it, and fast!
This isn’t good, and to make it worse Sarah’s got me practically pinned under her much larger size at the moment as they-

“Okay, where are they?”
My thought processes stumbled to a halt as my eyes drifted up to John’s suddenly stern face in confusion.
“Don’t give me that look Hannah, you’ve obviously got some secondary source of the stimulant potion you’ve been abusing to a stupid degree and it’s obvious that, even by your own messed up definition of ‘sanity’ at the moment, this new load of the potion is defective in some way from your actions alone.”

My eyes glazed over slightly as he spoke, too many words, too fast...
My head hurts and it’s only getting worse at the moment thanks to my ever-growing need for more potion!

“I don’t know what your-”
I trailed off mid-sentence as John turned sharply away from me and stormed off towards my main workshop rather abruptly.

It wasn’t really an intentional thing but my eyes had cut across the length of my now connected workshop areas to stare at the cupboard with my potions supplies stored safely inside it as my brain tried to catch up with his words at a horribly slow pace.

Judging by the speed he was moving at and the direction he was taking, the sneaky bastard must have seen my unintentional tell because he zeroed in on the cupboard with barely a moment’s hesitation.

The doors flew open and he chose THAT moment to hesitate, much to my frustration.
I kicked my legs in a vague attempt to get free from Sarah’s bulk but if anything all that did was make her tighten her grip on me, which is highly counter-productive in my book!

“...What have you done Han?...”
John turned around and the horrified look on his face would be rather worrying if I wasn’t so focused on finding another way to break free from my annoyingly clingy sister instead.

“Ayahuasca, Betel nut, Hericium mushrooms, Jimsonweed... Erythorxylum Coca!”
He shook his head in disbelief at my rather nonplussed reaction to his yelling tone and glanced back at the cupboard full of raw materials I keep piled around my reserve stash of completed potions before looking back at me with wide, almost frightened looking eyes.
“Powers, are you TRYING to kill yourself? Coca, Han, pure unprocessed alkaloid cocaine!”

Sarah gasped from above me but I ignored that in favor of focusing on John this time.
It’s become perfectly clear to me that I’m not going to get out of Sarah’s grasp until she LETS me go sadly...

“It’s all balanced John.”
I made sure of that when I made the potions to start with, everything’s balanced, for every cancer causing Ayahuasca root I threw in a cancer fighting Hericium Americanum stem for Powers sake!

“How the HELL do you know if it’s balanced or not?! You’ve NEVER been good at potions!”

Well... he kinda has a point there?... I’VE never been good at potions personally.
I never had a chance to learn about them honestly, mostly because it’s such a dying skill that even Edith never bothered to deal in them generally and ingredients are becoming a bit rarer as time goes on with the world becoming more industrialised.

That doesn’t mean ARISTA didn’t know centuries worth of information on the topic which I JUST so happened to steal from her when I dived into her section of my mind in search for her worst nightmares, along with a load of other skills and knowledge which I’ve abused to unbelievable levels when working on everything from the new safety suits I designed to protect us all, to practically all of my gadgets and tools that I’ve been making over the last few months.

John nailed it on the head a while ago when describing Arista in general, she knew a LOT of things, but she just had NO imagination for using the things she knew in an ‘outside the box’ way!

When you get your head around the basics of it all, like the plant reaction tables and which ingredients are likely to explode when mixed with which other ones under a new Moon, then Potions is practically just Applied-Sympathetic Magic with a rather fun level of challenge added into the mix from how many variables are involved ranging from ingredient potency to age of the plants involved and even just simple things like the current room temperature!

“My rune-covered distillery is in the cupboard two desks over from your left, the rest of my ingredients are in the cupboard on your right. I know what I’m doing and I NEED that potion John!”

He glared at me harshly and I flexed my arms slightly in an attempt to grab him from across the room somehow in my frustration, but Sarah was ready for me apparently because she barely even twitched as she wrestled my admittedly weak escape attempt back into nothingness.

“Grief, emotional distress, nightmares and a damaged, unstable, core... you tell me John! You tell me RIGHT now to my fucking face, that I don’t need an emotional suppressant in order to avoid doing something stupid which could, at best, kill me and at worst kill everyone around me!”

Mages and intense emotions don’t mix well, that’s always been something useful to keep in mind.
When I first learnt how to use my magic, just having a loud noise happen near me was enough to have me setting fire to things instinctively.

That was several long years ago with an awakening and possibly thousands of stolen cores being hammered into my own core in a truly horrifying way added into the mix to boot.
Me lacking emotional or magical control in the old days was bad but a few first-degree burns a week is NOTHING when compared to the kind of damage I could do right now if my magic decides to go crazy again!

It’s enough of a struggle at the moment just keeping myself relatively calm despite the memories trying to batter their way back into my head and John’s current angry glare.

“I need one of those potions John... I need it, please?”
His eyes tightened down in rage and all I could do was wince as tears formed in the corner of my eye from desperation.
“Please John? Take samples, find a better solution, HELP ME!... I don’t care, jus-just give me some more potion before I hurt someone by accident...”

I didn’t need to flick my eyes towards Sarah’s position at my side but it happened anyway, much to my frustration, and John seemed to accept my logic thanks to that small action alone if I’m any judge of his facial expressions at least.

He hesitated for a moment or two longer, fixing me with a rather intense stare which was only made more intimidating by my currently restrained position and the slight blur to him where the tears in my eyes were gathering awkwardly at the edges of my vision, but eventually he turned back towards the cupboard and snatched up one of the vials full of green goo inside with an angry huff.

“I’ll need two doses John, I’m too sober and that batch has gone off, so its effects are weaker.”
He froze in his crouched position, slowly letting off a frustrated breath through his teeth before reaching in to snag a second vial as he started to stand up again.

“You can’t be serious John?!”
I grunted in mild pain when Sarah’s arms tensed around me as she called out in confused anger at him.
“We can’t give her any more of that crap! Look what it’s done to her?!”

John paused in his slow walk towards us and his fist tightened slightly around the vials in his hand as he obviously forced himself to keep moving despite his misgivings.

“She’s right Sarah, she was out of her mind before but she’s clear at the moment and she’s right.”
His free hand came up to brush through his hair like he always does when he’s upset but he carried on speaking anyway after a brief pause.
“We’ll have to find another way to fix this, I can’t risk things going wrong at the moment if it will hurt either you or her... she’d never forgive me if I did...”

Sarah shifted uncomfortably as if she wanted to pull me away from John when he stepped closer to us and knelt down at my side, she didn’t actually pull away though, the serious look on John’s face and the determination in his voice apparently being enough of a shock for her to stall her protective instincts for a few crucial moments luckily.

He put his free hand under my chin and tilted my head up so that our eyes could meet in an intense stare off which said more than words ever could between us.

He doesn’t like this; he hates it in fact...

He’s angry at me for making him do this.
He’s angry at himself for not getting here sooner and probably even for letting me escape into my realm in the first place all those months ago.

The biggest thing I could feel burning in those sharp blue eyes of his though was the pain this was causing him.

He knows that this potion isn’t right, he knows that it’s a trade-off which hurts me both physically and mentally in order to protect myself and the world at large from the even worse potential consequences of my messed up emotional state and magic in general... but that’s not much of a comfort at this point sadly...

“Thank you John.”
He winced and looked away from me before huffing out another breath and turning back again, his thumb flicking the cork off the end of the first vial in his hand.

“Don’t thank me for this Han, I’ll find a solution quickly and fix this mess for you, I promise.”
Gently he pushed my head slightly further back and poured the foul tasting liquid down my throat in one go before tossing the vial away in frustration and moving on to the next vial in his too-tight fist.

The potion was already going to work, not quite as powerfully as it should but I could feel the effects and the almost euphoric feeling of empty-ness taking over my mind already.
A limp smile formed on my lips as I let my head droop slightly further into his warm palm.

“I know you will John-boy, what’s a Moriarty without his Holmes, huh?”
A giggle pulled itself past my lips but that died away pretty quickly as the humor of the statement I’d just made fled from my brain with another wave of potion-influenced haze leaving the whole thing as an almost abstract statement of fact in my mind.

John huffed heavily to himself before flicking the cork off the second vial and quickly forcing it down my throat.
The moment its contents had finally disappeared into my mouth he let off an angry yell and threw the vial across the room where it shattered with a sharp crack of sound.

For a few more seconds my gaze focused on the wall it had struck, but then the potion kicked in properly at last and my eyes rolled back in my skull, pulling a gasp of pain from my lips as my limbs tensed up under Sarah’s tight grip.

======

“You can let her up now Sarah, she’s safe... just-”
The weight on top of me eased off slightly as John trailed off almost uncertainly, as if he didn’t even want to consider what the end of that sentence should be.

I can’t remember why he’d be acting so oddly but it probably doesn’t matter anyway, John’s kinda boring like that sometimes!

“Why are we cuddling on the floor Sare?”
Sarah slipped away from me completely and stood up again with help from John, leaving me to roll onto my belly with an appropriately light-hearted sounding giggle of mirth.

Neither of them appeared to be happier, despite my giggle and the wide smile on my face, so after a few seconds of more intense smiling in the hope of getting a better result without much success I changed tactics, pulling my face down into a frown to show them both that they were being unreasonably difficult for once as I went.

“What day is it? Why are you both here?”
The calm, reasonable tone to my voice mixed with what I think was an intense look of concentration happened to be moderately more successful in getting a positive reaction from them at least.

John let out a long breath and stepped away from us to go over towards an open cupboard in my main workshop for some reason while Sarah let out a heavy sniff for some equally confusing reason as she reached out to pull me into an unreasonably tight hug which I returned with another socially acceptable giggle of reassurance.

“Sarah, keep her calm and keep her talking if you can. If she starts coming down again and requests another potion then let her have it but try to distract her as long as possible first, I’m going to take these samples and go work on the ‘Koo-ya-ore’, okay?”

I cocked my head to the side in confusion as he slowly spelt out some weird nonsense-word to Sarah that I’d never heard before, mid-speech, as if it was a perfectly normal thing to do, with his eyes flicking between us worriedly a few times and his eyebrows raised to convey some kind of greater meaning.

In seconds my mind set to work dissecting it and as he left the room through a mysteriously appearing hole that seems to have been blown in my wall from somewhere, clutching some of my potion vials in his hands, I shifted focus onto trying to pin-point the ‘word’ he said and it’s country of origin instead in the hope of finding a better starting point if nothing else.

‘Koo-ya-ore’... It sounds vaguely Asian?
Japanese to be specific, although it could also have been some form of ancient mandarin considering my admittedly rather lacking knowledge when it comes to Asian languages in general outside of the few vaguely memorable incarnations I had in the region that I can’t quite get a grasp on at the moment for some reason.

“Han?”
My eyes drifted over to Sarah thoughtfully but my mind was still kind of busy spinning around that strange Asian word and its possible meanings.

For a moment I considered asking her if she had any idea what it could mean but that idea was quickly dismissed too because... well, Sarah’s not exactly an expert on languages to start with and asking her might be a bit insulting when we both know she’ll be clueless about the whole thing, wouldn’t it?

Maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way?

I need to find homophones for it from the languages I actually know instead!
If I can find words that SOUND like the one he used, then trace that words history back, maybe I’ll find a common ancestor somewhere along the same lines which can give me a hint of some sort.

The only word I can think of that sounds like ‘Koo-ya-ore’ at the moment though is the Zulu word for ‘I love you’, ‘ngiyakuthanda’ but even that’s a bit of a stretch at best and it wouldn’t make sense in the context John used it unless... unless?...

“Sare, are you and John dating now?”
Sarah flinched and almost seemed to turn physically green for a moment or two, despite the bright blush that formed on her check moments later in a rather interesting display of odd bodily reactions to a minor external stimulus that had me staring at her progressively paler face with renewed interest, -terest, t’rest, rest...

======

By the time she opened her mouth to assuage my curiosity I’d kind of forgotten what I asked her initially, which was slightly annoying for me obviously but not completely unexpected.
I’ve gotten good at dealing with this sort of thing lately though, you just have to power on through the frustration until you work out what you missed is all!

With that thought in mind I snagging her wrist up with a tug, cutting her response short into more of a surprised yelp honestly, but at least it got us moving further off into my workshop in the process.

I don’t know why she’s here but I bet she’ll be impressed if I show her my stuff!
Hopefully she doesn’t get jealous or anything, if she does then I can show her that suit thingy I made for her to calm her down instead!

Wait... where did I put that suit thingy anyway?...
Ah, nevermind! It’ll turn up eventually I’m sure.

More importantly I’ve got some cool stuff to show Sarah that she’s just gonna LOVE, I’m sure of it!

Now what workshop did I last have the-
Number Six maybe?... or was it Number Twelve?

Sometimes I really wish workshops came with some kind of in-built filling system!

One step forward, two steps back followed by an all-out sprint. The path back to reality can be, ironically, a bit surreal sometimes it seems? The trick is to not get lost along the way due to distractions... ...Hannah, honey, that's your cue?... Events unfold including but not limited to: Hannah showing off, John being missing-presumed 'busy', and Sarah getting obsessed with a stupid bloody wall!

 

“Han slow down, where are we even going?!”
With a frustrated growl I tugged her along behind me.

Despite her apparent need to complain about everything she didn’t actually use her overwhelming strength advantage over me to stop our forward momentum, so she’s obviously just moaning to be annoying, which I REALLY don’t need at the moment because I can’t find the workshop I was looking for and I can’t remember why I wanted to find the workshop, or what workshop I wanted or.. or.. um?..

======

We came to a halt in the middle of one of the more poorly lit workshops that we apparently made our way into somehow along the way and with a thought the roof rolled back to show a delightfully transparent quartz ceiling with bright sunlight past that, which really helped make the workshop look nicer, at least in my opinion.

“Why are we in workshop seventeen, Sare?”
My sister seemed to almost let off some kind of relieved huff in the few seconds it took for her to finally catch up to my side like a particularly slow puppy.

I don’t know why but Sarah’s been acting really odd lately?
It’s like she isn’t sure what’s going on or something, disorientated, that’s the word I was looking for!

While I waited for her to gather her wits together my eyes cut around the workshop.
One of my more boring storage spaces compared to the others I’ve needed to create over the last few months sadly.
A heavy sigh forced its way past my lips in frustration.

My potion’s running low again, I don’t know where the times gone, last thing I remember I’d downed two vials of the stupid green goo that keeps me lucid enough to be safe and I really doubt we’ve been doing... whatever we’ve been doing?... for THAT long at all.

“Huh?... so that’s where I left my Voodoo dolls...”
Without a thought I let Sarah’s hand slip from mine as I made my way over to the still strong smelling little figurines to give them a proper look over.

I can’t quite remember how far I got while working on them before they disappeared, apparently having been accidentally left on one of the desks in here through my travels.

It surprised the hell out of me when I first found Arista’s, beyond secret, stash of illegal drugs and ingredients tucked away in a heavily enchanted set of grow-beds.
She had them running pretty much autonomously inside a rather large room within the realm, one of several that I happened to leave disconnected from the main hallways while reshuffling everything around initially because no-one had been there in centuries.

Along with her apparent drug farm, a few other more useful places like her raw materials stash, enchanted objects stash and her own workshop which, to this day, I’ve been too scared to enter due to how much dangerously uncontrolled magic practically rolls out of its door when I come close, there’s an amazing amount of unsorted storage space just sitting in the void of my realm that I haven’t honestly had the interest or concentration available to deal with lately.

My thumb ran over the little thread of blood soaked material tied into a cord like bundle with some recognisable hair, obviously taken from my own head, which stuck out of the chest of the first hemp doll, thoughtfully as I assessed my own work with fresh eyes.

As things go, I seem to have done a pretty good job surprisingly?
I’ve seen worse before at least and from what I can see the slips of paper tucked into each limb of the doll with Mongolian, the native language of the first people to cultivate the so called ‘weed of dreams’ that I probably used to help with my spells potency when I use them, seem to be all in order.

With a bit of poking I managed to get a better feel on the most important one within the dolls head, sealed with resin from the same cannabis plants used to make the dolls themselves and marked with an Ankh to show who crafted it.

I really need to work on making my own symbol at some point...

Don’t get me wrong, I like the ones I use regularly, the Ankh, Wicca star and Yin-Yang symbols that were used on my suppressors thanks to Edith’s forward thinking, but when you really get into sympathetic magic and run out of cheap tricks to boost your power like I’ve found myself doing lately then your only option left for a power boost is to start refining things better.

Having my own ‘symbol’, preferably one built from the same elements that I’ve used in the past, could potentially give me an edge the next time I match wits with someone who knows sympathetic magic just as well as I do.

I know that technically the only person who could manage that would be Arista herself and she’s gone now but... but in my nightmares she’s still here?
I don’t know if that says something or not, but I’m definitely not taking chances on this one.

If that parasitic bitch decides to somehow come back, just to spite me probably, then I’m going to be bloody READY for her this time!
I swear on my stupid broken core that I’ll be ready!

The second doll needs a bit of tweaking, I must have gotten a bit distracted at the time, I’ll have to sort it out before I try using them on any kind of defensive spell just in case the-

======

“HANNAH!”
My head swayed to the side instinctively to move away from Sarah’s loud, angry yell right next to my poor ear.

“What’s wrong Sare?”
Her chest was raising and falling rapidly for some reason as she glared at me with her hands clenched into tight little balls.
“Are you okay? You look really upset for som-”

“Am I okay? Am I OKAY! Are you bloody okay?!”
Her fingers twitched slightly as if she wanted to reach out and strangle me but she quickly pulled them back into those same painfully tight looking fists at her side instead.
“You went dead still and stopped answering me for over three minutes! Those stupid dolls you were holding are pulsing with magic and I didn’t have any idea if they’d done something to you or... or...”

Without warning her words trailed off and her lips trembled a few times before she surged forwards and pulled me into a tight hug instead of finishing what she was going to say.

I felt a bit confused over her odd reaction at first but after a few seconds pause I relaxed into her hug and looped my arms around her to hold her awkwardly as she shook in what could be rage, happiness or just suppressed tears in general for all I know at this point.
I really need to start paying more attention to this sort of thing.

I’m out of practice dealing with people sadly and that’s a skill I’ve probably taken for granted too much in the past honestly.

Slowly Sarah’s shoulders loosened up and her shaking reached a point where I felt safe pulling back to stare at her gently.
She offered me an awkward, slightly apologetic smile in return which I took as an encouragement to move on with what my instincts insisted was the right thing to help Sarah calm down a bit better.

“Wanna see something really cool Sare?”
Her smile twitched up a little bit more at my enthusiasm which was all the encouragement I needed to keep going at this point.

Although, to be fair, it’s not like I need much of a push to show off some of my new toys in reality.
I AM kinda proud of them after all!

“This way Sare, keep up!”
A playful giggle rolled past my lips which made her smile widen just a little bit more.

This is going to be fun, I can’t wait to see her reaction to my biggest completed project to date!

======

After a few false starts we came to a stop at a blank stretch of wall which I’m pretty sure is the correct one this time.

My knuckles came up to rap on the wall a few times, mostly just for show considering this realm is practically under my complete mental control these days but you don’t just make doors appear out of nowhere without some sort of gesture to warn everyone what you’re doing, it’s the principle of the thing after all.

For a heartbeat nothing happened but then the wall folded away to reveal the, usually sealed from contaminants, chamber inside containing my prototype magical satellite.

With a happy giggle I practically skipped forward to start checking that the calibration hadn’t slipped or anything equally stupid, leaving Sarah at the entrance in some odd state of stasis or confused hesitation which I really hope isn’t a permanent thing because honestly it looks kinda undignified from this angle.

When it became obvious she wasn’t going to move any time soon I turned my attention back to the launch platform instead.
As always the left cradle needs a bit of tweaking for some reason that I’ve yet to work out, it always does that if I leave it alone for a while and by the Powers have I TRIED to work it out because it’s bloody annoying an-

“Han?”
My arms flew out childishly as I turned away from the calculations in my head to face my apparently returned to reality sister instead.
A curiously raised eyebrow and slight tilt to my head was all it took to get her speaking again luckily.
“Why are the words ‘Never try time travel agai-’ written on that wall in what looks like still wet blood?”

Slowly my eyebrow twitched in annoyance at how easily distracted from my much more interesting and impressive mix of magic and technology, Technomancy, as its slowly becoming reluctantly known in the magical world, she is...

She’s not going to let the subject drop unless I at least pretend to humor her though sadly.
With a frustrated huff I turned to look at the wall she was staring at and glared at it harshly.

The words are still there, just as always, just as boring as ever.

Whoever wrote them had terrible handwriting; either that or they were in a rush at the time, an idea that’s sort of backed up by how the ‘n’ on the word ‘again’ is smudged to a point of being practically unreadable by what looks to be a small palm and fingers trailing themselves down the wall to rest at the bottom.
The whole ‘design’ is finished off by a surprisingly distinctive handprint just off to the side from the trail at the bottom, as if they tried to write more after coming to rest down there but couldn’t.

“I dunno? It just kinda ‘appeared’ there one day... no idea how or why really, but its good advice and the red sets off the copper-wire colors on my, much more important and impressive looking, SATELLITE!”
With a swinging wave I tried to bring her attention back over to my masterpiece instead of that annoyingly stubborn wall.

I’ve tried to clean it but despite the continuously wet look to the blood, it’s apparently resistant to being wiped off. The wall itself seems to actually block me from moving, shaping or generally removing it too, which would honestly be a bit more worrying if it wasn’t so aggravating at the same time!

Like it or not, I have a wall covered in not-wet, wet blood writing in here forever now apparently?

I guess technically the wall could be quantum locked into a state of permanent stasis, a bit like Sarah was when she first saw it really, but that would imply that time travel is a real thing with the more worrying addition being that someone messed up time in general somehow and THAT would just be STUPID because time travel is far too insane to be real... no matter how useful it could potentially be if it WERE real...

“Come on Sarah, I show you my genius in action and you focus on some stupid finger-painting!”
She didn’t seem entirely convinced of either my point or my sanity but at least she’s looking at me now.
“Look! Satellite, me make-y by myself, with magic and science and kinda with luck too, impressive?”

Again, she didn’t look too convinced and I caught her eyes slowly inching back towards that stupid wall again.
I allowed myself a frustrated growl at that one just on general principle, even Bitey was more impressed then this when I showed it to him damn it!

In a flurry of eye-catching movement I leapt up onto the launch pad, grabbed the basketball sized tangle of wires and wire-mesh that I call my ‘delivery sphere’ up from its previous position floating at the center of the launch pad and tossed it over to Sarah with slightly more force than strictly necessary.

Showing once again why she’s the ‘athletic’ twin in our now broken twin-ship, she managed to catch the ball out of the air by hugging it to her chest with little-to-no warning, which kinda annoyed me honestly because I was aiming for her head.

“Ta-Daa! See, much more impressive... you’re not clapping? Why aren’t you clapping?”
I scripted this whole scene out in my head a thousand times during my off days in here, she always clapped when she got her hands on the satellite and truly understood my genius at last.

“Han, I-”
She hesitated, her eyes jumping from the ‘ball’ in her hands and back up to me with more than a bit of worry on her face for some reason.

Oh THAT’S why she’s not clapping!
She’s got her hands full, how silly of me, I completely missed factoring in that part when I envisioned this moment before for some reason?

With a careless shrug I lent myself heavily against one of the four support cradles of the launch pad and started my spiel anyway, the problem of Sarah going off script solved, at least for now.
She has a nasty habit of forgetting her lines sometimes I swear!

“This, is my Satellite.”
Her eyes shot up to mine for a second before glancing sceptically down at the ball in her hands yet again.

“...It's a ball of wire...”

“Well... yes, and no?”
My arms came up to fold defensively under my chest, my eyes narrowing slightly at the mix of confusion and disbelief obvious on Sarah’s face.
I’m getting pretty annoyed with having her send those weird looks at me lately!

“Wanna run that one by me again, in English please, Han.”

“Subjectively yes, it’s a ball of wires, and actually no that wire mesh is there to hold the other components inside safely while providing a core that I can build other shapes around.”
She rolled the ball between her fingers, staring at it with that thoughtful, interested expression on her face that I’d been hoping for from the start of this messy introduction.
“Inside the mesh is several bags of magically-compressed fine powder materials, base-components and anything else I could think of needing, all surrounding a main mini-wardstone I’ve designed specially to handle several tasks from remote viewing to transmogrification, material summoning and even storing a mini-waypoint beacon that I can use to send extra materials up there in case of an emergency or if I decide to make an extra satellite someday to save time I can-”

I trailed off as Sarah rose her hand up in the universal ‘stop talking’ gesture with a frown on her face.

“You’re losing me Han, stick to the basics, I promise I’m very impressed but save the technical jabbering for John, okay?”
That’s... surprisingly reasonable of her?...
I can work with that!

“Okay, so one of the biggest problems with normal satellites is that their BIG, and therefore hard to get up into space while being practically unchangeable once they’re up in orbit, with me so far?”
She nodded with just the slightest hint of an exasperated smile on her lips at my expense.
“There’s a trick in sympathetic magic where you can make an object ‘mirror’ it’s partner across great distances, it’s usually been used in the past as a way for quick-covert mail delivery by pairing sets of notebooks, because mages are stupid and have no imagination so they find a use for something and then stop, because their super-stupid, and ignorant, and frustratingly-”

I stalled out again as Sarah rose her hand to interrupt.

It took me a few seconds to realise why she would be doing that and when I did I shot her a thankful smirk in response. The potions wearing thin, but it’s not completely gone out of my system yet, strong emotions prompt stronger effects from it so my annoyance at peoples stupidity in general took me into babbling territory for a second there.

“Anyway, I read online a while ago about this science thing called ‘quantum entanglement’, which sounds a lot like what the mirroring spell does, but on a much smaller scale at the moment due to technological limitations. At the time I found it interesting, if kind of confusing, and ended up skimming through some of the more fanciful, half-joking ideas people were putting out for what entanglement could mean in the far-future and that got me thinking...”
Sarah cringed for some reason.

“...Not good...”

“HEY! Be nice!-”
She snorted under her breath and gave me another disbelieving look, shifting my delivery sphere under one arm so her other one could settle onto her hip, a hip that she proceeded to cock to the side in a show of distain I’ve not seen her pull off that well since our teens.
“-Well, as I was saying, one of the biggest ideas people were bouncing around was for either faster-then-light communications for deep-space voyages or somehow breaking the ‘teleporting’ aspect of the entanglement to create a real life version of the ‘replicators’ from Star Trek to make stuff from practically nothing an-”

“Oh god...”
I stalled to glare at her lightly for interrupting again.

I’ve not even gotten to the good part yet!

“So this ball of parts is my payload, I need to fire it up into space obviously but once it’s up there then I can activate the rune chains I’ve embedded into the wardstone and-”
My hand waved dramatically making the back-wall behind me fall away with perfect timing.
“-force the stone to turn all those stored raw materials through in-built transmutation arrays and a LOT of math into a perfect replica of whatever is in THIS area to the best of its ability!”

This time I couldn’t blame Sarah for the blank, astonished look on her face.
While the launcher platform is housed in practically a cube shaped little cave tucked off from one of my old workshops, I quickly found that satellites in general are a lot bigger than they look on TV and I needed more space to work with as time went on.

The roughly marked out square area, signified by the warning tape draping all over it in bright yellow and black, along with its surrounding walkways I left in to make working in general easier look even better with my current ‘final’ design model for what the fully deployed satellite will look like sitting in the center of it too.

“That’s a spaceship?”
No, it’s a Satellite, thank-you-very-much my poor deluded sister!

A big satellite which doesn’t really look like a ‘conventional’ one by the shear fact that I don’t need silly normal things like heat insulation, solar panels, antennas or anything else really inside it when I can recreate every use you could imagine for it with a specially calculated, one of a kind, plug-in-and-play rune system of my own design, I’ll grant you... but it’s still just a Satellite.

If I wanted a spaceship I’d have made it MUCH bigger!

The pressurised internal area is shielded from pretty much everything, thanks to magic obviously, but due to boredom more than anything else I kept things to a basic level with just about enough space inside to fit one of my workshops, swivel chair and all, next to the wall-mounted array of ‘slots’ left open and ready to receive any of my new mini-wardstones that I want at any time with just enough room to let me go up there and fix something personally if I have to.

Plus, let’s see John-boy ruin THIS bolthole if I ever need to run- uh, ‘take a break’, again without warning him first!

“There’s a specially designed long-range warp point setup on-board already, it was one of the first mini-stones I produced and it’s keyed specifically to my magic so I should be able to kinda ‘half-Bula warp’ up there safely if I need or want to... obviously adding that meant I had to work on oxygen scrubbers next, and a water’n’food source, which both became a lot easier after I somewhat drunkenly applied a bit of logic, a bit of brainpower and a butt-load of math into changing the ‘mirror’ spell so that it draws from a set of stored patterns instead of a direct analogue to source it’s reproducti-”
She’s giving me that look again... why’s she giving me that look again?

“You are unbelievable, you know that?”

“Why? This is all really easy; it’s just applying sympathetic magic in a new way with runes to get the outcomes I needed at the end of the day. The biggest problem I had was working out how to get geo-synchronous orbit going properly while avoiding collision or detection from the normal government junk up there, which took a bit of work because it turns out fire-magic doesn’t like being contained or produced by a rune pattern for very long an-”

“Han?”
I paused and looked at her in confusion once more, I was just getting to the interesting bit damn it!
Slowly her hand came up in an almost perfect mimicry of me when I’m getting a headache as she squeezed her nose with her eye’s scrunched up tightly in obvious pain of some kind.
“...Stop talking, please?...”

Well fine!
Excuse ME, for being proud of the stuff I’ve done over the last three months.

It’s not EASY creating amazingly new technomantic devices while under the influence of some of the world’s most potent psychotropic drugs, ya know?!
I kinda had a helping hand with all the lovely new knowledge from millennia of magical studies that I stole from Arista of course, but I still had to design and make the bloody stuff!

I still am in-fact... in-fact, you know what?
SCREW IT! I’m getting back to work, so THERE!

With an angry growl I shouldered my way past Sarah’s taller form and made tracks towards my current ‘main’ workshop where the little mini-wardstone I’d been working on earlier, before her and John decided to interrupt me, was sat.

The little teardrop shaped rock is still only partly engraved due to a rather frustrating problem I’ve come up against in trying to make a working rune-matrix that can power magical ‘lasers’ I can fit to my awesome satellite, for defensive purposes naturally, mostly coming about when it turned out that actual ‘normal’ lasers don’t work the way they are supposed to on TV in real life apparently.

We’ve had decades, possibly more than decades, of ‘Sci-fi’ showing us how laser-guns are supposed to work, why the hell do I have to be the first mage who wants to make them real with magic?!
It can be really frustrating being the only person in your field striving to make something NEW for once and it’s even worse when-

“Han, wait up!”

With another frustrated growl I picked up the pace and practically sprinted through my workshops to put some space between us before I snap at her properly.
I need another dose or three of my potion, right, bloody, NOW!

======

“Um... Han?”

My humming stopped which was a little odd because suddenly the vibrations radiating around in my head stopped with them making me feel momentarily light-headed.
That problem didn’t last for long though and I spun away from my desk to offer her a nice big socially acceptable grin in response to her questioning tone.

I want to say her names... Sahara?... Sally, Simone, Simon? Sam, Sully, Steve? Sa-, Sa... there’s definitely a ‘Sa’ in there somewhere.

With a twitch good-old Righty came up to slap me back into reality after I started slipping into a sa-, sa-, sa-

======

SARAH! That’s her name, good old Sarah, I remember now, Sarah, Sarah, Sarah...

“Are you feeling okay Han?”
My smile went up a notch and I nodded helpfully.
Righty twitched at my side as if it wanted to slap me again but Lefty moved quickly to stop its usually more helpful twin instead.

“I feel great Sarah, how are you?”
For some reason my smile didn’t have the desired effect I was trying to achieve in helping her feel welcome so I let it slide into a more neutral, yet slightly whimsical, lopsided smirk instead.

“Damn it, you’re completely wasted again, aren’t you?”

For a moment I thought she wanted me to confirm that idea for some reason but she beat me to answering the question all on her own, which left me cocking my head to the side in confusion over why she asked in the first place.

“I need to get this suit you put on me, off again, Han... I need...”
She hesitated for a moment before ploughing on anyway.
“I need the bathroom, okay? So you need to do whatever you’ve gotta do to turn this thing back into its big loose form so I can go quickly an-”

“Why would you need to take it off?”
My eyebrow rose to join my left ear in fixing her with a curious look of confusion that my already cocked head was showing ever-so-nicely anyway.
“The suits are permanent, taking them off would be most impractical and not to mention stupid beyond belief because it would negate all the protection they offer.”

“Han-”
She growled my shortened name out in frustration making me cock my head to the other side for a better look at her face in case I’m missing something here.
“-Han, I get it, your tripping out of your mind right now but can you just PLEASE be serious for a second?... I REALLY need to go and this suits going to be pretty ruined if I can’t get it off pretty damn soon!”

I stared at her for a few seconds trying to work out how something can be both ‘pretty’ and ‘ruined’ at the same time, but then she did this silly little dance on the spot, rubbing her thighs together for some reason and distracted me yet again.

“What do you want Sarah? The suits are important to stop Arista from freezing you to death so I can’t exactly-”

“DAMN IT HAN, I NEED TO PEE!”
I pulled my head away from her due to the volume involved but quickly settled back into my seat as an even more confused frown formed on my lips moments later.
Why is she complaining about THAT of all things, I’ve had that sorted since the second suit prototype after all an-
“HANNAH! Seriously, jus-just tell me what to do here? Fine, I won’t take the suit off but... is there a fly, or a zipper, or something that I just can’t find?!”

Ohhhh... well, this is kinda awkward?...

After a moment’s thought I ended up giggling to myself about the whole situation, which probably had some kind of ‘cause and effect’ relationship with how red her face suddenly started going just because of the timing, although I can’t think of why really.

All of a sudden she burst into action and pounced so quickly that she had me pinned to the floor before I realised what was happening, her face flustered and breath heavy but anger burning in her eyes.

“The suits are self-cleaning?”
The words squeaked out almost automatically to her unasked question, as her elbow came down towards my throat for leverage with almost dangerous precision.

For a few long seconds she froze in her position above me but then the arm restraining me went slightly slack, enough so that I managed to get Lefty free and with a bit of effort press the deactivation runes at my throat which I designed to make the suits perfected ‘I don’t exist’ array turn itself off temporarily.

Her eyes widened as she took in the sight of my suit, or at least what was visible of it from underneath my clothes, which basically consisted of the long sleeves, gloves, high-neckline and possibly a hint of stomach considering how quickly she threw me to the floor in her frustration.

“Toilets are impractical, Shower Monsters are scary and Periods are annoying, so I fixed it?”
Her mouth dropped open in some strange mix of shock and horror at the same time that made me want to start studying her again, but I should probably wait until she lets me up off the floor for that at least an- details!

That’s what she needs; details, then she’ll let me get back to work.

“The suits skin-tight in a literal sense, internally there’s a mesh of tightly packed runes which destroys anything excessive and ‘new’ produced after the initial ‘scan’ the suit did of you before it activated the fitting process you went through at first to a reasonable degree. Liquids are transmogrified into base components for either disposal or use in repairs if needed, same with solids including body hair.”

She still didn’t move so I decided to switch encouragement tactics slightly.

“I told you before that you could go to space in this thing, didn’t I?”
A grin played across my lips which I’m pretty sure is encouraging, either that or annoying, I can’t remember which at the moment.
“I meant that quite literally too, aside from a propulsion system which I still haven’t quite finished making for the Satellite, let alone making the array small enough to fit on the suits, you are your own self-contained unit now and can survive pretty much anything the universe can throw at you for the most part. There’s even a ‘helmet’ bubble of constantly generating air you can turn on to help you breath too if you press your thumb into the three main magic lines running up the underside of your right wrist.”

Finally she seemed to understand what I was saying at last because her shoulders slumped slightly and she rolled off of me so I could get back to my feet.

I watched with only a mild amount of confusion and curiosity as she curled in on herself for a few moments, until her legs twitched slightly and her face went a lot more ‘red’ then I think is entirely healthy for a human-being in all honesty.

“Damn it Han! You thought of everything as always, but still damn you! Thi-this is the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done to me...”
My hand came up with a finger raised to correct her on that one.

Considering I once let her leave the house to go play as part of a parent-suggested ‘play date’ in our backyard wearing only a tutu and diaper when we were two, despite my better judgement at the time saying it was a bad idea, this really isn’t the MOST embarrassing thing... but after a moment’s hesitation I decided that it would probably just lead to more drama if I pointed that fact out and I really need to get back to work before John breaks another wall down with his ‘Koo-ya-ore’ no doubt, whatever the hell that is, obviously interrupting me yet again in the process.

I settled myself down in my chair and picked up the rune-covered mini-wardstone again to go back to my calculations, only half-paying attention as Sarah slowly eased herself to her feet with an awkward, slightly bow-legged, stance which I found odd considering the self-cleaning enchantment on her suit should activate instantaneously.

With a partial shrug I forced myself to focus entirely on the mini-stone instead, only just catching her final grumbled words before losing contact with the world in general as the numbers became everything I could ever need once more.

“...Damn you Hannah Cooper...”

"For your own good" is a useful but often badly thought out phrase, only time can tell if actions eventually work out for the better in a lot of cases where it's applicable. This is one of those cases. Events unfold including but not limited to: Bitey getting his origin story told, John has a (possibly terrible) plan, and Sarah swears while staring at Eris!

 

If I shift the bilateral cooling array just three degrees to the left then I’ll have to rebalance everything again but it could improve efficiency by at least a factor of four in a sustained firefigh-

“Don’t touch him John.”

I paused for a second in confusion that words had just randomly come out of my mouth and a moment later I realised that not only was my left hand not holding my engraving tool anymore but it had also shot sideways to grab onto something warm in a death-grip.

Slowly my eyes trailed up my own arm and settled on a smugly grinning John who seemed rather pleased with himself for some reason as I held his hand just short of Bitey’s usual range of attack.

“I told you Sarah, she never changes. Just like in school, she’s lost to the world while she’s working but it’s like she’s got some kind of sixth sense for when someone’s about to mess with her stuff.”
He shot me a slightly wider, amused, smirk before turning his head to share that same look with just a touch more smugness in what I can only assume is Sarah’s general direction, eventually turning back to me again after a few seconds to really rub the look in naturally.
“Nice to have you back with us Han, how are you feeling?”

With an annoyed growl I dropped his hand and shifted in my seat slightly to get more comfortable for the conversation he’s now obviously intent on having for some powers-known reason.

“Don’t touch the plant; he’ll rip your finger off.”
Just because I have to accept talking over doing my work for now doesn’t mean I have to be nice about it.

Sadly my words only seemed to encourage him, having the opposite effect to what I was looking for, because John smiled slightly wider and wiggled his fingers teasingly at a point between me and Bitey as if trying to tempt us both into snapping at them.

Stupid John!

“Oh come on Han the little guy’s harmless, look at him, he’s barely a sprout an- AH!”
John’s pinky finger waved slightly too far into range and Bitey moved with his usual lightning-fast precision, just missing said appendage due to John’s naturally boosted reaction times luckily.
“What the hell? The stupid thing really tried to bite me?!”

Sarah chose that moment to snigger and mumble something like ‘I told you so’ but I chose to ignore her in favor of setting my ever annoying friend right on the reality of the situation instead.

“Bitey isn’t a normal, cute little house-plant John-boy... early on I was trying to find a way to fix my core using my Golden healing diversion, a plan that failed spectacularly by the way, and part of that experiment involved me channelling the biggest sizable chunk of magic that I could manage from my core without passing out into a dead plant I found in one of Arista’s hidden grow-farms.”
I paused to take a breath and shifted uncomfortably in my seat, well aware that I was both far too sober and far too busy to be having this conversation right now in all honesty.
“I woke up after passing out from the pain to find my new roommate, Bitey, happily chewing away on a chunk of my hair that had fallen within range of his jaws… basically, as far as I can tell, he’s kinda some sort of ‘zombie-plant’ hybrid?...”

A look of horrified fascination spread slowly across John’s face as the seconds ticked by which was more than a little bit distracting.
Meanwhile Sarah seemed content to quietly stand as far away as she could from said plant as if he’d suddenly develop the ability to jump out of his pot and chase her or something equally stupid.

“…A Zombie?...”

“Kinda-”
I stated, holding in a sigh of annoyance that THAT happened to be the part of all this he latched onto for some reason.
“-he was a dead plant after all and now he’s not, like you in a way now that I think about it?”
Judging by the glare that comment got John did not find the comparison in any way amusing.
“I don’t think he’s infectious at least, although to be fair I haven’t exactly tested that theory yet because finding a live specimen I don’t mind turning into some form of highly dangerous zombie if it turns out I’m wrong isn’t exactly an easy feat obviously…”

“…He’s a zombie, and you called him ‘Bitey’?...”
My lips twitched a few times before I gave in and smiled widely in response to John’s incredulous words.

What else was I supposed to call him really?
He’s too smart to be a ‘Darren’ and he practically threw himself off the desk when I suggested ‘Felix-two’, so now his name’s ‘Bitey’ and that’s that!

“You’ve been alone for far too long Han…”
My eye twitched at the implied insult in John’s almost hushed statement.
The fact I can’t exactly argue with him on that one when I’m sober enough to think rationally like this doesn’t help much either obviously.

Instead of dignifying his words with a response I turned around in my seat and picked up my wardstone again to get back to work before either he thinks of something equally as stupid as prodding Bitey with a finger to get my attention again or I get so far out of my rhythm that I need another dose or two of potion before I can carry on, an option which really wouldn’t be healthy at this point considering how close I am to overdosing on the stuff sadly.

======

“Han, how do we get Sarah’s suit off?”

For a moment or two the words spoken directly into my ear by an annoyingly familiar male voice didn’t really register in my head properly, but when his hand came down on my shoulder and shook me gently a few seconds later I jerked away in surprise, practically throwing my chair away in my rush to step away from the unexpected contact.

John’s hands instantly shot into the air in the universal sign that he meant no harm and he eyed me like a cornered animal for the few crucial heartbeats it took for my creating haze to fade enough that I could get my bearings properly at last.

“Sorry Han, didn’t expect to startle you that badly.”
I sighed and rolled my shoulders slightly, trying to ease some of the tension that had suddenly formed in them, its times like this that I REALLY wish mages could pop our joints properly!

“Nevermind, I was just a bit out of it, what’s up? Something about Sarah and a suit, right?”

John shot Sarah a slightly worried look which she shrugged in response to before he turned back to me with a blatantly concerned look on his face this time instead.
He shifted his feet a little awkwardly and after a few seconds of studying my face for some reason he continued speaking rather than questioning my reaction like he so obviously wants to do now.

“The invisible, skin-tight hazard suit you made for Sarah. How do we take it off?”
Oh… this again?…

“You don’t take it off John, I’ve got one on, Sarah’s got hers now, there’s one for you and Eris somewhere around here too. They’re necessary John, I’ll agree that it takes a bit of getting used to but they’re self-cleaning, no sweat, no bathroom breaks, no monthly annoyances for those of us who face that joy-”
For a long moment I hesitated, the words sticking in my throat slightly as flashes of that horrible day so many months ago came back to the forefront of my mind with little-to-no provocation, but I had to carry on despite them.
Of all people John was there and he’ll understand if I can just explain things properly...
“-you saw Wizard Island John, you saw what happened there, you saw the destruction a battle of wills between me and Arista caused.”

Slowly I trailed my eyes up to meet his slightly widened ones with as much seriousness as I could.

“We’ve been at war since the moment you forced my second awakening John, longer than that really thanks to a load of loud-mouthed seers through the years, I stumbled my way through it all and most of us survived that horrible mess… but not all of us…”
My head twitched towards Sarah for a second automatically as my mind turned to guilty thoughts of Mum’s untimely end at my own frost covered hands but with a force of will I pulled them back up to face John again, not that he missed the motion in the slightest of course.

“I’m an Enchanter John, not a warrior. Runes are an art, not a weapon.”
Without conscious effort a heavy breath left my lips in frustration as I shifted my feet uncomfortably under their confused stares.
“I can’t AFFORD to assume that this is all over, just because the tumor-bitch in my head is gone now; I can’t afford to sit back and get comfortable again… Runes aren’t a weapon, but if I’m proactive, if I plan, and build, and work HARD to protect what’s important then maybe next time a war comes to call on me I’ll have a fighting chance at stopping things before they can all go wrong and I end up with more blood on my hands again.”

An almost excruciating silence rolled out after that painfully true statement of intent from my own lips.
My feet shifted awkwardly again and after a moment’s pause I turned away from them both to go pick up my chair again so I can get back to work at last.

“Han…”
I glared defiantly at my desk, a wave of my hand cutting off his words before whatever stupid platitudes he was planning to let loose on the world could leave his lips for once.

“Don’t-”
-for once John just DON’T!

Let me have this, I need this, I’ll accept cutting back on the potions if that’s what it takes to get everyone off my back but I’m not stopping this now. I’ve worked too hard, hurt too much and gone too far towards insanity in this stupid quest to save everyone to stop now!
It’s an empty bid for redemption from someone whose actions are irredeemable at best but it’s all I’ve got now...

“Just don’t John, I know you, I know what you’re going to say and I know that you’re going to be right too because you’re an asshole like that at times… just this once can you let me live with the consequences of my actions in exchange for all the good I can do from accepting them?”

Slowly yet another awkward silence fell over us all once more.
I’m getting pretty sick of awkward silences at this point, even the dr-

“What happened to you in that crater Han?... What aren’t you telling me, telling everyone, that you think is so damning?...”
With a gasp of outrage I spun around to glare harshly at the stupid bastard who’d dare just openly ask me like that in front of Sarah as if i-
“Sleep”

The rage in my eyes died out quickly at his command, shoved sideways into my straining head as those damn hypnotic eyes of his registered to my body before my conscious mind could even realise what was going on.

“You son of a bit-“
Before I could finish cussing him out, the world grew dark as my eyelids got heavy all of a sudden and I found myself falling forwards into his arms before it all faded away into a mercifully blank nothingness instead.

======

“She’s been exposed too long, the only options left are this or we let her go into withdrawal, which is more than likely going to just outright kill her from her body going into shock if nothing else.”
Part of me wanted to groan or growl as John’s voice came into focus but I clamped down on that urge viciously in favor of staying still and listening intensely instead.

“What about the cure? You said if you could get a sample of what’s effecting her you could neutralise it in her system and-”
An impatient growl from John stopped Sarah’s almost desperate question in its tracks as the warm shoulder-shaped object currently stuck in my gut from the ‘fireman’ carry he’s apparently using to move me somewhere tensed in aggravation.

“It’s not a potion Sarah, there is no outright cure, Hannah… she should be dead? There’s no magic to the ‘potion’ she was drinking, it’s just a carefully balanced mix of high-strength narcotics and hallucinogens.”
Vaguely part of my mind connected the dots and belatedly it became clear that the ‘Koo-ya-ore’ that John was talking about before he left Sarah to keep an eye on me was not only English but something as simple as a ‘cure’ that he stretched out the sounds of to confuse me in my drugged state.

“Have you ever heard of an ‘upper’ and a ‘downer’? In essence they’re two types of drugs, one brings on a sense of euphoria and the other depression, Han managed to make a cocktail of those sort of drugs which brought her into an almost perfect state of equilibrium, robbing her of most emotions and impulse control but leaving her in an advanced form of that stupid mental rut she likes to call her ‘creating haze’ for hours at a time… it’s insane, it’s stupid and idiotic, and so NOT Hannah that there’s nothing I can do but this to help her.”

“You’re sure it will work?”

“No, obviously, this is untested ground after all... but if anyone can pull it off then its Hannah. I just need to get her riled up and angry enough to pull it off, than pray to the Powers that she doesn’t kill me in the process, I guess?”

So that’s your plan is it John-boy?
Get me angry then see what happens, how predictable of you!

“You’d better not die, you melodramatic idiot, I only just started liking you. Dying on me now that I actually care what happens to you isn’t an option, okay?”
The humor in Sarah’s voice calmed my thoughts slightly for a moment but slowly the undertone of actual fear and worry underneath that humorous manner of hers struck me with more force then I’d expected.

When I was on the potions I’d suspected something was going on with the pair of them in my absence just from the way they spoke to each other now if nothing else, but hearing that worry in Sarah’s voice hurt a lot more then I’d anticipated honestly?
I’ve lost a lot of things to Sarah over the years, some willingly, some not-so-much… but I don’t think I can lose John to her too at this point.
I need him right now, even the idea of Sarah doing anything to him an-and.. and..

A growl rumbled low in my chest and I practically shot to my feet in a heartbeat sending John stumbling backwards from the force of me kicking off of his shoulder in my bid for freedom.
My eyes cut between the pair of them and Sarah flinched for some reason, taking several guilty steps away from me which I took as an invitation to focus back on the real source of my rising anger.

“Han, it’s not what you thin-”
My hand waved up towards Sarah’s face to cast a silencing spell on her automatically.
I saw her flinch once more out the corner of my eye but nothing happened surprisingly and, after a long confused pause, my eye’s widened in fear.

For the ambient magic around us to not do my bidding, that could only mean one thing…

“You took me out of my realm?”
A shudder made its way through my whole body and the air itself felt suddenly so cold as the idea that we weren’t in my realm anymore finally hit home to that deep, primal-fear section of my brain at last.
“What the hell are you THINKING John?! I’m defenceless out here! My core’s ruined, what if something happens? What if it explodes and kills everyone, what if someone attacks us, what if I-”

Our eye’s connected and a wave of numb calm fell over me like an oppressive blanket as those damn hypnotic eyes of his did their thing once more.

