Title Here: Multi-fandom Writings

minuseven · Jul 13, 2022

22.07.2022 switched images, minor edits to errors

Synaptic Architecture//Demon Somatic 1.0

It was just like jumping into water. A shock of cold, a weightless feeling and the stinging of water in their eyes. Water from the plains of Cetus, because the warframe's systems shorted out. Shields: disrupted. What little energy was left: gone. HUD: wack.

And trapped inside, all she could think was This is becoming a little bit too real.

Now, it felt like she was awake, rather than the self she dreamt they were. And it was cold, after a fashion. The warframe fell into snow, phantom pins and needles erupting across