“Calm Hannah, I’ll protect you and keep you from harming others.”
’...I’m calm, he’ll protect me and keep me from harming others...’
“Your core is safe as long as you don’t reach for it, so don’t reach for it.”
'...My core is safe, I shouldn’t reach for it...’
“We are going somewhere safe and I’m going to help you, trust me on this?”
’...I trust him...’

John’s eyes drifted slightly off of mine towards Sarah and for a moment the power of his magic dropped in response before he tightened his gaze upon me once more with slightly widened eyes full of worry.

“Sarah, set up the ward like I showed you, I can’t break eye-contact at the moment, Hannah’s too angry for the effects to linger. Set up the ward and activate it, tell me when you’re done, okay?”
Part of me registered his words but their real meaning escaped me as the seconds ticked by, like water through my fingers when faced with the warmth of John’s eyes.

=====

For the next few minutes I stood in a blissful stare-off with John, who was apparently having to fight hard not to blink for some reason while I focused on his words and the feelings they inspired in me.
...I trust him...

“It’s done, are you sure this is necessary? It’s her realm and-”
Sarah glanced away from us for some reason and her eye’s widened in fear.
“Oh shit”

“Mum!”
Eris’s happy little voice rang out from behind me and even John’s hypnosis couldn’t suppress the bright smile that formed on my lips at the sound of her so happily calling out to me.

Instinctively John’s eye’s left mine for just a moment but that was all that was needed for reality to reassert itself for me, my head whipped away from his and my eyes squinted down as much as I could while still being able to see Eris as she sprinted towards us with a happy little skip in her step.

As she got closer I reached my arms out to snag her up onto my hip like I’ve longed to do for months now, while irrationally fearing that exact same outcome because I’m such a fool!
Just the sound of her voice was enough; I could never hurt her, my Eris...
Not even my stupid broken core would DARE to harm her when-

She’s almost reached me, but something isn’t right?

The world seemed to slow around us as her eyes trailed across me without recognition at all and she continued running past my outstretched arms as if they didn’t exist.

Slowly, almost mechanically, my body turned to watch as she flew by and folded herself against Sarah’s legs lovingly in a way I remember her once doing to me, so many months ago, before she discovered that being carried was much more fun of course...

Sarah’s head moved upwards, seemingly at a painful crawl, until our eye’s met and a silent conversation flew between us in twin-speak twitches that burned my chest even harder than my already rebelling magic ever could.

Apologies, that’s all her eyes could offer me?

Apologies and fear for what I might do next as Eris obliviously moved herself behind my sisters legs in a painfully familiar motion she used to do with me whenever faced with strangers…
Strangers like… me?...

“FUCK!”
John’s frantic yell broke the moment of horrified staring for me as the world sped up and my magic flared in outrage, hurt and every other emotion I could feel bubbling under my skin from my confusion and the growing pit of dreadful, rolling anger forming right along with it.

Before I could even move a muscle he surged forwards and tackled me around the waist heavily.
We didn’t even have a chance to fall before my vision bleached out to the annoyingly bright blue of a forced warp and the world fell away as he dragged me off somewhere despite my best efforts to escape his magic’s grasp.

======

We landed in a tangle of limbs which quickly separated as we both tumbled down the unstable side of some sort of sand-mountain that we’d appeared on top of.

Eventually we came to a stop, and with a jerk I came out of my wild defensive roll to glare at John from across the few meters worth of sand dividing us, my rage growing cold just from the calculating look in his eyes that reminded me so much of Max at his worst.

“Where are we?!”
There are so many questions, so many accusations, so many… so many EVERYTHINGS I want to throw at him right now but the only one that made it past my lips was that enraged war-cry of a question.

“Middle of nowhere, in Death Valley, I needed a safe place for you to explode and this is it.”

“Explode?! Why the hell would I ex-”
Even as the words were leaving my lips I could already tell that they were redundant.

Magic, thick tendrils of it, rolling in the every shade of color and elemental power imaginable were forming up around me, pouring out of my skin itself as my already terrible control slipped even further with my growing panic.

My core pulsed in my chest horribly, beating a rhythm into my magic itself which my Locus point was apparently more than willing to return with interest.
Slowly the pain registered as, with each pulse, my core pushed itself ever closer to its already stretched limit that I’ve been trying desperately to avoid for months now.

“John, run!”

The shaky hold I had over my leg muscles gave out as yet more magic lashed around me wildly and my head sunk practically to my chest as I tried fruitlessly to focus on putting the storm back inside the bottle when in all honesty it’s already long since escaped my grasp at this point.

After a few seconds that felt like a lifetimes worth of me running into a proverbial brick wall of magic, something warm wrapped itself around me as a pair of gentle hands encircled me in a tight hug.

My eyes flew open almost as quickly as my head snapped up to stare at John’s smiling face in horror.

“What the hell are you doing?! My core’s breaking John, RUN!”
He didn’t even twitch at my yell; if anything all it did was make his grasp on me feel somehow even tighter despite his lack of actual movement.
“John! You were right, it was too much. I let my anger get to me and it’s too late, let go and run for powers sake, I can’t hold this all in for much longer!”

His arms shifted slightly and somehow he managed to scoop me up onto his lap despite the magic waving around us violently, yet somehow managing to not hit him in the process.
A warm smirk played across his lips for the second I got to see them before his head came down and he settled his chin on the nape of my neck comfortably.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“John, don’t do this, you don’t understand, my magic’s going crazy and its gonna-AHH!”
A scream pulled itself from my lips and my back arched harshly forward as something deep in my chest, most likely my core, snapped like the most terrible of broken bones.
By the time I came back to myself from the pain my breath was coming out in pants and I’d sunken back against John’s chest like a limp sack of potatoes.
“Please John, leave me here and run. My magic, it’ll... it’ll kill you?”

He shifted once again but, for some powers-known reason, the stupid bastard wouldn’t let me go!

“I’m guessing you heard at least some of my conversation earlier, you’re terrible at pretending to be asleep, and considering the circumstances I should probably cut to the chase-”
One of his arms stretched out to fully encircle my waist leaving his other one free to reach up and gently work its way into my hair in a way that felt surprisingly nice, and more than a little distracting.
“-this isn’t quite what I was planning but we’ll work with what we can here. I’m not going anywhere and your magic isn’t going to kill me any more then it will kill you Han, despite how it feels, there’s still a chance for us to both walk away from this mess unharmed.”

My jaw tensed as he shifted his head slightly and rubbed his chin into the tiny ticklish spot on my neck just next to my shoulder that he somehow seemed to know exists without me having ever told him about it in the slightest, probably a secret he learnt from Arista or Ari like so many others he’s known lately.

“Calm your thoughts Han, your body is weakened from the drugs you’ve been pumping it with, your core is damaged seemingly beyond repair from your fight with Arista and your mind is-”
My back arched violently again as the pain in my chest spiked once more and a scream ripped itself from my lips before trailing into an angry roar of ‘Get on with it!’ which he actually seemed to listen to for once.
“Use your diversion Han... It can heal anything, bring back the dead, and fix bloody-broken walls. When you have THAT as you’re trump card then you USE it as much as humanly possible!”

Not another word was needed between us at that point.

I’ll admit that I felt immeasurably stupid for not having thought of it before now, but in my defence I’ve gotten out of the habit of using the strange Golden ability Edith gave me ever since I knocked myself out trying to use it and accidentally created Bitey.

My magic’s beyond control at this point but luckily a diversion doesn’t need control, it’s practically an automatic process set to a mental trigger after all, almost entirely out of my control after I’ve set it to work.

That being said, I focused for a moment and almost instantly the multi-colored tentacles of magic waving away from my body started to bleed gold, the power inside them not being forced out like when Arista took over my body but seemingly being converted in the same way that this mysterious golden power inside me spread itself through the Hub unhindered, despite Mavens best efforts to stop it.

I found myself letting out a long breath of relief that at least something had gone right for once.
The way John lost what little tension was left in his form beneath me and the fact that the evil idiot decided to place the lightest of kisses on a rather sensitive spot above my exposed collar-bone didn’t help either obviously.

“Not out of the woods yet Han, but good work all the same, pull this next bit off and I’ll kiss that spot just below your ear that turns you to jelly, okay?”
THAT’S PRIVATE!

“I don’t know what you’re talking about Joh-AHHH!!”
I couldn’t even get my denial out before my core surged again, making my throat burn from the agonised scream that burst forth from me in response to its efforts.

The stupid broken slab of metaphysical magical containment didn’t even give me a chance to catch my breath before it started all over again in its attempt to apparently tear itself apart and take my sanity with it!

======

I’m not sure how long I screamed for but eventually the pain DID subside, even if it didn’t completely go away in its entirety.

“It’s okay Han, breath, hold my hand and breath, you’re going to be okay I-”

“My magic’s trying to kill me John-boy; I’m not having a bloody baby!”
I couldn’t see the look on his face after that rather exasperated yell left my lips but I can guess and, honestly, I even had a rather muted sense of his feelings from his magic too which was a pretty odd sensation to have after months of isolation and intentionally avoiding my mage senses for fear of setting off my core once more.
“What’s the last step John? I’ve got a load of gold floating around me like a horny squid and if my guess is right we’ve got at most a minute before my core goes into meltdown again.”

He hesitated for a few seconds before answering me at last, which with John is usually a pretty bad sign in my experience, but nevertheless he still answered me eventually even if his response wasn’t the most reassuring thing that I could have hoped for.

“There’s nothing I can do about your core Han, I don’t know what happened to it but it’s broken beyond anything I’ve ever seen before and your leaking more magic then should physically fit inside you every second that we sit here, it wasn’t noticeable in your realm but ever since we got outside I’ve been feeling it and it’s pretty damn terrifying honestly...”

A little smile made its way onto my lips at the awe in his voice but that died away pretty quickly when my thoughts shifted to the ‘why’ on that one and all the people I killed to achieve this ‘impossible’ level of magical power that’s tearing me apart.

“If we survive this John-boy, I’ll explain it to you properly, now what’s the next step I need to fix my core?”
Despite my best efforts a rather frantic sounding breath pushed itself up my chest and past my lips as the pain in my core increased by an almost unnoticeable amount as if it could understand what I was planning to do and wasn’t too keen on it in the slightest.

“Han… there’s no way to fix your core...”
What?
“I’ve been studying up on Arista’s past attempts at making a stable Locus point and after reading Arthur’s diary on Excalibur, Arista’s first successful attempt at making a Locus point of any kind, from what I can see there’s a step in the creation process she perfected that you haven’t reached yet.”
WHAT?!
“Your core is holding you back at this point, it’s not yours to begin with, I don’t know where she got it from but Sarah’s core wasn’t the only one she transferred into you and if her methods held true over the years than the one you have currently imploding inside your chest is doing exactly that because a magical core CAN’T co-exist with a true Locus point. The power involved is just too much for even the greatest core ever recorded to handle.”

“WHAT?! What the hell are we gonna do the-AHHHH!!”

With impeccable timing my core decided that NOW would be the best time to show its nasty little crack-filled head yet again.
The pain was horrible, objectively not as bad as the pain I went through fighting Arista months ago, but then that was months ago and this is now which happens to bloody HURT!

My vision split between the real world and the part of my mindscape that houses my lines without any input from me, as if my magic had a flair for the dramatics and enjoyed having an audience as it seemed to wait for me to be watching before literally shattering the crumbling remains of my core into nothingness.

In the real world my magic went crazy, massive waves of golden light cresting and letting loose from my body in all directions which seemed to grow taller and wider with each successive pulse of power that left my body as that strange feeling in my gut that I’ve come to think of as my ‘Locus point’ in general started to beat in an almost steady rhythm which drowned out my hammering heartbeat from its intensity alone.

My lines, on the other hand, had become a wild tangle of threads flapping loosely from the location where they used to center themselves around my now destroyed core.

I watched on in a state of pain and bewilderment as the lines began to organise themselves once more and, as they moved, so did my viewpoint which resettled itself on a pit within my mindscape housing an endless void of swirling blue power around a seemingly tiny spec of golden light at its ever shifting heart.

All the loose lines around me sorted themselves out with almost methodical precision, forming up constructs and shapes that I remember clearly from the lines that once surrounded my old core.
When they had themselves in position they almost seemed to hesitate for a moment to make sure I was watching, like a child showing off for a bored parent or something equally stupid, before they all surged forward as one and connected violently with the storm swirling away inside the glowing pit of power in my gut.

I don’t really know what happened next, it all happened so fast.

The world exploded, my inner world disappearing into a golden light and the real world doing pretty much the exact same thing as a practically solid blast of golden light forced its way out of my poor aching body.

It left me no other option but to give in to the inevitable and collapse into oblivion from a mix of pain, relief and the overwhelming power rushing through my body all at once as if time itself would bow its head to this impossible force of nature given form inside me at its whim a-

Not all explosions are bad... a lot of them maybe?... but not all of them at least. Let's just say 'explosions can be a mixed-bag'. It's complicated, no worries, you'll get it eventually. Events unfold including but not limited to: Hannah going for a swim in Death Valley, John giving out a few well-timed cuddles, and the desert will never be the same again!

 

That… fells… AWESOME!

My arms twitched slightly and my every movement seemed to make the warm, comfortable heat rolling through my limp body increase even more.
It felt so good, I must have spent at least ten minutes just rocking from side-to-side on my back with my eyes closed, humming happily to myself as my body practically glowed internally and the magic inside me pulsed within me like someone was playing a rich Caribbean drum solo in my chest.

Eventually my curiosity won out over my love of feeling so nice and with little effort at all I thrust myself up onto my feet again, my magic assisting with amazing precision to add just a pulse of air from my back and make the whole movement unnaturally smooth in a rather interesting way.

The moment my feet settled on surprisingly solid ground my eyes shot open and I took in the world around me with wide-eyed awe.

Everything, from the thick canopy of trees above us to the lush grass around my toes and the slowly flowing waterfall to my right looked so bright, so alive in a way that I can barely remember it having be in such a long time.

Another happy little hum slipped out of my lips as I turned on the spot, swinging my arms out childishly as I just enjoyed the sounds and smells of nature around me.
When I’d almost completed my first full revolution my eyes landed on one, rather obvious, thing that clearly didn’t belong in this paradise I’d awoken in.

“John! John, wake up you useless git!”
He flinched heavily at my yell but that was nothing compared to the outright convulsion he gave off when I took a running leap and landed on top of him with a happy giggle.
“Come on John, you’ve got to see this, I have no idea what happened but it’s so pretty!”

My words seemed to snap his eyes open almost instantly for some reason.
With a startled yelp I rolled off of him as he shot up into a sitting position without any real warning at all.

“W-wha... where the hell are we?”

I kept going with my roll across the lush grass around us before kicking out my knee at just the right time and, with another minor blast of wind from my seemingly ever so helpful magic, sent myself cartwheeling up into a standing position with one smooth transition.

John’s eyes trailed after me in amazement and I couldn’t help but preen a little under his attention.
It’s nice to know your worth paying attention to after all, I’d hate to disappoint by having messy hair or something equally stupid!

“Han? Wh-... are you feeling okay? The last thing I remember was your magic going haywire and then... nothing?”
I giggled in response and went up on the tips of my toes to spin on the spot happily.

He’s such an idiot sometimes!

“I’ve never felt so good in my life John. The worlds so bright and everything feels so nice and my magic is just-”
Rather than even try to explain the wondrous feelings running through my body at the moment I wrapped my arms around myself in a tight hug and shook from side-to-side to show him how nice it all was.

I haven’t felt this good in... ever?... I honestly can’t remember a time in my life when I’ve felt this good before!

Even the explosions of raw, forced enjoyment I got from over-using my diversion so many times can’t compare to how LIGHT I feel right now.
It feels like I could grasp the world in my hands and just hug it all forever or... or, I dunno, something fun like that at least?!

Just because I could, I spun on my toes again, but I barely even reached a quarter of the turn before the water of a nearby oasis caught my attention due to the bright sunlight sparkling off of its crystalline depths.

I smoothly shifted to my other foot and pivoted myself into an outright sprint towards the water’s edge, the giggle on my lips morphing into a laugh of expectant joy as I reached the small beach-like area before the water and kept running.
The water rose up to meet my feet with barely a thought from me and I just kept running, the wind at my back and the water as my stepping stones as I rose higher and higher into the bright sky, until I could even see above the canopy of trees around us to the barren wasteland of sand surrounding it on all sides.

With little more than a glance, out of curiosity more than anything, I took that final leap off of my water-steps and flew down towards the inviting water below with an excited yell.

Hitting the water was at once cold, refreshing and gloriously welcoming.
Swimming through the crystal clear waters of this mysteriously nice oasis felt like coming home to me for some reason.

I wanted to giggle to myself and roll around in the cool, yet somehow warm, depths forever.
It was only a pressing need for oxygen that prevented me from doing just that honestly.

My head broke the surface first and finally the giggle could come free from my lips again without potentially drowning me in the process.

“Hannah!”
With little more than a thought I rolled onto my back and the water around me began rising up into what was, for all intents and purposes, a throne made of water itself.

For some reason the throne looked and felt familiar but I just couldn’t put my finger on why, despite searching in my head as much as possible in the brief time I had before John decided that standing by the water’s edge calling my name wasn’t working and he made the mistake of stepping into the water, trying to wade his way closer towards me.

I shot him a knowing smirk and pulsed a mild surge of lightning magic through my feet into the water, causing his body to freeze up involuntarily for the brief moment I needed to let my water-throne drop as I practically flew through the cool water like a missile until I was right in front of him at last.

Yet again I surfaced with a happy giggle but this time I followed it up but wrapping my arms around him in a tight hug before he could escape.

“You got in my water John-boy, that’s a dangerous place to be, say ‘Uncle’ or I’ll dunk you!”
His eye’s widened delightfully and I laughed at his obvious surprise for the few seconds it lasted before he hid it behind his usual ‘cool’ exterior.

Slowly his arms came up and wrapped around me in a returning hug which honestly surprised me given the fact that I’d just, playfully, threatened to drown him in the nice oasis water around us.
His hands locked in place behind my back and he stared into my eyes searchingly for a second before his magic swelled impressively wide.

For just a moment it managed to wrap tightly around me on all sides before fizzling away into nothing when faced with the force of my much more powerful magic, but by that point the damage was done.

The warm, inviting feeling I’d had pouring into me from the water around us turned cold.
The colors of the trees and grass lost that unnaturally bright shade that had initially caught my attention about this place.

More importantly I felt a chill move down my spine and the rather odd feeling of the magic inside me pushing against seemingly solid walls of that same magic from outside my skin as if fighting back a tide of power in order to... to...

======

With a gasp of air my eyes shot wide open once more, despite my inability to remember closing them in the first place.

It took me a few seconds to gather myself and take stock of my surroundings before my eyes settled on John’s worried face at last, a rather easy thing to do from our rather cosy position hugging each other tightly while we paddled in a seemingly bottomless pool of amazingly clear water around us.

“John?”
His eyes lost some of the tension in them just from my cautious, questioning tone of voice and it felt like he relaxed as a whole moments later, much to my growing confusion.

“No time to explain Han, I need you to trust me and let me wrap you in my magic, then we need to get out of here quickly.”

I didn’t even get a chance to answer before a sheet of his magic came loose from his body and started trying to surround me on all sides, just like it has done so many times lately with equally nice feelings of warmth, love and trust inside it while being only slightly spoiled by the worry I could feel rolling through it almost constantly as it went.

My magic tried to push loose from his hold but it barely took a thought for me to suppress it into a more docile state and let him keep going until all I could feel was his power surrounding me on all sides.
Without another word he shifted his arms around me slightly as if trying to get a better hold before we were both wrenched away in the dizzyingly blue mess of a line-of-sight warp.

======

We came out the other side, wet but otherwise fine aside from some mild nausea on my part, as always when it comes to warping in general.
John let out a long breath I didn’t realise he’d been holding and, even stranger, I found myself huffing one out in relief as well.

“What’s going on John?”
I frowned slightly as my bare feet sunk slightly into the sand that we were now standing on, the water on them just turning the fine particles into a soggy mush which felt anything but nice as I shifted slightly to avoid sinking any further into it all.

“Everything went as well as it could, I think, your core imploded and scattered to the winds leaving nothing but your Locus point behind. That’s good for you, much healthier, not to mention more manageable, but as a side effect you appear to have created a pocket of magic around where the explosion happened.”

He shifted his arms slightly and flicked his head to my right in response to my curious eyebrow.

I turned my head to follow the movement and my eyes settled on a rather large area of green within the seemingly endless mountains of sand around us, at least a mile away easily from where we were currently stood, yet easily visible due to its general size and just how much it stood out compared to the bleak sand-covered space surrounding it.

“My magic did that?”
He nodded and sighed heavily, giving me another, not unwelcome, squeeze for some reason before he continued speaking.

“From what I can tell, it’s like the Hub or your Realm. You’re magic is infused into the ground and when you woke you must have been completely connected to it judging by the way you were acting. I did the only thing I could think of and wrapped you in my magic, forcing you out of whatever was affecting you by cutting you off from all external sources of magic for a moment or two.”

My eyes widened in surprise before cutting back over to the massive oasis that I’d apparently made by accident from nothing but an uncontrolled blast of my magic as a shudder went through my body at the thought of being controlled by the ground under my feet once more.
It was bad enough the first time back in my realm, let alone out here in the real world!

“Thanks for the save John, I’m sorry about... ya know... everything just kinda spiralled out of control and Eris... E-Eris-”
Slowly I stuttered to a stop as tears formed in my eyes in response to thinking back on that horrible moment where the closest thing I’ve ever had to a daughter didn’t even recognise me, running straight to my own sister who she called ‘Mum’ for some powers-known reason.

After a few moments pause to compose myself I sniffed heavily and shot John an apologetic look which he was more than willing to accept with ease judging by the look on his face.

“I feel better now at least! My magic is... I dunno, but it feels good, it feels lighter than it has in ages, I don’t feel out of control anymore and I don’t... um...”
I’m not even sure what I was trying to say at this point.

Being stood here, wrapped in Johns warm arms and his warm magic while I tried to explain how it felt to finally be free from all that built up pressure inside me left me feeling decidedly awkward as I came to realise what it may look like to an outside observer.

With that thought in mind I eased my arms up and gently pushed us apart slightly to create some space while offering him a thankful look just to make sure he knew it wasn’t anything personal.
He accepted my movement with a surprising amount of grace considering John’s usual emotional range that seemed to shift between arrogance and smug smirking in general.

The moment we’d fully separated, his magic fell away from my body and I couldn’t help but shiver slightly at its loss.

We both opened our mouths to say... something?...
I’m honestly not sure what I was planning to say at that point, let alone him, but it didn’t matter in the end anyway because practically the moment his magic left contact with mine there was an almighty roar of noise to our right and we both spun around to stare in horrified confusion as what appeared to be some kind of giant tentacle monster made of water rose high out of the oasis in the distance.

Several thicker tendrils split themselves vertically as they rose out of the ‘beast’ to create surprisingly realistic looking ‘mouths’ and they all turned as one to focus directly on us.
John gulped heavily and I tried to take a step back in fear, practically tripping over my own feet while crashing into his side instead moments later, much to my continued embarrassment.

“Do you think your magic can sense, well, your magic?”
My worried gaze cut between him and the now moving, gelatinous beast made of pure water as it oozed its way slowly towards us leaving a river of water behind in its wake leading out from the oasis’s original central pond and, if my eyes are seeing things right, apparently also spawning grass and more greenery out of nowhere along the sides of the ‘river’ as it goes!

For one horrible moment a few connections were made in my head between my golden diversion magic’s ability to grow plants around my feet on contact, its ability to influence me when I claimed my realm, it’s almost ravenous hunting of me when I used it to ‘defeat’ Maven at the Hub and finally the freak accident from my ill-advised attempts at testing its limits within my workshop while my core was damaged beyond belief which ended up creating the seemingly sentient zombie-plant I’d affectionately come to call ‘Bitey’ over the last few months.

“We need to leave; we need to leave RIGHT now! I don’t care where John, just hurry the hell up and get us out of here NOW!”
Luckily he didn’t need telling twice.

His arms wrapped tightly around my waist and I just about managed to take in a deep gasp of air before the blue light overtook us as we disappeared into a warp piloted by John, leaving behind the horrible, seemingly sentient, water-beast my magic had apparently formed into so it could catch me again just like the golden puddles tried to do at the Hub.

Much to my relief we got away without further incident and despite the potential dangers involved in its very existence as a whole, which I’m quite happy to list under ‘future-Hannah’ problems at the moment thank-you-very-much, at least the water-beast thing is slow moving if nothing else apparently!

======

We came crashing down awkwardly onto a hard wooden floor in a dark building of some kind.

I couldn’t bring myself to study things much more than that at first as I rolled onto my side and heaved a few times, my motion sickness showing it’s hatred for the idea of warping yet again with a much harsher response then the one I got a few minutes ago.

“W-where are we?”
My arms trembled slightly as I heaved in a few more deep breaths to suppress the urge to vomit which I’d probably have followed through with if it wasn’t for a certain lack of actual ‘food’ in my stomach at this exact moment in time.

“My place, it was the first thing I could think of, the manor is shielded so whatever that thing is, it shouldn’t be able to track you while you’re in here...”

I sighed in relief and rolled onto my back, my arm coming up to wipe my damp hair away from my face in the process before my lips split into a wide grin and a string of almost hysterical laughter left me, joined seconds later by John’s own relieved sounding sniggers to my side where he lay spread out on the same hard-wood flooring as I did.

“...I fucking HATE magic sometimes John-boy...”
The words barely escaped my lips before I was back to laughing to myself at just how crazy things had become in such a short space of time.

Less than a few hours ago I was safely tucked away in my own private little dimension doing everything I could to hide from the world and my problems, now I’m lying on the floor in my best friends ‘manor’ house somewhere feeling SO much better!

My core is just... I don’t know how to describe it?... it’s one of those annoying things with magic where you have to FEEL it to really understand properly but it’s like my core, in all its broken glory, was weighing me down for my whole life and suddenly someone’s cut the anchor away!

My whole body is just HUMMING with magic from the center of my chest all the way to the tips of my fingers.

Logically speaking I would have expected there to be some kind of empty, hollow feeling making itself known behind my heart because my core is completely gone but... but, it’s not there?
I can feel my Locus point pulsing away in my gut still, the power it’s radiating out, washing through my body like crashing waves of comfort that warm me from the inside so deliciously that I just want to bask in it whenever I focus internally even slightly.

It’s as if my Locus point has just been waiting for this moment, for my core to be gone so it can run wild through my body, run free... I honestly don’t think I miss my core at this point?... all my lines have reconnected themselves smoothly around my Locus point as if THAT’S my ‘new’ core and everything feels so GOOD now.

I feel refreshed, renewed and so wonderfully FREE at last!

======

“-glad it all worked in the end, I tried everything I could to find a cure for your dependency on that stupid ‘potion’ of yours or your fractured core but in the end all I could think of was to trigger a big burst of your diversion magic and use it’s unnatural power to ‘heal’ you instead.”
I blinked furiously, coming out of my thoughts on the weirdly pleasant feeling of my newly released magic as I rolled over slightly to fix John with a curious eyebrow which ignored in favor of carrying on regardless of my previous lack of attention.
“I didn’t exactly plan for you to snap like that so suddenly, I was actually going to lead you far away from everyone and then try to piss you off somehow, so the plan didn’t change THAT much, but when Eris turned up I knew things were going to go south pretty quickly and you needed to be removed as fast as possible.”

Slowly my head ducked down in thought as my mind focused on that horrible moment when Eris ran past me into Sarah’s arms instead.

The emotions tied to a lot of it all feel so remote now?
I’m not really sure what’s going on there, the thought of Eris not recognising me still hurts, burns me up inside, but the rest...

I know that I should feel upset?
I know that Eris’s ‘betrayal’ was just the tip of the iceberg with Sarah and John’s much ‘closer’ relationship coming before that, along with all the lingering doubts and guilt I have over my part in the deaths of my Mum and Edith as well... but it’s all just so... so... abstract?...

I’m really not sure what’s going on in my head at the moment at all.
One minute everything’s crushing down on me and then the next...

I just feel so light and free now, so disconnected from that rolling ball of rage and hatred that I let fester inside me for the months I hid in isolation.
There’s probably something to that feeling which I should be worrying about right now but I honestly can’t bring myself to face them at the moment if there really is something to worry about involved.

For the first time in a long time I feel like there’s nothing holding me back, nothing dragging me down or subverting my mind to turn it against me.
It’s such an amazing feeling that I just don’t want to let it go until I have to!

======

“What happened with Eris and Sarah, John?”

Just because I don’t want to look into the ‘why’ behind my sudden disconnection from those horribly strong emotions, doesn’t mean I don’t still care of course and John’s my best source for that kind of information at the moment sadly.

“Trade, an explanation for an explanation?”
I glared slightly at him but that only seemed to amuse him annoyingly so after a moment’s pause I huffed to myself and nodded in acceptance like he knew I would eventually.

“Things got messy. I came-to in a containment field, it didn’t take long for me to break-free obviously, I’ve fought rune masters much better than whoever made that one before after all.”

My eyes winced slightly at the idea of telling him it was his own mother who put him in there.
Before I could decide if it was worth keeping that information to myself or not he carried on speaking though, making the decision kinda moot for now as he moved on.

“I knew you’d be in trouble so I used our brands and followed them back towards your realm, it wasn’t until I got inside that I realised something was very, very wrong...”
He winced and shifted slightly so he could look at me better from our rather awkward positions on the cold wooden floor.
“The brand on my cheek, the one you gave me after I enacted the old magic against you, was telling me that you were quickly moving away from your house on a roughly northwards route... meanwhile the brand touching my core, the one that formed between us from your end when I first enacted the old magic against you and I worked pretty hard to keep open afterwards as a ‘back-up’ in case you ever found a way to cancel out the other one, was telling me that you were laying on the floor a few corridors away from me in serious pain.”

My mind spun with the implications involved in that shocking new information as John seemed to gather himself together so he could say what came next.

Slowly facts started slotting together into place making a horrible amount of sense and drawing a surprised gasp from my lips, my eyes widening along with them as I realised just what had really happened when Arista ‘gave’ Sarah back her core in that hallway.

“From what I could figure out, when the first binding between us formed, it connected with your dominant core; Sarah’s fire one to be exact... After that, Arista must have sensed what the magic was settling inside you to do somehow and begun work to prepare for her bid to take over during your so called ‘second awakening’, thrusting her ice core more into prominence, so that when you tricked me with a brand of your own minutes later the old magic latched onto her core instead of Sarah’s.”

‘Old magic doesn’t discriminate between intent.’
That’s what got us into this whole mess to start with, it’s the same loophole John abused to trick me in the first place after all!

Magic’s stupid, magic’s beyond stupid sometimes and it just does what it’s supposed to without questioning things.

The bindings were never designed to deal with someone who has more than one core, there’s never BEEN someone with more than one core before, as far as I know, so why would the ancient rune-masters who created those meeting grounds have factored something so unlikely into their calculations?

“You found Sarah?”
It’s the only way this story can go from here, he followed the nearest brand connection and found Sarah just how I left her, writhing on the floor as her own core burned her from the inside out with a dazed but heavily sleeping Eris laying nearby in the middle of some random hallway of my realm!

“I found Sarah, and Eris but Sarah was the priority obviously, it took a lot of work but I got the pair of them to the Hub doctors who started working their magic on them almost instantly.”
He sighed and brought a hand up to rub at his cheek slightly as he struggled to find the words for whatever he had to say next.
“They stabilised Sarah’s core and got to work preparing her lines for the magic battering its way inside her with surprising ease, apparently there’s some strange genetic deformity in some of the older Native American mage clans which mirrors what she was going through pretty closely because they had spells on hand to deal with most of the problems she was facing as they cropped up... Eris on the other hand...”

I blinked heavily and found myself holding my breath as he shifted his shoulder against the floor once more before continuing on.

“I don’t know what Arista did Han but Eris isn’t who she once was anymore. She’s the same in so many ways but it’s like someone’s memory wiped away all the important people associated with the things she knows and has hidden them away completely.”
He paused just long enough to shudder, probably at the idea of memory wiping being used on a mage like that in general knowing him, but then he carried on as if nothing had happened.
“I didn’t find out until after we got back from Wizard Island. She was still asleep when they got Sarah stable and I left to follow after you but when she woke up she took one look at Sarah’s sleeping form and declared her to be her ‘Mum’... nothing we tried could convince her otherwise, she’d just start thrashing around and screaming if we tried to stop her, in the end Sarah woke up and over the last few months she’s reluctantly fallen into the role thrust upon her in your place...”
...Well, fuck?...

Fucking Arista and her stupid fucking mind-games, and her stupid fucking... URG!
“Arista did it on purpose, she wanted to hurt me and she knew that the best way to do that was to take Eris from me like this...”

Gently John started pushing himself across the floor towards me.
He’d barely reached the middle-point between us before I lunged forward to wrap myself in his comforting embrace as the tears came and sobs followed quickly afterwards.

The rage may be gone, the hate, the anger, the betrayal... but it still hurts... it hurts so much I don’t know how I’m ever going to face Eris again without breaking down in seconds from it all!
Arista wanted to hurt me, to punish me, and she achieved it in the worst way she could possibly imagine...

“I’m glad I killed her John”
He didn’t question who I was speaking about or why I said it so suddenly.
He held me tight and rocked me while the tears kept falling, allowing me my much needed time to grieve at the loss of the closest thing I’ve ever had to a daughter, despite the fact that she’s still alive and well with my sister of all people.

“I’m glad I fucking killed her!”

======

“Sorry John...”
He let off a hollow little laugh and hugged me closer into his chest for a moment, his way of telling me that I was being stupid in apologising.
“Sorry I ran away into my realm for so long, I just couldn’t deal with things and I... I panicked?”

This time he didn’t laugh but he did squeeze me again as a sheet of his warm magic came loose to wrap around me in such a comforting way that I almost lost track of my chain of thought for a moment or two.

“Wizard Island... I k-killed a lot of people John, I’m a monster...”

Without any warning at all he twisted his body sideways, taking me along for the ride with a rather indignant squeak of surprise from me before settling us back down in a seated position, his back resting against a nearby wall and me seated in his lap like he’s done so many times lately.

Part of me wanted to resist his comfort as my thoughts sunk deeper into the seemingly dulled but still present feelings of guilt I had over my actions at Crater Lake, but a much bigger part of me settled into that wonderfully warm cocoon of his power.

I swear I can actually FEEL his magic slowly sinking into my skin, as if my magic itself is absorbing that strength and comfort as best it can just to keep me from falling over the edge once again?

“I saw the bodies...”
A full-body shudder ran down my spine at the almost detached statement of fact that fell from his lips.
He must have felt the movement I made, no matter how small it really was because he easily moved his arms around me ever-so-slightly tighter as he sunk his head down to rest on my shoulder reassuringly.
“What happened Han?... I know you, you wouldn’t have done something like that without a good reason...”

My mouth opened to answer him but I hesitated for a few precious seconds before the words finally came and like a flood I just couldn’t stop them as they all came pouring out in a near constant stream of broken mutters and half-formed sobs.

Starting with Arista’s snide little introductions ‘for my benefit’ as she greeted her followers, through my shock at the rune-covered crater’s unveiling and onward into the horrible jumble of physical and meta-physical fighting that ensued in that Powers-damned crater.

Through it all John just held me close and encouraged me to speak with little more than a few understanding noises at the back of his throat and the occasional squeeze or two when I needed it.
I didn’t realise until I’d started, just how much I NEEDED to get this all off my chest at last, ‘a secret shared is a secret halved’ and all that after all.

“You beat the hell out of her inside your own mind? That’s classic!”

S-stupid John... he always knows what to say...
...Always...

There's nothing wrong with having a good cry sometimes. Getting a weigh off your chest, Misery loving company, Jon loving Hann- Okay, lets not get crazy with this one, shall we? Events unfold including but not limited to: Feelings being talked about, Facts being discussed, and some shocking discoveries are made!

 

“-and then I looked up, and this dome of converging Laylines had formed high above the crater, I was SO scared John! Magic like that could crack the Earth in two if we let it, I didn’t have a choice in the end, I watched as thousands of cores worth of magic started rising up into the Layline streams and I knew that I didn’t have a choice... I thought... I thought I was going to die, John? I readied myself for it, I accepted it, and with everything I had I made SURE that the magic from Arista’s stupid crazy plan wouldn’t TOUCH the earth as long as it had to get through me but... but I was so scared...”

The sobs came back and John rubbed my shoulders a few times as I struggled to get the last few parts out past my trembling lips.

“I woke up on that thick, flat slab of obsidian where Wizard Island used to be, what felt like barely seconds later, and I could hear you calling me. You know the rest from there... it was all too much at that point, I’d been ready to kill, ready to die to protect everyone, not just the people I cared about but EVERYONE on the planet... I wasn’t ready to live through it all afterwards though...”
Slowly the sobs petered out and I was left sniffling to myself slightly as John kept on with his silent but reassuring presence.

“By the time I’d really worked out what was going on we were almost home and I panicked. I panicked so hard and just like Arista, just like all the others you used to call your ‘scared little rabbit’ I ran away from it all and hid as if it would make it all better somehow-”
With one last big sniff I tried to straighten my shoulders slightly to show that I wasn’t about to fall apart again over all of this just because I’d finally told someone what happened all those months ago.
“-I was so stupid...”

A beat of silence fell between us which felt like it had some immaterial ‘weight’ to it, as if I’d just imparted some great fact upon the world which would change the way things worked for all of eternity or something... and then John snorted back a laugh, unsuccessfully I might add.

Within moments I joined him as we both collapsed in a tired, broken puddle of relived giggles at just how stupidly melodramatic that final point had come out sounding.

“I... was, like, SO stu’pid!”
John echoed my own words back in his best attempt at sounding like some sort of vacuous bimbo from the worst acting talent pool a low-budget porno could ever hope to produce through peroxide and an IQ lower then my new, tiny, shoe size.

“D-don’t be an ass J-John-b-boy-”
I couldn’t even get the words out properly past my sputtering laughter, let alone make it sound in any way menacing or dangerous in the slightest.

“Oh, what are ya gonna do, ‘stupid’ me to death?”

It wasn’t funny at all, especially considering the topic we’d just got done discussing, but on the other hand it was hilariously perfect especially in that mocking tone of voice John always used to use in school when we’d quietly discuss just what the more Neanderthal-like members of the football team might be talking about as we watched them from the bleachers while eating our lunches in relative peace and quiet.

“You’re SUCH an ass!”
He just cackled in response and to my shame I joined him too.

It felt nice to laugh at last, things have been far too heavy and depressing lately, after reliving all those horrible moments that scarred me so badly a few months ago it felt good to just cut loose with him like we used to do in the old days.

He knows it all now and he’s not turned on me because of it, he’s not disgusted by me or calling me a monster... he’s just being an ass, just like always...
Stupid John!

======

“So, so you and Sarah aren’t... ya know?”

John blanched as if I’d hit him or something, his arms flying up to wave in front of his face as if it would make my question disappear back into the void somehow.

“We most certainly are NOT, ‘ya know’ing!”
I found myself sniggering at the almost physically ill look that crossed his face as the topic continued on and he started building up to a truly impressive looking rant.
“It's awkward as all hell honestly. We both still don't like each other that much, too much bad blood and Sarah is pretty possessive of you, even now, but we've gotten a working relationship going in the last few months at least as I trained her on how to use her magic properly without hurting herself.”

He sighed heavily and turned his head, rubbing his chin into my shoulder slightly as if that would make this conversation any easier or something.

“The brand is there and it messes with our perceptions of each other sometimes but we're both strong enough to ignore it for the most part, so that’s as far as it goes... I mean, can you IMAGINE me with your bobcat of a sister? She’d kill me within a week!... Besides, I prefer my girls with a sense of humour and I’ve only got eyes f-”

Suddenly his head jerked around and he stared determinately up the empty hallway to our left as if he’d heard something.

======

It took me a few seconds of worriedly watching that same hallway to realise that there really wasn’t anything there and he was just using the movement as an excuse to ‘subtly’ cut himself off mid-sentence.
It also, depressingly, took me a few more seconds to backtrack the conversation enough that I realised what he’d been about to say, making my cheeks flare in a mildly indignant blush as a result.

“So... I've missed a lot, huh?”
John seemed to let out a relieved breath at the easy out I was offering him and his body un-tensed beneath me as he turned back to facing my way again with an amused grin on his lips that felt only slightly forced.

“Honestly... yeah?... Crater lake has been officially declared a ‘death cult’ event, the current story being that they tried to summon a volcano god with explosives of some kind and failed, obviously.” He shifted his legs a little and ducked his shoulders so he could look at me better from our slightly awkward seating arrangement.
“I’ve heard rumors floating around that it might have been some kind of ‘Illuminati’ style ritual instead because of the high level positions apparently held in the normal world by most of the mages working for Arista, but no-one’s really giving that much credit, even if it is kinda closer to the truth than anything else on the table.”

He shrugged a little making me bob up slightly in his lap before we settled down again comfortably.

“On the magical side of things people don’t really know what to think and I don’t think they’ve really had time to work on finding an answer either, considering most of the mages in positions of authority across the globe have all died so suddenly without any real explanation and all.”
He went to shift his legs again and I forced my knees to clench slightly to stop him which drew a snort of repressed laughter from him at least.
“As it is, our magical congress are just barely limping by with assistants and assistants-TO-assistants being thrust into roles they are completely unprepared for just to stop the whole system from collapsing in on itself at the moment.”

A little laugh rumbled up in his chest making me vibrate in response due to our close proximity at the moment but it died off quickly as his face took on a far more serious tone.

“I’m amazed I’ve not been hit by a load of summons daily to come help sort things out really. I assume they’ve just held off on the misguided idea that I might be ‘grieving’ for the loss of Arista or something, but I’m glad they apparently don’t need me at least, it’s a good sign that things aren’t quite THAT bad yet if nothing else...”

I smiled slightly in response and rolled my back slightly harder against his chest just because it felt nice at this point while also giving me a chance to bring our conversation back on track once more.

“Where do we go from here then? I’m clean at last, in more ways than one, but I really don’t know how I’ll be able to cope with your connection with Sarah or Eris’s... just Eris in general at this point really...”
He shifted his legs a bit underneath me and pulled his arms tighter around me reassuringly as he tried to think of a proper response to those rather awkward points of contention.

“For Sarah... well... you and Sarah are connected too, so we should balance each other out pretty well as long as we’re all together most of the time.”
I twisted in his arms and shot him a curious look at that one.

That’s the first I’ve heard of me and Sarah being bloody ‘connected’ somehow?!
I mean, we have our ‘twin thing’ but that’s not REALLY real in a traditional sense.

We just know each other so well that we can kinda ‘skip the boring bits’ when it comes to most conversations while explaining it away with the often nebulous concept of ‘twin speak’ if it ever comes up, but there’s not REALLY some kind of psudo-psychic link between us or anything, that would just be weird!

“You can’t seriously be trying to tell me that you can’t feel it?”
My eyebrow rose slightly higher in response to that one as if the answer should be obvious, mostly because it should be at this point, if he wasn’t such a stupid John.
“There’s a bond between your core and Sarah’s now, easily a thousand times more intense than the one we share, looking at the pair of you with magesight when you’re close to each other is practically blinding now. We used to patrol your realm together, just so I could watch the way your bond intensified as you got closer to Sarah and I’d have a shot at actually catching you when you snuck out to steal more food.”

Son of a-
THAT’S how he found me every-bloody-time I left my workshop on a food run?!

That’s CHEATING! I didn’t even know that we HAD a bond, let alone one so powerful that John could abuse it to track me so easily just by watching it move with magesight!
...I guess it kinda makes sense at least?...
Until recently Sarah’s new core was stuck inside me along with Arista’s one and my Locus point after all.

When you put it that way, it’s only natural that we’re connected; I'd be surprised if we weren't after everything that's happened and all the years ‘our’ cores spent in a connected system with each other.

The sympathetic relationship of a shared core, with a shared identity, and a shared bloodline in a shared lifetime alone would assure that there was some kind of bond tying my Locus point ‘core’ together with her fire one at the very least.

If you factor in us being born as twins, magical twins at that, then it would only strengthen a bond which was already there over time as my power levels grew instead of forming a fresh one in the first place.

I couldn’t exactly drop in and check for something like that over the last few months though, could I?
Until barely an hour ago, my magic has been so broken since Arista’s botched ritual that I daren’t even touch it.

Considering how badly things went wrong in my last attempts to directly access it, leading to my accidental creation of the world’s first ‘zombie plant’ of all bloody things, I was quite happy to work on my runes and use the ambient magic of my realm when a power source was needed thank-you-very-much!

I’ve spent the last few months working with nothing but ambient magic from my, luckily magically rich, personal dimension instead of even TRYING to access my core in the slightest.
Even now I’m kind of worried what I’m going to find if I drop into my lines at this point!

It may just be a Pavlovian response to all the pain I’ve faced from doing just that over the last few months but that doesn’t make it any less difficult to shake off the feeling of dread I have over doing it, even when I know that I should be able to reach my lines and even my mindscape with ease now.

======

“-as for Eris...”

Ah, crap, did I miss part of the conversation?
Stupid brain!

“From what I can tell, from the magic involved with Sarah’s description of things and yours added in, Arista tried to shift Eris's loyalties onto herself with some weird compulsion-based magical signature related system she has in place as part of whatever twisted spell system she’s put together that stops Eris from dying at all.”
He sighed heavily and ran a hand down his face in exasperation before continuing.
“It probably would have worked as she planned; except for one thing she’d overlooked... you were fighting inside YOUR realm at the time... and even when Arista had her in her clutches in an attempt to ‘imprint’ on the poor girl, the very air around them was soaked in YOUR magic instead, making her whole plan a big useless mess to some degree.”

Not THAT much of a useless mess, she still managed to make her forget I exist after all and... and...

As if he could read the direction my thoughts were going in John winced in sympathy and pulled me tighter to himself for a gentle squeeze as his magic ghosted its way across mine reassuringly.

“From what I can tell, while the magical side of things didn't work properly, the mental side did and the compulsions on Eris left her open to suggestion. Like a baby bird she imprinted on the first person who was there when Arista tried to ‘program’ her she saw upon waking up as her 'mother', namely...”

“...Sarah...”

“Yeah... I’m sorry Han. I honestly don’t know how she did it or how to fix things yet but that doesn’t mean we’re giving up any time soon, I promise that we won’t stop until we find a way to bring our Eris back properly at last and undo whatever Arista did to her once-and-for-all!”
My eyes closed heavily as I sniffed back a sudden resurgence of those stupid useless tears once more at the sheer determination in John’s voice as he said exactly what I needed to hear at the moment.

He’s right damn it!

I shouldn’t give up so easily, Arista isn’t unbeatable.
I’ve already proven that more than once and if the bitch wasn’t already dead I’d do it many more times over, just because I could.

I’ll find out what she did to turn MY Eris into HER immortal, programmable doll, and I’ll FIX IT!
I’m Hannah Powers-Damned Cooper and if I say I can do something then I can do it, just watch me!

“G-Guess I'm 'Auntie Hannah' for now then, huh?”
Even I winced at the shaky tone to my voice as I spoke those, at once painful and yet encouraging words, aloud finally.

Ever since the remnants of my ice core exploded in my chest it’s been so easy to let my emotions slide away behind whatever ‘veil’ has formed between them and me in my head.

That veil is still dangerously thin though when it comes to certain topics and people especially.
I’m functioning, I’m surviving at least, but... but while some reminders and conversations can be like taking a Hammer to that ‘veil’ making it ache and wobble when they’re through, others like Eris feel as if someone’s painfully stabbing a sword right through it all and out the other side.

“Until we can fix this, she's alive and she's safe for now, they both are, that's what matters.”
...He’s right...
Wh-why does he always know what to say?... Stupid John!

I mean, what do I know about kids anyway?!
I'm a fighter, not a mother!

Sarah will be way better for her then I could ever be, and he’s right, with them together like this now they can be so much safer.
While I focus on the bigger problems around us, they can look after each other for once in my place.
...Yeah, that sounds about right...

Before I could voice my latest decision, my temporary acceptance of the way things must be from now on, John pulled me in for another tight hug and without any input from me a few more weak-tears fell from my eyes in response.
For a few seconds I tried to fool myself into thinking that they were happy tears, safe tears... not sad ones because I’ve lost my d-daughter to my s-sister an-and..

He squeezed me again and I wrapped my arms tightly around him in response so I could squeeze him back with at least somewhat equal amounts of fervor to match his own warm, accepting grasp.

Stupid John!

The bastard didn't even say anything this time but he still knew EXACTLY what to say when I needed him to...

======

“Ready to face the world again yet?”

I grunted and rolled slightly in his lap, pulling us further apart and sighing lightly as his warmth bled out with the encroachment of some stupidly cold air between our bodies.

“Good. You need some new clothes in that case, I’ve got to make a long delayed stop-off on the way home and you just KNOW Sarah’s worrying herself sick over you at the moment, the quicker we can get everything sorted and meet up with her the better, huh?”

A bitter little snort of amusement left me nose.

I’m okay now. I’m not great, not even ‘good’ really... but just about ‘okay’...
I can survive on ‘okay’, I’ve done more with worse before after all an-
...Hang on a minute, what’s wrong with my clothes?...

Almost without a thought my eye’s scanned down myself with a dawning sense of confusion and surprise which was quickly dwarfed by an even bigger sense of fear.

My clothes are gone!

Well, no, okay... so not ‘gone’ gone exactly?
I’m not naked or anything, but the clothes I had on over my protective suit must have gotten vaporised like the magically un-protected fabric they were at some point during my whole ‘core exploding’ thing and the moments of madness that followed it.

More importantly, and worrying, is the fact that I can see my bloody HANDS!
My feet too, now that I’m paying attention to it all!

The ‘sleeves’, gloves, one skin-tight legging and both ‘sock’ parts of my full body protective suit are just... just GONE...

It looks like I’m wearing a weirdly cut, all black, swimsuit with rather ragged edges more than anything and that... that’s a very, VERY bad thing!

“To be honest I think the look suits you, very ‘bad-assed beach-babe’ in my opinion, but I know what you’re like when it comes to fashion and showing off too much skin these days.”

“John... my suits ruined?...”
He shifted slightly so he could see my admittedly pretty stunned, dazed looking expression a bit better and smirked in response, as if to say ‘Really? You don’t say?!’ without words.
“No, John, this isn’t a joke. My SUIT is RUINED!”

“So? What’s the big deal? You can just make a new one; it can’t be that hard at this poin-”

“John, shut up and LISTEN to me damn it!”
His smirk dimmed slightly as he finally seemed to realise that I wasn’t just messing around but getting seriously scared at this point.
“These suits, I designed these suits to be perfect John... I designed these suits to protect the wearer against the elements, against most firearms or bladed weapons and more importantly against MAGIC!”

He’s still not getting it, I can tell just by the look on his big dopy face.

“External AND internal magic, John! No magic, let alone MINE should have been enough to even make a dent in this suit.”

One of its main purposes was to be a suppressor for when my magic goes out of control again and for the force of my core ‘exploding’ to be so powerful that it did THIS much damage to my suit means... m-means that we might have a serious problem on our hands here, because if that’s how much power my broken, weakened and partly-disconnected core could let off then just how much can my Locus Point itself manage to throw out if it tries?!

He’s not... he’s still not getting it!

My magic’s always been strong, far too strong for my sanity’s sake, and even if it feels so calm and controllable now, you just have to look towards that new ‘oasis’ it made to realise that I still don’t have a complete grasp on just HOW it all works yet let alone WHY it works, which could be SERIOUSLY dangerous even at the best of times.

If my core was THAT powerful and my Locus Point is even half as powerful as it feels like it is when compared to how my broken core was, then this is definitely not a ‘best of times’ situation!

FAR, far away from a ‘best of times’ situation!

======

With a harsh jerk of my body I shot away from John and rolled to my feet, sliding slightly on the wooden flooring until my back hit the hallway wall furthest from John and I could stare at him in fear.

How could I have been so stupid?
Of course my magic couldn’t just WORK for once and be useful without there being a catch!

Compared to anyone else I’ve ever met, even including John, just my normal ‘Golden domes’ of healing power are beyond most of their power levels by a stupid degree.

The ‘Nuke’ I let off when healing John was beyond anything I thought humanly possible and may even LITERALLY have been just that, considering it broke the rules of life-and-death with relative ease at the time.

The blast I let off back in the crater of Wizard Island to bleed power away from the earth was almost purely from instinct alone and it’s not even WORTH calculating the amount of magical power involved because I’m not even sure numbers large enough to work it all out on paper have been given names yet by humanity in general!

I designed these suits to contain and bleed off more than FOUR TIMES the roughly estimated power level of THAT blast into the environment harmlessly... and this latest blast of power managed to vaporise parts of the suit instead.
Even worse it was very specific parts too, ones which contained concentrations of storage, syphoning and control runes, all wiped completely out of bloody-existence!

That can’t HAPPEN, it’s just not real that my Locus point could be THAT powerfu-

======

“Han, you’re sparking?”

My head snapped up and I stared at John in lost confusion as the world started coming back into focus around me from my little introspective moment of fear in the face of my own potential power-levels.

“What?”
...Sparking?...

What the hell does he mean by ‘sparking’?!

Instead of actually answering me he glanced awkwardly down towards my hands.
My eyes followed his down and settled on thick streams of pure electricity, as they arced in almost blindingly bright blue lines around my tightly clenched fists like mini-thunder storms in the process of bringing down the wrath of the Gods upon some poor unfortunate soul.

The moment I realised what was happening a gasp left my lips.
Almost instantly the arcs died out as if sensing my attention upon them, leaving us both blinking furiously to try and clear the light away from our eyes in possibly an even greater state of confusion from just moments before.

With a careful gulp of air I brought my hand up to my eye-level and stared at it hard as if it would provide answers of some sort.

After a few seconds without much progress I tentatively tried to reach out to my magic once more and with barely a nudge it surged forth again, bright blue sparks of electricity shooting between my outstretched fingers for a few moments before being drowned out by much larger trails of lightning which wrapped their way around my hand and partly up my arm like a writhing pile of snakes made of pure energy.

I gulped again as my theory was at least partly confirmed from the sensations I could feel rolling around inside me, and the moment I thought of it the lightning just disappeared once more as my magic obediently returned to its rolling brethren inside my body itself.

“I’m a lightning mage?”
It wasn’t really a question, despite the questioning tone those words slipped past my lips in.
I’m a bloody LIGHTNING mage!

When- How could I- Wha-
What the hell?!

My brain jumped through a billion hoops in seconds as I tried to piece together any kind of scenario where that idea made ANY kind of sense, until finally a pair of often ignored memories from my distant past decided to raise their guilty little hands in response to my troubled search at long last.

The first was from my childhood, the night Dad tried to take me away again in the dead of night and Sarah caught him in the act, the night I panicked because I thought he was going to take Sarah with him too and the next thing I knew he was across the garage against his work-bench, twitching away as if... as if he’d been electrocuted?

The second one was during prom, the night we were kidnapped by Vlad and his vampire cohorts.
He bit me, he was killing me and there was nothing I could do... but during the haze that I fell into through blood-loss, when the MPA stormed the place and the girls screamed in fear behind me, I lost track of the world for a moment and the next thing I knew Vlad was across the room from me, twitching and jerking as if he’d been zapped by... something?

‘I tried to console myself with the fact that I was doing it for you. If you don’t know about magic your safer. I spent the whole night going around in my head about how I was doing it for you and it wasn't my fault... but I knew... I saw what happened in that hall, the same thing that happened to Dad... I KNEW you were a mage.’
Sarah, oh Sarah, I should have bloody LISTENED to you for once!

She knew, she’s always known, but she’s never had any reason or context to understand what that simple observation she made while ranting to me in an empty car-park after our first trip to the Hub together could really mean in the slightest.

I’m a lightning mage.

I’ve always BEEN a lightning mage!
My first awakening suppressed it entirely with Sarah’s fire core, my second with Arista’s ice one, but now they’re both gone and all that’s left is my original ‘core’, my Locus point?

My apparently, lightning element based, Locus point.

Edith’s diversion was set up to tweak the output of ‘my’ core and let me unconsciously manipulate my lines into producing that Golden magic instead of Arista’s dangerous ice... but that cores gone now too.
No core, no diversion!

‘Ba! Ya truly be useless girl, fire ain't a right’un for ya!’

‘Be sayin’ ya be a wrong’n with fire girl but ya not be listenin’ neither. Ice be bett’a but not too right for ya still..’

‘Ya thinkin’ too right-ways, ya need ta think up!’

Think 'up', my ASS Edith!
The stupid little Yoda-wannabe KNEW and she never said anything?!

Part of me is still a little stunned, completely thrown off by the sudden revelation that I’m not what I always thought I was, magically speaking at least.

A lot of early sympathetic magic goes into the reasoning behind and effects of your elemental affinity on you, your personality, your reactions and everything else meta-physical about you as a human being.

...I’ve been running the math wrong...
For years I worked my sympathetic spells and connections on the faulty idea that I was a fire mage and it threw off my calculations in often unexpected ways as a result!

When my core changed over to an ice affinity I didn’t give it much thought, allowing little more than a moment’s pause to think ‘Huh, well that makes a bit more sense at least?’ before carrying on with the rest of the mess that came from my second awakening in general.

I’ve gotten lazy ever since I got my Golden diversion magic, it fixes so many things so easily that I’ve not even bothered to consider alternative methods of doing things half the time.

I didn’t even TRY to use my ice magic to do any kind of sympathetic rituals at all.
If I had, I’d probably have been in for a bit of a shock at the time, metaphorical or literal, because while ice is closer to lightning on the ‘elemental wheel’ then fire it’s still not right and my math would have been WAY off still!

I’m a lightning mage... I’m a BLOODY lightning mage!

At least I can try those battery charging runes out easier now, I guess...
...That’s the spirit, always look at the bright-side of things!...

What are the personality traits most common in lightning mages anyway?
Do I match the profile at all?

When I was younger I always thought I fit the definition of a fire mage a bit too well honestly, but these things are vague and a bit obtuse for a reason I guess.
It’s a bit like the ‘cold-readings’ that ‘psychics’ do with the normals, or ‘horoscopes’ in general, unless their done properly.

Everything is just vague enough that if you look at it properly it can probably apply to any person in any situation most of the time, but those profiles are important, the only reason I managed to find any degree of control over my fire magic was by looking up the profile and... and...

Well... Crap...
I’m such an idiot sometimes!

I read up on the character profile for fire mages, roughly applied it to myself in my head and from then on I ran with it, trying to fit into the personality profile as best I could as time went on.

Self-hypnosis, self-bloody-hypnosis!

I convinced myself it was true and my magic responded to my change in attitude as the fire calmed down in return for my fitting ‘the norm’ of its users a bit better, despite that not being how I naturally am...

What was I really like before my fire magic came along?
I wasn’t brave.
I second guessed myself on everything and I worked so hard to be ‘normal’ growing up, despite being painfully NOT normal in most situations.

Sarah was the brave twin, the fire mage in essence, always pulling us into and back out of danger just for the fun of it all... meanwhile I was... I was...
...Meek?...

I didn’t like being the center of attention, didn’t like responsibility or being forced into situations without a lot of preparation beforehand.
Al, Young Al... would he ever have been strong enough to fight full-blood demons on a daily basis?

The same kid that let his sister boss him around constantly, the same kid that screamed and hid behind the pillows when that same sister put horror movies on at Halloween, the same kid who just went along with things to avoid conflict...

How did I change so drastically over the years without realising it?
The change was slow, I noticed it more in my emotional reactions to things after my change from fire to ice honestly, but the changes were there and there was nothing ‘natural’ about them at the time!

I don’t... I don’t know who I am anymore?
I don’t- I- S-

STUPID MAGIC!

Why does everything have to be so complicated when magic is invol-

======

“Han?”

John’s hand came to rest on my shoulder and I jolted back with a scream of surprise as I was rudely forced out of my own internal moment of panicked realisation once more, back into the real world with a bump as my head met the wall at speed.

Sadly John joined me in screaming a moment later when my magic sparked in response to my emotions and sent more than a few volts through the poor unsuspecting idiot too.

“Sorry John, I... Uh... I, um...”
His hair is standing on end and he looks less than amused.
Even if his magic is telling me quite clearly that he finds the whole situation at least somewhat funny that doesn’t change the fact that I just shocked the hell out of him, in more ways the one.
“Just had a bit of a moment there, ya know?... So yeah, I’m a lightning mage I guess-”
This is starting to get awkward and his hair is still sticking up from the charge too.
“-so uh... ‘Woo-hoo, lightning pride!’ yay for new elements and all that, blah-blah-blah...”

His eyebrow is twitching slightly and I honestly can’t tell if it’s from restrained laughter or just a tick formed by the electrical current presumably still running riot through his nervous system to some degree.

“...I’m just gonna go clothes hunting, as you said earlier...”

Without another word I practically sprinted past him and dived into the first open doorway I could find.
My hand reached up automatically to close the door before pulling back with a yelp when a spark of static electricity shot from my hand to the old metal doorknob instead.

After a few seconds of rubbing my poor hand to get the numbness to go away I huffed to myself loudly and nudged the door shut with my foot instead.

Stupid lightning magic!
As if I didn’t have enough on my plate as it is?

There better be some damn clothes in here or I’m gonna light the world up like a Japanese 'Sparkle-Mouse' having its tail stepped on!

Paying attention is important. Take nothing for granted and nothing will surprise you! It's a nice theory at least... in practice though?... Events unfold including but not limited to: Hannah being carried awkwardly, John staring awkwardly, And multiple floors are going to need cleaning!

 

“You done in there yet Han? It’s getting kinda late.”

‘Am I done in here yet?’
...I honestly don’t know at this point...

I had a bit of a ‘mini-freakout’ over the whole ‘lightning mage’ thing at first but eventually I calmed down, more out of self-preservation than anything else.

Considering how many times I got static shocks off of things because my body apparently develops a charge every time I get angry now, which bloody HURTS by the way, the fact that I’ve managed to actually look for some clothes to cover up my ruined protective suit is pretty impressive in my opinion John-boy!

I’ve got quite a few questions to be asking him when I get out of here though, that’s for sure.
...Maybe that’s a good thing to focus on for now?...

“I think I’m done John-boy. I’m coming out, no laughing, okay?”

The main question on my mind at the moment is something along the lines of ‘Why has he got so many eclectic pieces of women’s clothing in his mansion?’... although, considering they all looked like they could fit me perfectly, I’m guessing the answer to that one is going to be kinda obvious in the end sadly.
...Stupid Arista...

“My options were limited so I made the best of things, but I know it looks stupid so don’t you dare laugh, okay?”
He didn’t answer, annoyingly.

In the end I just screwed up my courage, straightened my back with as much dignity as possible and eased the door open carefully with my new sleeves tucked over my palms to prevent yet another static shock from happening, something which I’m becoming frustratingly used to receiving already at this point.

As I slid my way out of the door I came face-to-face with John who’d apparently decided to change clothes too judging by the dark, tailored suit he’s wearing with a matching black shirt and thin white tie underneath it he’s wearing which looks vaguely ‘retro’ to my inexperienced eye.

I’m by no means an expert on men’s fashion but if he actually bought that suit this side of the last handful of decades then I’d be surprised honestly.

At first his face was set in a wide smirking-grin of anticipation but when I finally cleared the doorway his smirk slowly fell away to be replaced by a rather unnervingly softer look that almost bordered on ‘fond approval’ more than anything else.

I found myself nervously shifting from foot to foot in the little kitten-heels I found at the bottom of the right-hand wardrobe of the apparent bedroom that I locked myself into earlier.

Seeing as I was hunting for clothes that looked more like actual ‘clothing’ instead of a ‘costume’ due to how out-of-date it all seemed to be, it kinda feels like I didn’t do too badly if I’m being objective about things.

There wasn’t exactly much to work with that wasn’t ‘costume worthy’ and I made the best of what I had at least!

I could have done without the skin-tight brown leather horse-riding pants, but considering they were the only thing that could be considered ‘not a full-on Victorian or worse’ skirt on offer, they were an instant ‘yes’ sadly.

The fact that the leather gave me more than a little bit of a wedgy in general meant I had to add something on top of them for my own embarrassment sake if nothing else, just so I didn’t feel too exposed.
The least ‘Victorian’ looking item on offer was sadly a little yellow ‘Ra-Ra’ skirt which I’m pretty sure I remember seeing someone wearing in a movie from the Eighties at some point.
It was obviously not optimal or my first choice in the slightest, but beggars can’t be choosers and it was better than nothing in the end...

Added to that was a frankly kinda embarrassing, lacy white ‘bodice’ I stole from the top half of a massive white ball-gown hanging up in the second wardrobe.
It would have been possibly worse than the leather pants honestly, if it wasn’t for the skin-tight layer of my ruined black ‘wetsuit’ I have underneath it and a long, open frock coat in a dusty shade of off-brown I found a few hangers over from it to go on top, of course.

The coat practically goes down to my ankles with an almost fanned out ‘skirt’ like effect that puffs out almost unnaturally well in a wide bell around me from a point just below the rather tight waistline allowed by its built-in belt.

At first I left the belt undone which let the coat settle a bit better but I ended up using it eventually just to keep the whole thing from flapping open too widely as I moved more than anything.
I think with everything added together it kind of works in making a somewhat serviceable mix-and-match outfit at least.
One which looks sort of okay to me in the mirror but would definitely be considered on the ‘weird’ side of fashion in general back in Klamath falls but-
“...beautiful...”
-Huh?

My eyes cut up sharply to stare into John’s admiring ones as he scanned me up and down a few times almost hungrily.

From the tips of my little heels to the high-neck of my dark under-suit, from the wide ‘bell’ bottom of my over-coat to the partly hidden but still figure hugging ruffles from my ‘borrowed’ bodice and back again.

I shifted my weight awkwardly and coughed to try and break his concentration but sadly he seemed to be far too deep into his dazed staring to be of any use at this point.

“It’s the best I could manage with what you had John-boy, quit staring already... why do you even HAVE all these clothes anyway?... Please tell me I’m not stealing Arista’s stuff; that would just be creepy at this point...”
It’s bad enough I stole all her magical knowledge already!

Don’t get me wrong, the bitch totally deserved it... but the more I think on it all the more uneasy I feel over taking so much from her without any form of recourse from the whole thing?

Mages don’t really believe in ‘Karma’ generally, and even if they did I guess her magical knowledge would be the least she could give me in exchange for the crap she pulled, but we believe in the ‘Powers’ and if you believe the old myths about them then they might as well BE ‘Karma’ incarnate for the amount of times they’ve supposedly ‘taken revenge’ on those who have abused their powers too much in general so-

=====

“Sorry Han, didn’t mean to make you feel awkward, you’re just... the look suits you, I guess?...”
My eyebrow perked up suspiciously at him and he shrugged slightly in response before smirking his usual ‘devil-may-care’ grin at me as if dismissing everything he’d said moments ago, an idea I’m more than willing to go along with considering how weird this whole situation is getting sadly.
“If you’re ready, you can go first and I’ll meet you at the Klamath Falls waypoint?”

Rather than give him a direct answer and chance having to spend any more time standing in this quiet hallway with him awkwardly like this, I shot him a quick nod before dipping slightly into my lines for the first time since my core shattered so I could reach my warping ‘senses’ and get out of here.

It barely took a second or so for me to pick up the right ‘taste’ combination for Klamath Falls surprisingly and much to my relief no problems decided to appear out of nowhere either.

Apparently even my warping senses are working better now that I’m free of the dead-weight put on my ‘true’ Locus point core by Arista and her stupid game of ‘Let’s add more cores to Hannah and see what happens!’.

If anything, I felt a bit put off by just how easy it felt to navigate to my lines now?
There was none of the ‘pushback’, none of the concentration needed to maintain the connection that I’m so used to having be present at all for some reason.
I only needed to just about ‘touch’ the surface of my lines before my magic surged up to meet me like the ‘bottled thunderstorm’ equivalent of an over-excited puppy.

My magic rolled and flipped happily in my chest to such a stupid degree that I didn’t even need to reach my lines directly before my senses kicked in at full power, as if my magic could tell what I wanted already and was only too eager to help.

With one more quick glance over at John I felt the waypoint beacon pulse in response to my probe, showing that it was clear for me to go through and I dropped into warp so smoothly, practically without effort at all as I found myself whizzing across the globe as a scattered bundle of atoms in a bubble of my own magic, surrounded by the familiar blue haze of warp space.

======

The world reformed around me at last and naturally the first thing I did was collapse forward with a sickened groan as my stomach rebelled against the newly rediscovered idea of me existing in ‘reality’ on general principle alone.

“Miss, you need to move out the way, I have another warp request coming in already?”
From my hunched over position on the floor I slowly twisted my head around to glare at the stupid guard guy on duty.
It wasn’t intentional but I could feel sparks of electricity welling up across my skin as my hair stood on end from the static build up that came with them, much to my continuing annoyance.

“Don’t make me zap you random guard-guy, I’m not in the mood. It’s only John, the bastard can wait considering he forgot to remind me that we’d be warping here from bloody ENGLAND of all places!”

The poor guard took several steps back from me as my glare intensified in the few seconds I could hold it before my eyes started wincing down again into pained little slits and my stomach once more disagreed heartily with the idea of me speaking right about now.

That was probably a wise move on his part in hindsight because, after a few deep huffs to prepare myself I climbed back to my feet only to have my magic flare up in yet more arcing lines of electrical fury as I practically fell forward moments later in my best attempt to get clear of the waypoint’s landing zone as requested.

My shoulder slammed into the doorway which acted as more of a crutch for me than anything else as I clung to it for dear life and waited with my eyes closed for the tell-tale disturbance of cold air that should follow John’s arrival in good old Klamath at last.

Luckily I didn’t have to wait long and he appeared behind me with a slight stagger, followed by a rather loud huff of breath that I’m pretty sure was meant to signify the journey had left him at least slightly winded... although maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part at this point...

“You okay there Han?”
Slowly I leaned more of my chest against the doorframe so I could pull my head and shoulders back slightly and turn to shoot him a highly un-amused glare in response to that stupid-bloody-question!
“Oh... right, still got that whole ‘motion sickness’ thing going on, huh?”

Yes John-boy, thank you for noticing, isn’t it just delightful?!
How about you come over here so I can kick you in the balls and we’ll both suffer through mind-numbing degrees of nausea together, huh?

“Why don’t you just blast your golden ma-... oh, right, no diversion at the moment...”
Yes, also a fantastically well-made point John-boy, yet again let me extend my offer to personally help you understand just how sick warping across the bloody GLOBE makes me feel when just going a few miles leaves my stomach swirling on a good day!

“Is she going to be okay?”
I barely managed to restrain myself from letting off another pained groan when the stupid MPA trooper on guard duty decided to chip in to this whole comedy of errors again with an almost annoyingly worried tone to his stupid voice.

“Sorry about her, she’ll be fine soon enough; she’s just a bit grouchy today.”

Don’t think I can’t feel that knowing look you just shot him John-boy you ASSHOLE!
Don’t you DARE use a currently non-existent period as an excuse to another guy for why I’m nauseous, rightfully angry at you and being ‘grouchy’ in the slightest!

“I hope you feel better soon Miss, have a good day, okay?”
Powers damn it; he actually bought it!
Bloody... bloody... MEN!

“Come on Han, let’s get you some fresh air and somewhere away from the innocent people you could harm where you can sit down in peace for a bit, shall we?”
Without prompting at all John loped his way over to me and threw an arm around my waist with his head tucking under my elbow so he could support me better as he eased me away from my nice supporting wall and we slowly started progressing through the motel hallways outside the waypoint room in an awkward three-legged shuffle.

“You tell someone I’m on my period ONE more time John-boy, rightly or wrongly, and I’ll kill you where you stand, understood?”

He’s laughing at me! The stupid bastards LAUGHING at me?!
I can FEEL it, I can feel his stupid shoulders shaking through his stupid suit as he walks my stupid wobbly-ass through these stupid halls with the utmost calm, as if we’re discussing nothing more important than the stupid weather!

“...I hate warping...”

Don’t pat my hair ‘consolingly’ John-boy or I’ll bite your fingers off!
Focus on getting us somewhere that I can puke without being seen you stupid asshole!

======

We took another right-turn along yet another street and a truck whipped by so quickly that I actually staggered back slightly.
My head rose for the first time since we left the motel to scan our surroundings before dipping back down again with a depressingly self-pitying groan of defeat.

ENGLAND?! We warped here from bloody ENGLAND of all places!
On top of that, I’d already let John warp me around twice in the last few hours too; once to Death Valley somewhere and then onwards to his little ‘mansion’ as well.

Third times apparently ‘the charm’ because all that warping seems to have finally caught up with me this time, to a stupidly horrible degree, that’s worse than I can remember having from just a normal warp in a long-long time.

Considering most mages don’t even think cross-continental warping is physically possible and I’ve got a well-documented history of problems like this when traveling by ‘Magical atom bubble’ airlines, I’m kinda amazed I’ve not puked yet honestly?!

“Where are we-”
I paused to suppress a burp that felt like I REALLY didn’t want to let it out at this point and we took a few more steps forward up the street before I could continue on.
“-going exactly?”

“No worries Han, we’re almost there. You can grab a seat and I’ll see if there’s anything to hand that might help you at all.”
Part of me wanted to call him out on how evasive that answer was in general but a much larger part of me just didn’t want to chance opening my mouth to speak again considering how much ‘success’ I’ve had on that front recently.
“Almost there Han, lean over slightly for a sec’ so I can get the door open, okay?”

It apparently took a bit of juggling for him to reposition me without letting me fall, like I SO wanted to right now, but eventually John got things sorted and the apparent ‘door’ on my right swung open with an unexpectedly loud bell-ring that made my already upset stomach roll once more in a horrible mix of guilt, fear and just straight up nausea in general.

“E-Edith’s shop, John?... Why are we at Edith’s sh-shop?”

I had to work pretty hard to get the words out at this point, not helped at all by the sudden stutter that formed up just at the thought of Edith and... and the shop I’ve been avoiding even THINKING about over the last few months through sheer willpower alone because with it comes the knowledge that I’ll have to face the remaining occupants of said shop again one day, no matter how unready I feel about that concept.

“We need to go-”

My legs buckled and my arms twitched heavily as it all became too much for my poor abused stomach at long last.
In a startlingly well lined up shot which really put the ‘projectile’ in... well?... either way my stomach emptied pretty damn quick, leaving a rather disgusting puddle on practically the same spot I once left a distinctly similar sized puddle on this same floor, after Edith got through bashing my brains in due to supposedly ‘Bad Juju’ the first time we met an-

“Well... I’d love to say I didn’t see that coming but...”
...Oh, just shut up John!...
“Come on, slide onto this stool here, at least you missed your clothes for once.”

My butt hit a soft cushioned surface which I’m at least partly sure has usually been home to one of the two male Sibs behind the front counter pretty much every time I’ve been here in the last few years; an idea that was given further credence when I collapsed forward and found my head resting on a nice cool wooden surface which I’m almost completely convinced is the same counter top I’m thinking of too.

“Fena! Fena, you in here? I need you’re mop-”
He paused for a moment to consider things apparently before continuing on again
“-possibly you’re golem to do the cleaning too... I brought Hannah with me?”

Don’t make it sound like I’m some kind of treat you’ll offer her if she plays nice John, I feel bad enough about this mess as it is, ya insensitive jerk!

Yet again I fell short of actually voicing those thoughts, more out of self-preservation than anything else because words are at a premium at the moment sadly, but it didn’t matter anyway because after a long pause of waiting there was no response from Fena in the slightest.

We both stood there... well, I sat but you know what I mean?... ‘stood’ there in awkward silence for far longer than strictly necessary before anything changed on that front too.

I get the feeling John REALLY didn’t want to be the one cleaning up after me, despite the fact it was his ill-advised suggestion of us warping home that was the main culprit behind the puddle I left on the thankfully empty shop floor when we got here a minute ago.

Judging by the long relived breath he let out when the door to my left opened up to let someone big and heavy sounding out of it, along with a clanging slosh that I’m pretty sure denotes some kind of ‘water bucket’ being along for the ride as well that feeling was probably pretty close to the truth too.

“Hey Lurch, ‘clean up on aisle three’ pronto, huh big guy?”
The poor Golem grunted at John, completely ignoring his attempt at humor or friendly banter like... well, like an emotionless Golem would I guess?...
...Big surprise there...
“Is Fena out getting fresh stock or something?”

I was tempted to look up slightly and watch the, honestly painful sounding, attempt John was making at ‘talking’ to Lurch for some Powers-known reason.
In the end I settled for listening along happily as a bucket hit the floor followed by a splash and ‘slap’ of a mop hitting the same floor moments later with the practically silent Golem going to work cleaning up my mess without comment, naturally.

“Powers, what the hell’s wrong with me, I’m talking to a fucking Golem...”
Well done! Finally realising your mistake there John-boy?
What do you do for an encore?
“Right... Han, stay were you are, I’m gonna go check their medicine cabinet to see if they have any stomach-settling potions in stock.”

Oh, that’s what you do for an encore?
Tell me, the person only being held up by the fact that I’m collapsed onto a big heavy desk, to not go anywhere so you can try and find something to stop me puking again...

Bravo! Definitely not worth the price of admission but bravo anyway for trying at least!
...Stupid John...

======

“Okay, I think I’ve found som... uh, you okay there Han?”
In response I groaned dramatically with a ‘negative’ tone hopefully very present in my voice.

Apparently whoever programmed Lurch-
...I’m thinking Edith, the little Yoda would find the whole idea HILARIOUS after all...
-programmed him not only to do simple tasks like ‘stand and look menacing to stop people stealing if no-one else is around’ or ‘clean up if someone pukes on our floor’ but also for some Powers-known reason decided to program him with a ‘comfort people if they are feeling sick’ setting too?

The moment the floor was shiningly clean again Lurch left with his bucket and mop for a few minutes before returning with his usual lumbering lack of grace.

I’d almost decided to give speaking another go, or at least moving in general at the time and probably would have done just that if the big guy hadn’t swooped in with a surprising amount of speed to lift me up into his arms for what I can only describe as a very one-sided ‘cuddle’ involving him holding me to his chest like a baby as he rocks me backwards and forwards with that same emotionlessly blank look on his face that he always has, without showing any signs of ‘stopping’ any time in the near future at all.

...It’s actually kind of comfortable and nice really-...
-BUT THAT’S NOT THE BLOODY POINT!

I swear to the Powers John, either find a way to get him to put me down or you’re both SO dead!
ARISTA levels of dead; dancing on your ashes before peeing on them with my now non-existent equipment built for doing exactly that, levels of dead!

Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m thinking John.
This is so unfair, I’m ill and this is just downright EMBARRASSING!

Hurry the hell up in getting me down NOW you useless asshole!

“Lurch, buddy, I think Hannah’s ready to go back onto a chair now big guy. I’ve got medicine for her, see? Look, nummy stomach-relief potion, see?”

...He’s seriously baby-talking to a seven-foot tall Golem-...
-and even worse it’s WORKING, damn it!

“That’s it big guy, just settle her down on this chair right here and I’ll help her feel better, okay?”

With much more care and gentle movements than I’d ever thought possibly from a Golem, let alone Fena’s often rather blunt pet Golem Lurch, he shifted me in his arms slightly and eased me down into the overly soft single-seated sofa that I’m pretty sure they only keep near the bookshelves for those few days when Fena feels like ‘veg-ing out’ and reading all day instead of doing any actual work at all.

Not that I’m complaining or anything, soft, gentle and slow are all things I can totally get behind at the moment considering the state of my still rolling, if slightly improved, stomach right about now.

The moment his arms were free from underneath me Lurch straightened up to his full height and turned around to go back upstairs through the little side door by the front counter as if none of the last five minutes had ever happened in the slightest.

...Sometimes I envy Golems for their goldfish like memories...
Not to mention their ability to not really know what the hell’s going on, yet still get things sorted due to a certain lack of that key ‘sentience’ which lets us mere Humans suffer through things with blushes and cringing facial expressions most of the time...

“I’ll go grab a spoon, you’re not allergic to Belladonna are you?”
John’s words and sudden burst of action as he moved over to check a draw tucked away down the side of a nearby counter-top threw me for a moment but it wasn’t long before I was jumping back on the conversation train and ready to answer him, despite my slightly muddled thoughts at the moment.

...I blame all that rocking by Lurch...

“Why would a stomach-relieving potion have Belladonna in it?”
He almost seemed to ignore me at first as he kept searching the draws for something even vaguely ‘spoon-like’, before straightening up again and offering me a slightly distracted shrug in response.

“Pretty sure it’s there to help re-balance your equilibrium or something, you’re pupils will probably dilate more, at least that’s what girls used to use it for in the old days... apparently wide, drugged-out looking big pupils are sometimes considered ‘cute’ by some people, along with arsenic-enriched smooth hair and lead-covered complexions...”
Thanks for the history lesson John-boy but really not helping here!
“...Sorry, you’ve kind of thrown me by getting this ill all of a sudden Han. I had this whole plan for how things would go when we got back and now we’re sitting here trying to ignore the fact you just got rocked to sleep by a glorified magical version of the Terminator so-”

My hand shot up, practically on its own accord, to give him a nice healthy ‘one-finger salute’ for that one, although after a few seconds of holding it I let my hand drop down again with a heavy sigh when it became obvious that all I was doing was amusing the smug-bastard even more, despite my best intentions.

“...I hate warping...”

======

“Feeling any better?”

My head jerked slightly at John’s sudden question which managed to pull me out of the rather interesting book on crafting your own magical symbols and languages, entitled ‘Languages be simple stupid’, either as a joke by the author or more worryingly because Edith decided to ghost-write it somehow at some point in time, I’d assume.

“Yeah, a bit, the words on the page have stopped changing sizes or blurring every few seconds and I haven’t had to hold back a dangerous burp in the last hour or so at least-”
John nodded along with my words distractedly as his eyes drifted over to the shop-front with a mild frown which kinda annoyed me just on general principle of being rude more than anything else.
“-I’m sorry, am I keeping you from something important John-boy?”

The question came out slightly colder then I’d intended, although it had the effect I’d been hoping for at least as his head snapped back around to stare at me with an apologetic look on his face that I probably found more gratifying then is strictly appropriate in all honesty.

“Sorry Han, I was hoping to get you home before sunset, it’s a full moon tonight which is bad enough but ever since you’re little trip to the crater-within-a-crater formerly known as ‘Wizard Island’ un-dead and parasitic activity has been on the rise for some Powers-known reason... I’m sure the Hub would be on full alert about it and have it all under control by now, if they weren’t in such a mess right now due to massive-loss of management, naturally.”

Ah... well, not much I can say to that really?
...He just wants to protect us...
He just wants to protect me I guess so I can’t be THAT mad at his distraction but it’s still rude to so blatantly not be paying attention like that after asking someone a direct question, even if it isn’t vitally important or worth arguing over, given the circumstances.

“Any word on Fena?”
John’s eyebrow twitched up slightly at my kinda obvious topic change, although thankfully he didn’t say anything about it at least.
“It’s unusual for her to leave the shop most of the time and the male Sib’s aren’t here either so I figured something must be going on, right?”

Slowly he shrugged and shot a cautious glance over at the door leading upstairs.
A move which I’m pretty sure he didn’t intend to do considering how sharply he turned his eyes away from it a moment later, only to settle on my curious gaze with worry obvious on his face now.

“What aren’t you telling me John-boy?”
His mouth opened as if to answer me before almost snapping shut instantly afterwards as he reconsidered what he was about to say.
“John?”

His face took on a decidedly ‘guilty’ look for a few seconds before he finally seemed to build up the courage to speak again at last.

“Fena’s upstairs an-”

“Well why didn’t you say so sooner? I’m here now and, as much as I’m dreading it, I’m sure she could use the company after-”
As I was speaking I slid the book onto Fena’s little side-table and stood up, making my way over to the doorway leading upstairs so I could go check on her considering how silent she’s been for the last few hours, only for John to step forward.
Without a word he planted himself right between me and the bloody door with a surprisingly determined look on his face for some reason.
“-what are you doing? Stop being an idiot John, let me past for Powers sa-”

I tried to barge my way past him while sliding under his outstretched arm but I found myself blocked by his awkwardly raised knee instead at the last minute.
The move caught me completely off-guard and I ended up staggering back a few steps as my eyes focused back on John’s, not really worried looking but definitely flustered, face.

“Sorry Han, you REALLY don’t want to go up there right now.”
Of all the stupid-
...-as if he can really stop me if I want to get past him....
Fena’s my friend and if she needs help then I’ll damn well be there for her!

My eyes scanned John’s position for a few seconds, weighing him as an opponent and finding him more than a little wanting considering his need to both defend himself and stop me from getting past at the same time.

With a nod to myself and a slight bounce on my toes I launched towards him in a text-book tackle maneuver which had him flinching and shifting his body into position for an equally text-book counter move that would have sent me crashing back on my ass easily if I’d actually been going for a tackle in the first place.

John’s foot slid forwards to hook mine and with a twist I threw my body weight off-center, falling into a forward roll which neatly skipped past his leg while also having the advantage of both knocking him sideways as I went and letting me pull myself back to my feet behind him in a pose that was just perfect for sprinting as John practically collapsed into the doorjamb, giving me those few vital seconds I needed to start moving without him.

“Hannah, DON’T-”
John’s last attempt at getting me to stop fell on deaf ears and trailed quickly into a string of swearing as I sprinted up the stairs into the ‘secret sanctuary’ of the second-floor, where even I’ve never dared venture into before.

By the time I reached the top of the stairs I was actually laughing as I heard John’s stumbling steps close on my heels in his delayed attempt to give chase.

My magic practically sung in my chest, tiny wisps of it trailing behind me in an almost invisible trail of sparks which somehow seemed to boost my speed just ever so slightly and help to keep me those few precious steps ahead of John as we reached flat-ground again and I shot off down the main hallway at the top of the stairs.

My laughter faded as I almost giddily started calling out for Fena, my eyes swinging from side-to-side as I checked each room for her presence while John kept chasing me despite obviously having lost this one for once.

Finally we reached nearly the end of the Hallway and from an open door on my right Lurch loomed out of the shadows with an expression which, if he had such emotions, I could only attribute to ‘long-suffering bewilderment’ of some kind.

It didn’t matter anyway because where there’s a Lurch there must be a Fena!
With one more happy giggle to myself I grabbed the doorframe next to Lurch’s slow-moving form and pulled myself violently around it as I slipped past his massive body with ease... only to screech to a halt moments later, the giggle dying on my lips at the sight that greeted me.

Sitting in what I can only describe as a ‘throne’ of half-eaten, partly rotten animal parts, her eye’s glazed over and blood practically coating her from head to foot as she waved her hands in the air like some kind of twisted mix between what a Normal would expect to see from a so-called ‘mystic’ and a drug addict on a particularly ‘far out’ trip, was Fena.

Dark hair matted and plastered to her skin through a seemingly impossible amount of blood and a horrible, unnaturally-wide looking compared to her usual tight-lipped smiles, grin on her face with one noticeable addition which made my blood run cold in fear.
...She’s got fangs?...

Small but sharp looking fangs, fangs that I know all too well from years of repressed-trauma induced nightmares about ‘Vlad’ sinking his own much larger ones into my poor neck as he gloated over me in the worst possible ways.

“...Vampire?...”

The word just seemed to slip out and the moment that it did I wished with everything I had that I could have held it in because as that one simple word left my lips Fena’s head snapped down to stare directly at me with wide, over-blown pupils that spoke only of the madness and insanity within her now un-dead form.

Something loud, which I can only assume is John, slammed heavily into something else, which I think can safely be assumed to be Lurch, behind me but that all meant nothing as I stared broken-heartedly at one of my oldest friends as she pulled herself slowly up to a standing position from her ‘throne’ with a horrible, wet squelch.

“Al...”
Oh shit!
“...Al?...”

She repeated my old name as if even she couldn’t comprehend she’d said it in such a rough, broken tone of voice the first time, which still left me frozen in front of her from fear that’s only partly due to my bad past experiences with the un-dead in general.

Slowly she took one uneasy step towards me and with a squeak I staggered back away from her automatically in response.

My eye’s turned frantically to the side for just the briefest of moments as I tried to see if I had any backup coming or at the very least something nearby that could be used as a weapon to defend myself with, but that was all she needed because in that brief moment of distraction she just MOVED!

A sharp gasp of air left my lungs as her body catapulted across the room, slamming into mine so hard that it sent us both tumbling to the ground in an almost ‘hug-like’ tangle of limbs.

The world seemed to slow down as she eased herself up my slightly smaller frame until her cheek was resting next to mine and all I could do was shudder as her mouth opened wide letting a blast of cold breath ghost over my soon to be bitten neck.

“AL! You’re alive?!”
...uh, what?...
“You’re alive! You’re alive! You’re alive! John said you were alive but I didn’t believe him and he said you were hiding and I said that’s not like you at all and he said that you were upset and I said he was definitely lying then but I was wrong and your alive and that’s so AWESOME!!”

Some small detached part of my mind noted that the running mangle of words punctuated by the dreaded ‘and’ coming out of her mouth is probably how human-beings in general would speak if we didn’t have that pesky need to take a ‘breath’ every-so-often, meanwhile the rest of me was kind of locked-up, frozen in an odd state of mixed confusion, horror, fascination and above all else relief.

The blood, the body parts, the dark room and the fangs are all terrifying for more than one reason or another in their own right.

Added to that you have the fact that Fena, Goth-wannabe and usually pleasant if not a little emotionally stilted resident of the shop, is now babbling away like some kind of ‘high-school cheerleader’ on a caffeine high directly into my ear.

She’s speaking so fast that I not only KNOW she doesn’t need to breath for certain by now, but can also barely make out any of the words she’s saying and you get one rather confused, mildly terrified Hannah I’m sorry to report.

I think it’s fair to say that my reaction of abject fear is not, as suggested by John’s surprised laughter, amusing, but entirely appropriate and the ‘right’ reaction for me to be having right about bloody-now!
...Speaking of bloody...

Eww, she’s getting animal blood all over me!
...At least I hope it’s animal blood?...

“Fena let me up for Powers-sake, your heavy, and covered in blood!”
Hurricane Fena stopped her loud attack on the English language at my yell.
Her head snapping up from my neck to fix me with an oddly unfocused look that was practically unreadable for the few moments it lasted before it disappeared into a wide, fang filled grin instead.

All I could do was let out a frightened ‘eep!’ as her head came down towards me again, mouth wide, as she proceeded to start LICKING the blood that had been spread over my face where we’d made contact off of me as a sound that I can only call a ‘flirty giggle’ rumbled in her chest... as terrifying as that concept seems to be when it now involves Fena, Vampires and at least several cows worth of blood!

“John! Get her off of me, NOW!”

“Hold on, I’m trying to get this for posterity, smile for the camera-”
The distinctively fake ‘shutter’ sound-effect of John’s phone going off followed that trailing statement as he moved closer to us, although Fena didn’t seem to be paying attention at all considering she’d found an apparently really tasty spot of blood near my chin and was practically lapping it up like an over-enthusiastic dog.

“I swear to the Powers John, if you don’t put your phone down and help me RIGHT now, I’m gonna make you WISH you were part of Fena’s Throne-of-forgotten-farm-animals!”

GAH, not my ear!
Stop licking my damn-ear Fena, I’m ticklish an-

Aah-Hahaha! No!

======

“Feeling better?”

“I wish you’d stop asking me that today, it’s like, your jinxing me or something?... And yes, for your information, I am feeling much better now that I’ve had a shower and I’m away from Fena’s... licking...”

A shudder ran down my spine as memories of her uncharacteristically ‘enthusiastic’ greeting, which John took great joy in capturing from all angles before finally helping me get free from at last and sending her off with Lurch to somewhere else as he directed me towards a nearby bathroom to clear myself up as well.

My new outfit, the one I put so much time into making ‘not terrible’ and John called ‘beautiful’ is RUINED now too!

I ended up having to slip out of the bathroom in just a towel and make a few mad dashes from room-to-room until I found one with clothing inside which, while too big for my annoyingly small Arista-shaped body, were at least designed for a human female and somewhat ‘not ancient’ looking.

To be honest, if it wasn’t for the high-necked remnants of my protective suit I’ve still got on, remnants that are hiding any hint of a ‘cleavage’ I could offer, smallish as it may be, I’d probably still be standing in some random bedroom upstairs trying to find something at this point, because even WITH it on I feel wholly under-dressed!

Whoever owned these clothes before me, my money’s on Fena obviously, must have been VERY comfortable with their body in general and sexuality as a whole because the ‘best’ I could put together from it all which wouldn’t leave me practically more exposed then a bloody-bikini turned out to be this dark blue, velvet looking ‘corset’ thing that buckles its way up my stomach before leaving a nice big window on my chest as it loops around my arm-pits on either side to join what I can only call a ‘spiked collar-style halter neck’ shape around my throat.

The skirt I found to go with it is at least floor-length... mostly... while the back and sides are practically floating around my ankles, the front is cut so high up that it’s practically a mini-skirt at its peak!

I couldn’t find any shoes to fit me so I’m walking around bare-foot until my shoes dry out too.
Bare-feet don’t bother me much but it IS kinda awkward due to the skirt’s back dragging behind me, because it was obviously cut for someone a few inches taller than me in heels, while also being rather chilly too for more than obvious reasons.

Whole outfit’s horrible, tight in the wrong places while loose in equally wrong places and it makes me look like some kind of Gothic bride-to-be in all honesty but I really must reiterate that this was the BEST of what I had to work with, some of the other clothes on offer just... I’m never going to be able to look at Fena the same way again, let’s put it that way!
...It really doesn’t help that John’s staring at us so much...

I suppose I could conjure something up to last me for now but I’d feel a lot better with doing that sort of more intensive magic AFTER I’ve had a chance to ensure my new core hasn’t got some horrible flaw in it that is going to rip me apart the first time I actually try to cast something more complicated than a mild warming-charm on myself at the very least.
...He’s still staring at us...

“Oi! Stop staring John, it’s rude!”

Before he could do much more then flinch and glance up at my face guiltily in response there was a rather loud crash behind us, followed by a fast-moving object that appeared to be some form of walking black bedspread, which moved out of the door leading to the dreaded ‘upstairs’ and mercilessly attacked the little coffee maker at the other side of the room with lots of bangs, crashes and moans while we watched on in confusion.

Finally Lurch ducked his way past the doorway and moved over to take a now slightly damaged mug away from the poor coffee deprived floating-bedspread-of-doom who proceeded to grunt in thanks before collapsing sideways with more grace then I think is strictly fair onto one of the nearby tables, finishing the whole thing off by curling into a little ball and groaning to herself pitifully once more with no obvious plans to stop doing so at this exact moment either.

I shot John a curious look and he mouthed the words ‘sobriety potion’ to me, looking far too amused for everyone’s sake sadly.

Just what we all need right now!
A Vampire Fena with a hangover, how can this POSSIBLY go wrong?!

The best of plans can go astray in any number of ways. It's not like we can always see what's coming a lot of the time, after all, right? Even Seer's have their limits sometimes it seems... Events unfold including but not limited to: John doing 'guy stuff' with a Golem, Fena breathlessly rambling (again), And Hannah gets more then she bargained for multiple times over!

 

“Um... Fena?”
All I got in response was another pitiful moan of obvious pain and torment.

“Fena you-”
I had to practically bite my tongue to stop myself from saying the ‘un’ before continuing.
“-alive in there?”

The next pitiful moan took a slightly upturned note of insistence which could either have been a sound of agreement or a sign that she needs that coffee faster than Lurch can realistically make it sadly.

“Fena... when did you... uh, ya know, become a... um...?”
The bundle of bedspread on the table in front of me shifted slightly, then it rustled before finally it split open at the top like a cocoon to allow the, looking worse than death ironically, vampire Fena to stick her head out and stare at me in confusion.
“What I mean is, when did you become a... a vampire exactly? I know it’s been a few months since I last saw you and John said the un-dead have been pretty active around here since but...”

Her eyebrows slowly crept up her surprisingly normal, if rather pale for most of humanity, looking face until they practically merged with the black mass of tangles that make up her currently messy hair in general.

Eventually, after the silent stare-off between us had reached the point of almost painful awkwardness that had even me considering the option of looking away, just to finish it at last, her eyes left mine and cut over to John as a confused yet slightly amused smirk spread across her thin lips in a way which would honestly have been kinda cute if a fang hadn’t taken that opportunity to make itself known again, ruining the look entirely.

“She seriously doesn’t know?”
Apparently that question wasn’t for me judging by where she was looking and the non-committal grunt she got in return from John.
“Like, really doesn’t know? Not even a clue?”

I turned slightly to try and see the other half of the conversation I’m being excluded from and just managed to catch John’s shoulders lowering out of a slightly bemused shrug before I had to snap my head back around as Fena let off an uncharacteristic burst of loud laughter, only to cut herself short moments later as her hands poked out of her cocoon to hold her head in obvious pain from the sound itself instead.

“I take it I’m missing something?”

John snorted behind me which is honestly never a good sign in general, let alone at times like this.
Slowly Fena lowered her hands down and brought her head back up to look at me again, this time with eyes that betrayed just the slightest hints of fear for some Powers-known reason.

“I’ve always been a vampire Al. Ever since we first met, did you seriously not know? I mean... I kinda thought it was obvious and you just never brought it up to be polite really...”
My eye twitched heavily as those words hit home rather harder than I could have expected, even if I HAD anticipated them before hand, which I didn’t of course.
“The tight-lipped smile you always used to tease me about because it was ‘cute’, the fact I never leave the shop and always stay pretty far away from the windows even on over-cast days, the rings I use to cast elemental spells because my magic has no element anymore what with my being... you know?... I mean, didn’t you ever wonder why I’m always so cold, even when the heating is on and I’m bundled up in multiple layers?”
...Wow...

That... that was definitely not something I saw coming?
She’s right; I mean, the clues were all there and more!

The way she’d always lick her lips nervously if I came into the shop injured, bleeding, before shooting off upstairs to get Edith’s help.
The way she never seemed to get out of breath, even when Edith had us both doing jumping-jacks for a solid hour as punishment for ‘interrupting her stories’.
The amount of times I attempted to ask her out when I was still ‘Al’, under the guise of going for something to eat, just as friends of course...

Oh Powers, FOOD!
How could I have been so stupid?!
Food! She never once ate, not in all the time I’ve known her have I ever seen her EAT something!
Drinking, sure, but even then it’s usually water or wi...ne...

“The reason you used to beat me every time I stayed overnight watching movies in the storage room instead of doing stock-checking was because I was the only one actually DRINKING wine, wasn’t it?”
For a long moment my serious, if only slightly annoyed, glare was met by her lightly apologetic gaze in return before finally she cracked and had to look away from me as she burst into relieved sounding laughter for some reason.

“You just found out I’m a frigging VAMPIRE and THAT’S what your worried about?! That I cheated on our silly drinking games with blood instead of wine?”
Reluctantly even I could see the funny side of it now that she’s said it.

Slowly my lips twitched a few times and eventually split into their own amused grin as a laugh escaped my chest moments later making my shoulders slump in slightly tired relief of my own.

It’s been a long day, cut me some slack here!
...Consider the slack cut!...

“You’ve always been a pretty terrible Goth, if anything, considering my past experiences with vampires in general, you’ll make a pretty great one easily... Vlad was a complete poser too...”
John snorted behind us but he wasn’t important in all of this.
I could feel my own smile get ever so slightly wider as Fena’s laughter doubled in force, if not volume, and she rolled deeper into her blanket-cocoon to snigger almost convulsively to herself inside.

So... Fena’s a vampire?
...Eh, I’ve seen weirder...
It’s a surprise naturally but also kinda not at the same time?

Either way I’m pretty sure I’m already over the initial shock to it all by now and I’m solidly on my way towards ‘acceptance’, with maybe a few stops off here-and-there to tease my friend and see where we both stand with each other again before I have to ruin the good vibe we’ve got going on by bringing up Edith at least.

“Remember when you walked in carrying those enchanted mirrors and ‘some random cat’ hissed at you?... I seriously thought you were angry at me and did it on purpose at the time but now it’s pretty obvious that you’re just an idiot Alistor Cooper!”
Her head popped up again and she pulled a frankly adorable face at me before carrying on in a tone that was probably about as deep as her usual soprano voice can manage as she carried on while shooting me a light-hearted glare that plainly said that she was impersonating me, the old me that is.
“Oh, what happened to your face Fena? Sunburn! It looks really bad, do you want me to take you to a hospital?”

Her voice shifted back into her usual tone again but the mockery was almost palpable as she went on to explain.

“Thank the Powers Edith was there, when you came in a burst of sunlight reflected off the mirrors and practically burnt my eye out! If Edith hadn’t ‘suddenly’ noticed some Bad-Juju on you and knocked you out while trying to fix it I’m pretty sure my survival instincts would have kicked in and I’d have attacked you as the nearest blood-donor to me at the time!”

...Seriously?!...
How many other moments have I misread or misunderstood because of this big secret between us?

“Then there was the time you decided that I should help you carving protection runes into the back of all those crosses you ‘borrowed’ from the Vatican, do you KNOW how many chickens I had to drain to recover from all the blisters I got when you dumped that lot in my arms all of a sudden?!”

...Oh Powers, this could take a while...

======

“So, how old ARE you exactly?”
Fena paused momentarily before shooting me a now much more relaxed smile.

We spent over half an hour reminiscing about the past of all things; mostly about the things we’d both completely gotten wrong due to being equally obvious to each other’s oblivious-ness.
Finally after a few uncertain stabs at conversation proceeding the nostalgia we managed to settle into a comfortable ‘normal’ for us, where we talked about what we’ve been up to lately while steering pretty clear of the elephant in fluffy slippers that seemed to stomp around every time Edith’s name came up at all.

I spent most of that time telling Fena all about my latest projects and getting a much better reception, let alone general comprehension from her, then I ever did with Sarah... mostly because Fena could actually understand half of the words I was saying of course.

Meanwhile Fena rather embarrassedly told me about the ‘blood-n-drugs’ binge she went on after ‘the event’ as people are apparently now calling it in magical circles.

Between Edith not returning home, the Male Sibs ‘disappearing’ on the same day and then her misguided belief that I too had died, along with everyone else after John’s rather botched attempt at explaining what he knew of things to her, the day after I fled into my workshop while looking for some help in finding me again, she fell into a bout of depression.

That lead her to doing what she apparently ‘always used to do’ when depressed... pay drug addicts to donate blood to her privately and get high off of their tainted blood for a few hours at a time... a story which was almost worryingly parallel to my own, although where I had Arista’s secret stash to fall back on she had to rely on Lurch for getting hers once she became too dependent to go out and get it for herself.

On a slightly amusing note, the local Police department are now convinced that some ‘Freaky Frankenstein lookin’ Mo-Fo’ is in Klamath Falls going on a one-man vigilante spree against the local drugs trade while taking large samples of his unconscious victims’ blood as ‘some kind of sick trophy’.

At least that’s what the officer who had called around one evening to give, poor, defenceless and only partly sober Fena a warning about it said... along with giving her his personal contact details on a card she waved around almost proudly during her explanation.

While amusing, that all did lead us back to that one big point we’d been dancing around for the last hour, namely the reason for her depression and binge, ‘the event’ at Wizard Island.

Naturally I scrabbled for the first safe topic I could to avoid it all yet again and somehow settled on asking about her age of all things.

...Stupid brain...
Yeah, stupid brain!

“It’s not polite to ask a Lady her age Al-”
She shot me a cheeky wink and leaned in a little more as she’s been doing every so often when she finds something even funnier than usual lately.
“-but just between us girls Hannah-”

...Oh, that’s what she found so amusing?...
She’s still not quite used to the concept of me being both female and using my ‘new’ name sadly.
I can’t exactly blame her, but at least she’s trying, even if she does act like the whole concept is a big joke or game where I’m hiding behind a false identity like some sort of spy or something.

“-I’ll be Four-hundred and Twenty-Six next spring.”
My mouth dropped open in shock and she practically fell off her chair laughing at the apparently rather stupid look on my face as I tried to process what she’d just said.

It’s not so much the age itself, although it is at the extreme of what I’d often considered the ‘maximum possible age’ a mage could live to naturally in one body if they were really lucky, but more the idea that Fena of all people could be that old in general.

“I’m the oldest of the Sibs after all; admittedly it’s been centuries since Edith, Romi or Remi have treated me like the ‘big’ sister annoyingly but then, when you get to that age the long way round, without eternal youth or a fear of daylight at your side, I guess an age difference of a few years doesn’t really mean much anymore?”

She grimaced slightly but eventually shrugged to both me and herself at whatever thought had crossed her mind in that brief moment.

“Vampires see time in a completely different way than humans after a while, most go insane because when you’re effectively full-on immortal, life has little-to-no meaning in general. We found a way around that for me by taking the old saying of ‘living in the moment’ to a pretty big extreme but it’s still kinda an issue.”

Short attention span at times, impulsive actions, almost childish amusement at little events and a constant need to avoid feeling ‘bored’... yep, I can definitely see what she means by her ‘living in the moment’ now that she mentions it.

Honestly at one point I was pretty convinced she just had the Goth equivalent of some hyperactivity disorder, with this new information it definitely makes at least some level of sense though.
If she’s too busy focusing on the ‘now’, she isn’t busy focusing on the ‘forever’... which would also explain her quick slip into depression when overnight she lost Edith, the male Sibs and me all in one go too, I guess?

...I still think she has ADHD though...
Definitely Vampire-Goth ADHD!

======

“Fena... it’s been fun and all but I think it’s time we talked about... Edith...”
Just rip the band aid off!

Come on Hannah, time to be a big boy... girl... whatever, and just do it so you can-
“Oh! Saying that, she left you a letter upstairs, two seconds I’ll go grab it for you.”

Before I could respond, the now rather overwhelmingly perky form of my usually rather quiet friend took off with inhuman speed for the doorway leading back upstairs without a second glance, leaving me sitting on my chair staring after her in surprised confusion.
...Edith left us a letter?...

The evil little Yoda was a seer after all.
I guess she might have... might have known what was coming, maybe?

Why have I got a bad feeling about this all of a sudden?
...Hidden Seer powers activated!...

My right-hand shot up to smack myself over the head on some kind of instinct that I don’t fully remember ever gaining which is more than a little worrying, almost as worrying as the anticipatory grab my left made to stop it before it could make contact too.

After a few seconds staring at them both in shock they both seemed to almost ‘realise’ that I was watching them because they went limp suddenly, my right ironically crashing palm-first on top of my head as it fell down despite the left’s best efforts to stop it.

I quickly shot a glance around the room to make sure no-one saw that little momentary bout of insanity, finding that thankfully John and Lurch are still off somewhere doing ‘guy stuff’ as John put it, so he could leave me and Fena to our ‘chatting’ apparently.

Slowly my eyes settled on my hands again which had seemingly decided that cupping gently together in my lap was some way of showing ‘innocence’ of any such wrong-doing I may think they might have done.

...We’re unofficially-officially going crazy, I swear...
Stupid defective brain!

======

“Found it, sorry about the blood stain on the corner, I kinda dropped half a sheep on it at some point I think, but the rest is fine I promise!”
I really didn’t have the heart to even glare at her for that one at this point.

The fact that she was offering me a pretty convincing look of apology helped and I’m pretty sure she’d be blushing if her rarely displayed dimples showing is any indication at least, considering she can’t actually... ya know... ‘blush’, being un-dead and all.

Another stupid thing I missed about her that I’ve only just realised is that no matter how embarrassed she gets, in all the years I’ve known her, I’ve never seen her properly blush before... for now rather obvious reasons no-doubt.

Rather than voice that rather stupid new realisation I settled for offering her a gentle smile and taking the envelope from her with almost reverent care, before flipping it over to find it sealed shut by an honest-to-Powers wax ‘seal’ straight out of history with a family crest on it and everything.

“Edith said you’d want to be alone for reading it, don’t worry, I’m going to go clean up my room for a while... although how on earth I’m going to get some of those blood stains out I have NO idea-”
She didn’t really say anything more to me from that point on as she turned away to head back upstairs, although I could distinctly hear her still muttering to herself thoughtfully under her breath as she went anyway.

With a few more steps the door leading upstairs shut loudly behind her and I was left alone in the quiet main room of the Sibs shop holding the letter carefully away from my body just in case it might explode in the time it takes for me to get up the guts to open the damn thing, let alone read it!

...This is Edith we’re talking about, so good call on that one I think...
Exactly!

======

‘Useless Girl,

By now you know that my ‘accent’ is fake for the most part, so I’ll skip the preamble.
I’ve written and re-written this letter a thousand times in the last few years, always thinking up new ways to explain what needs to be said... but in my final hours before I come to join you in battle, I find myself writing it all once more.

We both know you don’t have much of an attention span so I’ll jump to the important points.
Number One:
Don’t be an idiot and blame yourself for my death!

I’ve got blocks in place to stop myself from seeing events past my current incarnations life-time, a security measure to ensure I don’t create another mistake like Arista once more, but I’ve known how I would die for a very long time now.

All I can say is that I died proud and happy to have been your tutor as well as your friend.

Edith...

My last view before the ice consumes me entirely will be of you collapsing backwards as Arista’s core-shard is thrown out into the void at long last, for that you have my deepest thanks and above all else my undying loyalty, do not blame yourself or do something stupidly ‘you’—like throwing yourself into a depression filled drugs binge like Fena is sure to do unless you follow point Number Two properly!

Uh, oops?...

That brings me onto point Number Two:
Survive the fight, as I know you will, survive and come back to Klamath Falls for Fena.

A long dead incarnation of Arista by the name of ‘The Countess Beth’ turned her into a vampire many long years ago and she cannot be left alone as she is.

It took some borderline necromancy for me to keep myself and the twins alive for all these years without reincarnation. I’m basically being held together by my magic these days and the twins are even worse off, their cores having fallen completely to a point where they are only sustained by my magic alone, which as you can imagine is more than slightly limiting on life in general.

This all means that the moment I die the twins will, too, leaving Fena all alone in the world but for you. Take care of her Useless Girl!

She is my sister and I love her as such, but the vampirism has taken its toll on her as with all undead, warping her mind and working in similar ways to the methods that Arista has used upon you in the past, to shape her thinking towards darker intents.

Her core is dead and, as such, her personality is no longer safe within the natural reincarnation cycle.
When Fena dies the version of her that you know, the version which I have watched grow from a slightly airheaded little nobles daughter into a passionate and caring human being, will cease to exist.

We’ve spent centuries trying to find a solution to help her, to make it so that she can have a normal reincarnation again, but from all accounts it is just not possible.
All I ask is that you keep her safe, keep her happy and keep her alive until I can once more return to watch over her again, can you do that for me Useless Girl?

Of course...

The third point I must raise is of the future.
I cannot tell you what is to come from now on, that is the purview of my next incarnation after all, but I can make some guesses from my lofty position as your ‘stupid/wise old yoda-wannabe’.

Uh oh!...

Yes, I have heard your grumbling on more than one occasion and I take it in the vein it was offered, with little more than an amused smirk at your childish choice of wording in general as my only comment upon it.

Well, that’s something at least—Sorry, Edith...

You do not know how far the battle-lines are drawn on both sides of this conflict useless girl and you are not yet ready to face it all even if you did, I’ll leave the history lesson for those who are more knowledgeable than I on the topic you will no-doubt meet in the future.

I can assume that when news of my death reaches certain areas within our political system you will be contacted by a familiar but unwelcome face. Please do not dismiss him out of hand as I know you will wish to. He holds information you will need and maybe even offers some form of closure for you at the same time.

...Cryptic much?...

I’ve spent a long time thinking on my final moments over the years since I first saw them with my gift and I’ve come to one rather startling realisation.
You have more than two cores within you!

Um—you’re a bit late to the party on that bit of info, Edith, I’m sorry to say.

To be precise, I believe you have three!
One which Arista will ‘give’ back to your sister in the next hour or so, one ice core of unknown origins which houses Arista’s core personality, and a final one which allows you to survive the removal of Arista’s ice core in my final seconds.

It wasn’t hard from there to work out that this third core would be your much fabled ‘Locus Point’ and something which I’d initially forgotten may be a problem due to its almost total uselessness as anything but an annoyance for all of us up to this point.

This brings me onto my final point and the end of this missive to you, my often exasperating student.

======

"Oh I’M the exasperating one, am I Edith?!"
Can you say ‘Bad JuJu’ at all you little-
...Calm breaths...

Slowly I lowered the letter down into my lap and let off a heavy huff of air to calm myself down a little bit, my right hand came up automatically to wipe away a few tears I hadn’t consciously even realised I’d been letting fall as I read Edith’s very... ‘Edith’... final letter to me at long last.

Only she could be so infuriating that even in a letter from beyond the grave she manages to piss me off!

“Powers damn it Edith, you just had to get to me one more time, didn’t you?”
Despite my possibly harsh sounding words, a bitter little smile formed on my lips even before they’d truly finished leaving them.
“...Powers damn you Edith, you evil little troll...”

Without another word I turned back to her note, a sense of almost ‘zen-like’ calm falling over me for having something to turn my attention onto once more if nothing else.

======

The ‘diversion’ I placed upon your magic when it became obvious that Arista had pushed her core into a controlling position, after you let that stupid toff friend of yours make you a little more ‘girl’ and a little less ‘useless’, was not some great mysterious power you made it out to be in the weeks following my placement of it.

In fact, it’s not even a ‘diversion’ in a traditional sense but more a reduction to the complexity of your internal magic’s self-regulation as a whole.

Uh—what?...

I shall use small words so you can follow me through this properly.

...Smug much?...
Don’t read my mind from the dead Edith; It’s creepy!

You’re magic is comprised of Arista, Mother and Yourself.
You house three very different cores in ability, content and associated personalities but each holding one overriding connection amongst themselves.

At your very centers, at the very apex spark which spawned your cores in the first place, you each hold the same unimaginable power which few mages would believe existed if not for the very real results of that powers existence.

Mother’s magic was once the purest source of this power, she was even able to manipulate it to some degrees in healing which is actually what gave me the original idea behind your so called ‘diversion’.

Arista received only part of this power, barely one-percent by what I can see while studying your lines as you cast, and it only ever manifested in the most basic form that she became so widely known for within the magical community.

Then we come to you...

I cannot be certain on this, having never actually seen this theoretical ‘third core’ of yours in action. However from what I have seen in the last few weeks of your ‘Golden domes’ and their power levels, I can surmise that you are truly on a completely different level from even Mother herself.

The power I speak of is, of course, the ability you share to create life itself, magical life, the ability to birth new magical children at all!

The same ability which earned your counterparts their often overblown joint title ‘The Mother of Magic’, the same sole domain of the two most unstable members of the magical world in general, until you came along at least...

With the removal of Arista’s core your miraculous ‘Golden domes’ will, I assume, disappear.

Due to the shifts required within your lines to accommodate the change in main magical element being converted and the limitations of the ‘reduction’ I put upon you, it will become useless the moment your system is cleansed of Arista’s ice in its entirety.

The trick I used was crude at best, using a sample of ‘your’ ice magic and using it to trigger a conversion which is technically as much of a step backwards as you managed to take when diverting from ice to water for some damned fool reason so many weeks ago, but with one fundamental difference.

The power within you is incredibly dense... just like you!

‘HEY!’
...That’s just mean!...

The power to create life from nothing which you all share is so amazingly dense that barely a drop is needed to establish its dominance within your system and despite being a technical ‘step backwards’ from the far more complex magic required for your body to naturally assume an elemental nature of any kind, that magic’s density provides an amazingly terrible exchange rate, something which you desperately need with how much magic you produce just by existing, Useless Girl.

On the final page of this letter I have provided a list of reference books and instructions on how you may gain a connection to that spark within you once more.

Mark my words, I know you will need and regain your precious ‘Golden domes’ in the times to come until I see you once more.
I say that as your mentor, as your friend and thanks to your general lack of ‘thinking’ or a ‘ sense of self-preservation’ that would have given me a heart-attack years ago if such a thing could actually kill me at this point.

This new method is much more in-depth when compared to the reduction I put in place before, but hopefully when you complete its training you will have a better understanding of yourself, your Locus Point and your magic as a whole, so that if the worst ever comes to pass and you die once more, you will still be able to access that spark within yourself despite the change in body that comes with reaching a requiem.

Edith, I don’t know what to say...
...Say nothing. Keep reading...

The last few years working with you have renewed my faith in the future which had honestly been almost completely eroded with the passage of time that has come from watching over Fena for so very long.

You are a truly exceptional person—useless—but exceptional, and I’m so very proud to have been a part of your life for so long, obviously crazy old fool that I am.

Take care of yourself Useless Girl.
Don’t mourn me, protect Fena and LIVE!

One day a much younger looking ‘crazy little Yoda’ will appear on your doorstep and I will be expecting to hear about all the madness I have missed that comes from just knowing you in the slightest apparently.

I’m sorry for my part in any suffering you have faced over the years.
A seer does as a seer is told to by fate herself, it is not our place to question, only guide those we must... but with you I can truly say that for the first time in an eternity I have grown attached to you and hope you have a long, happy life ahead of you in the coming years.

I must prepare, I have a set of new robes to enchant against blunt force, earth magic induced, trauma before ‘Mother’ calls us all together at Crater Lake.

May the Powers bless you, Useless Girl
Until we meet once more.

Esti-dif Ta
Sixth born of the Ta clan, Guardian of Delphi and honoured ‘Yoda’ to the magic emporium of Klamath Falls.

P.S - If Fena does somehow end up going off the rails before you get this letter and comes up with the stupid idea of mixing an orphanage with an opium den again, tell her that it didn’t work in London and it definitely wouldn’t work in Klamath Falls of all places, so just drop it you silly old fool!

======

That final point, which Edith just HAD to tack on at the end there, I suspect specifically because she knew how I’d react to it, left me laughing almost hysterically for a while, slumped heavily in my borrowed but still nice and squishy sofa chair.

Eventually, almost mechanically, my hands flipped over to the next page, finding what I can only assume were the promised instructions and reading recommendations that Edith left for me.
I couldn’t tell initially because my eye’s had mysteriously filled with water for some Powers-known reason?

With a forceful sniff I brushed the water away, for safety’s sake, I’m a lightning mage now after all and lightning does NOT play well with water!

Slowly the note came into focus and I stared at it for a while, not really comprehending it because my mind was stuck more on the letter that came before it.

Finally after a period of time which could have been anything from a minute to an hour for all I know my introspection and lost musings were cut short by a clatter of noise to my right as a rather guilty looking, once more blood splattered and now dragging a suspiciously ‘animal parts’ shaped trash bag behind her, version of Fena came shuffling back into the room.

She actually jumped slightly in surprise when her tense gaze settled on my own curiously amused one, which I found even more amusing then the actual scene itself in all honesty.

“You finished with Edith’s letter?”
Her grip on the bag’s opening shifted slightly and a hoof of what I can only assume is some kind of sheep flopped silently out of the bag to hit the floor behind her, completely unnoticed by Fena as she stared at me with worry obvious on her now much more open and expressive face.

“...Yeah...”

After a long moment’s pause as if she expected me to say something more than that and one more shift of her grip which let what was possibly some form of rat’s tail fall out and join the sheep’s leg in its bid for freedom, she seemed to realise that I wasn’t offering much more on the topic at this point an-

“Anything interesting?”

-or maybe that was just my wishful thinking at work?

“Not much, just her usual stuff really, she called me ‘useless girl’ a lot, told me to keep an eye on you and offered some help on what I need to work on next in my training.”
She seemed to almost deflate at that response.

I know I could have told her the more serious details in the letter but something held me back from it, despite the disappointment obvious on her face from my rather flippant response instead.
The letter was for me, I know Edith pretty well at this point, if the letter was for me and she sealed it to make sure Fena couldn’t read it then it was for a reason.

Whether it was a good reason or just because she felt like it may be up for discussion but she definitely had A reason in mind and I’ll respect that if nothing else for now.

That being said, I’m not above sharing some of the less important or private parts with Fena if it will lift her mood at least.

“She did happen to demand that if you went into a drug-fuelled vampire binge that I should tell you your idea of mixing an orphanage and an opium den is just as stupid now as it was in London, so drop it before someone gets hurt?”

THAT did the trick at least!

While far from perfect and slightly strange to see, it really was a sight to behold as someone who couldn’t ‘blush’ did a pretty credible impression of doing just that, only without the red-tint to her cheeks that you would normally expect to be part of such an action.
My worries over her subdued mood were assuaged pretty easily from there as her head snapped up to glare at the ceiling above us.

Her delicate-looking pale fist came up quickly to wave dramatically skyward as she cried out something about ‘It was only one time!’ between sputtering fits of laughter that I happily joined her in without a thought, continuing on for a while afterwards as we made eye-contact again which only seemed to encourage us to laugh all the more for some reason.
...Good choice slipping that bit in Edith...

“I swear Al, it really was just this one time and I wasn’t being SERIOUS, you know, it was just an idea because at the time we-”

As Fena continued to awkwardly dig herself deeper into the hole of her own past actions, all I could do was settle back and grin at her happily.
I’m gonna miss you, you old witch, but don’t worry... I’m sure we’re gonna be fine in your absence for now...

“-and then Remy said ‘Well if you’re going to run both, why not save on space’ and so I said-”
The literally breathless rambling just went on and on but I didn’t mind.

For the first time since I saw her in her gore covered bedroom looking like some deranged feral beast, there was a spark back in her eyes that I’ve known and loved for years now.

So, I’m best friends with a vampire?
I’ve been tasked by my old mentor to help keep her sane until she can come back from the dead to take over again... and I’ve got a new magical ‘homework assignment’ to work on in my spare time.

That letter was unexpected but damned if it didn’t help me gain some sense of closure on my feelings for Edith and the guilt I let fester for so long during my isolation as well.

“-then the police showed up and tried to arrest me for prostitution, which I SO wasn’t doing! and-”

My relieved laughter joined Fena’s ever more desperate attempts to prove her innocence and the shop felt just a little bit lighter than it had barely an hour ago.
...We’ll be fine, I can tell. Thanks Edith...

Moving house can be a hassle, Moving house with magic is, presumably, meant to be a bit easier? Moving house with John’s help would likely be... ...Yeah, not the best idea in the world, is it?... Events unfold including but not limited to: The sun being discussed, Taxi rides being (relatively) skipped over in silence, and explanations of events are exchanged, much to both sides confused frustration.

 

“Hope you two are done chatting because it’s almost painfully too easy to beat a Golem at chess sadly and I-”
Words froze on John’s lips as he stared at us and we stared back feeling only slightly like naughty children caught mid-act.
“-I’m assuming there’s a reason you two are doing that?”

My eyes cut from Fena’s slightly flustered face down to the big ‘bottomless’ bag we’ve got stretched out as wide as it can and the still full book shelf we managed to tip onto its side with aid from Fena’s vampire strength a minute ago.

The original idea was to save time by just loading them straight in but despite what I’d presumed in my own testing of the bag Edith gave me ages ago, the openings don’t just keep growing forever and it’s kinda a tight fit getting the shelving unit inside honestly.

“Um... We’re packing?”

John snorted in amusement and for once I really can’t blame him considering how silly we must look, Fena struggling to pull the bag edge over the feet of the unit while I’ve somehow ended up mounting the bloody thing for a better grip as I play my part in making sure the bag doesn’t just fall off again.

“You know what?... I’m not even going to question the multiple different, much easier, ways you could have tried to ‘pack’ and instead I’ll settle on a much more simple ‘Why?’, just on general principle...”

Oh how magnanimous of you John-Boy!
Ever so nice of you... you smug asshole...

“Fena’s packing up shop and moving in with us back home. With a little bit of tweaking we think we can get rid of the UV ray’s coming from my fake-sun inside the realm, if it even produces any at all to start with, so she can hang out with people and feel ‘normal’ while being closer to us if she gets bored...”
Before I could finish explaining Fena straightened up a little bit and shot John an almost smug look of her own, continuing on where I’d stopped.

“Also, considering this new ‘realm’ place has a massive shopping mall’s worth of magical shopping mall spaces inside it I plan on picking out some prime real-estate, tax free because I know the owner and everything.”

I’m sure somewhere up there or something Edith is grinning proudly down upon her ‘big sister’ right about now because that sort of enthusiastic assumption that I’m gonna let her take one of my best shops up for free is exactly the kind of thing Edith would have done in a heartbeat given this same situation.
...Damned if it’s not gonna work too!...

“Make yourself useful and help us get this shelving unit into the bag John-Boy so we can make our way home faster, yeah?”

He scoffed loudly in response but didn’t hesitate to help us seconds later, even if his ‘help’ turned out to be a few almost bored looking hand waves which left Fena on the floor to my right and me sliding off a now emptied shelving unit to land painfully on my butt moments later.

The books once occupying it’s shelves had all levitated out and flown into the bag along with every other book around us in the few short seconds it took for the shelving unit itself to shrink down to about half its usual size for easier entry into the bag.

He waved his hands again and the other shelving units shrunk to similar size before making their own floating way into the bag as well. The smug smirk on his face was undeniably annoying but I didn’t have time to match it with my own glare before Fena cut between us with a hand offered out to help me back to my feet instead.

“Now I see why you keep him around, easy item storage isn’t cheap usually, you know?”
We both laughed, me slightly harder as I noticed a tick of irritation barely being hidden behind John’s smirk, as his moment of gloating was interrupted by Fena’s slightly catty words.

Eventually we had our fun at his expense and both turned around to face him again with almost identical evil-grins on our faces a few moments later.

“John-Boy! You’re on packing duty seeing as you’re oh-so-good at it!”
He shot me a momentary glare for that one but there was honestly no heat to it and even Fena could tell he was more amused than anything else by my commanding tone.
“Well, chop-chop! I don’t pay you to stand around looking pretty after all.”

His glare reappeared with a slightly more challenging tilt to it this time but he didn’t argue back, perhaps sensing the mood me and Fena had settled in which would make any protest he could muster just the subject of ridicule unfortunately.

With one last huff of what I think might have been fond exasperation he turned away from us both to start waving his hands around like a certain mouse in a certain animated classic about an inept wizard’s apprentice trying to cheat while doing his chores.

“It’s like watching a really boring version of ‘Fantasia’, isn’t it?”
My head jerked to the side slightly to watch Fena out the corner of my eye and I allowed myself one tiny smirk in response as she summed up my thoughts rather well.

Part of me was almost tempted to conjure a patched and floppy blue wizards-hat with accompanying red monks robe for him honestly but he really is doing us a favor so I shouldn’t be mean at this point, despite how funny his reaction could be.

“Come on, we’ll go box up your clothes so the ‘Great wizard’s apprentice’ doesn’t have to go digging through your underwear draw unnecessarily.”
This time it was Fena’s turn to glare at me lightly but that didn’t stop her from moving off towards the stairs with me trailing behind her to do just as I’d suggested.

He may be helpful and relatively nice these days but somewhere deep down inside ‘John’ is still the pervert/stalker supreme known as ‘Maxarimus’ after all, even I’d hesitate to let him near my underwear draw... although in my case it’s because knowing him he’d throw out all my nice new comfortable stuff for support-lacking push-up bras and an endless parade of thongs, for his own amusement if nothing else.
...Stupid John...

======

“That’s this room done, what about all your stuff in the room across the hall?”
Fena hesitated, then shot me a slightly confused look for a moment before bringing her hand up to stifle a giggle of some kind.

“I’d wondered where you got that outfit from, that’s Edith’s spare bedroom for whenever she decides to take an aging potion and go out clubbing or whatever it is ancient people in temporarily young bodies do at least...”

I couldn’t help but have a full body shudder run down my spine.
First at the idea of Edith going clubbing, then her going clubbing while wearing something as dramatically ‘shows off a lot of skin’ as the clothes I found in that room and finally because I happen to be wearing the most in-offensive clothing I could find from that worrying collection of clothes at the moment, much to my growing horror.

Fena let me stew on the image of Edith, admittedly a non-potioned into youth version of her, dancing with young guys while wearing a leather mini-skirt an-
“...I think I’m gonna be sick...”

“Oh don’t, you big baby, I was kidding-”
...Thank the Powers!...
“-You were right, it’s my ‘out of season’ stuff being kept for when the fashion cycle starts over again in a decade or two so I’ll have a suitably ‘vintage’ wardrobe to work from... the look on your FACE though!”

My glare hopefully showed her just how not-funny I found her obvious joy at my near brush with vomiting once more today.

It really hasn’t been my day for that sort of thing, has it?
...Nope, terrible day for it really all things considered...

“Let’s get on with this then before John finishes with downstairs.”
Fena grumbled something about me being ‘grumpy’ in response but we both moved out of the now bare room behind us with its lingering smell of blood and neat pile of semi-packed items so we could move on to the next one over instead to start all over again.
“Powers, who knew moving house with magic could be this tiring?”

======

“-And that’s the last of it.”
We both let off slight cheers to ourselves but they sounded a bit weak really which I guess is kinda understandable considering how much pile-making we’ve had to go through over the last hour or so, let alone the whole fiasco with trying to ‘disarm’ Edith’s room full of magical toys and Bad Juju hitting implements!

“I wonder how far John’s gotte-”
As if summoned like a true demon of old his head popped around the doorframe to shot us an unfairly energetic smirk by way of greeting.

Judging by the almost lazy hand waving he offered while summoning the item pile in the middle of the room out into the waiting bottomless bag at his side I’m willing to bet he’s gotten on pretty well in the packing department, just to spite us for giving him the ‘hard’ job if nothing else.

“...Your such an ass sometimes John-Boy...”
I elbowed my way past him, my magic brushing up against his, highly amused, magic for a moment or two which really wasn’t helping things as I went through the hall making final inspections for missed items along the way back down to the main shop-floor.

Despite my intense efforts there really does appear to be nothing missing between the top floor and the front door at this point so I guess we’re finally free at long last to continue on with our day as originally planned, plus one vampire-Fena as...well...

“Uh, don’t know if this is a stupid time to point this out but it’s day-time outside?”
Full daytime too, as in, sunlight pouring in through the windows and people going about their late-morning lives as birds sing in the late-fall breeze.

“It did occur to me too, we HAVE been here for a while after all...”
Not helping John-Boy!

“What about Fena?... ya know... vampire plus sun equals hissing and ash-puddles, right?”
This time I really did feel like an idiot as the pair of them shot each other oddly exasperated looks for a moment before John nodded the responsibility of ‘correcting’ me off to Fena with a negligent twitch of his head.

“It’s the sun Hannah, not some sort of vampire-seeking laser or something...”
Oh?...
“Give me some high factor sun-screen, a few of my sun-rings, a big floppy hat with a full-body wetsuit and I can laze around at the beach these days.”

Well that’s, Uh...
Yeah actually, I guess that would make sense, wouldn’t it?

...Fena in skin-tight neoprene...
Shut up brain, not helping!

“Generally though I prefer blending in a bit considering it’s almost Winter and the Upper is freezing this time of year... give me a minute and I’ll go get my Leathers.”

That being said, Fena turned and went off to find said ‘Leathers’ apparently.
I couldn’t help but turn a questioning look over to John but he just shrugged in response despite the grin that refused to leave his lips at my obvious confusion.

Some annoying part of my mind was running in circles at the idea of Fena in ‘leather’, although luckily it wasn’t hard to keep those sort of thoughts under control for the most part, I DID grow up as a semi-average hormonal teenaged boy after all.

When it didn’t look like Fena was coming back any time soon I let out a huff and hopped up onto the now empty counter by the door to wait instead.
Hopefully she doesn’t take too long finding them.

Knowing her, she probably had Lurch hold onto them, if this was a planned part of her leaving after all.

“So, how long exactly have you known about Fena’s... vampire-ish-ness... without telling me John-Boy?”
His eyes widened slightly and he quickly looked away from me as if that would help avoid the question in general.

At least I won’t be bored while waiting!

======

“Does this look okay? It’s kind of hard to check yourself out when mirrors don’t show your reflection...”

My eyes cut away from my now minute-long silent glare at John to glance over at Fena’s newly arrived form instead and had to bite down hard on my tongue to stop myself from making some kind of sound honestly.

Biker leathers, full-body skin-tight biker leathers with a dark black helmet tucked under her arm, the silver accents of which really worked well with the studs on her belt, boots and jacket as a whole to give off the impression of a truly interesting looking biker-girl in my opinion.
...And I thought we had it bad when she went through that whole ‘Lolita’ phase a few years ago...

“I-it looks... good...”
The words barely managed to pass my lips as she turned around slowly, showing off every curve she had in such an amazingly unfair package.

“It’s very, uh-”
My next stab at an awkward compliment stopped short when my voice actually cracked slightly into a higher pitch as I fought hard to hide the blush I can already feel creeping up my cheeks despite my best efforts.

Judging by the knowing look on her face, and barely surprised ROLLS of laughter I could feel coming off of John behind me, I have no doubt that they both know exactly what my problem is, which sadly only made the blushing problem worse out of embarrassment if nothing else.

“I’m glad you like it Hannah, if you ask nicely I’m sure I can sort you out with a set of your own. The guy who makes mine does a lot of work for the more quiet and hidden members of the vampire community usually.”
She shifted her feet in her biker boots and glanced away from me slightly as a tiny frown formed on her lips before she continued with just a touch of bitterness to her voice.
“I’m pretty sure the old perv would jump at the chance to fit someone with an actual pulse into one of these things...”

Before I could question her sudden change in mood Fena practically skipped forward, all bitterness seemingly forgotten, and snagged my arm up in hers with only slightly faked excitement.

“Come on then Hannah. I’m ready to go out into the world again, it’s been too long since I’ve been both conscious and sober at the same time long enough to notice how dark and depressing it can get in this place at times.”

In a smooth, obviously practiced motion she pulled her motor-bike helmet onto her head with one hand and with a few moments fiddling managed to get the chin strap in place where it could overlap slightly with the high neck of her leather under-shirt.

The image finally complete I could understand her logic in wearing it all honestly.
While the leathers offered complete skin coverage on all sides and the, I’m assuming UV protected, visor of her helmet allowed her to see still, she also didn’t exactly look ‘weird’ or ‘out of place’ in general either.

Well, no more so than a Motorcyclist in Klamath Falls could look at least.

For some reason it felt like she would easily fit in to some kind of action movie as the ‘faceless courier’ character who the hero has to chase down, due mostly to the all-black coloring and my overactive imagination I think honestly, but she definitely doesn’t scream ‘vampire walking around in the daylight’ at least which I guess was the intended goal in the first place after all.

“Daylights burning and I’m sure everyone’s wondering where you are at this point seeing as your visit apparently wasn’t planned or anything, so let’s go already!”

That being said she placed a leather-clad hand on the small of my back and practically pushed me out the front door, John following in our wake with Lurch bringing up the rear with her bottomless bag containing practically the whole shop inside it.

As we made our way down the street towards the taxi office a few streets over that we’re apparently going to use to get back home now on some silent decision between John and Fena, without my input being needed nor requested, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of foreboding that I just couldn’t shake for some reason.

It wasn’t until we were just a few steps away from the taxi office’s doors before it finally clicked in my head what was bothering me so much.

...We disappeared?...
Me and John, we disappeared while I was having a pretty major magical freak-out and when my magic exploded it knocked us both out for who knows how long!
...I don’t have my phone on me...

Hell, I’m lucky I have clothes on me considering John had just got done dragging me out of a magic and drug fuelled state of insanity when everything went crazy.

Whether we were gone just a few hours in that desert or a full day, or more, it doesn’t matter because the outcome is still going to be the same... Sarah’s going to go ballistic at me for worrying her again!

Almost unconsciously I allowed Fena’s gloved hands to guide me into the backseat of our taxi and my mind started going into damage-control mode as I tried to find some way of getting through this without being yelled at by my rightfully frightened sister in twenty minutes or so.

...The odds aren’t exactly in our favor on that one...
Very, very not in my favor!

======

“Fena could you... just kinda... go in first to tell everyone I’m safe and stuff?”
John’s highly amused snort was joined a moment or two later by Fena’s slightly muffled laugh which really isn’t a good sign here.
“Please?... I’ll get you all the goat’s blood you could want, promise?”

This time there was no laugh from her and, although it was hard to tell with her face covered by her visor in total darkness from my perspective, it felt like she was at least mildly curious at the idea if nothing else.

John’s snort progressed into a full blown snigger naturally, not helping my nerves any more than the collection of curious heads I could see popping out of our front-front door to duck inside again a moment later as their owners went back into the bowels of our house, presumably to spread the news that we’ve returned at last.

Fena actually had the gall to offer me a silent, but nonetheless mocking, pat on the back in false reassurance!

Even from here I could hear a commotion starting in the house which could really only mean one thing, Sarah’s coming.
In desperation I turned and grabbed Fena’s hand while using every trick I’ve picked up over the years to give her the most devastatingly adorable ‘puppy dog’ look I could manage as she staggered away from me slightly in surprise.

“Human virgin’s blood Fena! No questions asked, I’ll get you as much as you want if I have to raid every Chess Club from here to Brooklyn, just please... PLEASE, don’t let Sarah get her hands on m-”

“HANNAH COOPER, YOU ARE IN SO MUCH TROUBLE!”

Oh crap, crapping, cra-
...Too late for that now dumbass, RUN!...

My knees jerked and within moments I was sprinting towards the back of our house in the direction furthest away from Sarah’s now gaining form as possible.

As I whipped around the side of our house and jumped the slope entirely with one awkward roll that lost me precious seconds it was hard to miss the nearly hysterical laugher coming from John that happened to be joined annoyingly by Fena’s still muffled voice as she made no move to help me in the slightest despite my earlier pleading.

“Get back here Han!”

======

A few wild minutes later, we both lay on our backs in a panting mess trying desperately to catch our breaths after the garden-borne chase that just took place.

My plan had originally been to dodge into the back door and go hide in my Realm for another month or two until she calmed down properly but every time I tried to make a move towards it she somehow knew what I was thinking because she was RIGHT there, every bloody time!

Eventually there’s just only so many times you can dodge around trees on pure luck alone and Sarah managed to tackle me to the ground as if it had been a forgone conclusion that she would from the very start.

On the plus side the whole manic chase itself seems to have worked wonders for her mood if the mild grin I can see stretching her cheeks is any indication, but on the negative side I’m completely worn out, feeling weak as a kitten and utterly defenceless if she decides to have yet another change in mood at some point in the near future.

“I’m glad you’re okay, Han... Sorry I yelled...”
Slowly I rolled myself over in the grass so we could look at each other properly again and a small grin flitted across my lips in acceptance of her apology.

She had a good reason to be worried and if I didn’t know any better I’d almost think this whole chase was just her way of making sure I really was ‘okay’ despite the near-meltdown state I was in the last time we saw each other honestly.

“So what happened after you left?... I’m sure John could fill me in but I caught you so you’ve got to spill or else, that’s the rules after all.”

This time I really did smile, her little grin turned into an outright smile as well as we devolved into a relieved fit of laughter between us that felt so nice as my heartbeat finally settled back into something close to a ‘normal’ rhythm in general.

“How long have you got?... I kinda accidentally made a brand-new oasis somewhere in Death Valley that tried to eat me and I’m a lightning mage now apparently, as you can imagine, that’s just the cliff notes version...”
Her hand flew out to slap my shoulder lightly in reprimand but her smile didn’t dim in the slightest.

“Start from the top, tell me everything!”

======

“So Fena’s really a-”
Sarah’s hand came up and she did a kind of awkward ‘fang-like’ gesture with her fingers in front of her mouth that didn’t exactly take a genius to work out the meaning of sadly.

“Yup, throne of dead animal parts and everything... she’s fine though! Just kind of went off the rails a bit like I did apparently but she’s all sober now and perfectly safe as long as we keep a stock of blood around for her come dinner time.”

“Well that’s.... reassuring?”

Seriously, of all the points to come out of our catch up conversation THAT'S the one she's stuck on?

I mean sure she's not exactly had any good experiences with vampires over the years.
She didn’t exactly get on with Fena even before finding out about it either come to that, but surely me going all ‘God Hannah’ again while forcefully shattering what was left of ‘my’ powers-damned CORE should be slightly higher up the worry list here, right?

...She’s being unreasonably selfish in her fear, in my opinion...
Exactly!

“Trust me on this one Sare, Fena’s safe. Even when she was high on junkie-blood for weeks on end she never attacked anyone or made a throne of human remains after all.”
...It was animal parts instead, completely different and understandable...

“It’s fine Han, nothing I’ve seen over the years leads me to think she’s a threat to us at all... it’s actually kinda a relief. I always thought something was off with her honestly but it all makes more sense if she’s a vampire.”
Um... what?
“She doesn’t blink enough for a normal human. It’s creepy and always made me feel like she was some sort of psycho stalker just waiting for me to push her too far so she could kill me in my sleep or something.”

What is she-
I don’t... I mean... wha-

“You seriously didn’t notice? The blinking thing and the weird irregular breathing patterns were pretty obvious at times, especially if you got too close and she sniffed yo... oh, okay... yeah, that IS kinda creepy again now that I think about it.”

Fena sniffs me?!
...Constantly...
Powers-damn it, am I literally the only person who didn’t know something weird was up with her?
...Probably...
Damn it!

Let’s move on quickly before I start getting paranoid about people sniffing me all over again.
It was bad enough the first time!

“We’re getting a bit off topic here Sare, I’m almost tempted to suggest we get back to you yelling at me for letting John kidnap me to protect you and Eris over discussing Fena again at this point, so can we just drop it now we know that you feel safe with her around, please?”
Sarah shrugged a little uncertainly but didn’t argue as I almost frantically started searching for a new topic to fill the void in conversation my request had introduced.

“How about you catch me up on what I’ve missed around here, huh? Not that I’m expecting much obviously, I was only gone a day afte-”
She cringed visibly.
“-uh oh, what’s that look for?”

“A messenger from the government came for you this morning.”
Oh... oh, I am just so not stoned enough to handle this right now...

“Hold that thought, if I’m going to be dealing with the next idiocy to invade my life already I at least want to be sitting down with a coffee and something to eat first, Sare.”
Surprisingly she nodded along with me as if that idea made way more sense than even I’d intended it to which really isn’t helping this situation honestly!

“Probably a good idea, I’ll make some sandwiches and call Eris down to give you a hug, trust me you’re gonna need it Han...”

Powers damn it!

======

“I’m sorry but I’m really just not getting it, can you run this by me one more time, Sare?”
Eris giggled from her new, to her mind at least, position on my lap at the kitchen counter.

It was unbelievably awkward when she first turned up and I can’t even describe how much effort it took for me to not wince when she called me ‘Auntie Hannah’ but I’ll admit that having her so close is helping me stay at least slightly calm at the moment if nothing else.

Distractedly I reached out and grabbed a piece of Eris’s sandwich, tearing off the crusts with a now practiced twist before holding it up for her to take a bite out of, which she did with yet another happy little giggle.

It’s amazing how quickly little actions can become second nature to you really?
I barely even noticed I was doing it until she giggled again, my mind more focused on trying to process the latest mess to land on my doorstep and who I should be blaming for it all.

“He said that the magical congress was being called to session so they can finally do something about the whole ‘everyone dying’ thing, you’re the main person delaying them at this point because they need five of the ‘numbers’ or their representatives present before they can make any new rulings official, outside the initial state of emergency at least, and most of them are currently dead.”

Yep... that sounds exactly the same as it did the first two times she said it...
I have so many questions but also no ability to verbalise them properly because swearing around Eris is a bad idea in general!

The magical congress thing I get.
They’ve been slow in reacting to everything, thanks to me apparently, but generally speaking their jobs are to keep the magical world ticking over if something big like Crater Lake happens unexpectedly.

The ‘Numbers or their representatives’ part I get too sadly.
Why they couldn’t have just called John in I have no idea, probably something stupid to do with that whole ‘making me his heir’ thing he pulled out of his ass when we were claiming our house and the surrounding miles of land at the Hub knowing my luck, but I get that the Numbers are considered wise and important to most politically savvy mages at least.

With John being ‘Number Two’, Edith apparently being the ‘Sixth’ and presumably Arista being ‘Number One’ they could be calling me in for multiple reasons I guess, my role as John’s heir, Edith’s apprentice or just because I technically inherited everything from Arista thanks to her meddling with my core.

Most of the Numbers being dead isn’t hard to work out either.
They could have died separately, for political reasons or something, but odds are that Arista’s highest ranking children would obviously have been at the Lake the day I went and massacred the lot of them, unless they’d had a falling out with her of course, which I think it’s safe to say is probably why some of them are alive at all right now...

I get all of that. The problem... the question I don’t get is WHY?!

Why me, why now, why... just generally ‘why’ really?
I’ve never wanted to go into bloody-politics!

I just don’t have the temper for it for a start.
The first guy who says the wrong thing to me when I’m in a bad mood and I’ll likely be up for homicide in their once hallowed but now blood-stained halls, for Powers-sake!

There are so many people who are better positioned to do this sort of crap.
The first one coming to mind being John obviously, the sneaky bastard that he is...

Come to think of it, I think I’ve finally worked out who’s to blame for this mess now at least.

“JOHN! Get your ass here now or else!”
Ahhh... that felt good...

My arm reflexively squeezed Eris as reassuringly as I could, making her relax out of the stiff pose she’d taken on when I yelled so suddenly.

I ran my thumb absentmindedly across her cheek and up to tickle the little hairs behind her ear, in a way I know she likes, as she slowly eased herself even further back against my chest.
Eventually her little head finally came to a stop on my left breast and she turned it slightly to the side so her ear could rest unerringly on that same damn spot she always manages to find somehow with a contented sigh.

A little smile came to my lips as the familiar sensation of our aura’s magics mingling together pulsed away in my chest like a heartbeat, louder than ever before to my senses... although that’s probably just because my control is so ridiculously improved compared to the way it was when she used to do this sort of thing before-
“You call, Han?”
-and here comes the entertainment at last!

Let’s see if John knows anything helpful about this new mess, shall we?
...I’d be surprised if he didn’t plan the whole bloody-thing honestly...

“John-Boy, what do you know about the magical congress calling a meeting that needs at least five ‘Numbers’ there before they can even start?”
He froze mid-step but that barely lasted a moment before he was moving swiftly to my side and sliding into the empty stool next to me with a practiced ease.

“Oh Crap...seriously?”
...My thoughts indeed John-Boy, my thoughts indeed...

======

“Auntie Hannah! You gotta get up, Dad says if you don’t then he’s gonna call your guards to do it instead!”

“Murphurna-”
...I hate you so much sometimes John...
“-wha’ time’sit?...”

A certain over-excitable little limpet decided that my half-intelligible grunts didn’t count as being ‘awake’ apparently because she proceeded to lunge onto my bed and start jumping around in a manner I’ve become annoyingly used to over the summer I’m afraid, despite the relatively few times she’s actually done it in that timeframe.

We stayed up pretty late last night hashing things out and coming up with plans for our apparent near future.

Between John’s ‘helpful’ input about what will be expected of me as ‘Maxarimus’s representative’ and what kind of ramifications might come crashing down on my head if I don’t go along with this latest madness, it took a while just for me to get past the ‘swearing portion’ of the night in all honesty.

If I don’t turn up then they can’t call the congress to session and if they can’t call it to session within the next week or so then we’re all doomed because officially the Magical Government of America will be formally ‘disbanded’, making rights over the magical citizens of the USA essentially ‘up-for-grabs’ to the highest international bidder.

It’s a bloody-stupid system in my opinion.
A system that just about makes sense when you consider it was designed back in a time where national borders were more of a suggestion than anything else.

A time where any mage worth his magic had claimed some small area of land and people as his own private kingdom which should never be allowed to go too long without a ruler... but is so horribly out of date at this point with the invention of ‘countries’ in general that it’s not even funny!

John reckons that they must be really desperate if they’re calling in Maxarimus, or me as his representative at least, because normally the higher numbers tend to just be left to their own devices like the walking time-bombs of insanity they tend to be, to minimize damage for everyone involved.

The fact that they sent someone in person and the fact that it was to ME of all people says a hell of a lot about just how bad things apparently are below the surface!
To misquote Hamlet; ‘Something’s rotten in the state of New York’... and considering how my luck goes these day’s I’m probably going to end up being the only one who can fix it.

I hate my life sometim- Oww, that’s not a handhold Young Lady!

“Okay, okay! I’m getting up!”
Anything if she’ll just let go of my- Ahh, that’s better.
I swear she gets the boob-grabbing thing from John...
“Go make sure John’s ready and breakfast is cooking for me sweetie, I’ll be down in a minute, I promise.”

That was all the assurance Eris needed apparently before she shot off the bed in a rather comically slow sprint that only a young child could consider ‘fast’ but the giggle she let off at the same time warmed my heart.

It still hurts having her so close by and, if nothing else, this little side-trip to our magical state-capital will give me some breathing room to get settled again after the all-out assault dealing with Eris for the last twelve hours or so has felt like, so I guess I shouldn’t grumble about it all too much in the end, huh?
...My boob’s still hurt from her using them as hand-holds again though...

With a sigh I sat up and rubbed tenderly against my now sore left side for a few seconds before flicking my legs over the edge so I could shuffle my way out of bed to go find my bag with a fresh set of clothes in it.

A few minutes later and I had on a comfortable set of jean-shorts with a baggy red boat-necked sweatshirt that practically covered those same shorts from view due to it’s length and my short legs.
I really do miss my golden magic badly at times like this; I could go days without changing clothes thanks to that little tri-

The bedroom door opened, as commanded by my hand turning the handle in much the same way as you would expect really, but the sight that greeted me on the other side of that door, along with the general chaos and noise which somehow hadn’t managed to reach me through the wall to such an impressive degree that I suspect magic may have been involved in some way, was enough to make my still only just awake mind stall out completely once again in horror.

“Oh... what fresh hell is this?”
...Looks like someone is trying to organise an army’s troop movements at short notice...

I have no idea who decided to tell my extended family that they are coming with us to Long Island but it’s hard to take this mess any other way when several werewolves are busy chaining camping equipment and suitcases down the hallway right in front of me with smiles on their faces, and I know exactly who’s going to be to blame for it at least.

“JOHN!”

When it comes down to it, sanity can often be found in the strangest of places and situations, if we need it desperately enough... in my experience at least. Sometimes it can just take being put, reluctantly, back into your element to bring on clarity and a sense of purpose properly at long last. Events unfold including but not limited to: Hannah breaking some windows to get attention, John using his magic effectively without casting a single spell, And a Jeep needing to have its windows opened quickly!

 

“No! No werewolves, the minute they leave our clan grounds they’ll be fair game for anyone who wants to take a shot at them an—”

Henry, one of ‘our’ more annoying magical children wandered past me clutching what I can only describe as a fishing pole crossed with an overly large cucumber and a smirk on his face that made me really just want to go back to my initial reaction of hitting John repeatedly because this is all his BLOODY fault!

“No children either! The big or the little kind!”

This is getting out of hand, I only slept for a few hours?!
How the hell have they managed to mobilise so quickly and come to the mistaken idea that anyone else is coming with us to visit the magical US’s political elite?
...or what’s left of them at least...

“You need to bring an entourage with you Han, I told you that last night, and apparently someone heard us talking because it quickly got out of control, I guess?”

Out of control, ‘you GUESS’?!
There’s an army of werewolves planning on marching on the bloody-capitol building because they mistakenly believe an ‘entourage’ is code for a bloody-ARMY and you GUESS things might be a bit ‘out of control’?!

I’m... I’m going insane?...
What the bloody-hell am I going to do to stop this unholy cluster-fuck car-crash of a situation unfolding in slow motion before it’s all too late?!

...We tried yelling yet? Works on John usually...
Yelling! Perfect, why didn’t I think of tha- oh, wait, I did? –nevermind!

My fingers came up to my lips and John ducked away from me almost instinctively as I pushed magic up my throat to enhance my noise making potential.

With a single huff of breath I let off a whistle so powerful that all the windows in front of us looking down onto our backyard shattered in seconds as every dopy idiot child, cousin or miscellaneous relation in a three mile radius dropped to the floor with a pained yelp.
...Teach them to do stupid stuff while we’re sleeping...
Exactly!

No kid gloves this time.
This. Ends. NOW!

======

My hand came up to rub tiredly against my forehead while the arguing continued on despite my obvious lack of involvement at this point.

“How many ‘entourage’ members are we down to now, John-Boy?”
His eyes cut up from a piece of paper and even before he opened his mouth I could tell just from the look on his face that I wasn’t going to like the answer he had to offer.

“Four-hundred and thirteen”

Crappppp... if anyone ever says that ‘it’s good to be loved by your family’ to me again then I’m going to personally zap them in the balls with lightning magic!

So many people, so many diverse little sub-groupings of people, and they all expect to be ‘represented’ in my ‘honor guard’ while taking offence every damn time I try to offer a compromise of any sort to calm things down at long last and... and, ya know what?...

“Screw it, I’m done!”

With stamping feet I forced myself back to a standing position and rose my fingers back to my lips making everyone around us freeze with such satisfying horror on their faces that even in my current state I couldn’t help but let a little smirk out just because I could in response.

“I’ve made my decision! My entourage will consist of Me and John, that’s it, the rest of you get lost back in the realm before I lose my patience.”

Everyone stayed frozen with obvious disbelief written on all their faces as they stared back at me at first but all it took was one more forceful huff and a little lean forward that left no doubt in anyone’s minds that my next actions would shatter yet more eardrums if they don’t get moving to start the stampede back upstairs at long last.

“Say what you want, I’m already packed and so is Eris so we’re still coming Han.”
Damn it... I’ve got such a headache...

“I’m coming too, ‘vampire rights and peace’, ‘free the under-represented once-buried masses’ and all that stuff... I’ve always wanted to try my hand at politics honestly...”
Really big headache, really, REALLY big headache!

“Motherrr! I’ll come too as your-”

“NO!”
Not him, anyone but him.
What the hell kind of role does he even think he could pretend to do in m-
“Damn it Narcissus, don’t start crying!”

...Seriously?!...

“Look, I’m sorry I yelled, okay? I’ve got a headache and it’s just... it’s just...”
...THINK! Quickly!...
“It’s just that I need you here more than anything?”
...Ohh, good one...
“Uh, yeah! I need you here to... keep an eye... on the shopping district while I’m gone...?”

John coughed awkwardly to my side in a way that really didn’t hide his snigger at my poorly hidden, let alone thought out, ‘cover story’ for why I couldn’t bring Narcissus with me to Long Island.

The sappy self-obsessed idiot didn’t notice though apparently, probably lost in his own little world of joy at his ‘mother’ having such an important role for him in her absence judging by the almost sparkling effect of unshed tears in his eyes in the brief moment I got to see them before he dived forward to give me a really unwelcome hug around my waist instead!

“Get. Him. Off of me. Now, John-Boy...”
Yet again Narcissus seemed blissfully unaware of the growl rumbling low in my chest as he clung on to me and rambled on about ‘plans’ he’d apparently made months ago because ‘he just knew I’d pick him eventually’ or some such garbage.

I’m honestly beyond the point of caring as long as he’s gone soon, very, very soon.

Thankfully for all our sakes Echo seemed to notice the near murderous look in my eyes because she made quick work of easing him off of me with surprisingly little effort, while getting him into a discussion about ‘his new job’ full of open praise which distracted him far too easily for my sanities sake as the pair walked away as if nothing that happened just moments before was ever ‘real’ to start with.

“I’m in a nightmare, an honest to Powers nightmare... anyone else want to crawl out of the woodwork to try and claim their spot on this stupid non-existent entourage?!”

Silence descended around us, blissful, wonderful silence which I think even John was glad to see at this point.
I can feel the little hairs on my arms sticking up from built up static electricity I’ve gained where my emotions got the better of me an-

“Knock, knock?”

I’m... I’m gonna kill someone?...
I don’t care who, maybe just myself will do, but I’m definitely, definitely going to kill someone!

“It’s only us, Trudy and Rosemary, from the AMS?... We heard your guard detail were coming up to prep for this whole ‘summons to New York’ thing and figured we’d hitch a ride with them on the way because-”
I didn’t hear what else Trudy was saying from that point on.

Someone’s arm made its careless way around the corner leading from our front hallway into the kitchen and I lunged forward sharply only to find myself pulled back with a grunt by John of all people.

For a few seconds I struggled against him but he didn’t hesitate to unleash his aura making a shudder go down my spine due to our proximity even as a thick blanket of his magic drifted its way around me in a warm wave of love, affection and calm feelings that I just couldn’t resist.

Like a puppet with its strings cut I sunk heavily back into his chest and let out a long, tired sigh that pretty much summed up the last hour or so since I woke up in its entirety at this point.

“...I fucking hate politics...”
John laughed and the little jolt of amusement I felt through his magic felt so nice I laughed dazedly along with him for some reason.

The arm’s owner finally came into focus for my slightly blurred eyes and I let out one last, almost insane sounding giggle as Pauly looked down at us with more than a little confused frustration obvious on his weathered old features.

Me, John ‘the magical blanket’ Jones, Sarah and Eris apparently, Fena our newly dubbed ‘vampire rights activist’, the AMS girls and Pauly’s crew of annoying soldiers just to add the icing on the cake!

I really did go to bed last night thinking this whole thing might actually be SIMPLE and easy for once but no; as if the universe could ever let anything in my life just be simple and easy in any way-shape-or-form!

“...I wanna go back to bed...”
John snorted and my head lolled back slightly further as my eyes shut under the wonderful assault of his magically transmitted emotions that washed over me once more.
“Wake me up when we’re ready to go Joh-”

Before I could even finish my sentence my tiredness and the stress of everything combined with that wonderfully warm feeling of love surrounding me won out over my conscious mind and I drifted off to sleep while standing up, being awkwardly cuddled to his chest by a grinning John.
...At least everyone’s being quiet at last...

======

“Bacon... Steak... Sausages dipped in pig fat...”

My head jerked up in bleary surprise and seemingly the whole world around me exploded in laughter for a few seconds before I could work out what was going on.

We’re apparently in one of Pauly’s stupid Jeeps, number three again judging by the two soldiers in the front looking so annoyingly familiar that they can only have been the same ones from the last time I travelled by ‘Pauly cab’ so many months ago now.

“Told you, all it takes is a good bit of meat to wake her up, pay up gun-wavers!”
I can’t even bring myself to be vocally annoyed at John over the obviously intended double-entendre in that sentence?

It probably doesn’t help that I feel so comfortably warm at the moment, still wrapped up in his magic and-
My eyes cut down slightly to make sure my senses weren’t being fooled, only to find a comfortably sleeping Eris sprawled across my chest in her usual ‘starfish’ like pose with her ear stuck just above my heart like old times.
-I’ve got Eris with me too apparently, which feels really good even if she still doesn’t think of me as her ‘Mom’ anymore...

“Wha’ did’I miss?”
The words came out in a half-awake drawl which I honestly hadn’t intended but one that only seemed to amuse everyone around me a little bit more at this point.

There were some shuffling sounds behind me and a few seconds later a recognisable hand holding a recognisable brand of coffee cup reached over my shoulder like some kind of gift from the heavens.

Not willing to give up even the hint of real live coffee in my half-awake, at best, state I moved my free arm up to snag it before I’d even fully realised that the arm holding it belonged to Sarah.
It took me a few more seconds to realise that we obviously can’t be in the same stupid Jeeps as last time because this one apparently has a third row of seats in it.
...Unless Sarah’s currently riding around in the trunk at least?...

Out of curiosity more than anything my eyes cut back over my shoulder to stare at the highly amused face of my sister, sat happily in one of two other ‘back seats’ behind us.
Behind her, Trudy and Rosemary waved happily at me from an even further extended very-back row with the still helmet wearing form of Fena lazing comfortably between them as well.

My coffee-holding hand came up to ‘salute’ them all slightly as best I could before practically diving back down towards my lips so I could take one nice long suck from the precious life-giving nectar inside.

“...Thanks Sare...”
Another round of smiles was my reward for that mumbled comment, but I didn’t mind too much at this point considering it gave me a chance to settle in and slowly reengage my brain over the course of the warm cups life-cycle.

Eventually I noticed that we were moving and it took longer than it probably should have for me to realise that I didn’t really recognise the roads around us at all, meaning we’ve obviously been traveling for a while if nothing else.

“Where are we going?”
John turned his head away from the front to offer me a surprisingly gentle smile as he turned his body to better face me once more, his magic twitching as he moved but not coming loose from its current job as my nice warm invisible blanket.

“The airport.”
I jolted slightly in surprise, almost spilling my coffee a little and getting a tiny sleep-filled grumble from the Eris-starfish on my chest at the same time.

“But... I don’t have any of my stuff?”
I also don’t like flying in planes and he KNOWS that!

I don’t really get travel sick too badly with planes unless we hit some turbulence or have a bumpy landing so that’s something at least but on the other hand I DO have what I’d like to say are mild, but are probably better described as ‘major’, panic attacks when we’re in the air!
...We scream like a little girl and cling to the nearest person for dear life is more like it...
Human-beings flying in the air thanks to anything but magic is just not natural! Okay?!

“No worries Han, we got your expanded bag full of clothes and junk from your bedroom, it’s in the jeep behind us, and Sarah even grabbed a pile of books in case you get bored.”
His smile was still looking eerily gentle for some reason which kind of threw me off for a second but I managed to pull myself together again quick enough to give him a proper answer at least.

“Not that stuff John-boy, I need a new safety suit for a start and if we’re going to face magical politicians then I’m going to need every dirty little trick my drugged up mind could think of just to survive most likely!”
Eris shifted a little at my raised voice and my hand moved to better support her head while patting her hair to help her settle back down again without a thought as I stared meaningfully at John’s disbelieving face.

“You’re exaggerating...”

“Maybe a little bit but I’ll feel safer with them anyway and more importantly the suit at the very least keeps my magic calm... just because it’s not been a problem since my core exploded doesn’t mean it couldn’t go wrong eventually.”

Even I’m not completely convinced there’s anything to worry about anymore with my core honestly but it’s as good an excuse for him as any.
I put a lot of hard work into that suit and I’ve kinda gotten used to not needing silly things like showers and toilet breaks thank-you-very-much, not to mention it helping me deal with my periods better on a cramps-front and mess-front, of course.

Besides, we have no clue who could be a sleeper agent for Arista at this point considering she established the MPA apparently. I’d rather wear the suit and not need it then need it and not have it at this point, preferably with Eris and John also wearing their own ones for safety sake, come to that.

“I’m not going to be the one to tell this lot to turn back. It was hard enough convincing them that a flight on my private jet was better than three days of non-stop driving and I really don’t want to push my luck with that Paul guy... pretty sure he was tempted more than once to just shoot me and get it over with honestly...”

“You have a private jet?”
It took a second for my brain to catch up with the rest of his words and I felt a little stupid for voicing that question when I did.

Of course he has a private jet; he’s a rich ancient-mage and an asshole at the same time after all.
He also has a manor in England now that I think about it?

I really need to sort my finances out at some point. I can’t let John have yet another reason to feel smug around me by being the one always paying for everything much longer or he might realise it’s happening and find a way to block my bank access entirely just to be an ass and enjoy it all a little bit longer.

“Forget that, more importantly we don’t need to stop... I think?”
Cautiously a shot a glance around the elongated Jeep-thing we’re riding in and after a quick glance down to check Eris would be okay if the sound involved woke her at all I focused on our two gun-toting drivers in the front seats instead.
“Umm... just a heads up, if this works we’re going to have a visitor making a bit of noise and fire dropping in so... uh, don’t panic, I guess?... Okay?”

The male driver stayed focused on the road ahead but his female companion in the passenger seat turned to shoot me a knowing look that came off as only moderately smug, although that could just be because I’m used to John’s ‘entirely smug’ looks all the time at this point and I’ve lost the ability to judge normal levels of smugness properly or something.

“Okay, here goes... Felix?”
For a moment nothing happened as we kept driving along the road and Sarah even started to snigger slightly under her breath at the worried pout that I could feel forming on my lips as the seconds ticked on without response.

Finally, just as I was preparing to give up on my self-proclaimed ‘familiar’s odd ability to hear when I call him that’s saved my butt more than once since we met, there was a puff of smoke followed by a rather pathetic looking flame that seemed to almost gutter out the moment it formed right in front of me.

Several people helpfully opened their windows to let the slowly spreading smoke out and I eventually got a clear view of Felix at last, who honestly did NOT look well at all!
His little wing-flicks looked slow, almost tired as they just about held him in the air and his bulbous little eyes looked glazed-over as he took in everything around him with a lost look on his chubby little red face.

“Felix?”
He twitched and within moments seemed to gain some life back into himself as he swung around mid-flap to face me, his face lighting up in surprised awe and delight as the seconds ticked on.

“Bii-Sanya? Bii-Sanya!”
I barely got any more warning then that joyfully confused cry before he dive bombed me, latching his cute little furry body practically around my head as he hugged me as if I’d come back from the dead or something.

“Hey buddy, it’s been a while, huh?”
He didn’t answer me verbally but I could feel his little body shaking from its new position as if he were crying, which was worrying in itself honestly because I really didn’t know Imp’s COULD cry, biologically speaking at least.

Before I could say anything to help comfort him an odd sensation formed across my forehead, right where he had his own little fur-covered one resting on mine, which grew quickly into a forceful pressure upon my magic itself.
My first instinct was to lash back at the invading force but almost as soon as I’d thought of that it finally clicked in my head why the pressure felt so familiar.

“Felix?”

He didn’t answer yet again but he did squeeze my head a little tighter as the force that can only be his fiery Fae magic at this point continued to cautiously force its way into my system from the point where our heads touched.

While I didn’t know what he was trying to do, I DO trust the little guy and it didn’t take much for me to effectively tell my magic to ‘let him pass’.

Practically the moment I did just that his magic surged forwards, flying down the line leading from my left temple across my chest and blazing a trail down to the only possible destination it could realistically be searching for at this point.

His trailing line of magic connected with my Locus Point core and in seconds the warmth of his power spread out across my body in an amazingly wonderful feeling of care and devotion that almost reminded me of the way John’s magic feels when he wraps me up inside it.

“...Bii-Sanya...”
“...Lady-Death...”

A wide smile came to my lips in response to that funny little musical echo of words that I hadn’t realised I’d missed as much as I did until I heard it once more.

”You-are alive! We feared-the-worst when-your power exploded-across the-laylines of the-sleepers-hole...”
Slowly he eased his grip loose from around my head and pushed himself backwards slightly with a flap of his wings so we could see each other better.
“I must-inform the-others. The-Fae will rejoice at-your-return Lady-Death!”

All signs of his sluggish, hazy lack of energy had seemingly disappeared at this point and his red little cheeks seemed to positively glow as he grinned at me, his eyes still taking me in constantly as if he couldn’t really believe I was sitting in front of him like this.

The excitable little guy moved back slightly more and almost instinctively I knew he was about to leave.
Probably to do just as he’d said, inform the Fae that I wasn’t dead, which would kind of defeat my original point in calling him if I didn’t say something quickly.

“Felix! Before you go to the others, can you drop into my realm and grab some things for me?”
He froze in place... well, about as frozen as someone can be while being suspended in the air by wings flapping behind them at least?... but his face didn’t lose any of its newfound joy at least as he nodded his little head with a happy smile playing across his fanged lips.
“I’m not really sure how to describe where you have to go, my workshops are kind of hidden behind a locked door at the moment, but I need a large bag that’s tucked away in a dark corner of my satellite chamber and a replacement for this torn suit I’m wearing?”

My hands came up to play with the high-neck of my suit to show what I meant and he seemed to concentrate on it for a few seconds before blinking a few times with another nod of understanding.

“Lady-Death’s realm is like-the-golden-halls, yes?”
...Golden halls?...

Oh! The ones back at the Hub I infected with my magic by accident while fighting Maven?
That reminds me, I really should go see if I can fix that at some point.
...Time for that later though, one thing at a time Han!...

“Yeah, kind of like those halls Felix, it’s pumped full of my magic at least and-”
The almost violent nodding of Felix’s head made me trail off in confusion as he grinned at me knowingly in response.

“The-halls like-me. They-feel Lady-Death’s touch. I-will find what-you-need easily!”
That said he flapped harshly once more and twisted in the air, disappearing in a Fae teleportation which was a lot more ‘fire’ and a lot less ‘smoke’ when compared to the one he appeared with earlier at least.

With a sigh I leaned back in my seat a little more and got ready to wait for him to reappear.
After a few seconds where my eyes almost drifted shut again from just how warm and comfortable I felt, even with John’s magic having fallen away when Felix latched onto me, I flinched slightly as Eris moved against my chest.

Slowly her little head turned up so her eyes could stare at me in mild confusion but it bled away into curiosity a few seconds later for some reason and she opened her mouth to speak instead.

“...Was that Felix?...”
A little smile played across my lips and I brushed her hair back from her face unconsciously in amusement as her lazy eyes trailed over my face thoughtfully.
“What did he want? He’s Mom’s familiar but I’ve not seen him in ages since...”

My eyes went wide in shock almost at the same moment that hers drooped in lost confusion.

Part of me wanted to jump around in as much excitement as Felix showed a few moments ago at the idea that some part of her still remembers something so specific, something about me, even if she’s now confused because reality doesn’t quite match up with her thoughts due to Sarah not really being her ‘Mom’.

The other, more rational side of me is spinning in circles trying to find a way to do damage control if this goes any further than it already has.

Whatever Arista did to her isn’t perfect.
That’s great, fantastic even because it means that there could be ways for us to subvert it all and fix it... but it also means that Eris could be in danger if we aren’t careful too.

Potentially this could be like Mum all over again!
Her memories were tampered with and she’s hitting walls where things don’t add up.
Things could go so much worse from here if we’re not supremely careful at this crucial ti-

Before I could make up my mind one way or the other about where to go from here the confusion on Eris’s little face cleared completely leaving her looking worryingly blank for a moment until it finally moved back into her usual smile again and she settled her head back down on my chest once more as if nothing had happened in the slightest in the time between her raising her head and her resting it back down once more.

For a few long seconds I stared down at the top of her head as the newly re-opened wound of losing her stabbed away at me inside but with a slightly harsh huff of breath I managed to force those emotions back behind the ‘veil’ with all the other things I’m just not ready to handle at the moment, instead turning my head up to stare at John with hope-filled eyes which he’d have to be stupid to not understand at this point.

I almost felt like mouthing the words ‘she remembers’ to him as he looked between me and her with unspoken pain obvious on his face but seeing the shocked, almost hurt, look on Sarah’s face from her position practically next to him stopped me short on doing that at least.

My minds already coming up with small ways I can test the limits of this tiny chink in Arista’s horrible mind-work on turning my... turning Eris against m... US.
It’s not much, but I’ve done a lot more with a lot less in the past and Eris’s wellbeing is one hell of an incentive for me to start getting creative!

Slowly my eyes drifted down to stare at the once more ‘starfish’ shaped Eris lump on my chest and I gently eased her loose hand up, tucking her fingers away until only her thumb remained so I could easily slip it between her slightly parted lips.

A gentle little smile flickered across my own lips as she sniffed slightly in her sleep but finally started to suck her thumb the way she always used to do in so many past incarnations that I only vaguely remember and one that I hope we can get back someday soon.

John’s magic spread out to wrap around me once more while I was busy watching Eris start to snore to herself lightly, the comfortable warmth felt perfect as a compliment to the rekindled hope I could feel slowly growing in my chest just from knowing that all isn’t lost for the first time in a long while.

“...Thanks John-Boy...”
Out the corner of my eye I could see his smirk almost as easily as I could feel his happiness at that thank you vibrate through his magic moments later.

We’re heading to the biggest collection of high-power mages left in the United States.
Sure, I’m going to have to put up with an airplane trip to get there... but where there’s mages there will be experts in every field imaginable.

I don’t care if I have to go full Arista-mode just to get their attention, I WILL get their attention, and when I do I’ll make damn sure that if anyone has even a hint of an idea what she did to Eris then they will tell me every-damn-thing!

======

We were just passing under some kind of large overpass, about five quiet minutes of driving since my little revelation with Eris, when there came a surprisingly muffled ‘pop’ followed by a roar of flames and Felix appeared in the Jeep with us once more, his little wings flapping frantically to stay airborne due to the weight he was carrying with him.

In his little clawed hands he was clutching the rather long handles of the ‘bug-out bag’ I’d requested from my workshop, a recognisable roll of black cloth tucked through those same handles, showing that against all odds he’d actually managed to get my spare suit too.

My free hand came up to rub gently on top of his round little red-head in thanks and the little guy seemed to practically glow under my attention, even as he let the bag fall into the space by my feet in order to better stay at the right height to get a proper head-scratching in peace moments later.

“Thanks Buddy, I knew you could manage it. Do you want to stay with us for a while? I’m sure Eris will be happy to see you again at least.”
For a few seconds he just kept rubbing his face into my palm blissfully but with some effort obvious on his face he managed to pull himself away from my scratches to look at me better once more.

“Little-Lady-Death-Pup is-confused by-me Lady-Death. It-will-be-better if she avoids-contact with-me for-now. I-must-return to the-others to-inform them of your-return anyway but thank-you for-the praise my-bonded. Call-on-me again when-you-are free to-do so once-more.”

With a happy little yip that even our odd familiar bond couldn’t translate, one that felt like laughter of some sort from what I can feel of his magic through this newly re-established bond we share, one that I’m pretty sure we must have had before but I can feel so clearly now that it’s mildly disturbing, he flapped slightly harder and disappeared with a ‘pop’ and a well-controlled burst of sulphurous flames.

“That’s probably the most I’ve ever heard the little guy say in one go, anything interesting?”
I rolled my head to the side and shot John a slightly reproving glare before shaking my head moments later.

It’s none of his business what we say to each other after all.
If John’s so curious what Imps say around him then he’ll just have to learn how to speak their language or at least get himself a translator like I have, so there!

A smirk played across my lips from the mild disbelief I could feel radiating out of John’s magic in response to my last words and I snuggled down in my seat for the rest of our drive to the currently undisclosed airport ahead of us somewhere.

I’ve got a goal now.
I’ve got a something I can gain out of playing along with all this stupid mage-politics and, wherever this latest mess is going to take us in the process of unfolding, it will be worth it if I can help her.

If it takes me claiming conquest rights over Arista publically to do it then so be it!

Obviously that won’t be my first choice or even ‘Plan F’ for that matter but if that’s what it takes for me help Eris then I’ll outright pretend to be that crazy dead-bitch no matter the consequences.
She hurt my daughter, worse than that, she did a terrible job of it at the same time for Powers-sake!

Watch out Long Island!

You just invited Hannah Cooper and her entourage to dinner and we aren’t taking prisoners anymore.
I’m going to ferret out every Arista supporter, sponsor or collaborator left among you bunch of magical snobs and when I find them I’m going to have some questions answered, either willingly or after copious applications of my traitorous Grans favored lightning empowered ‘interrogation methods’!

...Hoo-Raa!...

There are many forms of politics out there. If you really think about it, all social interactions can be boiled down to a form of ‘politics’ in the long run. That doesn’t mean we all have to be politicians about it though! Events unfold including but not limited to: Ill-informed books being studied, Hannah ends up wishing she had a tail again, And new clothes are created, for science!

 

Lightning magic cannot be ‘aimed’ like fire magic, nor can it be formed like ice, moulded like water or channelled like earth and wind. The key to controlling lightning magic is to remember that it will move between receptors only. You must form up your magic into a conductive shape, outside your body, and then send bursts out through that shape to ensure you do not electrocute yourself at the same time as you attack.

Many lightning mages choose to adopt a conductive weapon, be it a sword or similar, which can be used as both a safer means of ‘aiming’ their attacks while also potentially working as a safe grounding line to disperse built up magic through without harming themselves afterwards.

Lightning magic is wild and almost impossible to dodge in a duel due to its speed, but it can also be affected by a relatively large number of nullifiers which can be put in place ahead of time.
Even Normals have discovered this trait with so-called ‘natural’ lightning and have built their transportation devices, known collectively as ‘auto-mobiles’, specifically in the shape of a grounded ‘cage’ to disperse such attacks, often described as a ‘Phara-day shie—’

Powers damn it—
...He was doing so well too!...
A ‘Phara-day shield’?— Seriously?

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not expecting a miracle here.
For such a recent entry into such a famous book series on elemental theory, it’s been pretty helpful so far, but would it kill them to do even five seconds worth of research into any ‘normal’ topics they branch into?

You know, just enough to realise that the effect they’re talking about is spelled ‘Faraday’ after the original cages inventor Michael Faraday, perhaps?

Why do mages always have to be so stupid?!
...Bad genetics, maybe?...

That’ll do on this chapter for now, I guess.
At least I’ve got a general idea of what I’m doing when casting elemental spells with my new lightning affinity, if nothing else. I’m gonna have to look into getting a metal weapon of some kind, maybe borrow one of Fena’s resonant rods again to make myself a staff, or just get a sword from somewhere instead.

It’s a shame I can’t just create one with magic, but one of the biggest downsides to transmuting items, or even just conjuring them from nothing, is the magical residue that gets left behind.
If I’m going to be channelling tons of high-power electricity through the bloody thing then the last thing I need is a sword that’s contaminated with my magic already and, at worst, one that could potentially decide that it wants to keep all the lovely magic I’m pouring into it for itself until it explodes in my face or something equally stupid.

Okay, let’s see here...
What’s the next chapter on lightning magic?
Ah hah! Found it!

Lightning mages are often known for their easily distracted nature which can frequently come across as inattentiveness or just plain stupidity. Neither of these impressions could be farther from the truth, though:

Mages with lightning elements often find that it provides them with both an innate boost in situational awareness when other people or nearby animals are involved, in much the same way that wind mages can learn to ‘read the wind’ and sense movement around them with little to no effort from an early age, along with an often disruptively high boost in the electrical ‘signal speeds’ between parts of their brain.

Lightning mages have been known to show signs of this improved ‘signal speed’ through the intellectual advantages that come from it, as early as one year of age, with many being gifted near-photographic memories from as young as two years of age, as well.

In the most extreme cases, these factors have been said to come together in times of panic or fear, providing the user with an almost unnaturally improved reaction time which some have described as ‘slowing down time itself’ for brief periods until the threat is gone.

Due to rapid brain growth in early development and the frequent over-stimulation of certain brain centers while in the womb, lightning magic is considered to be the most dangerous element for a small child to be born with.

Children born with lightning magic can often be seen to display a mix of potential mental disorders at an early age including Autism and Asperger’s syndrome. These problems can take decades to be repaired by the child’s magic, even after their Awakenings come upon them.
This has lead many old families to put in place a blanket ban on allowing lightning mage children to progress after birth, often by drow—

Oh, Powers! Fucking idiot mages!
...Fucking old families!...

They have innate magical abilities in the palms of their hands for generation upon generation, and instead of either trying to find a way to help or even just getting used to having a few children who temporarily have mental health problems until their early twenties, they just bloody drown them instead!

That could have been me for Powers’ sake!

The more I read about lightning mages, the more a lot of my younger years have started to show some worryingly close parallels to what these books describe, in places, and if I’d been born into one of the ‘families’, then apparently I wouldn’t have lasted long enough to take my first bloody steps!

I’ll never really know for sure, due in large part to my golden domes and messed up core-replacements getting in the way of nature itself but, looking at my earliest memories from an outside perspective, I have a strong suspicion that ‘young Al’ was at least partly afflicted by Asperger’s syndrome or sat somewhere on the Autism spectrum to some degree or another.

I’d have to look up more information on both of them to even know where to start with that theory, but it’s there now and I can see it making a horrible amount of sense in hindsight, just like the whole ‘Fena is a vampire’ thing from yesterday, really.

Lightning mages are considered to be almost as dangerous as fire mages in earlier childhood, apparently due to the often volatile and powerful nature of their elemental outbursts, but they are also held in a lot lower regard too at the same time due to the potential mental problems that can come from their powers.

There aren’t a lot of ‘normal’ health problems mages tend to even consider as a real threat at all, usually, so having a one-in-six chance that your child could even possibly be born with such ‘mundane’ normal illnesses, with nothing but time to cure it all, must be kind of terrify—

======

“Hannah, time to put the book down, we’re almost here...”

With a little shriek of fear I practically jumped out of my seat making Eris grab fistfuls of my sweatshirt to stay in place, even as she giggled at my dramatic over-reaction to the simple shoulder pat John just gave me as he spoke.

“Whoa! Sorry, didn’t think you were that deeply into it, Han.”
Eris giggled again as I almost dropped the book to the floor in my haste to bring a hand up and cup it over my wildly beating heart.

It’s been a long time since I got so deeply into a book that I lost track of things that badly.

I guess technically all the time I spent in my Realm could count in the me-losing-track-of-things stakes, but that was different because I didn’t have anyone around to pull me out of it all once I got started, so I say it doesn’t count an—

“Han? You okay in there?”
My head snapped up to stare at John with a confused frown on my face for a few seconds.

The confusion bled away into a mild pout a few seconds later, when it became obvious from the look in his eye that he was at least partly teasing me, even if he was also kinda worried over my reaction at the same time.

“Sorry, John, I was miles away.”

He offered me a kind of reassuring, if unintentionally so, cheesy grin in response.
I could feel my lips tugging upwards slightly at the edges moments later in response, despite myself.

“We’re currently circling the airfield; Paul wanted to scout out the area before he let you out for the brief walk to the jet. You were reading so I figured you wouldn’t mind the extra wait?”

My smile got ever so slightly wider, and I settled back in my seat a little better with a mildly amused huff which he seemed to understand easily enough that I don’t really think I have to answer him properly at all, luckily.

Slowly, my eyes drifted over to stare out the window instead.
For an ‘airport’, I have to say that there’s a lot more ‘wide-open space, grass, and trees’ than I would have expected, honestly.

While it’s not exactly unusual in Oregon to find yourself in this kind of setting, it still feels a little odd to be driving along an old runway with mountains on all sides coated in trees and the only sign of life being a few tiny buildings in the middle distance, which I think could be considered what passes for a ‘control tower’ around here, even if they are lacking the whole ‘tower’ part of that definition.

It didn’t take me long to pick out Pauly and his team of soldiers as they held a completely pointless, in my opinion, set of defensive positions around a big slab of metal on the runway ahead of us, set in the unmistakable shape of a rather large personal jet.

A small shiver ran down my spine at the idea of flying in that—thing—in all its common-decency-defying glory. I didn’t have long to get too worked up over it though and within what felt like moments, our stretched Jeep was rolling to a stop in the center of Pauly’s little perimeter of gun-wielding people.

“Ladies... and Hannah.”
I shot John a dirty look automatically for the jab but it didn’t make him hesitate in the slightest as he continued on in his annoying ‘game-show announcer’ voice, smirk planted firmly on his lips through the entire thing.
“Welcome to Happy Camp Airport!”

A snort of amusement came from behind me at almost the exact same moment as I let one off myself. I didn’t even need to turn my head to know it had come from Sarah, we do have the same sense of humor after all.

“You literally picked this place because of the name, didn’t you?”

For a long few seconds, John made un-amused eye contact with me, but it was a terrible attempt at best and wouldn’t even convince Eris that he was seriously hurt by my comment, which I think might have been his actual intention, judging by the little giggle said starfish impersonator gave off a moment or two later.

“As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted—”
He started up again, shooting me an almost superior smirk as he went.
It was one of those infuriating looks of his which totally deserved the poked-out tongue he got from me in return, in my opinion, even as he pretended not to notice it in the slightest.
“We depart here for my private jet, named the Pegasus.”

...And I thought we were bad with names...

He just had to be an ass, even when it just came to naming a plane, didn’t he?
It’s not like it’s even bloody common knowledge that he was Perseus in a past incarnation or anything!

“Gun-toting soldiers first, of course.”
John bowed forward in his seat mockingly towards our driver and his female companion for the last few hours, thankfully handing over control of the situation to them at long last so we can get this all over with, even if he was being an ass about it in the process.

“Thank you so much for that brief introduction, Mr. Maxarimus.”
...Oooh, the sarcasm is strong in her...
“We have the runway locked down and we are ready to move when you are. I’ll step around the car to open your doors, when I do, please proceed straight to the plane so Paul doesn’t burst a blood vessel any more than he already has over having to take a flight in general.”

Her piece said, the female soldier opened her door and walked around the Jeep, first popping John’s door, followed by Sarah’s, and a hatch at the back to let the others out as she came around to my side.

When she reached my door, she paused for a moment to glance up at someone across the runway from us before nodding lightly and pulling the handle at last.

I bent over slightly to grab my bug-out bag from the footwell that Felix left it in, only to find it missing, a mysterious situation which didn’t stay that way for long due to John’s little laugh of amusement, indicating that he’d taken it while I wasn’t looking.

That just left me with Eris to deal with, Trudy visibly carrying my expanded bag already as she slipped out the back of the Jeep, which naturally I managed with practiced ease.

After a little bit of shuffling, we were all up and out of the long-backed Jeep at last, Eris sliding comfortably onto my hip while the others lead the way over to the jet waiting for us from its current spot, barely thirty paces away from the Jeep we’d turned up in, if that.

When we got close enough, John leading the way, a hatch opened up in the side of the jet and eased down to create a staircase that even I could appreciate as a nice design choice, if nothing else.

John waited at the bottom of the stairs and helped everyone else get on before himself, eventually coming up behind me as I made my way awkwardly on board due to Eris overbalancing me slightly on one side.

We barely got half way up the stairs before Eris started giggling to herself lightly as she looked over my shoulder.

I really didn’t need to look to know why she was so amused all of a sudden honestly.
It’s not like John would ever walk behind me like this and not do something ‘funny’, or at the very least perverted, for his own pleasure, if nothing else.

“Touch my ass and I’ll light you up like a Christmas tree, John-Boy.”

Apparently, I guessed right because Eris giggled once more, an indication that John had either stopped doing whatever he was about to do or, at the very least, pulled a face over being caught in the act.
...Stupid John...

“Team, close in for departure!”
As I took my last step up onto the plane, I couldn’t help but flinch slightly when Pauly’s recognisable voice started barking out commands to his troops behind us.

The plane looked a lot bigger and roomier on the inside than I’d been expecting, as we stepped inside.

All the others had already picked out seats they preferred apparently.
Surprisingly, even Fena had started to relax already, her helmet sitting on the little drinks table next to her seat, despite the window beside her that allowed rays of afternoon sunlight to play across her face in a way that really should be burning her to a crisp already, or something.
...Probably tinted win—...

“The windows are tinted to block out UV light. I told everyone about it earlier but you weren’t exactly paying attention, Han.”

As he spoke, I turned to shoot John a mildly annoyed look which he shrugged off as if I’d smiled at him instead.

With my attention now entirely focused on him, a situation I have no doubt he has wanted for a while now, just on general principle, I noticed the bug-out bag in his hand or more specifically the
black bundle of cloth tucked into the handles of that same bag.

One of the big things I don’t like about flying in planes is the very real possibility that the technology involved will outright fail due to my magic being too close to it.

That bundle of cloth will help me feel a lot better about the trip to come, honestly.
If nothing else, I know for a fact that it has a quick-deploy ‘Icarus Wings’ rune-set on it, so if all else fails I can jump out and glide to safety on good old, reliable magic.

“Pass me that bag, John-Boy. I need to go get changed before we take off in this bucket of wires.”

He sobered slightly at my tense tone of voice but didn’t hesitate to pass the bag over, at least.

Eris gently eased herself back down to her feet, allowing me to get a good grip on the bag, thankfully. When I had it settled at my feet, I pulled my new suit out of the handles and tucked it under my arm before opening the bag itself up and peeking inside thoughtfully.

After a few seconds of searching, I spotted what I’d been looking for and reached a hand in with a little sigh to pull out two of the other three black cloth bundles inside with a flourish.

As I straightened up, John shot me a curious look, one that widened with surprise a moment later when I tossed the larger bundle at him. He managed to catch it at the last minute and clutched the slick material to his chest as confusion flickered through his eyes questioningly at me.

“You didn’t really think I only made a suit for me and Sarah did you, John?”
He didn’t say anything, but his hands tightened on the suit a little bit more as I continued to explain my logic in giving it to him to wear.
“I’ll take Eris to the bathroom and help her get into hers. You can put yours on next. No arguments, John. When we’re all safe in these things, I’ll show you all how to activate the ‘Icarus Wings’ rune-sets on the suits, just in case the worst should happen.”

Slowly he nodded in acceptance and glanced down at the suit in his hands with a look of almost awe on his face as I turned on a heel, snagging Eris’s ready hand up before making my way towards the back of the plane where I assume there must be some form of bathroom somewhere.

“Uh—Thanks, Han?”
He sounded uncertain, not on whether he should be thanking me, but just in general, as if I really have caught him completely off guard for once.

I know it’s probably wrong, or at the very least childish, but I couldn’t help adding just a little teasing swing to my hips, sashaying my way down the long central hall of the jet in a way that I just know will keep his attention as we go because he’s a perv like that at times.
...Plus he’s cute when he’s flustered...
Ye—No!

I’ve won in our constant game for once, so I’m allowed to gloat over him, and that’s it!
...Denial much?...

======

“This thing feels weird?”
Eris scrunched up her little fingers in the still baggy, non-fitted ‘gloves’ of her suit and her nose wrinkled in distaste.

At least she’s put it on at this point, it took me putting my new one on first to even get this far, honestly, and I can’t shake the idea that she’s only humoring me at the moment because I promised she eventually wouldn’t be able to tell she has it on...also, she giggled a lot when my suit ballooned up during the fitting process, and I think she’s genuinely curious how it feels now, which is better than nothing, I guess?

As long as she’s wearing the suit before we take off, I couldn’t care less if she’s doing it for the wrong reasons. Her safety is more important than mine, John’s, and even Sarah’s at the end of the day, so I’d force her into the suit if I had to at this point.

“Ready?”

She bit her lip slightly nervously but nodded anyway like the brave girl she is.
My hand came up to run over the back seam of her suit then trailed delicately over the others around her limbs, activating the rune chains built into it as I went.

It’s lucky my body is so flexible these days because I’d never have been able to seal myself into my own suits, without a lot of effort, otherwise. That being said though, this new suit went on a lot easier than I remember my last one doing.

Maybe I’m just getting better at putting them on with practice?
...Probably...

Eris’s suit bloomed out making her briefly look like a giggling, oversized grape as the transmutation array on the inner lining went to work converting the tomboyish little shorts and tee-shirt combo she was wearing into its constituent parts.

I have to admit that the outfit she’s had on today has kind of been bugging me, if I’m really being honest with myself about it all.
It doesn’t look bad exactly but Eris is kind of a girly-girl, or at least my Eris is.

I can’t tell if this is simply a case of Sarah dressing her up according to her own style preferences, which often tend towards the ‘shorts and tee-shirt’ era of modern fashion, or if Eris legitimately likes this sort of clothing now thanks to either Arista’s interference, or if it’s just a case of her trying to look like her new ‘mom’ in general, like she used to do with me.
...Only one way to find out...

As her suit finished fitting itself around her to an expectedly skin-tight level and set to work recreating her previous outfit from its constituent parts, I found myself almost subconsciously dropping down into my lines for the first time since my old core exploded.

My new suit making me feel a bit safer in attempting it I guess, and even then my worries were kind of moot by the time I’d realised what I was doing, because the main ‘danger zone’ of the process I’d anticipated was done and gone already, anyway.

As always when it comes to Eris, my body made its mind up on what to do long before my brain could, sadly.

I didn’t have to go far enough to actually look at my lines yet, so that’s something, at least.

My actual lines are still a potentially dangerous area in terms of problems that could harm me and others around me at the moment, one which I’d really need to be in a magically dead ritual chamber before I’d even consider going so deeply into without immediate danger being involved at this point in time.

Luckily, between my magic’s rather helpful ‘mood’ lately, along with my long experience in both conjuring with and shutting down my own system... accompanied by my new suit’s help of course... if something goes wrong, then I should be safe just this once, if I’m careful.

Hopefully, the look on Eris’s face will be worth the effort if my theory pans out!

Her back was still to me as she stared in mute surprise at the clothes reforming over the top of her skin-suit, a situation which gave me ample time to focus and blindly guide my magic around my body towards the appropriate organ, namely my pancreas, while focusing on what I wanted with as much detail at hand as I could manage.

Eventually, a light weight appeared in my hand at last.
I opened my eyes to inspect my handiwork in an almost perfectly timed movement to match Eris turning her now wide eyes over to me with her invisible, intangible suit-covered fingers outstretched, as if she could somehow still see the gloves covering her hands despite the fact it had obviously finished its work and disappeared to all perception worth mentioning.

That look didn’t last long though when she saw the dark-red, little velvet dress in my hands, covered in every frill and ribbon addition that my moderately experienced mind could imagine, to make it into an almost sickeningly sweet ‘girly’ concoction for her, one that I know my Eris would have fallen in love with at first sight alone.

I didn’t need to hear the happy little squeal leave her lips to know that my theory was right, that deep down she still hadn’t actually changed as drastically as I’d feared, and that yet again there was still hope for fixing the damage Arista had caused to my— to Eris...

Without another word, she spun around and started changing out of her ‘boyish’ clothes on the spot. A proud little smile played across my lips as she lifted her arms up expectantly without a second thought, ready for me to drop the dress over her head like she did so often only a few months ago.

“Let’s go show the others your pretty dress, shall we?”

She giggled and snagged up my arm to drag me out of the bathroom quickly in her excitement, with practically a skip in her step that I had to work hard not to emulate thanks to my own happy little bubble of success as well.

======

“What do you think?”

Everyone looked up at us, and while the reactions were slightly mixed about just how ‘over-the-top’ her new outfit may look, in general, everyone was good at praising an obviously gleeful Eris as she swished about the cabin area full of more energy than I can remember seeing from her since I ‘returned’, honestly.

The only person who didn’t instantly offer praise, or at least a smile to her was, surprisingly, Sarah.
She appeared conflicted at first before settling into an almost resigned-looking grimace that would probably be only just enough to hide her thoughts from most people, luckily, but didn’t even begin to look convincing to me, considering how well I know her body language and facial expressions.

Rather than call her out on the odd reaction she was having, I decided to take charge and change the topic in the vague hope that a distraction would help her get over whatever problem she’s got with the outfit I made for Eris quicker.

“Alright, Sare, John, Eris—”

“Oh, that’s Eris?”

I paused, mid-speech, and turned to shoot a curious look at one of Pauly’s guards of all people as he eased himself out of his chair with an oddly thoughtful look on his face.
Several soldiers around him sniggered quietly to themselves behind their hands, for some reason, as he reached his full height and offered the smallest of bows to me before continuing.

“Sorry Ma’am, So-Com Private Ellis, I’m new. I thought they were joking earlier when they gave this to me, but apparently there really is someone called ‘Eris’ on this trip...”
His piece said, the guard leaned down to the side of his chair and awkwardly pulled a large, heavy looking orb from a black bag down there.

It took the few steps he made towards us so he could offer the orb up to Sarah, with more than a little confusion obvious on his face as he did so, for me to work out why it looked so familiar.

My mouth dropped open in surprise at almost the exact same moment that Eris let off a gleeful squeal of joy and practically sprinted across the cabin to snatch the stupid bowling ball I made for her months ago from the now even more confused soldiers hand, letting off a little huff of effort as she did so due to the weight, but not losing any of her joy for having it back in the process, even as the cabin erupted in poorly concealed laughter at the expense of the apparent ‘rookie’ being hazed with the bloody thing.

“A bowling ball?”
I shot a look over at John’s mystified face which matched his tone almost perfectly.
“Why does it feel like I’m missing something here?”

...Because you are, Duh?...
“It’s a long story. Don’t ask, John-Boy.”

“Mum, look! He brought back the bowling ball you made—for—me?”
Uh oh, quick, Sare, say something!

Sarah’s face twitched heavily for a moment or two but she at least managed to offer Eris up a pained smile if nothing else.

“Oh, I remember now. I hadn’t realised we lost it?”

My sister Sarah, everybody, the supposed actress and TV personality!
...Just because she’s on TV doesn’t mean she can act...
Exactly!

Eris obviously sensed something was off with Sarah’s reaction, but instead of saying anything, she just hugged the ball a little closer to her chest and let her head sink down slightly in a way that made my heart ache, as my brain screamed at me to just run over and pick her up for the sake of it.

“Eris, come show me your ball, sweetie.”
Her head perked up again and she sprinted over to me, skirts flying and her grin back once more as she held the heavy ball in front of herself for my inspection.

I played it up for her, ‘examining’ the ball from several angles and smiling a lot, which seemed to be the reaction she’d been looking for from Sarah, honestly.

Eventually, even I couldn’t overplay my excitement forever, but Eris was content at that point judging by the quick, bowling ball-exasperated hug she gave my legs before running off to go claim a chair, where she could play with the ball for some Powers-known reason.

When I straightened up at last, I caught John smirking at me warmly to my side.
Sarah was stood at his side and had an odd look on her face I couldn’t quite work out however, thanks to the brief glance I got of it before it smoothed away as she realised I was watching her back in confusion and she settled her face into an oddly blank expression, for some reason, instead.

“What were we doing?”
My eyes drifted uncertainly around the cabin as my mind spun a few empty gears, trying to work out where I left off before Eris’s little bowling ball-related distraction.

Before I could pin down whatever important thing I’d forgotten though, my eye’s caught on the window to my right and I froze in shock.

“Are we flying already?”
It’s a bit of a moot question, there are clouds outside the window, after all, but it never hurts to tell everyone why you suddenly lock up in surprise if nothing else.

I’m honestly a bit mystified by the fact that I wasn’t panicking in the slightest already, despite apparently being on an airplane high in the sky, more than anything else?
I didn’t hear or feel us take off while helping Eris get changed into her suit, and that’s weird in itself!

What’s worse is that I can’t hear the telltale hum of engines beneath my feet that always fills me with dread and fear, because we’re putting our lives in the hands of something awkward like ‘engines’ and ‘physics’, above all else.

When you’re a mage, you tend to get a good feel of just how easily the rules of ‘physics’ can be broken with little to no effort, so I think my fears are legitimately logical at this point in time—and yet I’m not scared?!

Slowly, I made my way over to the window so I could look outside and double-check that we are, in fact, flying at the moment.

As I leant against the wall by the window, so I could get a better look, a slight tingle ‘pinged’ across my magic senses and I pulled back somewhat in surprise before leaning in once more to splay my fingers along the wall completely and get a better handle on that feeling again.

“This jet—is this whole bloody jet enchanted?!”
For a few long seconds I got no answer and, in frustration, I turned around to find out why, only to come face to face with a now highly amused room full of people who’d obviously all been in on the joke from the start, by the looks on their faces alone.

My hand flexed slightly against the wall and I sent a small burst of magic over its surface to prove my theory one way or another, considering no-one else is feeling talkative at the moment.

The bouncing echo I got back through my senses was a mess and hard to follow in any detail, due to how purposely underpowered the burst was, but it was enough for me to pick out what I needed, at least.

I was right! This floating, high-end ‘apartment tube’ isn’t a bloody jet plane at all!
It’s a super-complicated and really well-made, magical ‘airship’ that just happens to look like a normal jet!

“You've been holding out on me, John-Boy...”

The almost manic look of interest that I could feel playing across my lips must be pretty obvious, because John cringed heavily when I turned my eyes back to him in the few seconds that he had before I pounced.
With lightning speed I moving across the floor between us to lean into his personal space, in my rush to find out more about the suddenly ‘new’ and highly interesting ‘plane’ we’re currently flying in.

“I didn’t make it!”

Oooh, nice try, John-Boy, but that’s not going to be enough to stop me now!

Putting aside the fact that I can travel easily in this thing without being terrified, because it’s purely magical in all the ‘important bits that make us not die’ areas, this thing is interesting!

Just like the runes he used to hide his brand from sight, this whole airship-plane thing just smacks of him having something amazing in his pocket and being too much of an idiot to realise what he’s got!

I almost wish I still had my annoying ‘cat’ appendages from that stupid mess with Wizard Burger now, ‘Cat-Girl’ Hannah would have been able to get his tongue moving and spilling every little detail he has on this magical marvel of his, just on general principle alone, if I still had the ears and tail at the very least!
...Stupid perv, John...
Useful, stupid perv, John-Boy!

“Tell me everything!”

Politics is like a river... no, that’s not right? Politics is like a cess pit... closer, but no. Politics is... is... I have no idea, I guess? Maybe we’ll get an answer to that question eventually, huh? Events unfold including but not limited to: John screaming, Metal walls being dented badly, and Hannah gets distracted at a bad time.

 

“For the last time, I’m not letting you ‘just have a look’ at the wardstone controlling this plane while we’re mid-flight Han, for Powers’ sake!”

A frown played across my lips and I rolled over slightly from my current sprawled position, just so happening to roll my head partly into his lap, so I could stare up at him with the widest, most enthrallingly ‘cute’ expression that this new face of mine can manage.

“Oh come on, please?— I promise I won’t break it.”
He huffed in frustration and looked away from my pouting lower lip as if it physically hurt him to do so, but he also didn’t cave to the cuteness in all its glory either, annoyingly.
“What if you come with me? You can hold me back, make sure my arms don’t come near it and everything. I just want a peek!”

...A nice tight, warm restraining hug from him and cool stuff to look at, good idea...
Exac—I mean, no!... Whatever!

Just let me see the damn wardstone, John-Boy! I’m curious, and we’ve got a long flight ahead of us.

If you showed it to me, then I could spend that flight breaking down what makes this floating magical oddity ‘tick’, instead of using my time more productively to read all the dusty old, factually incorrect when it comes to Normals, books that Edith assigned me to read in her letter, supposedly to help me regain my Golden ‘diversion’ magic once more, like I’d planned to do today, despite them all being such dry and boring reads!

“Han, I seriously can’t chance letting you near the wardstone at the moment. You’re a lightning mage and the ‘stone’ is made of metal, one wrong move and you could zap our ‘pilot’ runes to all hell, pulling us all out of the air just from excitement alone.”
B-but I want to see it!
...Getting whiny here...

Oh Powers’, that came out so whiny, didn’t it?

I sounded like a little kid being told they can’t open their Christmas presents two weeks early after finding them hidden in a closet downstairs.
...Not that we’d ever know what that sounds like from personal experience or anything...

Sarah started it— and anyway, that’s beside the point!

======

“Sorry, John. I got a bit carried away there. I think there may be a few lingering personality effects hanging around from the months I spent on my potions or something.”

...Ah! Good old, reliable drugs-abuse!...
The perfect excuse to avoid awkward questions about any odd actions you may make in any given situation.
...It’s like the victim card that just keeps on giving, apparently!...

“That’s okay, Han. Honestly, it was kind of cute watching you get so flustered like that for a while— silly, but cute— just like you...”
His lips formed into that same Powers’ damned grin he always gives off when he successfully teases me and, like clockwork, my cheeks went from Arista-pale to full blown tomato-red seconds later.
“When we land, I’ll let you go back and check out the stone, okay?”

I could have answered him, but my blush and his sudden use of the dreaded C-word, has left me feeling highly aware of the fact that I have my head resting in his lap, and that any further comment from me is likely to only make things worse, given the obviously teasing mood I’ve put John in now. Judging by the look in his eye and the emotions I can feel flickering through his magic from my current position I’m lucky he’s kept it in as long as he has honestly.

Instead of even chancing it, I let off the briefest of nods before quickly sitting myself up in the extended sofa chair I’d been resting across since I started trying to get information out of him properly.

As I settled myself back into an ‘adult’, meaning mature and respectable, not pervy and ‘John-like’, position, I couldn’t help but glance around us and cringe slightly at the mix of awed, confused or just downright amused looks I got in return for my troubles.

Apparently, I made a rather big spectacle of myself without really thinking about it for a while, there. Even Eris is watching me with a grin on her face instead of focusing on that silly bowling ball of hers, like she’d been doing when I started!

“If this thing’s magical, how long is it going to take us to fly from Oregon to New York, by the way?”
I don’t even know how long the flight would take on a domestic airline honestly, let alone on a private jet, but it’s always good to know how long it will take when you’re on such a long trip— and it gives me a handy change in topic as well, luckily.

“About another four hours. I could have set us up to fly faster but that means we’d face some turbulence and appear more than a bit suspicious to anyone watching the skies, seeing as we register on radar still and normal jets don’t go over Mach one in most cases.”

Judging by the amused grin on his face, John knew exactly what I’d been trying to do there and he was just ‘indulging me’ because he felt like it or something with his long-form answer.
I’m not complaining or anything. At least we can move on to new topics now, if nothing else!

Slowly, I settled myself down into a more comfortable slouch as conversations started up around us on any number of topics that didn’t involve me, at last, much to John’s continued and obvious amusement.

Honestly, I’m still not feeling properly ‘awake’ yet, despite all the fun we’ve had so far on this trip. It’s probably got something to do with a certain lack of breakfast this morning more than anything.

However, seeing as we have a few hours to go and we’re not in a tube of metal being tossed through the air from highly compressed explosions for once, I might actually be able to sleep through a flight entirely— if I try hard enough at least.

That thought in mind I rolled over slightly to face the window and let my eyes shut as they’d been vaguely hinting at me to do for a while now.

I’m not sure how long I lay there with the buzz of conversation around me to keep me company, nor at what point John decided to drape that damn blanket of his warm magic over me once again, but
eventually I drifted off into a deep sleep that I so desperately needed, at long last.

======

One minute I was arguing with a rather annoying leprechaun who kept demanding I let down my hair so he can climb up the side of my tower and steal my lucky charms, and the next reality snapped back into being as I jerked awake in my seat due to a surge of emotions I felt burst into being around me.

A moment later, while I was still trying to get my bearings, John’s now worried magic dropped away from me and someone started yelling loudly somewhere ahead of me.

That was enough to finally bring me fully back into the waking world with a bump and I found my eyes instinctively scanning the area around us in seconds, as the noise level began to rise significantly.

Apparently even Pauly’s soldiers, who have naturally taken up defensive positions around the others with the obvious exception of John, were already moving back down the length of the plane, leaving John to stand defiantly in the gangway, and me in my seat, for more obvious reasons.

Their worry and quick steps were slightly more understandable when you factor in the rather large Chinese man in traditional robes near the front of the plane, who appears to be gesticulating wildly with a glowing black staff of some sort, while being flanked by two gargoyle-like demons of some description, that are currently perched on the back of the first row of seats available at the front of the plane in a rather intimidating way.

I can’t understand a word the Chinese guy’s saying, unfortunately. I never was very good with Mandarin, assuming that’s what he’s speaking.

John can obviously understand him, judging by the increasingly angry-looking glare on his face and the minor body twitches he’s letting off to show just how close he is to snapping and abandoning his post to go attack the guy instead.

Slowly I eased up to my feet and made my way over to John’s side.

He barely seemed to notice me at first but the Chinese man definitely did, judging by the way his voice went up in volume slightly and he started waving his staff around again while throwing out a few words that sounded vaguely like ‘Max’ and ‘Arista’ to me, although it’s kinda hard to tell with how fast he was speaking, honestly.

“John, what the hell is going on?”

His hands twitched a few times into tight fists and his eyes didn’t leave the Chinese guy for a worryingly long few seconds, as if he were trying to decide if even answering me would be too much of a distraction at the moment.

“This guy, his name’s Wu Xian, he used to be a ruler to his people but things got messy and in the end he blamed Arista for it all. Apparently, seeing as Arista is ‘dead’, he’s here to avenge himself on me in her place while he can... although I’m still trying to work that one out at the moment.”
His piece said, John switched over to the same complicated and overly fast form of Chinese that this ‘Xian’ guy has been using so far again.

That left me standing there feeling more than a little bit awkward. As a precaution more than anything else, I turned away from the now rapidly arguing pair to stare at the others, bundled up behind us, with a thoughtful stare.

When my eyes made contact, first with Sarah’s obviously scared face, and then down to Eris’s own wide, frightened eyes, my decision was made pretty much instantly. One way or another things have already reached past the point of ‘dangerous’ here.

I don’t care if it sets us back a bit on our journey, the politicians can wait. My family comes first, damn it!

“Pauly! Get everyone huddled together. Everyone, grab your stuff, count heads, and then wait for my signal.”
Surprisingly, the gruff old leader that I’m used to getting more than a little bit of pushback from, in his own way, didn’t even question my order in the slightest.

The argument going on behind me progressed, gaining more volume as time went on, but I ignored it in favor of watching for Pauly to finish making sure he had everyone together. Finally, as Private Ellis moved into a defensive position on Eris’s left, he turned around and gave me the briefest of nods.

I let off a tense breath through my clenched teeth.
There are so many ways this mess can go wrong!

While I’m not completely sure about my abilities to warp people at the moment, let alone a huge group like this, I know of one technique that will work reliably, if nothing else.

There’s the potential of them all getting a bit of a fright along the way if my magic attracts the attention of a passing demon, of course, but better they be stared at by one demon than ripped apart by the two standing guard behind me when John inevitably fails in his attempts to end this whole thing ‘diplomatically’.

That said, I dipped sharply into my lines, not even hesitating to pull lose some threads of magic from my new Locus Point ‘core’, despite the worrying crackle of lightning that seemed to shimmer off of those threads as I did so and my previous worries over my magic use in general.

This is definitely an emergency situation, if ever I’ve seen one, so caution can go fly in the wind for all I care.

With a mental shove I dumped all four threads into individual lines leading to my feet, head and lungs, respectively. Two for movement, one for the idea and one for the void— how such a powerful force as ‘shadow magic’ can be so elegantly simple in its casting, still mystifies me to this day!

“Hold your breaths!”
With my warning given I rose my hand up, fingers spread and sparking with little flashes of lightning, despite the spell I’m casting having nothing to do with lightning at all, before closing them down into a tight fist and letting my arm drop.

The shadows around the plane all moved in towards the group before me and my fist shook slightly as I kept it tightly in position for the time it took to bring enough shadows together to encompass everyone at once.

Just as the last soldier began to sink into the oily depths of my manipulated shadows, something screamed loudly behind me, only for the sound to be cut short a moment later as a shield of blue sparks formed up around me.

Presumably that same ‘something’ slammed heavily into it behind me moments later, bouncing away from me at speed, just like Maven’s magic did when facing my Golden magic back at the Hub from what little I could feel of it all.

I did my best to ignore the what, how, and why behind all the noise and lights, focusing entirely on the group in front of me for those precious seconds more, even as John belatedly turned towards me and let out a horrified yelping version of my name, fear obvious just from his tone alone.

At long last the spell finished connecting and, with a water-like ‘splash’, the shadows collapsed in on themselves, taking their cargo of civilians, family and soldiers away to relative safety.

The moment they were truly gone and I felt my connection to the spell snap, I spun on a heel to find out what the hell was going on behind me, only to come face to face with a rather comically weird situation where I’m apparently the main point of interest on all sides for some reason.

My eyes first focused on the crumpled form of the right-hand demon, a form that appeared to have been launched across the plane so harshly that its head had actually embedded slightly into the metal of the far wall leading to the crew cabin and front exit, painfully.

From there they trailed to the Chinese staff-wielder, Xian, who’s jaw had dropped as he stared at me with obvious confusion apparent on his squat face, then over to the almost nervous looking left-hand demon, before settling on a rather relieved looking John.

“How you do dat?”
I jerked in surprise, snapping my eyes away from John’s growing smile to focus back on the previously only Chinese-speaking Xian instead.

There were a few English words thrown in after that, including dual casting, bad, and lost interspersed with almost frightened-sounding Chinese that went completely over my head, unfortunately.

His grasp of English obviously leaves a lot to be desired, but I think I get where he’s coming from on this one, vaguely, at least. Shadow magic requires a lot of power and focus to pull off correctly, after all.

The idea that someone can cast it while also blindly defending against a lightning-fast attack, from behind at that, must be a rather worrying thing for most people to witness the first time.

My eyes drifted away from Xian’s worried face again and down to my own hands, thoughtfully for a moment, as I tried to work out how it happened as well, because, honestly, I have no idea how I could have automatically cast a ‘bubble shield’ of any kind against a physical attack I can’t see otherwise—
Unless…?

Oh— oh, there’s no way I’m this lucky, is there?
Okay, think Hannah! How do I test to see if I’m right?
Ah hah! I’ve got it!

With barely a twitch from me, magic started to converge on three of my fingertips and I moved them down to tap just above my left hip, almost casually.

The moment my fingertips made contact with the runes hidden on my hip, a tiny pulse of magic burst out of me, one so light that it probably wasn’t even noticeable to John right next to me, given that he wasn’t specifically watching for it.

It was tiny, and kind of useless, considering where we are, but it would have been perfect for me to use in getting the ‘lay of the land’, normally, if I couldn’t see in a dark space, for example.

Oh, Felix—oh, little buddy, you are the best familiar ever!
The silly little guy grabbed me the wrong suit!

I thought the seams were a little too easy to seal up on this one, it didn’t even cross my mind that it might be because this suit has the prototype ‘improved’ sealing mechanism I came up with, for testing purposes, built into it.

Felix must have seen and grabbed my ‘combat platform prototype’ suit, in his rush to get back to us, so he could move on and inform the other imp’s that I’m not dead!

In a lot of ways this suit isn’t that different from a normal suit, in general use at least, but on the other hand there are so many little tweaks and throw-away ideas embedded in this thing, I barely even know what to do now that I have it!

About forty to fifty percent of the available material on one of my ‘normal’ suit would contain rune arrays; mostly ones centered above major lines of the body to make activation easier in a pinch. This suit— this suit has constantly evolved over time, when I came up with new ideas, good or bad, and added them on to see what reactions could happen from putting them all together into one unit.

Eventually, I stopped working on the suit, not because I lost interest or because I was ‘done’, but because I actually ran out of space to fit things on here without literally having to design some way to layer the runes over themselves somehow instead.

I lost track of it at some point, shortly after it stopped being useful as a test-bed rune assessment platform, progress being my main priority at the time thanks to my drugged-state, and probably leaving it in one of my many cluttered workshops, like I did my voodoo dolls, until Felix in all his Impish genius, found it at last!

======

Slowly, my eyes drifted back up from my hands and I couldn’t help the dangerous little smirk that played across my lips as I did so.

With a few deft finger movements, the kinetic shield that had formed up around me using my now lightning-element based magic when the suit detected the demon’s intentions and picked up a fast-moving ‘object’ coming towards me—
...probably using an experimental, compressed, ill-intent ward somehow...
—deactivated, just as I’d designed it to do in the first place.

An ill-intent ward and the same deflective shielding spell, with some minor tweaks from me, that Arista used to block Edith’s earth magic back at Crater Lake, merged together to create the magical equivalent of an ‘airbag’, for emergency use only.

That’s brilliant!
...I think we can officially mark that one up as a successful test run...
I wish I could take full credit for that idea at this point, but even I wouldn’t have thought of it if I wasn’t drugged out of my mind for days on end first of all!

...Is it bad that I’m starting to think we need to go on depressed drugs benders more often now?...
I can already feel the storage runes for the shield recharging from my magic while we’re standing here, give it another twenty seconds and it will be ready for deployment once again for Powers’ sake!

...That all being said, don’t count your chickens until the demon summoning staff-wielder is dead...
Oh, yeah! There’s an inevitable fight kicking off still, isn’t there?

======

“John, if you could be a dear and make your way to the rear emergency exit of the plane, I’ve totally got this one handled.”

In his usual style, when it comes to leaving me in harm’s way, John hesitated.

To really nail my point home, I brought both my hands up to eye level before clenching them down into tight fists and slamming them together, knuckles first. My magic pulsed and a slight, almost unnoticeable, magical drain started up on several points across my body.

It barely took a full three seconds to reach the necessary activation power levels, and suddenly little metal plates started forming up across my still-clenched fists in scale-like gauntlets that fit almost impossibly well to the contours of my hands.

The magic kept going from there. I could feel its activation signal pulsing its way up my arms, leaving trails of thin sparking blue magic along the inside edges of my arms as they went on, first aiming for my shoulders then down to my back before looping around my chest and finally pouring into my legs.

The moment the pulse reached the tips of my toes there was a sudden rush of power that left sparking trails of electricity flowing over my suit, and all the storage runes I’d carefully crafted into this suit one night after a bad set of nightmares about a certain demon I once faced whose only weakness was non-conjured silver, burst into life, disgorging well-fitted sheets of scale armor across what a mage would consider my vital areas, as they went.

I originally used pure silver over an acceptable alloy due to its ability to also burn on contact quite a few species of creature I don’t want to fight empty-handed, along with its high-gloss shine being perfect for some possible distraction techniques that I was working on, and its high conductivity being useful in general.

Unfortunately one of the reasons I scrapped the idea of this summonable armor in the end, was the opening that same conductivity left for lightning mages, or even just electricity in general, to become a rather bad enemy to me while using it all.

Luckily that initial mistake is going to play right into my hands now!

By the time it was finished, I could feel that the clothes I’d had on over my suit were in tatters and, more importantly, see that my all-black bodysuit was now visible due to an annoying problem I ran into where the I-don’t-exist runes, tend to fail under high-release rune activation situations, sadly.

That’s one problem even a drugs-binge can’t fix apparently, but that’s all made up for by the frankly pretty ‘badass’-looking set of gauntlets, spike-tipped metal boots, neck-to-belly chest-plate, bulky shoulder pauldrons, and wide belt with an attached scale skirt that came with the rune-set’s completion and the suit’s reappearance.

It all comes together in a look that, in my mind, makes me seem like some kind of fantasy warrior-woman from pretty much any online video-game out there these days.

Intimidation was always an issue for Al, it’s even worse now for me with Arista’s stupid face and height, the hope behind the armor’s design being to make me look at least slightly ‘dangerous’ compared to usual, if nothing else.

“...I can’t believe that actually worked?...”
I seriously thought at least one part of the armor would appear a meter away from me by mistake or something. I can’t actually remember fixing that ‘minor’ problem in the slightest, so I guess ‘drugged’ Hannah fixed it in my place for me.
“As I said, John-Boy, I’ve got this. Who needs a sword, when you’ve got enchanted silver armor at your beck and call, huh?”

For a moment or two, John seemed almost as lost as our ‘guest’ Xian did, but luckily he seemed to finally make the connection, either just between his brain and ‘how to work’ or hopefully between my ‘sword’ comment and my new lightning magic instead.

I’ve not had a chance to use my new lightning magic properly before. This is all new territory for me and, I’ve got to be perfectly honest, now that everyone but me and John are safely away from things, I’m starting to feel pretty excited for the chance to test out so many of the new magical and technical options that have fallen into my lap with my third, and hopefully final, elemental change at last!

As John moved back down the cabin of the plane, I stared at Xian, my eyes twitching at every movement he or his two pet-demons made as the right-hand demon pulled itself free from the wall with a pain-filled cry of displeasure at last and whipped around to glare at me in fury.

The tension grew with each passing second until finally the elastic snapped and the right-hand demon lunged towards me, claws outstretched and a roaring snarl on its lips.

The moment it moved even a single inch, I threw my hands up across my chest and let my magic loose properly for the first time since we discovered my new element at all. As I’d hoped, lightning covered not just my gauntleted hands, but started building up and sparking off all the other armor parts on my body at the same time due to just how much magic I was releasing into my aura at once.

By the time the demon was almost within reach of me, I felt like my final theory had been proven true by just how much electricity I had dancing around me at the moment, without any of it actually hitting me in the slightest.

As an ice mage I was pretty immune to cold temperatures, as a fire mage it took a lot to burn my skin at all... and now as a lightning mage I’m hard to hit with electricity!

My finger twitched and the magic built up in my new armor burst out of me in all directions.
Some of it arced out to strike the metal hull of the plane, making an almost web-like corona of blindingly blue light around me in all directions, effectively blocking the path between Xian and John entirely, while the rest of it, mostly the electricity from my gauntlets, dumped itself into the nearest available path to ground, with a little help from me of course.
...That path being the demon itself, naturally...

First the gargoyle-beast froze, letting off an almost silent sounding scream of pain from just how much power I was dumping into its monstrous body. But even that stopped after a few seconds, as it started to physically glow from the inside with just how much lightning was running through it, until finally it burst into flames like an overloaded fuse, collapsing to the ground as a dead husk moments later, much to Xian’s obvious horror.

I was almost tempted to steal a line from a pretty terrible movie about ‘what happens to frogs in lightning’, just to really rub it into Xian’s poor unprepared looking face, but you have to at least try to be the ‘bigger person’ when facing obviously amateur bad-guys like this one!
...It’s only fair, after all...

It really does seem wholly unfair that John gets THIS kind of idiot as his ‘enemy’ to deal with, while I get lumbered with actual thinking, plotting and complex enemies like Storyteller, Handyman and Arista, now that I think about it?

As if the world didn’t already enjoy throwing its middle finger in my face quite often, just because it can, knowing that I really am the only one dealing with my level of insane ‘villains’ is more than a little bit galling honestly, so—

=====

“Hannah, focus!”

My head jerked upwards at John’s shout only to fly backwards as my whole body moved automatically into a backflip and a, suddenly not so frightened, Xian’s mud-brown magic-covered fist flew just over my head a second later.

Not one to give up a free shot when given it, but also cursing myself because I just knew that my whole ‘drifting off’ thing would almost get me killed one of these days, I kicked my leg up as hard as I could, embedding the spiked tip of my all-silver boot into Xian’s upper thigh moments before pumping a pretty large surge of electricity into it for good measure.

He screamed and fell away from me to land in a twitching pile of robes on the floor, a pile which I took as a good signal for me to get started on sorting everything else out at last, considering I really doubt he’s going to be getting back up any time soon from that one!

I moved back several steps from him to go regroup with John at the rear of the plane when my eyes landed on Xian’s final demonic follower, a demonic follower who quickly became my final threat of the day by default.

The demon honestly didn’t appear to be in any rush to go anywhere near me at this point though, amusingly.
Between its burning husk of a partner and the twitching form of its assumed summoner, I think it made the right choice when it slowly eased itself back off the chair it had been perched on for most of our short fight, in an obvious sign of submission.

Just when I thought we were finally done here and I actually got more than a few steps towards John again, the plane, as a whole, gave one very violent jerk in the air that practically launched me up to the ceiling before sending me crashing down to the floor again with a pained groan.

“...Oh, crap...”
The words had barely left my mouth before John echoed them with a string of choice phrases in several languages that all meant pretty much the same thing at the end of the day.

As the plane gave another, almost gravity defying jerk in the air, it didn’t take a genius to work out what was happening. John warned me about the wardstone on this thing being made of metal, after all.

In order for it to work at all, it would have to be fitted to the ‘foundations’ of the plane, and I just pumped a hell of a lot of magical lightning into the inner-hull of this thing in my excitement to finally ‘play’ with my new element, completely unhindered in the slightest.

“John-Boy! Please tell me this isn’t what I think it is!”
Despite my hopeful cry, I still staggered back to my feet and turned away from the downed pair with their single remaining conscious friend in order to practically sprint down the aisle to John's side anyway.

In what felt like seconds I was throwing myself heavily against the wall beside his current position, stood holding tightly to the handle on the emergency exit door dividing the front and back ends of the plane.

“You did precisely what I told you not to do earlier and zapped the hell out of everything. So now the runes are trying to decide if they want to just give up or keep fighting to stay in the air.”
I knew he’d say that! I just knew it!

“What’s the plan then?”
His eyebrow twitched in frustration but at least he didn’t yell at me for ruining his big shiny flying toy, if nothing else.

“We wait and see if the plane stabilises, if it does then we’re all good, if not then we warp out of here to safety.”

Well, that’s a better plan then the one I had at least. I was thinking ‘jump out the emergency exit and leave Xian behind as a guinea-pig to see if the plane lands in New York without us’, honestly.
...Not one of our finer plans but—...

With practically no warning whatsoever, something at the front of the plane exploded and suddenly everything started tipping forwards until we were in a pretty obvious nosedive.

As if that wasn’t enough, something else decided to explode at the front as well, but instead of being nice and distant about it, the explosion turned into a massive fireball which came roaring up towards us at frankly terrifying speeds.

There was no time to think, no time to warp out.

The moment things started tilting John had let go of the exit handle and wedged himself against the partition wall next to it with his free arm looped around my waist to stop me from falling, which meant I was the only one left with a hand free to do anything.

In a moment of madness, only slightly improved by the knowledge that our suits both have my Icarus wings forming rune-sets embedded in them, that we can activate as parachutes, I leaned over and gave the exit handle a magic-assisted yank upwards.

The door flew backwards and the flames below us roared even louder with what I can only assume is the backdraft effect kicking in, to make everything so much worse in my book.

John’s mouth opened slightly but he didn’t have time to say anything before I planted my feet, kicking off from the partition wall, and dragged him along with me in my sideways dive out of the new opening into the much safer-seeming confines of an open freefall.

John’s grip on me slipped, which was probably a good thing considering neither of us can activate our wings while held together so tightly.

After a two-count to make sure we’d drifted far enough apart as the plane catapulted away from us at an unreasonable speed, towards what appears to be some kind of thankfully empty stretch of farmland below us, I brought my hand up to my right shoulder and placed three charged fingers across my upper bicep.

Almost instantly, all the armor on my suit was practically sucked back into their storage runes, a little trick I honestly can’t remember building into this thing but can’t find it in myself to be annoyed about at this point.

With the armor stored away, the rest of my runes kicked in properly at last, forming twin trails of blue magic that burned their way out from my chest and settled in a plate-like shape across my back.
A moment later my stomach jerked as a pair of truly massive, white-feathered wings burst out from the shoulder blades of my suit, their wingspan easily four times as long as my own reach.

In seconds, they’d both locking in position, both caught the wind, and I was catapulted sharply out of my freefall at blinding speed to float harmlessly in the sky, as I’d designed them to do in the first place.

My adrenaline was pumping now and I couldn’t help but let out a little whoop of excitement from the rush of it all, followed by a string of giggles as I used the wings’ manoeuvrability to turn and face— nothing but empty sky?

Slowly, I felt my eyes trail after the smoke stream left by the plummeting wreckage of John’s jet, until they latched on an equally plummeting shape that could only be, the soon-to-be-wreckage form of, John, himself.

...We forgot to tell him how to activate the wings...
I forgot to tell him how to activate the wings!!

My hand flew up to the same spot on my arm. With no hesitation, despite the fact these wings take hours to refill with enough magic to deploy again, I applied a few taps of magic to make my Icarus wings fold in slightly.

It took a moment or two for the magic to take effect fully but eventually the wind tore at the wings, making them fall away from my back as the spell maintaining their strength, shape and generally holding them in place deactivated.

I quickly moved back into a, thankfully much more controlled, freefall with my body now pointing almost straight down like a pencil on a collision course with John.

My adrenaline was pumping again and a part of my mind was screaming at me for doing something so reckless. But it’s my fault he’s falling like this, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to face an eternity with John reminding me of ‘that one time you pushed me out of a plane without a parachute’, if I can help it!

If he’s smart, he’ll have spread his body out to slow his fall somewhat.

If he’s smart, he’ll be trying to come up with his own plans, most likely some form of warping... although how much that can help when he’s moving at terminal velocity I have no idea.

If he’s— damn it!

My hand came up and with lightning flickering between my fingers, I sliced straight through the still flapping remains of my, previously really comfortable, baggy boat-necked red sweatshirt to let it fly off behind me and be lost in the updraft. With the deadweight ‘parachute’ of my loose clothing gone, I tightened my tuck in and started to move my magic around inside myself, trying to make a shield of some kind that could potentially be more aerodynamic then my already maximised little ‘bullet’ shaped profile.

I honestly have no idea how to manage that yet, but I’m working everything out on the fly, which is really not my strong suit when it comes to using actual spells!

I’m definitely catching up with him already, that’s something at least. He’s still really far away and the ground is definitely looking a lot closer now too, but I can hear one all important thing that tells me I’m making progress if nothing else: John’s frightened screams as he plummets to earth.

He’s apparently doing nothing to help himself slow down, or even stop tumbling in the air in the slightest sadly.
…Stupid John!…
I have to do bloody everything around here, I swear!

I’m coming, John-Boy! Don’t die from something as lame as gravity of all things, you stupid idiot!

Screaming is healthy... well, sometimes at least? Screaming in bad situations can help you resist much worse, politically unwise actions as well in the long run. There's no shame in letting off a nice big girly scream or two while falling through the air at speed at least, no matter who you are. Events unfold including but not limited to: Plans being made and shared repeatedly, Someone gets clingy for semi-valid reasons, And Hannah uses John as a meat shield!

 

John’s still screaming, well, more like yelling really, but I’m the one saving his ass so I say he’s screaming and it’s a fact, no matter what he may say about it later. I’m still gaining on him as well obviously, but it’s hard to tell by how much though.

The ‘shield’ is about as ready as it’s going to get, I think, all that’s left is to deploy it. Powers’ help me, this better work! With a push followed closely by an expectant a flinch I forced the spell construct out of my lines. In seconds, a sparkling blue haze formed in front of my vision, much to my relief.

The shape wasn’t perfect by any means and I had to shift my body into a slight spin to counteract a problem where one side of the nosecone-shaped shield was slightly lopsided, but my velocity drastically improved to a point that within seconds I was practically passing John in the air.

When I had as big a lead ahead of him as I’d dare to get with the earth coming quickly upon us, while still being useful, I shattered the shield with a pulse of magic and twisted my body over so I was falling back-first.

My arms spread out as wide as I could and I gestured for John to come to me. It took him a moment or two to get it but with a visible gulp he pulled his arms in, no doubt in the same way he saw me do a moment ago, and dropped towards me harshly.

We smacked into each other at speed. The collision hurt, especially my ribs where his elbow slammed into me, but luckily one of my hands managed to slap down on his lower back as he almost drifted away and the ‘sticking’ spell Eris showed me to help get my hair to stay in place worked wonders in ensuring that he couldn’t just bounce off of me to go flying away once more.

I frantically pulled us together and he wrapped me up in his arms tightly in return. My legs twisted together with his to lock myself in place as best I could. With one last huff of breath I slapped my charged hand on his bicep to activate his wings.

The g-forces involved felt like they must have been staggering. I’m pretty sure only the inherent nature of the runes built into his newly fabricated Icarus wings stopped us both from passing out as we decelerated at a stupidly fast rate. I’m also pretty sure that, if I hadn’t tweaked the spells a little before translating them into a fabricating rune array, then the wing constructs jutting out from behind John at the moment would have probably snapped off like twigs by now, too.

As it is, though, I held on for dear life, mostly remaining tucked to John’s chest by the ‘sticking’ spell my hand has on his back and the amazingly tight hug he’s got around me at the same time. After a few seconds the sound of rushing wind finally died off at long last and I could hear some loud girly screaming surrounding us from seemingly everywhere at once.

I opened my eyes, ready to tease John about it, only to find him watching me with his mouth shut instead.
...Well, that’s embarrassing...

It took more force then I’d like to admit for me to slam my mouth shut and cut off the terrified little scream that had been unconsciously escaping me for however long it had been happening as we fell.

“Nice of you to drop in, Han. I thought you liked flying as long as it’s by magic?”
...Seriously?...

We just survived jumping out of a burning plane and he wants to be a smart-ass about it now?

“Don’t make me hurt you, John-Boy.”

Despite the situation and the very real fact that, because of my own negligence in forgetting to tell him how to activate the most important spell on these suits when we’re thirty-thousand feet up, I nearly let him die an— and—

Slowly I tucked my head tight against his chest and closed my eyes slightly as I clung on for dear life and we started to our controlled descent properly at last.

I didn’t think at the time, I got too distracted by the seemingly impossible magical plane we were in, and Eris’s cute reaction to getting her bowling ball back.

I didn’t listen. I got too caught up in the fun of finally getting to test out my new element and all my new toys properly, too. After months of half-dazed calculations I can barely remember, there was this burning need in my chest to prove, to myself more than anything, that it all wasn’t just wasted time!

I acted rashly, stupidly, in a way that we just can’t afford to do anymore. Xian, back in the plane, proved one simple fact which I tend to forget sometimes, I’m not the only one with enemies.

There isn’t time for me to relax. I shouldn’t be wasting my attentions on family drama, emotions, or allowing my own fears to control me! I should be working around those fears or just ploughing through them like a Powers-damned adult would!

If I’d been any slower, if Felix had given me a standard suit instead of my prototype one, if John hadn’t listened to me when I told him to get back or hadn’t caught me when the plane tipped forward so suddenly. Then we could have all died back there and it would have all been my fau—

======

“Less of the moping, Han. We all survived and you did the right thing. Enjoy the view while you can and stop beating yourself up with what-if’s like you just finished our third-grade math test all over again.”

My mouth opened to snap at him, either for reading my mind like he so often seems to do lately, or just because he’s trying to stop me from doing what needs to be done again, just like he did back in my realm—then, my brain registered that tacked on third-grade comment in his chastisement and I paused in surprise at the reference, a reference which caught me completely off guard for obvious reasons.

Without much warning I felt my cheeks flush a little at the embarrassing reminder and a string of barely suppressed giggles left my lips, even as I fought hard to pull them into an annoyed pout for his ego’s sake more than anything. After a few more seconds of hard struggle, I just gave up and sunk my head against his chest again to let the giggles come as they liked.

His chest was vibrating in amusement, too, thankfully, so I didn’t feel too stupid in letting them out at least. I haven’t thought about those days in ages!

He’s right. I was acting very ‘Al’-like for a minute there, going into a guilt-fueled rant to myself over my own failings, because I wasn’t good enough, just like I used to do in pretty much any exam we faced growing up.

Back then, it was a near panic attack when I thought I’d gotten less than one-hundred percent on that stupid little test, because I was a complete dork as a kid who didn’t know any better—Now it’s a lot more serious, with people’s lives in the balance and everything. But my reaction was the same still, and he’s right.

Panicking over what-if’s isn’t going to help us going forward, damn it!

I did everything I could realistically have done to protect us all before we got on that plane. Sure, I forgot a few things along the way and got extremely lucky at points too, but there are always going to be things like that for me to learn from in any situation.

Beating myself up over it all isn’t going to help anyone in the long run. It’s just going to upset me and make me even sloppier the next time I face a bad situation, which is completely the opposite of what I need right about now!

“...Thanks John...”

The smug bastard, with his smug, warm magic radiating happiness against my skin like a strobe-light set to ‘seizure mode’, only grunted in response to my words. At least I could feel from that same magic and the way his arms squeezed around me, that he was feeling relieved as well while also telling me quite plainly that he understood why I had to thank him, all the same.

With a heavy sigh, I turned my head sideways so my ear could rest against his chest comfortably and my eyes focused out across the fields stretching for miles around us, seemingly in all directions, as the sun hung low in the sky rather beautifully as well.
...He was right about the view...

Stupid bastard John— it really is worth looking at while I can...

======

“Keep all arms and legs inside the vehicle for landing. Thank you for flying Air John and I hope you had a good jour—oof!”
My elbow dug rather forcefully into John’s ribs to cut his joking spiel short, just because I could.

He obviously didn’t appreciate it at all, but he also didn’t complain or drop me, at least, as we swooped in surprisingly smoothly to the middle of a rather large, empty field among many that apparently make up whatever rural corner of the US we’ve landed in now.

I hesitated for a moment or two, only partly to get my footing properly as I’d pretended to do, I’m sorry to say. Eventually I pulled away from John’s nice warm arms to fix him with a thankful smile that seemed to light up his whole face in an almost worryingly similar reaction to the one Felix always has when I smile at him too, honestly.

“I take back everything I said about these suits of yours, Han. Considering Xian was specifically hunting for me, it’s not like I can even say it saved us from a mess of your creation, for once, either.”
...Smug bastard...
“That doesn’t mean I’m not still going to complain because you could have told me how to activate the Icarus Wings at some point while you were busy flash-frying demons and my poor plane, after all.”
...Smug, kinda correct, bastard...

“I completely spaced John, I’m sorry. Trust me, I’ve already beaten myself up over that stupid mistake while I was trying to find a way to fall faster than gravity and wind shear should allow in order to save your ass. This whole trip’s just been one big rushed mess, and I’ve been pretty stressed and tired since we got home again, a—”

A finger came up to my lips, making me stall out mid-sentence as my eyes crossed to stare down at the offending appendage while fighting the somewhat unreasonable urge to bite it just on general principle alone.

“You were rambling.”
That damn smirk of his was back on his lips as he smiled down at me gently, annoying finger and all.
“I’m not blaming you, Han. This trip was rushed, at best, and honestly this one is totally on me. I suggested we use my jet—mostly because I wanted to show off after finding out just how bad you are with normal tech—”

…Ah, ha! I knew he was showing off!…

“From what I could get out of Xian, he’d been tracking my jet for months now, and had been staking it out ever since it landed, all so he could get a shot at killing me while my guard was down.”
Slowly his finger dropped away from my lips and he sighed to himself heavily, his head shaking from side-to-side slightly, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was going to say next.
“Apparently someone in China really wants the U.S.M.P.A to fail and they wrongfully assumed that us traveling to Long Island was happening so that I could take my place as ‘Max’, to make up the vote at last, instead of you doing it in my place.”
...Well that’s, kind of, annoying...

What a stupid bloody reason to pick a fight with the current incarnation of Maxarimus, and the technically current incarnation of Arista!

It’s like this Xian guy had a death wish or something, especially when he got everyone I care about involved in the process too. John, on his own, would probably have been enough to take down that demon-summoning asshole, especially if I hadn’t jumped in like an overenthusiastic child instead of letting him handle it!

“You think he was working alone or...”

The grimace I received in answer to that question, followed shortly by a tentative shrug, was enough to make me sigh aloud in frustration. We’ve not even gotten into the hallowed-halls of American magical corruption yet, and already this politics junk is getting downright aggravating!

Anything John might have to hand should now be considered compromised, basically, because we have no idea who else could be staking out his car, his truck, his boat or any other stupid form of ‘Normal’ travel he might have tucked away somewhere, just on the off chance he uses it to get to Long Island!

Hell! The way things are going, I wouldn’t be surprised if normal air travel would be dangerous, too.

Taking MPA Jeeps on a roadtrip across the country or using Waypoints in general, considering how compromised the MPA have turned out to be, thanks to Arista’s meddling and all, would probably be almost equally as dangerous.
...Not to mention far more time consuming...

We’ve got days, at best, before the United States as we know it falls apart. Without the stupid laws they need put in place again being signed off by the ‘Numbers’, Magical America will be torn to pieces by scavengers from every nation across the globe and there are no options left for us to safely get from one point to the other anymore, let alone as a group.

With the way this is all unfolding, maybe it would just be better if we all hid inside the Hub and demanded a—a?
Wait!—No, it couldn’t possibly work—

...Or could it?...

Felix said— But I can’t just—
...But maybe?...

“What’s that look about, Han? I know that look and it’s usually either very dangerous, or very fun, depending on where your little head has drifted off to.”
Oh, you have no idea, John-Boy!

I’ve just had an idea. A crazy, stupid, ‘couldn’t possibly work’, kind of idea that feels annoyingly like it could be the single greatest thing I’ve ever done in my life, if it actually works!

“I think I have a way we can travel across the country without anyone being ready to stop us at the other end...”
Two ways, come to that, a second one that could be a bit more awkward to set up, but should theoretically work just as well if the first option fails, so—

John moved forward slightly and planted a kiss on my forehead so suddenly that I froze in shock, staring up at him in disbelief. He quickly pulled back and there was a proud grin on his face that made my heart flutter just ever so faintly, in a way that was pretty hard to ignore, despite my best attempts to pretend such an annoyingly irrational biological reaction never happened in the slightest moments later.

“I love it when you have crazy ideas. They’re always fun if nothing else.”
That stupid grin of his didn’t dim at all as he spoke and I could practically feel waves of his happy magic rolling off of him, even when he carried on speaking in a more serious tone of voice a moment or two later.
“What do we need to do? For that matter, where did you send everyone else?... we should probably collect the rest of them before getting started on the fun, after all.”

I couldn’t help but grimace guiltily at that second question, one that I probably should have seen coming to some degree.

While I’d hesitate to call any form of shadow magic ‘instinctive’, I kind of ran on instinct while casting my wide-range shadow warp spell earlier. Some forms of magic, like with muscles, can often have an annoying amount of ‘memory’ to it, that can help make your reactions faster than should be strictly possible at times. Well, I was in a rush and a bit drowsy at the time too, in my defence, an—

“Han, jus—just tell me you didn’t trap them in some nightmarish hell dimension in your haste to get them clear?”

Oh please, as if I’d do that!
...I don’t even know the Waypoint code for Detroit, after all...

“Much, much worse than that one, John-Boy.”
I’m not sure if it was my words, or just the guilty tone of my voice I used while saying them, but some part of it made John blanch visibly in response as he stood there waiting for me to deal the final ‘blow’ and spill the bad news at last.
“Do you remember the Waypoint beacon taste for Medford, by any chance? We really should hurry before they all start worrying or something, an—”

Damn it, John-Boy, stop laughing! I wasn’t joking! Hell, give me a nice cosy demon-filled hell dimension over Medford. I’d even take Detroit over Medford, any day!

A physical shudder rolled through my body at the very thought of it all, which only seemed to amuse John even more for some reason.

Medford was the one place that anyone who knows even the slightest bit of information about me wouldn’t think to look for people I sent somewhere ‘for their own safety’. It was the first thought that came to me at the time, hiding them all in plain sight where no one would even consider looking for them any time soon.

It’s the one place that I’d gladly offer up for hosting Arista’s next big ‘Crater Lake’ event too, if it came to that someday—okay, maybe that one’s a bit of a stretch?...
...Only a little bit...

“Can you stop laughing John? We really should go find them all before something else goes wrong in the meantime.”
His laughter stalled out slightly and he stared at me with a look of almost confused wonder on his face for a moment or two, before going back to laughing all over again, annoyingly.

“Y-you’re serious?”

Apparently my glare and accompanying folded arms weren’t enough of an indication on that one because, once again, he went back to laughing. This time actually mumbling ‘Medford’, to himself in disbelief a few times under his breath, as if he wanted to rub it in even more. Damn it!

“I know, I’ll apologise to them all when we get there, okay? Now let’s GO!”

With an almost distracted dip into the outer reaches of my lines, I conjured a new red sweatshirt and pair of shorts for myself, struggling into them with a rather graceless, awkward hop and shimmy motion on the spot, before reaching up to my neck and reactivating the runes at the base of my skull that make my safety suit invisible and intangible once more.

I didn’t give him a chance to laugh at my choice of clothing, nor the rushed method I used to get into them. Instead, dropping furiously into my mage senses and quickly sending out a pulse toward the beacon at Medford.

In barely a second I received an ‘all clear’ response that I latched onto in order to disappear at last and leave the chuckling wonder behind to his own amusement, at my expense, naturally.

======

Powers’ damn it! I hate Medford...

“Ma’am, I’m getting another signal in, so I need you to step off the platform for your own sa—”
My eyes cut up to glare at the guard so sharply that he actually stuttered to a stop in surprise.

With one hand wrapped around my now complaining stomach and another being used to push myself back up to my feet again, I staggered off the arrivals platform with a groan and practically flopped into a spare chair that I’m pretty sure is usually reserved for the guard to use during quite periods around here normally. Quiet periods that tend to be rather long and boring, judging by the chairs central placement in the room and the amount of junk he’s got stacked around it, not that I cared enough to comment on it all at this point in time, honestly.

After a few seconds pause there came a flash of blue light and John stumbled forward slightly, a barely supressed smile on his lips still, which only seemed to get brighter when he noticed my slumped form nearby.

The poor guard tried to give us some form of canned introduction after a few moments, as if he’d finally remembered what his actual job is supposed to be around here, but it didn’t take much for John to brush him off into silence as he made his way over to me and helped ease me back to my relatively unstable feet at last.

“We’ll go walk it off, Han. You know the way to wherever you sent them all, right?”

Rather than answer him properly, I just nodded and leaned heavily into his hold with more than a little relief painfully obvious on my face.

I swear my travel sickness never used to be this bad with warping, back when I was Al. Whether my awakenings—number one, two or ‘three’, for that matter—have changed something in my magic or biology to make it all worse, I have no idea. It’s got to be either that, or I’m just more sensitive to it all for some random reason lately.

...Honestly, I have no idea, but either way it really sucks at the very least!...

Before I could say anything more on the topic of our destination, or my sickness in general, John looped his arm tighter around my waist with a nod of his own and practically carried me out of the Waypoint room, as we made our way through the back halls of Medford’s stupid shopping center on our way to fresh air, which I think I desperately need at this point, unfortunately.

For once, I’m kind of glad Medford has their stupid Waypoint in the back of their stupid Sears store.

At least the walk out should give me a few minutes to get my head on straight if nothing else and, of almost equal importance, it will give me a chance to grab a new pair of shoes or sandals along the way, too.

I really suck at conjuring shoes for some reason. I can make them look right, at least, but they always feel awkward when I put them on to an eventually painful degree, especially anything with a heel on it. If we were anywhere else, I’d rather go barefoot than wear conjured shoes, honestly, but we’re in Medford, where the streets are paved with things I don’t want to step in, not even with my suit protecting me from actual contact with anything.

Given the choices on hand, buying a throwaway pair of shoes on the way out of here is the better option in the long run, even if it does mean tapping into the ‘Bank of John’ once more, much to my pride’s continuing despair.

======

“Take a left up here, by the garage on the corner. We’re almost there now.”

My stomach finally decided to settle at last, about the point where we passed the sweet, unhealthy smell of Red Robin a minute or so ago, but John’s arm is still wrapped tightly around my waist ‘for support’ and I really can’t be bothered to dissuade him from it at this point in time. Even if the position of his arm leaves us in probably look a bit suggestive from an outsiders perspective, the casual closeness adding to the whole ‘dating couple’ look we’ve got going on in general.

I can’t bring myself to shrug him or his nice warm magic off at the moment, after the day I’ve had so far.

“Is it just me, or is this stupid town full of fast food places that love pumping their smells out everywhere you go?”
...I knew it wasn’t just us!...

“I know, right?! It’s so weird! This is nothing, too. You can smell the Chinese place we’re heading to from across a massive car park and everything.”
…Mmm! Chinese food…

“I could go for some egg fried rice and chicken balls right about now...”
...Great minds think alike, John-Boy!...

“You’re buying, naturally, also we may have to pay them a little extra money as well. Now that I think about it, the last time I was here, I kind of ran off without paying in an attempt to escape Narcissus and Echo. If they recognise my face, you’ll have to be ready to crack out your credit card I’m afraid, John-Boy...”

I hesitated for a moment to let that half-joking, half-serious statement of fact sink in, but I needn’t have worried because John just laughed the whole thing off with his usual, casual dismissal when it comes to money and spending it in general.

I guess, when you’ve got uncountable-generations worth of built up wealth to fall back on, money really can be a bit of a moot point sometimes.

That being said, I really do need to sort my finances out at soon!

If it really comes down to it, maybe I should just get someone else to do it for me? I’m sure someone in the magical world must know how to fudge the system and retrieve a mages Normal-world money for them, after all.

At the rate I’m going, I’m never going to get around to doing it on my own. Getting an expert involved, even if that does mean involving the Hub as well, is probably the only way I’m actually going to get some financial freedom from John at the end of the day.

I’m not exactly struggling at the moment, obviously, but it’s still pretty awkward at times, having to rely on him in general. Let alone the whole traditional female role it kinda places me in as basically his ‘kept woman’— minus the sex or benefits for him, of course!
...Of course—for now...

My ears unhelpfully decided to flush bright red as my mind spun frantically in an attempt to distance itself away from further thoughts along that particular route for a few seconds and annoyingly John noticed my ‘odd’ reaction all of a sudden too, judging by the quiet chuckle he let off a few moments later.

I couldn’t bring myself to look at his face and check to make sure it was me he was laughing at, but I really doubt I need to, sadly.

“Shut up, John-Boy.”
...Stupid John...

======

“Ha! I called it, no-one can resist Chinese food of this quality!”

John’s, almost lazy, snort of reluctant agreement put a slight dampener on my joy at being right in the assumption that the others would not only camp out in the Chinese restaurant that my warp dropped them off next to, but also order food while they waited.

Before I could turn away from the street-facing window to properly give John a well-earned smirk of victory someone inside squealed loudly and I staggered back slightly in fear as a virtual stampede of bodies made their way towards the glass door in front of us, with one obvious goal in mind, namely, us!

By the time the first little body, one that’s pretty easy to see belongs to Eris, even through the slight distortion of the window glass between us, reached the door itself, I’d managed to twist myself around and practically dive behind John’s, now lightly laughing, form for shelter from the barrage to come.

Eris aside, we have a group that includes my often over-protective sister, my ‘therapist’ Trudy, the robust form of an often far-too-comforting-for-my-sanity’s-sake Rosemary and, more worrying than anything else, Pauly in all his paranoid old military glory!

It’s bad enough when just Sarah is having a go at me over every stupid little thing I do. I don’t want to even imagine what she’s going to have to say about me getting rid of all my potential backup, aside from John, while facing an unknown mage and his demon ‘friends’ and that’s without the others joining in, too.

“Han, John? You’re both okay!”

John’s grunt was about the only warning I got before Sarah came flying towards us and somehow managed to twist herself around my improvised meat-shield to snag, not just me, but him up in a tight pair of one-armed hugs as she buried her face in my neck harshly and shook slightly from barely suppressed emotions.

Slowly I turned in Sarah’s death-grip and slid both my arms protectively around her waist in return. She obviously needs the comfort at the moment if she’s not even yelling at me for sending her away from danger, yet again, like I’d normally have expected her to be doing right about now.

“Let’s head back inside, the streets aren’t safe or easily defendable.”
Despite his gruff tone and tight glare that seemed to flicker in every direction possible as he spoke, I could tell by his body language alone that Pauly was at least relieved to see us alive if nothing else.

I didn’t really feel like arguing with his pretty valid assessment of the situation, even if I hadn’t had Sarah clinging to me anyway. So without more than a glance between us, me and John set off for the doors in front of us with Sarah in tow, as best we could.

Eventually we got inside and were directed to a corner booth near the back, surrounded by the now all-business soldiers standing guard around it in that same annoying way they tend to do whenever I’m around.

Sarah reluctantly let John go with some prodding from him, but seemed more than content to use her now free arm to cling tighter to me as we slid awkwardly into the booth and settled in to get comfortable at last. After a few seconds, I took in a huff of air and watched on a bit dazedly as my entourage formed up around us, John taking up the free space on my left with Eris in his lap while Fena, Rose and Trudy took up the rest of the booth.

To finish the set off, Pauly dragged a spare chair over, positioning himself at an angle from the table which I have no doubt was chosen specifically because it broke line-of-sight between me and the window-covered walls behind him, like the paranoid old buzzard he can be at times.

“What happened? We grabbed everything we could, some of the soldiers got your bags by the way, and we’d just gotten into a huddle when the world suddenly went horribly dark. One moment we were falling and the next we were spinning through a lot of flashing red lights until the world suddenly turned back on again, leaving us here, of all places.”

My hand came up to run through my hair, as best I could with Sarah perched possessively on my shoulder, and I sighed heavily to myself at the awkward conversation to come.

“I kinda... shadow-warped you all to safety, then blew up the plane and almost got John killed by going base jumping without a parachute...”
The expected, long awkward silence that I received from that, admittedly brief, summary of events made me cringe almost as much as the sudden tightening of Sarah’s arms around my shoulders and the indignant glare on Pauly’s face did, in pretty much equal measure.
“John, it’s your turn to do the explaining!”

With my desperate command given, I rolled my neck back to rest on the booth seat’s headrest and closed my eyes tightly to stave off the headache I can already feel trying to start up a mini-revolt against my brain cells at any moment.

“Great! Thanks, Han.”
His eyes scanned around us before he let off an amused little huff and started explaining what happened after I warped them all away in detail for his captive audience.
“Well, it all happened because this guy called Xia—”

======

“Spring rolls, extra dip?”

I kept my eyes closed but shot a hand up for the waitress’s sake, much to the amusement of the others around us at this point. John was rather... extravagant?... in his explanation of everything that the others missed, unfortunately.

At this point, even Sarah’s let go of me in order to stare incredulously between us, an action I can’t blame her for, considering I apparently ‘pulled a super-powered suit out of my ass’ and ‘punched myself to turn my suit into some fantasy, role-playing game nerd’s idea of female warrior armor’.

Armor that I then proceeded to ‘light up like a Christmas tree mixed with a Tesla coil’ just to show off, according to my utter bastard of a best friend in all his smug glory.

The fact that his version of events has those tantalising grains of truth inside them makes it all so much worse, because my glares and blushes as he continued on were pretty hard to hide, while apparently also being far too easy to read incorrectly for most people as well!

...At least the food is here now...

Maybe we can all focus on something other than John’s stupid version of ‘what happened’ at last, or my own stupid reaction to him saying I looked like ‘some kind of lightning-goddess of hot asses and spandex’ at the very least. A reaction which may or may not have included a blush, an indignant squeal, and a failed attempt to either hit or zap him at the same time, I might add!

“So what’s the plan now, then? No plane, and if we take the Jeeps across country at this point we will be cutting our deadline pretty close, I’m afraid.”

I froze with a spring roll halfway to my mouth as John grinned at Pauly’s question and turned his attention over to me instead, making everyone else copy him with mild amounts of confusion or amusement obvious on their faces at the same time.

Rather than give in to peer pressure, I let off a huff to show them all I didn’t care what they thought before shoving the spring roll in my mouth as an excuse to not speak for a few more precious seconds.

I used those well-earned seconds mostly to cuss out John in my head, while also putting my plan together verbally for public consumption.

More importantly, they also allowed me the time to enjoy my first bite of Chinese food so far today, unhindered by the barrage of questions that are about to assault me when I try to explain the loose collection of theories that technically could be described as my plan in general.

It’s a terrible, half-formed and hope-filled plan that still seems to be more than a little bit insane, even to me at this point, sadly.

“Well, okay, so you all know that weird golden effect that’s been spreading through the Hubs, right?”
Damn it, John! Stop smirking at me with that childlike wonder sparkling so obviously in your eyes! It’s bloody distracting and it’ll be pointless if I’m wrong about even one part of this mess anyway, so shut up already, you incorrigible idiot asshole!

...Stupid John-Boy!...

Cause and effect can be important in life, especially when you’re making plans. Sadly, knowing about it really doesn’t help much if you don’t understand all the factors involved. The best laid plans of Hannah’s and—well, just Hannah, this time… Maybe blame John, too, of course. Stupid John! Events unfold including but not limited to: Messages being passed between soldiers, John getting called pretty (internally at least), And Hannah’s plan going about as well as could be expected.

 

“Wouldn’t this have been easier if we’d gone back to the Klamath Falls Hub?”

I couldn’t help but grimace as we pulled up outside a comfortable looking house, tucked behind several high tree walls on all sides, that houses the Merlin Hub’s entranceway at the moment. Slowly, I turned to shoot Sarah an annoyed look because she just proved that she obviously wasn’t listening during my earlier explanation in the slightest.

“Everything that we take for granted is compromised, Sare. Like it or not, we’re creatures of habit and that makes us worryingly predictable when an assassin from any one of several interested nations could be waiting around the corner for us now.”

The soldiers started unloading from the Jeeps around us. One of them gestured towards me through the window, while offering a painfully obvious attempt to be subtle about doing just that, and I let out a tiny sigh in response. With a few shuffles forward in my seat, I got ready to exit the Jeep, finishing my thought off in a resigned tone of voice that hopefully shows to everyone who’s listening that I know explaining things to Sarah right now is a waste of my time, to some degree.

“If my plan doesn’t work, we’ll need to be somewhere no-one would expect and we’ll need to get lost pretty quickly, just in case they can track us. Given that fact, Merlin’s Hub was not only closer and easier to get Jeeps sent down from, but also a place none of us has ever been to before.”

A brief glance over my shoulder before my door opened showed me that this time Sarah had, at least partly, understood the logic behind our relatively short trip to the northern outskirts of Grants Pass, at long last.

The moment I slid out of my seat, Pauly’s men moved to defend me from all sides like a well-oiled machine. Annoyingly, that exact action probably told anyone who could be bothered to watch us that I was the ‘true’ VIP in this situation, a problem which could be a liability in a lot of cases and one that we’ll have to work out at some point in the future, before it gets me killed. Even if it’s not strictly an issue at this exact moment in time, thanks to the tree walls around us.

I barely had time to sweep Eris up onto my hip before we were being ushered towards the glowing front entrance of the rather worn-down property ahead of us.

The moment we were all clear of the Jeeps, baggage and all, the drivers pulled out and seemed to head off towards a disused farming shed to the side of the house that I can only assume is their cover for this Hub’s garage area. I didn’t really have much of a chance to take more of the place in before being rather rudely prodded through the doorway by an agitated looking Pauly, sadly. Overall it seems that they have a better set up than we do back in Klamath, a lot more secluded and hard to expose, at the very least.

Eris’s little fingers tensed on my shoulder as we stepped through the doorway. Thankfully, a squeeze from me seemed to calm her down for the brief moment of blindness that followed us entering this new Hub for the first time.

======

It took a few blinks for my eyes to get accustomed to the sudden explosion of color around us when we got to the other side of the doorway. It’s not like this is the first time I’ve had to deal with going from a dark real world to a far too bright Hub space, after all.

Honestly, the most difficult thing about this particular trip was the fact that the room we’d entered wasn’t the clean white space I’m used to seeing from Felicia’s Klamath Falls reception desk but instead a far too familiar golden color that shone out at me from all sides. The same golden color that I’d at least partly hoped wouldn’t be here, despite it being kind of necessary for our travel plans to work, in one way or another.

Luckily, the golden walls, floor and ceiling around us didn’t instantly start trying to drain me dry of magic like they did after my fight with Maven, but it’s still a bit disconcerting to know that the problem I accidentally caused has already spread so much in just a few months. I’m surprised the Hubs across America haven’t been crying out demands that I come and fix this mess sooner, honestly, so—

======

“You with us, Han?”
My head shot up and tracked to the side, instinctively, in response to those amused words that could only really come from one source at the end of the day.

“I’m fine, John-Boy—just didn’t think my magic would have spread so much already...”
He grimaced but nodded in understanding, anyway. I get the feeling he has a better idea than me on just how far my magic has really spread inside the Hub network by now. If he does, however, then I honestly don’t think I want to know at this point, for my own sanity’s sake above all else!
“Okay, Pauly, you send the alert out.”

If this works, then every Hub is going to be on warning not to panic like a bunch of idiots when anything starts changing around them now. Considering they just got over being invaded by eye-watering amounts of gold, I guess it shouldn’t be quite as much of a problem as it may have been a few months ago, but that being said, these are mages we’re dealing with. It’s probably better to err on the side of caution when it comes to low expectations over potential intelligence or stupidity levels when they are involved, really.
...Stupid mages...

With a simple nod, Pauly made his way back outside into the real world again, probably so he could get enough of a signal to call in the warning on his radio or something. Either way it didn’t take him long and as he stepped back through the entranceway behind us, there was a crackling sound around us, followed by a rather cultured male voice speaking up from seemingly everywhere to declare a brief ‘active maintenance’ period, while suggesting heavily that all staff and visitors find themselves an office or space to wait in until told otherwise.

We all stood around rather awkwardly after the announcement was made, waiting for the ‘all clear’ signal, which eventually came in the form of the rookie of Pauly’s team coming through the entranceway to join us while reporting in about the radio message he’d just received.

From that point on all eyes were on me, and I have to admit that I was feeling more than a little bit nervous because of it, unfortunately.

I eased Eris down again first. She proceeded to run over to Sarah in response, tucking herself behind her legs in a way that made me wince slightly before casting it aside in favor of the much more dangerous and important issue ahead of me. John sidled his way up to me and bumped his shoulder against mine reassuringly, his seemingly ever-present smile there as expected and helping a little more than I would have thought to calm me down, somewhat, over the stupidity we’re about to attempt.

“The minute I start ranting about being a goddess or any weird junk like that, you wrap me in your magic and get me the hell out of here, got that John-Boy?”
His amused snort wasn’t exactly reassuring, but the hint of worry I could feel practically radiating off of him helped to assure me that he was taking this seriously, despite his bravado and the front he’s putting up trying to say otherwise.
“Well—here goes nothing!”

My piece said, I took a few tentative steps away from everyone else. Carefully, I eased myself down into a crouched position in the center of the entrance hall, so I could place the flats of my hands onto the floor for a better contact point while keeping all walls and people as far away as possible. There are more magical receptors and lines in your hands than your feet, anyway. Above that, I also happen to be wearing an extra layer of clothing over my feet, due to my admittedly kind of thin shoes, as well.

As far as I can tell, the only reason the magic that’s infected this place isn’t chasing me around like a big juicy steak right now, is that my once more invisible suit is providing a layer between us and confusing it to some degree. That’s not going to last for much longer, though, and even worse I’m going to be intentionally provoking it, too.
...Of all the stupid ideas that our often defective brain could have come up with!...

“Here goes...”
The words came out in a breathy muttering whisper instead of the brave tone I’d been going for, more for my own sake than anyone else’s. But at least it helped me marshal my courage a little bit before taking the big leap, shoving several lines worth of magic through my hands and into the floor below them.

Almost instantly, the golden walls around us seemed to practically glow with renewed power and, even as a gasp left my lips, I couldn’t stop my hands flattening out completely when a wave of draining magical pressure came pouring in from all sides around me. Even the very air I was breathing seemed to carry with it some indescribably invading force that was so hard to hold back, something I’d instinctively tried to do in the brief moment of panic that followed.

Finally the force around me became too much and it really did become sink-or-swim time. With one more desperate breath that seemed to pulse out of me across every surface I could see, like a wave of uncontrolled power itself, I let go of all control and invited the magic in at long last.

The force that hammered against my very being in response was overwhelming for a moment and I almost blacked out entirely from that initial hit alone. Seconds later the magic burned a path, seemingly straight through my gut, into my lines to hit my Locus Point itself and all hell broke loose, forcing me to really black out imme—

======

“Hannah? Han, can you hear me?”

My eyes snapped open and my head lowered slightly to stare down at the mortal, a male I believe, who would dare speak so openly to me.

“Hannah. Are you, uh, you?”

The mortal was rather amusing, and rather pretty, for a male at least. Words came, a voice that I know; a voice that is my own and yet not. We know this male—oh, do we know this male!

“John...”

The male perked up at my words.
Mortals really are such odd creatures at times.

My hands drifted around at my side and magic rose up to meet them. As it should be, I could feel the world around me move with my every breath. I could feel the heartbeat of every mortal within my grasp and just as easily I could silence each of them with but a thought.

...We wouldn’t do that though...

We would not, indeed.
They are my mortals, just as this male is mine as well.

What event must have led us here?

To be so rudely summoned to my first true home once more. To be ensnared in this mortal form, even as magic suspends it and nourishes it beyond anything a true mortal form could sustain.

Oh—I see—
Well, that’s inconvenient, isn’t it?

Still, a boon she wished and a boon she shall gain! My time has yet to come, but that doesn’t mean fate may hold all the cards without rebuke.

...What are we going to do?...
A boon, a gift—not just to my Hannah, but to all children of magic.

Too long has fate divided them within these walls. Too long have the fallen claimed my home as their own. They shall have their space, as Hannah would wish, but no one Fae shall hold dominion over this Realm again.

You picked your pieces well, Brother, but you do not truly understand the game we are playing, nor the stakes at risk, I fear—such a pity—but no mind, I shall have my day to gloat, and this day is Hannah’s alone.

Be free, Hannah!

Be free and run wild with the chaos, as you were always meant to do. Let neither Fate, nor the Powers’ hold you back from your chosen path, my child.

Amuse me and be rewarded.

======

“Han? You’re worrying me here...”

A smirk played across this delicate mortal form of mine and I leant down to face her little toy male with care, magic tilting and turning me so I could see him properly at last.

“Care for her Jonathan Alicesen, embrace and protect her as only you can, for you both have enemies to face beyond your limited comprehension before you and she will need you more then she could ever admit to herself.”

The mortal male toy staggered away from me, his eyes wide in fear and wonder as magic, my magic, writhed not just around us but within his own chest, in turn.

You understand now, don’t you mortal male? You see, but you feel fear. You wonder, but also hide.

You’re only human, after all.

“Wh-who are you?”
A grin split these delicate lips once more and I rolled back upright, magic suspending me and holding me as only it can. I posed for the terrified mortals below—the terrified mortals and one mortal toy.

“I am Hannah Cooper, and yet I am not. I am the Lady Death, the beginning, and yet the end. I a—”
Oh, how precious… Her mortal toy thinks to overpower me?

He thinks that merely separating us from this Realms wellspring will save his mistress. Well, far be it from me to disappoint the poor boy!

Go my magic, you know of Hannah’s will, go do all you can to help her achieve her goals. I do hope she tries this again. I’d forgotten how fun mortals can be in times such as these.

The Sleep, can get ever so boring after a while.

======

With a breath stealing thump, my body landed harshly on the ground.

Somehow I seem to suddenly be flat on my back. Despite having only seconds previously, from my perspective, been in a kneeling position while trying to connect with the fae realm, as stupid as that idea feels in hindsight. Almost automatically, my body rolled over and I found myself unceremoniously puking up what little I had in my stomach, mostly coffee I’d assume, before rolling the other way in the lush grass around me with a pained groan.

It feels like I just ran a marathon or something! I haven’t felt this bad since we—

“Hannah!”
...Huh?...

Careful not to overstrain my aching body, I pushed myself over slightly further and winced one eye open to fix John and the others with a gimlet stare. It probably took me longer than it should have to realise that something was wrong with the scene before me. Aside from everyone staring at me with what I can only assume is an unhealthy mix of horror, fear and awe, which really doesn’t make any of this less confusing or weird at all sadly, we also appear to have gotten into my Realm somehow?

Lush rolling hills of grass… Check!

Blue sky that’s almost too pretty to be real… Check!

Oddly out of place, glowing doorway leading to nowhere… Che—wait!

“Wha’ happened?”
Slowly I pushed my complaining muscles into action and eased my way back to my feet.

After one staggering step that had several people moving away from me and a few of Pauly’s team even raising their guns slightly for some reason, my knee’s gave out and sent me toppling forward, despite my best efforts to stop them. I didn’t actually hit the ground, John having surged forward to catch me as he always seems to do in situations like this, but the landing still made several muscles I didn’t even know I had ache from the jarring jolt of stopping, all the same.

“What happened, John? I feel—weird?...”
Everything feels so heavy and out of place.

Why is there a glowing doorway, like the ones leading to the Hub, in my Realm? Why is there a slightly overgrown receptionist desk sitting in the middle of my nice grass entrance area, with little hills surrounding it, presumably holding my normally stone doorways leading out into the crystal roofed, white marble hallways of my Realm?

Come to think of it, why does my stomach hurt like I got punched in the gut a few times, right above where my Locus Point seems to sit, usually?

“My tummy hurts.”
Finally, I must have said the magic words or something, because everyone seemed to relax at my, admittedly, rather childish sounding muttered grumble.

Sarah cautiously stepped forward to join John at my side, bringing Eris along for the ride, despite the girl’s obvious worry at getting too close to me right now, for some odd reason. Trudy and Rosemary shared a significant look but when they noticed my bemused stare, offered me warm smiles in return, at least. Smiles which were somewhat interrupted by Fena elbowing past them so she could reach me a few moments later, naturally.

Pauly was barking a lot of orders as usual and, already, there seemed to be a steady stream of soldiers going in and out of the glowing doorway behind him with urgent sounding messages to share with him every time. I tried to focus enough to read some lips and get an idea what they were talking about, but my efforts were interrupted by Fena when she finally reached my side and promptly collapsed on top of me!

Without any warning at all she pulled me into a tight cuddle, like I’m some sort of oversized teddy bear, and squealed something about me being ‘So cool!’ right in my ear. Initially, I tried to push her back a bit, but I really don’t have the strength left in me to even voice a complaint right now.

Before long her worryingly fast chain of words that seemed to fixate mostly on me, my magic, and John for some reason, with minor pauses to talk about ‘goddesses’ and ‘death’, oddly, was becoming all too much for me to handle—not to mention that, in her enthusiasm, she seems to have forgotten that she has vampire strength going on in general.

With one more desperate attempt to push her off of me, an attempt which failed spectacularly, I found myself passing out from lack of air more than anything. Maybe stress and whatever the hell has left me feeling so weak might have had a hand in it all, too, although now that I think about i—

======

“I think she’s waking up?”

In response to Eris’s, surprisingly cautious sounding words I groaned and tried to wave her away in annoyance. For once, she didn’t take that as a sign for her to jump on my bed and start bouncing around, but it also lead to a lot more talking and voices than should comfortably fit into my bedroom a few moments later which left me, rather reluctantly, accepting the fact that I’ll have to get up—just to find out what they all want, if nothing else.

It took a few more seconds for my body to get the message, of course, but eventually I managed to practically launch myself up into a sitting position, my arms stretching up high in the air as a contented yawn passed my lips without my control.

That sleep—felt—awesome!

I totally needed a good sleep at last, apparently. I wonder if John did something to my bed or someth—Wait! Why is there grass on my bed?

My eyes snapped open and almost immediately closed moments later when bright sunlight came in, all too ready to greet my poor abused optic nerves in return. Slowly this time, I eased one eye open and let it get used to the bright light, before easing the other one open, too, and finally taking in my surroundings with more than a little confusion.

After a bit of digging around in my head, I came up with a few half-remembered flashes of weirdly disconnected things, like ‘magic’, ‘brothers’ and ‘toy males’, whatever that one means. Even as they popped into my head they seemed already to be fading away, along with what little detail they had with them, slowly leaving me feeling more than a little confused over their apparent existence when I can’t— jus—just…
...Nope, it’s gone!...

Whatever I was thinking about, it can’t have been important, considering what I have facing me at the moment in its place, anyway.

Apparently, a lot of people are interested in this new not-my-Realm-but-kind-of-is-my-Realm place we’re in right now, because I’m counting at least twenty Hub ‘guys in suits’, along with several R&D mages, and even a few SWAT teams who are busy scouting around while their leader talks to Pauly, of all people, in the middle distance.

I didn’t really get a chance to gather my bearings before a rather unwelcome face, attached to overly long limbs and a worryingly wide grin, noticed I was awake and broke away from the nearest huddle of R&D mages to approach me rather cautiously, instead.

“Hi, my name is Director Silvante. Are you with a department or the renovation team being debriefed at the moment?”
…Well—that’s a lot more pleasant of an introduction then we had last time…
Back when I was naive young Al and she started practically assaulting me for information about my mental state to satisfy her own curiosity, at least.

It has been a few years I guess. It’s probably not that surprising she’s finally picked up some bedside manner from that squat little mentor of hers, to go along with her obvious intelligence and all. If I can earn my own new stupid Arista face and larger-than-Sarah’s-but-still-pretty-small boobs in that period of time, and she can also apparently get upgraded from a ‘Division Head’ to a ‘Director’, then anything’s possible really!

Of the two options on offer, I think it’s safe to assume that the ‘renovation team’ would probably consist of John, Sarah, and everyone else aside from Pauly, who probably falls under our security detail more than anything else, hence him being talked to by that military-looking guy in the middle-distance still.

“Yeah, uh, I was with the renovation team?”

Her eyes lit up in interest and while she at least thought to offer me a hand up first, gesturing in the general direction I’d have to go to hopefully find the others, she didn’t wait that long before jumping in with questions that I’m only partly convinced she was expecting answers from judging by the speed she was shooting them off at me.

“How did you get injured?—What can you tell us about Gaia’s avatar?—Where did she come from?—Where did she go?—What did she say to you?—Is it true that the vessel for her consciousness disappeared after the power wave was let loose upon the Hub network?”

I winced automatically at her almost reverent tone of voice and reached out a hand to grasp Eris’s blindly, while keeping my now worried gaze locked on the far too interested-looking woman before us. With a barely convincing smile on my face, I slowly started, partly leading, partly following her off into the tunnel-like hallway on the left of the overgrown desk nearby that I vaguely remember seeing earlier, before I passed out from Fena's enthusiasm overwhelming me, at least.

There’s not a lot I can say to any of those questions at the moment. In a way, the questions are helpful in that they tell me, ‘Something major happened’, which I admittedly already kind of figured out when everyone was giving me scared looks earlier for some reason, but a lot of the things she’s saying just don’t make sense on their own to me, unfortunately.

‘Gaia’ is a really old myth in magical circles. She’s pretty much the figurehead for most of the pseudo-religions out there that feature the common thread of magic being in some way sentient, either being placed as the guardian of magical life in general or magic’s leash holder, depending on the iteration you’re talking about.

The concept of Gaia is one of many actual, magical concepts that have bled over into the Normal world over the centuries. Although, as far as I know, a lot of people mix her up with the Native American Earth Mother concept or pretty much any other ‘Mother’ deity from ancient mythology, a few of which I already know for sure were just Arista running around on a power trip in her role as the ‘Mother of Magic’ at this point, sadly.

What Gaia could have to do with any of this mess I have no idea. At best, it sounds like a case of people making some pretty wild assumptions, but even then, I can’t exactly say anything either way considering I’m drawing a pretty big blank on the time between my letting the magic of this place ‘in’ and my waking up to find that the Hub has somehow turned into a replica of my Realm out of bloody nowhere!

I need to get back together with the others and find out just what the hell is going on around here, before I say something stupid and make things even more of a mess then they already ar—

“Gaia was really pretty, she was floating, and gold, and she fixed the Hubs!”
Director Silvante’s head snapped around to stare at Eris in wonder at pretty much the exact same moment that my head dropped to fix her with a wide-eyed, worried, stare of my own.

My Eris generally knew when to be open and show her intelligence versus when it would be better for her to keep quiet or fake childish ignorance. My Eris was, actually, rather well practiced at manipulating situations to her own advantage by playing the ‘helpful but uncomprehending little girl’ act—often more so than I’d like to admit, even to myself at times—This Eris is still pretty much an unknown in a lot of ways, for situations like this. I honestly can’t tell if she’s playing Silvante in order to redirect her attention away from me, or if she’s literally just talking about whatever happened as the enthusiastic child that she technically is.

“What do you mean she ‘fixed the Hubs’, cutie?”

I couldn’t help but cringe at the obviously fake, in my opinion, comforting tone of voice that the eager woman tried to put on for Eris’s benefit. The whole act failed spectacularly, judging by the brief flash of disgust I saw cross Eris’s face before she covered it with a wide-eyed look of excitement once more, a quick change of emotion which probably answers the question of whether she’s faking this all or not, at this point.

“She made the Hubs pretty like my Mom’s Realm, and the others were saying something about her connecting the Hubs together. So she fixed them, yeah?”
Director Silvante seemed to accept her logic quite easily and smiled approvingly down at her as we kept walking along the newly ‘fixed’ hallways of the Hub.

As always when Eris is trying to seem innocent, I really did struggle not to take her words at face value, even when I know for a fact that she’s lying this time. It was Me that told everyone about my idea to connect the Hubs together internally so we’d have a safer way to travel cross-country that no one could anticipate us using, after all.

I’d honestly expected connecting to the magic within the Hubs again to feel like it did when I connected with the magic in my Realm earlier. I’d actually been counting on it filling me with an almost unnoticeable sense of giddiness, while leaving me lucid enough to at least initially get things done that I wanted, before finally overwhelming me entirely with the crazy ranting stage of things that is the rather large downside I seem to have developed when letting myself get too drunk on absolute power, beyond the standard definition of both absolute or powerful.

While at least part of that seems to have happened, in the way that the Hub has changed aesthetically if nothing else, taking on roughly the same ‘natural’ look that I prefer for my own Realm and also apparently gaining some kind of internal linking passageways, according to Eris’s description. I’m literally drawing a blank on anything past letting the magic in though.

It feels like I should and maybe even did remember what happened at some point but, like the past incarnations that Ellie sealed off for my sanity's sake, if the memories are still there then they are tantalisingly out of reach for some reason?

“Your team should be in here. I’ll probably be back to interview you all at some point, but for now I need to go check how the diagnostics are coming on our analysis samples from the new structures and ambient magic that have appeared. If you’ll excuse me, ladies…”

Her job apparently done, thanks to Eris’s helpfully vague information, I’d assume, Director Silvante opened the clean white wooden door in front of us and quickly turned on a heel to practically jog back the way we just came without any of the usual care I would expect from someone traveling the halls of the Hub at all. Considering how easy it is to get lost around here, no matter how good you are at paying attention to your surroundings, she’s probably going to end up lost beyond hope soon enough!
...That’s not really my problem though...

“Ready, Sweetie?”

Eris shot me an odd, almost confused look for a moment before nodding and taking my hand again, as if I was the one who needed reassuring about going into the door for some reason, instead of her.

My foot came forward to nudge the door open a bit further and Eris’s grip tightened ever so slightly more on my hand, a sign which actually made me feel a little better about the tense little ‘gulp’ I found myself making, despite how silly it was to be nervous over this of all things now, in my opinion.

======

“Ah! Your erstwhile assistant has woken up I take it?”

A rather perky-looking man in his mid-twenties with light brown hair lying haphazardly around his shoulders, a silly little goatee, and an oddly out-of-place-looking sweater-vest/jeans combo doing a pretty good job of making him look like some fresh-out-of-college child psychologist, or something equally wholesome in general, smiled at us benignly in greeting.

When he noticed my stare he offered me a wider, inviting smile and waved us into the room proper, gesturing towards the ring of chairs before him that currently contain John, Sarah, a no-longer helmet clad Fena, and the AMS girls, who offered me mildly amused waves of greeting as my eyes scanned over them all for a moment or two.

Cautiously, I took another step into the room while giving the child psychologist a healthy berth as I went. It honestly feels kind of weird to come into contact with someone who could, genuinely, offer me a polite smile without any hint of a smirk playing across his lips or leer in his eyes at all these days.
...We’ve been hanging around John too much...

“I’ve been hanging around John too much.”

I don’t know what emotions played across my face when I said those slightly disbelieving words, but they must have betrayed at least some of my thoughts, because several members of my ‘team’ started laughing in response moments later, including said John, who, I have no doubt, has already decided that this new guy will be easy pickings if he feels the need to torment someone in the near future, by now.

“I’ll leave it to your team leader, Ms. Cooper, to provide you with all the details involved, but to reiterate the main points for you: It is currently the position of the USMPA that the magical entity known as ‘Gaia’, and the Fae goddess known as ‘The Lady Death’, cannot, do not, and have never existed.”
The sweater-vest guy tried to look somewhat stern as he made that statement. Honestly, it kind of fell flat though due to the fact that he really is a bit too goofy and young-looking to be taken seriously in such a way, to my eyes.
“If questioned from this day forward about today’s events, your team had been assigned to deliver a high-priority magical artefact for storage and examination within the Hub.”

My mouth dropped open a little in surprise at just how much of an outright lie that statement really was, but the deceptively nice-seeming sweater-vest wearer wasn’t even done with his tale yet!

“Before you could make it to your drop-off point, the artefact had an unknown reaction to an invasive magical phenomenon within the Hub that had previously been dubbed ‘the gold’.”
He shifted his feet slightly and tucked his long fingered hands behind his back pompously, obviously uncomfortable with speaking the ‘lie’, even if it’s actually quite close to the truth, surprisingly, if you replace an unknown artefact with ‘me’ at least.
“The object promptly exploded in a large-scale magical event which seems to have taken prompts from the minds of several beings, both human and Fae, within the Hub at the time to reform our halls into an amalgamation of styles closely resembling the new magical domain of the entirely unconnected fresh-born mage known publicly as ‘Hannah Cooper-Garnier’, mostly thanks to Ms. Cooper being related to said business owner and having just come from her so-called ‘Realm’, which the magic involved obviously took a liking to for some inexplicable reason.”

My eyes tightened down into a wince of actual pain as I felt my temples grow tight with the effort it took to contain my initial reaction, one that was quite frankly, somewhere between randomly zapping people for the sake of it and just cutting out the middle man so I can hit John around the head a few times for the hand he obviously had in that ridiculous cover story!

“We’ll just need you to sign a few forms and you can all get back to work in your various capacities as part of Team ‘Tomb Raider’.”
…Oh, Powers…

Seriously, Sare? She’s still using that stupid nickname during official situations like this?
...Powers damn it, Sarah!...

Through gritted teeth, I smiled at the sweater-vest wearer while accepting the forms he was offering me without comment, so I can start reading through whatever this load of wasted trees is all about.

‘Party of the first part agrees that the undersigned party heretofore...’
...I’d forgotten how much we hate paperwork...

“What the hell is a ‘sanctioned reliquary access point’ and why am I agreeing to use one, only in case of a level three or below magical emergency, from now on?”

Stop laughing, John-Boy! It’s not bloody funny, and I’ve got at least twenty pages of this crap to deal with now, thanks in no small part to your stupid, flimsy, overly complicated and wholly stupid cover story!

In a political sense, nothing can get the crowd going quite like praising your chosen all-powerful deity and pledging yourself to him/her/them/it publicly. In reality, belief can often be the only thing you have left to hold on to when even hope is lost. In magic—well, in magic words have power. Imagine what can happen when you throw faith and belief into that melting pot of trouble... Events unfold including but not limited to: John has a crisis of faith, Hannah has a different kind of crisis that also happens to involve faith, And several people disappear into thin air!

 

“So, how exactly did you manage to convince them that there was even a stitch of truth to that stupid story you fed the sweater-vest guy?”

John shot a slightly worried look over his shoulder at the somehow still waving guy in question, who was ever so politely bidding us farewell from his doorway with that same, slightly creepy, guileless smile plastered on his dopy face once more.

“No one wants to believe in higher powers being actually real, Han, when the choices are ‘believe we were visited by something beyond human comprehension that used you as its entrance point’, or ‘weird magic reacted with weird magic weirdly’, what option did you think they’d run with?”

Huh—that’s a fair point actually. When he puts it that way, I doubt he even had to try to convince them all about his version of events, let alone do much to hide my identity at the same time.

“I take it, you left me passed out in the grass to make weaving your lies easier?”

John’s head cocked to the side slightly, as if he was somehow confused by my question, but the tiny twitch of his lips he couldn’t control said more than enough for me to ignore anything he may say in response, due to the fact that I obviously hit the nail on the head with that one, no matter what other reasoning he might have to offer instead.

“Where are we going now then?”

This time John let his lips twitch up into a full blown smirk. He even jogged forward slightly so he could turn around and face me properly while walking backwards, like an idiot, too.

“You tell me. The Hub has pretty obviously been shaped by your mind in some way or another, just from all the marble, artwork and glass ceilings around here now, alone. If you were redesigning the Hubs entirely and you wanted to make an easy public access route to the new transport system you were setting up, where would you put the entrance?”

My lips tensed down slightly into a pout of annoyance, mostly because of how casual he’s being about all of this, but also, maybe just slightly, because he’s got a point as well.

I’d have to be blind to not see just how much the ‘new Hubs’ are shaped towards my tastes at this point, honestly. Maps at every junction, no more unnavigable hallways, bright and airy decor with more than a few touches that I know exist in my Realm as well. It all totals up into a lot of obvious signs which are kind of hard to ignore, sadly.

“I’d put the entrance in the main reception area, on the left-hand side of the main entrance, with the exits on the right-hand side as you walk in, preferably making them visible only when you know they are there, to limit initial foot traffic until I’ve gotten a chance to check the place out for myself first.”

John stumbled for a step or two, but recovered quickly and spun around while swinging his arm up to land around my shoulders for a tight squeeze as his magic practically bubbled over with barely hidden amusement.

“To the reception area it is then! You really do have a devious little brain sometimes, Han. You know that, right?”

Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t have answered him due to the even tighter squeeze he gave me a few moments later, that actually managed to catch me off guard enough to stall out all rational thought in my head, as he practically lifted me off my feet for a few precious, disorientating seconds as if I weighed nothing at all.

“Get your arm off me, John-Boy, before I zap you!”

======

My eyes scanned around the newly grass-covered Hub entrance and, aside from a lot of random staff members moving about doing odd things like taking grass samples or even one guy who’d apparently decided to take a nap over in the corner, something I honestly can’t blame him for considering how nice it is in here now, there didn’t appear to be anything different or out of place compared to what I remember the last time I was in here, unfortunately. I squinted slightly and stared at the empty spaces on either side of the glowing doorway leading out of the Hub in confusion, but found absolutely nothing odd to focus on at all, much to my growing frustration.

“Having trouble finding your own secret entrance, Han?”

My head snapped up to glare at John who seems far too amused for his own good right now. It was his stupid idea that whatever happened in here earlier may have been shaped by my mind, so if he’s wrong, then he’s got nothing to be smug about, damn it!

“You’ve gotta believe, Tinkerbell!”

My height, annoyingly childish-looking face and general attitude aside, I do not look like a little fairy, John-Boy! I can’t believe he would say something like th—

As I started building up steam towards a truly epic explosion of rage at him for creating yet another unfair nickname for me, as if he doesn’t have enough of them already, my anger guttered out before I could even voice my first yell because John chose that moment to take three steps forward and promptly disappear into thin air, stalling me out in shock more than anything else. I stood there, frozen for a few seconds, just staring at the empty space where he’d disappeared. My brain working over any reasoning it could find for him obviously being able to see an entrance I couldn’t and coming up blank.

It wasn’t until Eris skipped forward and disappeared as well, followed closely by a slightly confused Sarah, an oddly excited-looking Fena, and both the AMS girls, that it finally clicked in my head why I was the only one who couldn’t see them.
…‘Tinkerbell’, my ass!…

“I don’t believe in fairies—”

Actually, I don’t believe in the doorways’ existence, because they weren’t here when I first looked and my brain tends to run on empirical evidence like that most of the time, but his point has still been made, at least. John and the others can see the doorways because they believed they would be there, they believed in my ability to create them in the first place, something I didn’t do until now, quite frankly.

“I believe in magically appearing doorways?”
The words didn’t help in the slightest, annoyingly. This isn’t some kids’ cartoon, after all.

After a few seconds of desperately running the odds of this all being a big joke on me by John, and factoring in the odds that Sarah or Eris would go along with it, let alone keep silent while invisible somehow for this long, I finally came to the conclusion that the only logical truth of this situation has to be that the doorways do exist. The moment I came to that conclusion, huge metal-framed doorways leading to a tired-looking set of concrete steps appeared, right in front of me, as if they’d always been there, complete with an amused and slightly worried looking group of entourage members standing inside it as well.

A glance to my left showed that a second, presumably ‘exit’ path, set of stairs had appeared on the other side of the Hub’s entranceway. Both entrances look oddly familiar to me for some reason but I just can’t place where I know them from. Presumably they must have been taken from some distant part of my mind, in the same way everything else in the newly refurbished Hubs seem to have been so far. That doesn’t mean I have any clue where they are from tho—

======

“You able to see us yet, Tink?”

I swear to the Powers, if he doesn’t drop that ‘Tinkerbell’ crap right now I’m gonna zap him so hard he’ll be lucky if he comes out of it with the conversational skills of a root vegetable! Rather than give him the satisfaction of a verbal answer, I flipped my hair back haughtily and stalked my way onto the new staircase, taking a moment’s pause to shove him to the side slightly with my elbow in passing, just because I could. The moment’s contact between us was enough for me to get a sense of his magic, and it was pretty obvious that he was amused beyond reason at the moment, probably because he’s found a new way to needle me now.

“Sarah, you, Fena, and Eris stay here. Trudy, can you and Rose go back and get Pauly to gather the troops when he’s free, then show them how to get in here?”

Trudy offered me a warm smile and nodded along as Rosemary let off a happy little giggle while offering me a worryingly well-done salute for her troubles. Sarah didn’t look pleased about being effectively told to stay put, but Eris didn’t seem to mind and Fena knows me well enough to keep an eye on them both while I go scout ahead with John.

I don’t exactly relish the idea of being alone with him at the moment, considering the playful mood he’s in for some reason, but if I have to drag someone with me into unknown territory, John would be my first choice due to his uncanny ability to survive bad situations like the cockroach he is.

“Come on, John-Boy. Let’s go see what kind of horrors my mind has supposedly made without my direct input this time.”

He didn’t hesitate in stepping up to my side at that challenge, the utter glee I could feel radiating off of him at the prospect of going into the unknown with me was so overwhelming that part of me honestly expected him to take my hand and pull me forward like a little child trying to drag his mommy off to the big fun rides at an amusement park.

He nudged his shoulder against mine and gave me a wide grin, which totally deserved the derisive snort I let off moments later, before stepping down once more on the relatively dark concrete stairwell below us.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this...”

======

After three right-angle turns and about thirty seconds worth of walking, not to mention multiple ambient magic-powered flame spells stuck to the walls like the ones I used back in Peru so we could see better, there finally came a light at the end of the tunnel.

I eagerly sped up my steps in order to get there, and maybe create some space between us again at last, because I’m pretty sure John’s spent most of the walk down either staring at or finding excuses to brush up against my ass like the big perv he is at times an—
…Oh, shit!…

I’d love to say that the first thing I noticed was that the room we’d just come out in is obviously a replica of the Grand Central Station main terminal in New York, complete with glass ceiling, side hallways and even information kiosks with attached billboards dotted around the place as well.

I’d love to say that the first thing I noticed was the worrying amount of Fae, mostly Fauni, although several other species were also moving around on the floor below us, talking to each other or doing what the rest apparently were doing, which happened to be kneeling down and ‘praying’ at the feet of what was actually the first thing I noticed, for rather obvious reasons.

Right in the middle of this replica of Grand Central Station, standing pride of place and towering above everything else so much that I’m surprised it could even fit under the high ceiling itself, was a giant golden statue of a woman who even I can’t deny is obviously—painfully obviously—supposed to me!

John froze when he finally caught up with me and his presence managed to, at least somewhat, jolt me back into reality again. Unfortunately, all that did was allow me to shift my focus enough that I could pick up the horrifyingly reverent mutter that seemed to practically echo off the walls around us, as it was spoken in unison by all the Fae who were busy praying to the golden ‘Me’ statue below.

“Bii-Sanya aba-aii, Bii-Sanya aba-aii, Bii-Sanya aba-aii!”

“Han, please tell me you didn’t create this on purpose.”
Shut up, John-Boy! Of course I didn’t create this! I don’t even remember creating anything that’s changed within the Hubs, but I know I wouldn’t have created bloody—bloody—this!

“I think, uh—I think my moving things around in here, may have uncovered some secret Fae temples, usually buried far away from human sight, or something.”
He turned and shot me a look that was full of disbelief, a look that I honestly can’t blame him for giving me at this point given the evidence at hand and the situation we’re in currently.
“Judging by the words they keep repeating. I’d guess that statue is of their Goddess, the ‘Lady Death’. That’s what Felix calls, um—her?—at least.”

John’s eyebrows shot up sceptically in response to my rather uncertain-sounding attempt at shifting focus away from the obvious elephant in the room, namely, the giant golden statue that can only be of me, considering it’s got my hair, face, and even my current bloody clothes down perfectly.

“Okay, I’ve been willing to wait and see what happens with all this mess, but I think it’s time we had a talk about this ‘Lady Death’ stuff you’re involved in...”
What?!
“Han, do you honestly not remember anything that happened earlier? Your skin started glowing as gold as that statue, you were floating and talking weird, then you claimed to be both Hannah Cooper and the ‘Lady Death’—pretty sure we’re beyond the point of you keeping things under wraps on this one, so what the hell is going on?”

I don’t—I can’t just—
I don’t—

“I don’t know, okay?”

Felix calls me it all the time and the other Fae I’ve met seem oddly receptive to me too, but I really don’t know the first thing about this supposed ‘Lady Death’, let alone any kind of reason why they would think that I’m her in the first place!

“I seriously don’t know John. Until recently the Fae couldn’t give two craps about me, but since I met Felix, they’ve been getting more and more interested in me. It’s not just the ones in the Hub, either. There was that invasion of Pixies in our house who kept braiding my hair too. Something about my magic is attracting them and the only thing I can think of that might have caused it is the weird golden healing stuff I can do.”

Suggesting that as the cause, does bring in some rather awkward questions about Arista, or Ari’s, places in Fae mythology, I guess, considering they were the only other people historically able to access that ‘spark’ of life-giving power, as Edith described it, before I came along, at least.

“Whatever possessed you when you touched the magic in here, Han, was powerful beyond belief.”

John hesitated for a moment before plowing on with whatever is bothering him about all this.

“Normals consider mages to be gods, a lot of the time, while among mages Arista and I are considered gods, to one degree or another—I’ve never had a reason to believe in the odd tales of ‘higher powers’ and actual gods before today because of that fact, but I’m seriously at a loss on this one, unless you can offer me some kind of alternative explanation?”

He sighed heavily and leaned back against the wall of the staircase as his hand came up to rest just above his heart thoughtfully for a moment or two.

“Whatever that thing in control of you was, Han, she commanded magic with a thought. Her mere presence had my core vibrating in my chest, as if it was desperately trying to jump out and be closer to her. I’ll not admit to this again if you tell anyone else but—I was scared!—you can be dangerously powerful at times, Han, but that just leaves me watching you in awe and joy.”

His arms came down, folded across his chest and he shuddered heavily before speaking once more.

“That thing, the being that controlled your body while claiming to be you in some way, horrified me on such a base level that I froze like a child and shook in place, despite my best efforts to fight that feeling off!”
Slowly, his head sunk down to stare at his hands for a second before he tightened them into fists and glanced up at me with determination on his face.
“She let you go, Han. I tried to wrap you in my magic again, to free you from the Hub’s magic, and hopefully her as well, but it didn’t work, and then she let you go!”

I didn’t really know what to say to him after that chilling declaration. The idea of being possessed again is disturbing enough in itself after my experiences with Arista, but the fact that I can’t remember it at all is so much worse somehow—at least with Arista, I could see what she was doing and fight back somehow, or plan against her in the meantime. There’s not exactly much I can do against a complete blank in my memories and that’s, quite frankly, terrifying!

“It’s going to be okay, John. You know what we’re like. I survived your crazy ass long enough for you to snap out of it after all, and you lived through my stint as Arista’s puppet-body, too. If there actually are higher Powers out there, or gods, or anything at all and they’ve inexplicably taken an interest in us, then that just means we’ve got some more crazies to beat into submission, right?”

Just to bring my point home, I sidled up to him and leaned against the wall as well, my arm twitching up to nudge him with my elbow as a little teasing smile played across my lips, for his sake more than anything.

He glanced down at me for a few moments with a worryingly lost look on his face, but eventually just a hint of a smile played across his lips in response to my own, that alone was enough for now, to assure me that he’d be okay. It’s kind of odd to be the one doing the reassuring and confidence bolstering for once, but he’s done it enough times for me at this point that he’s due a turn in my book.

“Now, enough worrying! It doesn’t suit you. Whatever will come for us will have to take a number behind all the rest of the insanity in our lives, right?”

He sighed and I dug my elbow into his ribs harshly, making him twitch away from me slightly in surprise before I continued on, anyway.

“Stop acting like your facing our first swimming lesson in school all over again and focus on our current problems instead, John-Boy, namely, deciding if it’s wise for me to walk the rest of the way down into Grand Central Station to go check out the apparently magical train network my twisted little brain came up with while under ‘Goddess’ control—all while an apparent cult of mixed Fae races bow down to a giant golden statue of me a few feet away at the same time!”

He snorted in amusement, possibly because of my little jab about the way he panicked during our first grade-school swimming lesson, but more likely at the matter of fact tone that I stated the horrible potential mess facing us in just a few steps down into the light away from unfurling, in any number of possible ways that range from unthinkably bad to mind-bending craziness.

If only I could have some kind of bodyguard detail like you see celebrities have on TV or something. Not the gun-wielding army kind, like Pauly’s troops, obviously, but something a lot better suited to dealing with Fae in gener...al?
...We’re such an idiot sometimes...

“Felix, Mau, I need some help boys!”

I tried to keep my voice down, which was a pretty hard task when I wanted to call out for them loudly in order to make sure that they heard me. Luckily, the fear of being noticed by the Fae cult below us was more than enough to ensure my voice stayed at an even, conversational, level even if I did put more emphasis on it things than strictly necessary in my rush. After a few long seconds of silence there was the telltale muted pop and flash of flame that signifies Felix’s arrival, although oddly, I couldn’t see any shifts in the shadows to indicate Mau’s arrival despite my having called him.

Come to think of it, I haven’t actually seen Mau around at all since I got back out of my Realm. That alone is more than a bit worrying, considering how much the little fuzz-ball used to enjoy following either me or Eris around constantly before Crater Lake. I hope he’s okay. Maybe our connection snapped with the loss of my Core, in the same way my connection to Felix apparently did?

It’s weird, though, because Felix could still hear me call him, even without the familiar bond connecting us. So I honestly have no idea what could be going on with Mau if it’s not something as simple as ‘he couldn’t be bothered to answer me’, at least. He is a cat after all! Demon cat or not, he’s still a cat, and cats can be assholes like that sometimes, right?

...He’s probably fine...
Yeah, probably, I’m still a bit worried though—

======

“Lady-Death?”

My head snapped up and a reassuring smile came to my lips as I noticed the worried frown on Felix’s, usually pretty happy-looking, little face.

“Sorry, little buddy, just a bit worried about Mau…”
He frowned but nodded in understanding as I took a breath to carry on, despite my worries.
“How are things going with you and the other Imps, Felix?”

“Our-new-home is-amazing Lady-Death. We-have-a city of-our-own now and-we-can publicly-display-our-prayers at-last while playing-with the-new-metal-warpers!”

Felix’s little eyes were alight with joy and excitement as he spoke in a way I’ve never seen from him before, outside the times he’s gotten a little lost while having his head scratched, at least. His piece said, Felix turned in the air to inspect the area around us and paused when his eyes finally landed on the large golden statue of me sitting in the middle of the replica train station, at long last. Slowly he turned back around to face me with an embarrassed blush pretty obvious on his cute little face, despite his red fur covering the blush itself up, in much the same way that I could tell yesterday that Fena was blushing, despite not being physically able to do so from anything but her expression alone.

“That-is-a Faunus praise-statue. We-told-them that they-are in-bad-taste, especially the-self-updating ones, but they-will-pray-as-they-will-pray, no-matter what-we-say.”

To finish his apologetic-sounding mutter, Felix shrugged slightly and glanced down at the floor as if expecting me to yell at him over the whole thing. While it’s reassuring to know that Felix and his little army of imps don’t spend their day bowing down to giant statues of me, that doesn’t mean it isn’t still a problem in general that the bloody things exist in
the first place, naturally.

“How many of these ‘praise statues’ exist, exactly, Felix? And how many of them are now in public areas, like this one?”

The cringe on his little rounded face really didn’t fill me with overwhelming anticipation over the, obviously unambiguously good and nicely simple, answer he’s about to give me in the slightest, sadly.

“Faunus like-building with-gold and Goblins love-building with-gold—”

Not exactly the answer I was looking for, nor was it very reassuring in the slightest, Felix!

“With-your return from-the-dead. The-races are-celebrating your-presence again.”

When my expression didn’t change out of the pained grimace it seems now to be stuck in, thanks in no small part to his poorly covered attempt at avoiding telling me outright ‘there are a lot of those statues, Hannah’ he just tried to pull, Felix’s little shoulder sunk and he offered me a frankly adorable pout in the hope of calming me down, pre-emptively, which unfortunately worked like a charm, because I seriously have a weakness for cute imps in general.

“Putting that worrying detail to the side for now, then, Felix—”

His little shoulders relaxed in response to my words, obviously glad that I wasn’t angry at him, despite how illogical it would be of me to get mad at him just for being the messenger in all of this mess.

“We want to use the ‘metal warpers’, as you call them, to travel to Long Island quickly. To do that, I need help getting past that huge crowd of Lady Death worshipers without getting mobbed in the process.”

Finally he seemed to perk back up to his usual high spirits properly, his little wings flapping excitedly as he chittered to himself thoughtfully before answering me with a wide helpful smile on his sweet little face.

“The-Imps will defend-you and your-other-humans from-the-others. I know how to-ride the-new-metal-warpers so I-can-help-you get there Lady-Death.”

My own shoulders un-tensed at long last and I let out a heavy breath of relief as my hand came up to pet Felix on the head, much to his enjoyment, judging by the dopy little grin that formed quickly on his face in response to my touch. Now we just have to wait for the others to catch up and we can get out of here!

======

“Is everyone-ready, Lady-Death?”

I almost nodded back to him automatically without thinking but managed to catch myself in time to check first, just in case. A quick glance around us showed pretty much exactly what I’d been expecting to find at this point.

John stood to my left, his arms folded exasperatedly due to how many noisy beings and people we have hanging around us now, I’d assume. Sarah, and by extension Eris, are standing pretty close to my back, nervously, their eyes repeatedly being drawn back to the giant ‘Lady Death’ statue like twin moths to a flame while Trudy and Rosemary are hanging out with Pauly towards the back of our group. Pauly’s troops have spread themselves out in their usual, slightly over-the-top, fashion and Fena is busy—

“Fena, leave the poor imps alone!”

She jerked guiltily to a stop, mid-swipe, and dropped her hands back down to her side while quickly turning in an attempt to offer me an innocent look which may have been more effective if she’d either taken the time to hide her fangs like she used to do while smiling, or preferably, if she hadn’t been picking on an imp in general, considering they have her beaten in the ‘cute and sweet’ stakes, in my opinion.

The swarming crowd of ‘assistant security’ imps Felix drafted in to help us today all shot me thankful looks and, luckily for all our sakes, they had enough restraint not to start teasing Fena now that she’s stopped trying to grab them out of the air, a pretty impressive feat for the rather childish pranksters that imps tend to be usually.

“Okay, Felix, I think we’re ready, little buddy.”

Felix nodded back to me then called out for his troops to form up ranks, an action which Pauly somewhat unknowingly copied moments later with his own soldiers as we took our first step down into the huge, almost stadium sized, building full of Fae below us at long last.

The next few minutes were more than a little awkward. While no one actively tried to approach us, especially with the imps defending us from above and the soldiers defending from the ground, all eyes were on me with a mix of awe and almost reverent fear seeming to have been universally slapped onto everyone’s faces, as the few who didn’t just drop to their knees in my presence, froze stiff to watch us move past them all instead.

I found myself offering the Fae around us a slightly strained smile as we went on and even a few little finger waves at any particularly young looking Fae we passed, which had the rather unfortunate effect of making several older Fae around them fall over in what I can only hope was simply shock and not something more serious, like a collective round of heart attacks or something. Finally we got through the main concourse and found that, thankfully, my mind hadn’t complicated layout of Grand Central Station, because the single, wide hallway we entered near a row of empty kiosks led straight to some train tracks with a single car subway train waiting patiently for us to step straight on board.

Felix shot me a quick glance to make sure I was still okay before making his way out towards the front of the train where a larger than usual, as far as I know, control panel was situated behind a glass fronted partition door.

When we’d all gotten through the metal doors of the car, with imps clinging to pretty much every surface around us and Pauly’s troops guarding each window, I rather reluctantly took the chance to glance back behind us again and felt my heart skip a beat slightly when I came face to face with an entirely clogged hallway that happened to be filled with Fae of varying species and creeds. The moment I made eye contact with one of them accidentally they all began bowing down once more in reverence to me and slowly the chant started to build up in volume once more, with a worrying amount of fervor behind their words that I don’t think was present the first time I heard it.

“Bii-Sanya aba-aii, Bii-Sanya aba-aii, Bii-Sanya aba-aii”

A shudder went down my spine and I had to fight, hard to keep the following cringe off my face as everyone on board our train car turned to either stare at the source of the worrying chorus of little voices, or just at me in general.

Felix let off a yelping cheer that our bond didn’t need to translate for me to understand that it implied some sort of victory and with a hiss, the train car jolted forward slightly as noise started rumbling around us from all sides. Judging by the tone of the motors gearing up, I’d be tempted to assume that these ‘trains’ run on electricity like a normal one would but more realistically, considering Felix seems to think he will be able to get us across practically the whole of America relatively quickly in this one, I’d assume that those sounds aren’t actually part of the trains running process at all and are more there for aesthetics or authenticity’s sake.

Whatever magic John’s so-called ‘Lady Death’ thing that possessed me used to create all of his, really has drawn directly from my mind. A lot of half-formed ideas I’ve let grow over time in the back of mind seem to have been enacted in here as far as I can tell so far, so I honestly don’t think it’s a stretch to assume that everything around us is magical right now, no matter how real or normal they may appear at times.

Hopefully this journey won’t take too long and, if we’re lucky, I’ll be able to slip out of the Hub without any more problems at the other end. The odds of that are pretty low, my life being what it is, of course, but a girl can dream, right?
...Dream, yes. Believe, not so much...

Either way, I’m not hanging around in the Hub any more than I have to right now! As useful as this new connecting network may potentially be, I think it’s going to be a while before I feel safe enough around here to walk freely within the Hub’s newly improved hallways again, considering the large crowd of Fae that seem to have decided to take over the place properly now, with praise statues and devoted cults bowing down to me or not!

…Why can’t things ever just be simple?...

Guns can be used for defense. They can also be used to hurt innocent and sometimes not so innocent people, whether politics is involved or not. Every assassination, successful or not, needs two things above all else at the end of the day: an assassin and a target. Events unfold including but not limited to: A gun being fired multiple times, John's name being yelled desperately, And Hannah wincing in pain thanks, in part, to Eris.

 

“Next-stop Long-Island Hub!”
...Felix is really enjoying playing at being a train driver it seems...

“He says we’re almost there.”
Everyone turned to look at me, mostly with surprise obvious in their eyes, either because I translated for him so easily or because we’re apparently already here.

So far, I have to admit that I’m rather impressed with this new Hub subway system.
...‘Hubway System’, maybe?...
Yeah, Hubway System will do for now!

I’m pretty impressed by the Hubway System as it is, honestly. We’ve only been traveling for a few minutes at most and even then, a lot of that time was taken up with Felix easing us up to top speed. The tunnels outside are pitch black so it’s hard to get a good grasp on distance travelled or anything, but a few of the soldiers have watches on and at least one of them has been keeping count as the minutes pass like it’s some kind of nervous tick for him or something.

Eris settled herself comfortably between me and Sarah in one of the train cars bench seats pretty early on, bowling ball and all, so I’ve been paying more attention to her than what everyone else is doing because she seems to be having a hard time deciding who she wants to cuddle up to more, me or Sarah, for a somewhat worrying but understandable reason.

“Have I mentioned how impressive your weird brain can be at times, Han?”

My eyes cut up instantly to glare at John and Eris took that moment of inattention on my part to drop her bowling ball in Sarah’s lap before practically hopping into mine. I only just managed to catch her thanks to muscle memory more than anything else and Sarah’s surprised grunt showed how off-guard she’d been as she struggled not to drop the surprise ‘gift’ she got in her lap instead.

Throughout the whole movement, I made sure that the only reaction I gave was to let off a grunt as her butt landed heavily on my unprepared legs, but apparently that said enough because John’s face twisted from a teasing grin into a more apologetic-looking wince of understanding seconds later.

Part of me wants to be annoyed at him as he no doubt suspects, naturally, but when my hands came up to play with Eris’s hair and she leaned lazily against my chest, just like old times. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it though, sadly. This is one time where his being annoying allowed something good to happen in my opinion, so I’d better not show any sort of negative feelings over what happened or he might get the wrong idea.
…I swear, sometimes dealing with him is like trying to train some sort of unruly puppy or something!...

We didn’t say anything for the few moments that our eyes connected but enough was said in that brief glance for both of us, hopefully. Either way I ducked my head down to rest on top of Eris’s hair as she snuggled into my chest with her ear hunting out that same spot just above my left breast it always does, paying no mind to anyone else around us until light started to finally pour in from the front of the train and we slowed to a stop in front of a thankfully empty copy of the same wide hallway we just left behind back in Merlin.

“Troop, decamp and get me a perimeter before the Princess gets off.”
Damn it, Pauly! It’s been over three months. Let that stupid code name go already, you spiteful old coot!

“I think that’s our signal to pack up shop, huh?”
John’s stupid little smirk came back as he leaned forward slightly and offered me a hand up. Part of me wanted to resist but standing up with Eris attached to me like this has always been awkward so I reluctantly accepted the hand he offered me, despite my better judgement about the whole thing. Naturally, the moment I was stable and had Eris slid comfortably over onto my left hip, John used our still joined hands to pull himself closer to me so he could tuck his free arm around the small of my back in that same annoyingly possessive way he seems to do sometimes, even if he tried to play it off as nothing with the smirk he let flash across his lips moments later.

To finish off the odd little family-like scene we were making, Felix came back out of the driver’s cabin at the front of the train car. The poor little guy looked more than a little tired and promptly decided that my somewhat free right shoulder, even if it was tucked next to John’s wider one awkwardly, would make a wonderful place for him to take a nap. With a joyful little chirrup he proceeded to flopping down, belly-first, as his wings tucked tightly behind his back and his little face nuzzled lovingly against my collar-bone.

I honestly didn’t have either the temper, or the dignity, left in me to look around us and see just what everyone else thought about this little ‘arrangement’ we’d made for ourselves. Consequently, I remained staring straight ahead with determination as the Imp bodyguards that Felix recruited for us decamped to help Pauly’s men. Even then, it was kind of hard to miss the muted sniggering coming from Fena in my peripheral vision, or the frustrated huff from Sarah as she stood up behind us as well.

Without another word I took my first step forward and John moved perfectly in sync with me as we made our way back onto the hopefully new platform below us, at the center of a rather worrying hive of activity.

There were only a few Fae hovering around this version of Grand Central station at least and even though they froze at the sight of us I can’t honestly tell if that was because they noticed me or just because of the strange sight we were obviously making, gun-toting soldiers, red-flying bodyguards, and all.

Finally, after a painfully long-feeling walk up the exit stairwell which had been helpfully highlighted for us by a neon green EXIT sign hanging above it, we finally came back out into psudo-sunlight again and faced yet another expanse of greenery that happened to be full of curious Hub workers. At a glance I’d seen all I needed to of this new Hub and apparently so had everyone else because the focus quickly shifted to the standard, glowing Hub entrance door right next to us instead.

Annoyingly I had to wait right at the top of the stairs as Pauly’s team essentially snuck past everyone, in groups of two, disappearing through the Hub entrance without being noticed by anyone else milling around as time ticked by. The Imp bodyguards at least knew that their important task was at an end by now and didn’t try to follow them, but they also seemed reluctant to leave without Felix giving out the marching orders, sadly.
After the third time I caught Fena trying to take a playful swipe at a few nearby Imps, I’d had enough waiting and turned around to face them all with a pained smile on my face that, nonetheless, seemed to perk all of the little red guys up in joy just from its presence and my attention being upon them in general.

“Thanks for your help today everyone. I’m sure if Felix was awake to do it, he’d thank you all too. We need to go out into the normal streets now, and I’m sorry to say you’d all create quite a scene if you followed us. I’m not really sure how to do this, but—uh—troop dismissed?”

Much to my relief the group of flying little red cuties didn’t take offence at my words and actually all came together instead, offering me wide smiles and salutes that I have no doubt either the soldiers or Rosemary must have taught them at some point.

Either way, they all seemed to understand that their job was over for now and while the older looking Imps left with proud little nods of their heads, I found myself receiving more than a few excited little face-hugs from the obviously younger Imps of the troop, before they all disappeared as well. The whole thing honestly left me in a surprisingly good mood, just due to how infectiously happy they all seemed to be from having helped us today. Imps really are adorable at times, after all.

“Wild, Oats, area clear… Vehicles dispatched… ETA: one minute at west entrance… The Princess is good to
go.”

The unmistakable tone of Pauly’s voice was barely audible through whatever radio system they are using but within seconds two soldiers moved up on either side of me and John protectively in response to it. Meanwhile, the few remaining rear guard took up positions around everyone else.

I couldn’t help but glance, first at the vaguely familiar-looking male soldier on our right and then to the closer female one on my left, who was hard to forget considering how long we spent in a car together earlier.

“Wild and Oats, no wonder you guys wouldn’t introduce yourselves when we asked for your names!”

The female soldier, who had my attention most, winced ever so slightly at the mild amusement present in my voice but otherwise tried to do the same thing I did earlier and stare straight ahead as if she couldn’t tell I was watching her in the slightest.
...Can’t have that now, can we?...

“So, which one of you two is Wild and which one is Oats? You both seem to get paired up a lot. You ever consider sowing some ‘Wild Oats’ of your own together?”
She tried really hard to hide it, but there’s no stopping a bright red blush of that intensity when it’s marching unstoppably up your neck and towards your ears. Trust me; I’ve been through it before.

Ha! Payback for all the times you’ve laughed at me since we met, Oats!
...Assuming that’s who she is, at least...
Oh, please! With how normal and boring the male driver of this pair looks, he’s just got to be the ‘Wild’ one on general principle alone, or else there’s something fundamentally wrong with the universe!
...A fair point, poorly made...

“Ride is here. Moving to west entrance…”

At Oats’s words, the soldiers around us snapped to attention with all signs of the amusement they’d allowed from my teasing disappearing in an instant, and even I let the whole thing drop for now in favor of straightening my hold on Eris a bit better as we got ready to move.

“Troop, move out!”

Felix perked his little head up slightly at her call and almost seemed to pat my shoulder reassuringly for a moment or two with one clawed little hand before disappearing in a rather lackluster Fae warp that was mostly smoke with barely a trace of fire to it, leaving me with the distinct impression that he hadn’t really been sleeping at all, despite obviously being tired all the same.

...Well, here goes nothing, I guess...

======

“...This is almost as bad as Medford...”

John grunted in agreement as we tried to ease our way around an incoming crowd of tourists that I think may have been from Austria, judging by what few words I could get and the vaguely recognisable accents they sported in their native tongue as they wandered past us with wide eyes and guide-books in hand.

Whose stupid idea was it to set up the nearest Hub to the Pine Ridge Congressional building in JFK Airport of all places?

I can kind of understand not having a direct link to the USMPA capitol building, considering I wouldn’t trust Maven as far as I could throw her and leaving an easy entry point to your main stronghold open for a potential enemy would be beyond stupid—but still, surely they could have found a better place than a bloody airport!

“Chill out, Han. Paul’s got cars out front. The minute we’re clear of the terminal it’s just an hour’s drive and we can get to work sorting all this crap out. We’ll be home in time for dinner, most likely.”
Despite his reassuring smile, I couldn’t bring myself to believe John’s far too generous estimation of things. Even if the arm he tossed over my shoulder a few seconds later and the accompanying magical contact that came with it may have calmed my nerves a little, unintentionally so, I’m sure.

“I’m not used to crowds and it’s making me twitchy. Seeing as any one of the people milling around us could be an assassin hunting your pretty-boy ass I think I’m allowed to be a bit off at the moment, don’t you?”

It may have been a little mean of me to say it like that, but the ‘pretty-boy’ comment made his magic go haywire for a second with different emotions until he settled on an odd mix between indignation and amusement in a reaction that was just interesting enough for me to focus on it above the crushing mob of people seemingly closing in around us by the second.

I was actually so busy paying attention to the tiny fluctuations in his magic that I barely even noticed when a large man, one that I’m tempted to say may be British in some way just from the terrible state of his teeth, brushed past me and Eris as he went by—right up until he spun around and tried to snatch her out of my arms at least! Dragging me along for the ride as she screamed in fear and John fell from the sudden force pulling him backward with the way I collapsed sideways while clinging to Eris for dear life.

The next few seconds were a tangled mess of limbs, yelling and me clawing at anything that I could to release his hold on Eris. Eventually I managed to jam a relatively blunt but no less painful fingernail into the pressure point between the guy’s thumb and forefinger harshly enough that his grip went momentarily slack, giving me just enough of a window to toss her bodily out of grasping range before he inevitably recovered and proceeded to snag me up by the neck a few moments later.

An instinctive gasp ripped its way past my lips as his beefy hand clamped tightly around my throat and he pulled me up against his body as his free hand dipped down to grab a gun tucked into his waistband in a pretty textbook example of someone trying to secure a hostage as a meat shield, unfortunately.

Chaos reigned around us for a few seconds more before the guy rose his free arm up and let off a round or two of gunfire from the pistol, making all the civilians around us panic even as what remained of Pauly’s team and the rest of my entourage tightened ranks, while moving into covering positions around us where possible.

John made eye contact with me for just a moment but it was all I needed to get my point across apparently because he didn’t hesitate to get a solid hold on Eris’s arm before propelling her even further out of the line of fire at last.

As he turned back around to face us again the gunman pushed his pistol, what feels like a Colt of some kind by my best guess, against my temple warningly. John visibly tensed, a pretty obvious sign of just how scared for me he really is at the moment, considering the usually strong poker face he manages to keep up most of the time.

“Max.”

The smooth, cultured British voice that left the gunman really didn’t suit his look in the slightest. Some small part of me felt just a tiny bit smug at the confirmation on my earlier guess towards his origins, although it really was just a small part, considering the rest of me was busy running numbers at mission-worthy speeds in order to not accidentally get myself killed by an over-the-counter Normal gun, of all bloody things!

“Jack, it’s been a while. No hair this incarnation, huh?”
John’s voice was calm, almost conversational as he took us both in and squared his shoulders challengingly with just a hint of a smirk tugging at his lips for the verbal jab he obviously couldn’t resist letting off to relieve some of his own tension. The gunman tensed angrily behind me and I winced slightly as he pushed the gun against my temple just a little bit harder in response to John’s words.
“Never had you down as a contract killer, Jack. A sociopath with mother issues maybe, but never a gun for hire…”

I couldn’t help but grimace heavily when Jack gave his ‘response’ to John’s words in a rather unfortunate way, his body leaning even closer to mine as he brought his chin down to rest next to my shoulder and he slowly dragged his pistol across my face until it stopped at my jaw, where he tapped it almost lovingly against my cheek, much to my disgust.

“She’s just your type, Max—I see you so much as twitch a finger and this little jailbait bitch dies in a rather unfortunate way, I’m sorry to say.”
Oh, you did not just call me ‘jailbait’! You hulking, great overgrown, tea-drinking asshole!
“Tell your men to back off. I’ll trade her for you and nothing else, Max. It’s nothing personal old man; the Club in London just want their land back, is all.”

John tensed all over again at what I can only assume was an unwanted confirmation for him of who is behind this little mess and employing Jack to do it. From the context I’d have to guess this ‘Club’ includes some of the mages who would have owned quite a lot of America back when the United States was more commonly referred to as the ‘Colonies’. Knowing that information didn’t help matters much at the moment though and all I could do was stand there watching as John gathered himself back together with slightly gritted teeth.

Slowly John’s eyes eased up to meet mine yet again and ever so carefully I winked at him with the eye furthest away from this ‘Jack’ guy’s view range.
John didn’t let off any outward signs that he’d understood me in the slightest, of course. This isn’t his first rodeo, after all. That doesn’t mean, however, he wasn’t just a little bit suspect in the way he went from obviously worried about my safety to offering the psycho at my shoulder a lightly amused grin instead, sadly.

“As you said, Jack, she’s just the flavor of the month. What makes you think I give a shit about her welfare when the freedom of every mage in America, most of them my children I’ll remind you, is at stake, if I don’t make it to this meeting at the Congress building?”

The gun at my jawline twitched almost imperceptibly, but I am way too used to this kind of shit to miss such an obvious reaction at this point, luckily. Looks like that one was a direct hit, with a biting tone of voice that’s just pure Max, and the fact that he was originally aiming to snag Eris instead all coming together perfectly to undermine this meathead’s confidence, apparently.

“How are your family, Jack?”
The question would almost have seemed completely benign, if it hadn’t been for the cold glare of loathing that slowly spread across John’s face after saying it, and the angry silence that followed as the seconds ticked by.
“All reincarnated fine this time, I hope? I’d hate to miss one due to poor timing when I slaughter them all and mount their still screaming heads above my mantelpiece, after all.”

Ah hah, ha—uh, okay, maybe that’s a little much now, John-Boy?
...Time to dial back the ‘Psycho Max’ act just a wee bit, I think!...

“The girl is mine, Jack. You remember what happens to people who mess with what is mine, don’t you? I will find everything you love, everything you care for, and I will burn it all before your eyes. Then pluck those same eyes out and feed them to your still sobbing corpse!”

...Whoa!...
Holy fuck, John-Boy! Cool your jets before his trigger finger gets twitchy a—

Despite my surprise and just a trace of fear that I really don’t want to admit to feeling, as small trails of fire seemed to start forming around John’s fingertips in agitation, I was apparently sensing nothing when compared to Jack, judging by the full body shudder that ran through his torso as his gun dipped ever so slightly downwards, away from me, and his eyes widened in fear.

“You know who I am, Jack. You know what I can do and you have seen me lay waste to entire civilisations for less than you’ve done today, already. So tell me, please, I’m ever so curious to know, what the fuck did you think was going to happen in this situation, you great big stupid ape?”

Jack’s gun arm shook in fear even more violently and as it dipped once more, just low enough that it wouldn’t hit anything vital if my math is right, I reacted at long last. My hand flying down sharply to grab ahold of the idiot’s crotch before letting loose a rather large pulse of lightning magic directly into his body from our rather sensitive point of contact.

His gun arm slipped and his trigger finger jerked, naturally, pulling the trigger as it went and sending a bullet grazing across my chest to sink into my free arm where it hit bone in seconds with a muted thump and the sound of tearing fabric.

I hissed in pain and dropped to the floor but forced myself to roll forwards as I fell in order to create some space between me and the now twitching gunman behind me.

As I came out of my roll, I ended up staring at a picture of pure chaos as people moved both away and towards us, all at once, depending on their involvement in this mess.

That scene was all nothing compared to the worrying sight that was right before me though, sadly. All I could do was watch as John stepped forward at a measured pace, one that mixed well with his almost shadowed-looking, downcast face to betray the barely controlled rage that was burning away in every hint of magic I could feel radiating off of him with each step he took.

Slowly, he dipped down to Jack’s side and snatched the man’s pistol up in his hand, straightening up to his full height again while not even hesitating to aim the barrel of the gun directly at its owners now whimpering head.

“You never learn, do you?... You don’t fuck with a god, Jack!”
His arm tensed ever so slightly and my mouth dropped open in surprise as the world seemed to slow around us.

“John! No!”
His arm kept going and I watched on as his finger pulled tight on the trigger with horrible inevitability.
“John!”

Before I could even move a muscle there was a loud bang and I watched on in numb disbelief as a single empty cartridge ejected out of the side of the gun while the people around us screamed in renewed fright and horror.

For my part, all I could do was stare over at John’s tense form in my own state of frozen horror as well. Horror and fear that he’d actually done it, that he’d actually killed someone—and worse—that he’d done it for me!

Then, a near silent sob made itself known to my enhanced senses and I let out a painfully harsh breath of relief instead.

Even as the world around us flew into a swirl of moving soldiers and shouting seemingly coming from all sides, John turned and offered me a rather tense smile that, nonetheless, held more than just a hint of mockery to it which was just pure ‘John’, much to my relief.

He bent his knees slightly and tossed the gun away so he could reach out with both hands to cup Jack’s face in his palms, I imagined so he could be sure he had his full attention, until he twisted the man’s head sharply to the side in order to fix his gaze on me instead, of course.

“See her, Jack? See that little ‘jailbait’ you just threatened to kill? She’s the reason you’re alive now, you ungrateful asshole.”
John’s fingers tensed harshly around Jack’s face in a way that made even me wince on general principle alone, even as he continued speaking in the same dangerous sounding pseudo-whisper he’d used before.
“Be thankful to her, pray to her during your long, dark hours in Swing-Swing and hope that you never cross my path again... I can’t promise she will be here to stop me next time, Jack.”

He let the man’s head drop back to the floor harshly in disgust, the movement allowing me to see the cracked tile flooring next to where he lay that could only have been caused by the bullet John intentionally missed Jack with a few moments ago.

After a few seconds of stunned staring, I had to look away because the terrified returning stare of Jack’s wouldn’t end, even after John let him go and waved in Pauly’s men to secure the gun waving idiot mage for transport. His eyes seemed to be locked on me now and no matter how intensely I wished for him to look away he wouldn’t which was more than just a little off-putting, honestly.

Slowly, John straightened up and he turned away from Jack entirely, his attention suddenly focused on me as well as he made his way over to my side, kneeling down gently so as not to spook me with any sudden movements like I was a scared, wounded animal or something.
…Partly correct, we are wounded at least, somehow…

“Someone get a medic!”
A tiny smile played across his lips and tentatively I could feel one growing on my own lips in response, without me really understanding why it would do so at all, aside from the fact that he’s John. He’s John Jones and he didn’t kill someone specifically because I told him not to, which is a nice surprise at this point in my life considering how well I know him, unfortunately.
“I dunno, Han. How do you get into these situations so much, huh?”

“...Stupid John...”
The words had barely left my mouth before reality finally set in at long last.

I leaned away from my own arm with a hiss in dulled surprise as things seemed to shift in my head as the pain I’d been feeling from my fresh grazes and gunshot wound made itself known with a vengeance, as if the traitorous injuries decided I’d had enough of a break for now.

“I can’t believe you have such crap enemies, John-Boy. How come I get Arista and her lot, but you get an idiot demon summoner and a mage who prefers handguns?”

His eyes lit up with warm, care-filled joy and he tossed his head back in a loud laugh of relief that I joined him in, at an admittedly rather more subdued volume, a few moments later. Things finally seemed to be coming into some kind of order around us at last and aside from a slight hiss of pain when Eris came crashing down on my technically uninjured but still lightly aching arm, we settled in to wait all the craziness to come out as best we could.

Just as I was getting ready to call over Sarah, Fena, and the others to join us for safety’s sake, a pair of green jumpsuit wearing people burst their way past everyone and practically skidded to a halt near me in their rush to stop unexpectedly.

“Oh crap! Who called the Normal paramedics?”
I’d like to say that John found some clever way to assure me that it would all be okay as that horrified mutter left my lips, but somewhat predictably all he did was laugh harder while shooting me a far-too amused for all our sakes look and scoop Eris up in his arms to clear the way for the ‘professionals’ to do their jobs.

“Oww! Watch the bullet wound, lady!”

======

“It’s fine. Seriously, we’ll be perfectly fine. Thank you for everything, Doctor. Sorry again about your beepy-scanny thing… I really have no idea why it would explode like that, I’m afraid. Bye now!”

Finally, I spun away from the far too interested clutches of the Normal doctors who’d ever so helpfully pulled the bullet from my arm over an hour ago, while commenting about how odd it was that I hadn’t fully broken a bone in the process of getting shot, walking away with just a few mild hairline-fractures thanks to my equally helpful mage biology and safety suit, for all the help that bloody thing turned out to be!

We had a rather frantic few minutes when we first got here, not to mention one pretty awkward ambulance ride. Where John and Pauly’s team were forced to help cover for me as Sarah and Rosemary took me into a bathroom in order to get me out of my now battle-damaged safety suit before a doctor could become free enough to check on me at all.

It turns out that a little factor I seemed to have forgotten at some point, and that I’m afraid I can only blame on the drugs I was taking so regularly at the time, is that these safety suits I designed to be bullet, knife, and pretty much everything else-resistant or -proof, are only that way if you put the bloody protection runes on them in the first damn place!

I made that stupid suit as a battle-ready test platform for me to try out every stupid little idea that might pop into my head, but I also forgot to put the most basic of protection runes on the stupid thing at the same time!
...Thank the Powers’ we remembered to put the Icarus wings runes on it, at least!...

Oh Powers! Can you imagine if I’d forgotten to add that set of runes on the stupid suit as well?—and then proceeded to jump out of a bloody plane, of all things!

I’m not even sure if I want to put the suit back on at this point. I do have the final spare normal suit left in my bag still and who knows what other things I’ve either added or removed from my now damaged prototype suit over time without remembering it somehow?
...Something is better than nothing at least...
Something is better than nothing, although how the hell I’m going to get either of them on anyway without them disintegrating my cast in the process I have no idea and—

“You okay there, Han?”
Do I look okay to you, John-Boy? I got fucking shot, for Powers’ sake!

I can’t believe I got shot due to my own drunken ineptitude, and worse than that, I’m stuck with this stupid cast on despite there being nothing physically wrong with me that a few hours’ sleep won’t heal—I’m on the books now! It’s going to take a medi-mage signing me off before every hospital I go near stops flagging me up as a person of interest from now on!

“I fucking hate guns...”
John couldn’t help but snigger at the almost growled mutter I let off as we made our way back outside to the patiently waiting Jeeps, loaned to us by the JFK Hub who couldn’t bend over backwards fast enough to accommodate us, once they heard the story of my injury and why we were even in the bloody airport to begin with apparently.
“I’m starting to really hate Jeeps too, come to that.”

Our resident female soldier, Oats, waved me into the middle seat of our stretched Jeep of choice, being unusually gentle in her handling of me, as if I’d shatter at the lightest of touches. John noticed the grimace on my face and started laughing outright at my expense because of it, naturally.
...This is going to be a long journey, I can tell...

How far even is it from here to Congress, anyway?

======

“Confirmation’s just come through. The gunman has been retrieved by British Magisters and he’s already been sentenced to Swing-Swing for the next six years, with a provision for further sentencing when he goes to trial.”
Oh, well—that’s good, right?

...What even is ‘Swing-Swing’ anyway?...
Yeah, actually, that’s a good point.

“John-Boy, what’s this Swing-Swing place you all keep mentioning?”
...Some kind of prison I’d imagine, from the context...

“It’s a mental asylum, at least that’s the story told to the Normals that know of the place, it’s how the British magicals deal with their criminals.”
John shifted in his seat a little and offered me what I think was supposed to be a reassuring smile before continuing on.
“The actual name of the place has changed a lot over the years, but the title ‘Swing-Swing’ came about in the Eighteen-hundreds after some bright spark mage found a way to create magical suppressors, much like the handcuffs I put on you a few months ago, to stop your magic going haywire.”

So that’s where he got them from? I knew John and his chicken scratch runes couldn’t achieve something that effective by his own skill alone!

“A week after the cuffs were brought in, staff deaths and prisoner escapees dropped to almost zero, but in exchange the suicide rate of prisoners went through the roof. The prisoners apparently preferred reincarnation to a padded cell with no magic. It wasn’t long until they fixed that particular loophole for them to escape with, obviously, but having a warden do his rounds and find an entire block’s worth of men who’d hung themselves, effectively in protest of having their magic sealed away, leaves a mark on a place.”

A shudder went down my spine just at the image he portrayed of the place. Even if you take into account that those people were effectively back on the street and fully recovered within a maximum of twenty years, thanks to their reincarnation and awakening cycles, that’s still a pretty morbid thing to have define a modern justice system that’s still running to this day!

“Don’t worry about it, Han. These days, Swing-Swing is more of a rehabilitation program mixed with a time-out on the naughty step compared to the old days. The Brits take the chance given to them to re-educate their captive audiences on the modern world so they can teach them about ‘rules’ and that pesky ‘law’ thing we all have to deal with nowadays. A lot of the people in there were last consciously alive when killing someone for ‘looking at your horse funny’ was entirely legal still, after all.”

The little smirk that came to his lips at that statement which obviously told me that he thought the whole thing wasn’t as bad as he’d first made it out to be. The aborted motion he made to put his arm around my shoulders reassuringly might have actually been welcome, if it wasn’t for the still healing burn across my chest and my still cast-covered arm sitting between us, of course.

In the long run, I guess I don’t have room to judge in this case, sadly? At least the Brits are trying to help fix their criminals. Over here, we’d much rather just kill any evil mages who pop up and be done with it, honestly. I should know, being enforcer-in-chief when it came to demon and dark mage assassinations for quite a while.

I was Al ‘Emotionlessly Drunk Killer’ Cooper, after all.

The Jeep fell into silence as I pouted slightly to myself at the abrupt reminder of my past incarnations more recent exploits, and everyone else seemed to follow me into my lull for reasons I can’t begin to understand at the moment too.

It probably didn’t help that my arm is stinging a little and Eris is currently sitting behind me, next to Sarah, so I can’t even cuddle her to make myself feel better. I shudder to think how Fena’s doing at the back as well considering my blood has been noted by Vlad and even that psycho Lich Dante as being particularly delicious-smelling to their un-dead senses.

Even if she’s got her helmet on, I’m not sure I want to risk a glance back there at the moment, just on general principle alone, really.

Is it bad that I kinda miss having John throw his arms protectively around me at this exact moment? In my defence, my arm hurts and I think I need a hug from someone, at least!
…Although the fact that he’s the first one who comes to mind is rather telling, unfortunately…

“…Don’t remind me…”
Everyone jumped slightly as I broke our impromptu moment of silence we’d been holding.

We’re going to be driving for who knows how long, I’m hurt, Eris is behind me, and John’s being unusually cautious around me all of a sudden, even if he is trying to play it off like he usually would. Add to that, the fact that I still couldn’t quite work out how to get my suit back on in the time between us leaving the doctors and my getting into the Jeep, so I’m currently feeling more than a little vulnerable in my conjured denim shorts and my damaged, blood-stained boat-necked red sweater.

This really isn’t looking like it’s going to be a fun ride at all.
...What I’d give to be able to just skip over this awkward drive and pick up when we get there!...
Exactly!

...Maybe a book will help calm our nerves a little?...

Where did Sarah put that pile of books from earlier? I might as well get some of my ‘homework’ done while I wait this journey out, if nothing else an—Oww!

My still tender and hairline-fractured arm bumped against a hard corner of moulded plastic as I tried to reach down to grab a little book sitting innocently in the storage slot at the back of the middle console by my leg. I couldn’t help but flinch and hug the offending limb to my chest with a pitiful sounding sniff of suppressed pain for more than obvious reasons.

Slowly, my self-pitying funk over being a mage who could actually manage to get shot by a bloody gun of all things, bled off, giving way to an almost unreasonable level of indignant rage which bubbled over into an angry yell, making everyone around me jump in surprise once more.

“Powers, do I hate guns!”

There’s often two ways you can take a serious or annoying situation; either run with it and try to have fun while you can, or more likely get mad over it all and life as a whole for being unfair. While it’s not the political thing to do; getting mad can also be fun in its own way, of course. That feeling is called catharsis, although some people take it to the point of schadenfreude, just because that can feel even better at times, as well. Which path will Hannah take in her political odyssey? Events unfold including but not limited to: The true power of Edith’s bad juju being considered, Suggestively phallic symbols turn out to look actually phallic after all, And Hannah gets caught being naughty in public!

Last time in Magic Is...:

Where did Sarah put that pile of books from earlier? I might as well get some of my ‘homework’ done while I wait this journey out, if nothing else an—Oww!

My still tender and hairline-fractured arm bumped against a hard corner of moulded plastic as I tried to reach down to grab a little book sitting innocently in the storage slot at the back of the middle console by my leg. I couldn’t help but flinch and hug the offending limb to my chest with a pitiful sounding sniff of suppressed pain for more than obvious reasons.

Slowly, my self-pitying funk over being a mage who could actually manage to get shot by a bloody gun of all things, bled off, giving way to an almost unreasonable level of indignant rage which bubbled over into an angry yell, making everyone around me jump in surprise once more.

“Powers, do I hate guns!”

---

It can be theorised that every human interaction is a battle of one kind or another, be it a battle of wills, ethics, beliefs, or just the give and take of disparate personalities. It’s rare that people can claim they have so much in common that they never fight, even in a playful, bantering sort of way. It’s even rarer when they are correct on that front as well. Sometimes the battles we fight are a lot more overt than a few subtle verbal jabs though. The times when those sort of battles don’t come to blows are often referred to as ‘politics’, although to be fair, the times when those same battles do come to blows are also referred to as ‘politics’ in some circles, at least, until they reach a point of outright war. Let’s hope Hannah can restrain herself just a little bit, huh? I’m not holding my breath, of course. It’s not easy being the famous new kid, after all! Events unfold including but not limited to: Someone infers that Hannah is a naughty girl, John laughs a lot, And Fena’s helmet makes it hard to express emotions appropriately at a distance!

Last time in Magic Is...:

“Ms Cooper-Garnier and associates? If you can all follow me, please, they are waiting for you in the spire.”

A rather snooty looking man in very dull, truly traditional-looking formal robes that suck compared to our custom ones in all their awesome glory, waved us toward a large red carpet-covered staircase enclosed on either side by two wide, square tubes which look like honest-to-Powers glass elevators.

The asshole didn’t even bother to look back, as if he just knew we’d follow him without question from the get-go and—
...Great! So much for the good start to this mess...
On the plus side, new robes! Ooh, so soft and warm!

Look out you Congressional assholes! I’m Hannah Cooper, and I feel like a comfortable badass!

---

Politically, compromise is acceptable and can even be considered good. In other situations, compromise can be a very bad thing. An example of that would be when it all comes down to the important factors of life; your morals, ethics or iron-clad will to resist that stupid part of your brain which finds a certain someone attractive enough to throw everything aside in a moment of passion empowered madness that— What do you mean ‘spoilers’? For all you know I'm talking about the unexpected love triangle between Felix, Lord Suttonsborough, and Fena! Fine, I'll stop—see if I give y’all an actual x-rated make out session to read this side of the apocalypse now! …Some people are so ungrateful sometimes… Events unfold, including but not limited to: Things going ‘boom’ unrealistically, A make-out session does not happen, And Hannah gets revenge on several well-deserving friends with help from Rosemary, of all people!

Last time in Magic Is...:

“Winner of the challenge, Duchess Hannah Cooper-Garnier, the new Lady Suttonsborough!”

...What?...
No! Seriously, what ?

I must have made some kind of obviously facial expression of shock because John cracked up laughing from the sidelines and, after a few seconds of shocked silence, so did pretty much everyone else in my entourage as they realised what I’d just unintentionally done.

As if to add insult to injury Suttonsborough’s scribe, a petite woman only slightly taller than me with long, flowing brown hair and an almost pained look on her otherwise pretty average looking face walked over to my side before grasping the edges of her standard black robe in an honest-to-powers curtsey as she dipped her head and uttered a quiet almost reverent sounding; ‘My Lady.’

In frustration, my eyes cut over to John’s still laughing form because I have no doubt he planned this all somehow! He’s enjoying the results far too much for him to have not planned it all out in his head a thousand times over in just the last few minutes, in my opinion!

You just wait until we’re alone, John-Boy!
...The Lady Cooper-Garnier-Suttonsborough decrees such...
Shut up, Brain! You’ll pay for this indignity, John-Boy, I swear!

I do not need another bloody surname, thank you very much!

---

Where is the line between being friendly and sexual harassment? Can mitigating factors such as ‘she thought I was her ex-lover', for some of it at least, be brought into consideration at all? Hmm? No real reason why I'm asking… No reason at all, just idle curiosity, honest… Uh—I mean, I'm asking for a friend. There! That works better! Events unfold including but not limited to: Hannah finds something wrong in her bra, John finds something wrong in his magic, And a party rolls on around them regardless of any new information that may come to light because of either issue!

Last time in Magic Is...:

“Well, hold on to your corsets people! Let’s hope we don’t regret this in the morning, huh?”

Sadly, no one else seemed to be up for joining me in my gallows humor as we stepped out onto the balcony-like fool’s gold-covered staircase. Attracting the attention of pretty much everyone in the room so far, thanks in no small part to the resounding gong that the walrus-tache guy rang before he took in a great big breath and unrolled his parchment officiously.

…This is gonna suck, I can just tell…

---

You tend to meet all sorts of people when dealing with Politics; sadly, most of them are politicians. But there's still the odd normal human thrown in as well. Now, those normal human beings can often be worse than the politicians in the long run. In fact, it’s often the case. That's a whole other kettle of fish, though, and it can get lumped under the often stated fact that people are stupid, unfortunately. Still, the odds are that there are at least a few interesting gems hiding in all the muck, right? Events unfold including but not limited to: Hannah corrupts someone, A toast is raised, And we avoid talking about the Graeco-Roman religious divide!

Last time in Magic Is...:

“Oh, shit!”

Sarah and John tensed. I couldn’t see them, but I could feel them both do it just from those two words alone—and rightly so—because I save that particular phrase for times when said excrement is about to hit a rather metaphorical fan in a very real way!

“John, please tell me that I’m imagining things and that Thor isn’t currently approaching us with a worryingly blank look on his face?”

The only response I got was silence, and Thor didn’t have the decency to pause in his steps towards me so I’d have more time to work out what the hell I’m going to say or do to stop any number of possible problems that could be about to drop on my head by coming face to face with the mountain of a man once more!

“Oh, this just isn’t fair!”

---

There’s a debate to be made on whether instinct is just a form of advanced self-awareness or a truly separate sense entirely. There’s also a debate to be made on whether trusting your instincts, consciously or not, is always such a good idea. Luckily, most politicians are good at debating and Hannah debates with herself constantly, so she’s in good company, right? Events unfold including but not limited to: John eavesdropping, --- Hannah eating more chocolate, --- And people reassessing things they once thought were impossible, for good or bad.

Last time in Magic Is...:

“You’re not cheating on me, are you Han? I’m not sure my poor little undead heart could take it if you were cheating on me with another woman—well, aside from John, apparently. But even I can’t deny the chemistry between you two, and I’m sure he’ll make an excellent thrall for all your male-related needs when it comes time for us to venture forth and take over the world at long last as evil queen of darkness and her lesbian vampire-pet love slave—”

She probably had more to say on the topic at hand, one she was obviously enjoying playing with to an almost worrying degree as her fingers did a rather good impression of Lilith’s from earlier this evening in running gentle caresses along my ribs. I was almost starting to naively worry that she wasn’t actually joking about any of the things she’d just said when her fingers twitched slightly and suddenly shot down into one of my most ticklish spots that seems to have come over into this new body from my days as Al, namely my ribs just below my new breast-line.

With an undignified squeal, I collapsed instinctively to the side and Fena took the chance to sweep me off my feet, practically raising me above her head like a villain you might see in old black-and-white movie with her vampire strength as she ran down the hallway towards the elevators, much to the confusion of everyone around us and my growing embarrassment.

“First one to our floor gets to ravish Hannah in every way imaginable at their leisure, John-Boy!”
What? Please tell me she’s joking!
…She’s joking—I think?…

---

Options exist for all of us. Some are more palatable than others, of course, but in general, it’s a fact that options do exist in most situations. We can try to be rational about things; we can try to be irrational, too. We can run into danger head-first, or even run away from it screaming bloody murder. The only thing that matters is the effect we want and the effect we get, most of the time. Success, in a political sense, is measured by you getting what you want with the least cost to anyone or anything you care for in the process. Failure is a deferment of that success with varying costs applied to that deferment as well, naturally. The question, really, is how do you measure success in more ambiguous situations? Say, just as a random example, when you race to save your friend from becoming a semi-human barbecue, while partly blinded and far too high in the air for most people’s sanity to handle due to your own poorly tested rune work? What exactly is the win status on that theoretical situation? Her survival? Your survival? The survival of the world’s political climate as it currently stands, perhaps? Or, and just hear me out on this one, maybe the win would be something completely unexpected which blows the other options out of the water just by existing? Let’s call that one ‘Option D’, shall we? Any guesses what Hannah’s up to today? Events unfold, including but not limited to: People yelling and crying on a balcony, --- Hannah crying in her bedroom for some reason, --- And as for Fena…well?

Last time in Magic Is...:

My mouth opened to continue my explanation about how I intended to test the rune work out, now that I’m sober enough to consider such simple things as ‘testing’ something before handing it out, but Fena was apparently way ahead of me and with a dramatic hair-toss she yanked the garter up her right arm practically to her armpit and spun away from me. In seconds she’d broken into an outright sprint for the wide balcony doors at the far end of the suite I’d noticed but not really given much attention to yesterday with everything else going on. A weight dropped into my stomach as I realized just what she was planning to do and my chair flew away from me with a kick as I broke into a desperate sprint of my own in order to stop her.

“Fena!”

She spun, mid-sprint, to offer me a devilishly happy grin before breaking out into a joyful cackle reminiscent of Edith herself as she shoulder-barged her way through the apparently flimsy glass doors onto the unreasonably wide and unreasonably bright balcony beyond.

…Fena!…

She skidded slightly across the floor, in order to bleed off speed, and suddenly the world bleached out with light making my eyes squint shut in pain, even as I kept running towards her in desperation, the garter obviously not having worked right from the light’s intensity, if nothing else!

“FENA!”

---

We all have egos. If you’re lucky you can keep yours contained most of the time; if not, then you’re probably a Politician. Pride can be found in many places, in yourself, in your skills, in your body. Sometimes it can even be found in your achievements or something really weird, like helping others, for example. Sometimes, if you’re extremely lucky, you can combine both being a Politician and having pride in helping others; this is what we call a ‘fantasy’, unless you’re Hannah, naturally. Events unfold, including but not limited to: Hannah being very aware of Fena's body, --- Two Ladies entering a throne room, --- And Sarah asking a stupid question!

Last time in Magic Is...:

“Chinese and Spanish? Now, this is an outfit I need to see you shimmy your way into.”
…And like that, he’s lost the right to be in this room while we’re getting changed…

Yeah, h—he never had that right to start with, damn it!

“Get out of here before I zap you in the balls so much you’ll be able to wear it instead, Arti.”

He winced and actually took a step away from me in obvious fear of my mighty lighting mage rage. Slowly he rose his hands up in a sign of submission and with a gentle nod of his head he left me to get on with things at last.

…An ironically low blow, bringing up ‘Arti’ like that?…
Shut up Brain!

Now, let’s see what fun little challenge of fashion and decency I’ve got to contend with today, shall we?

 

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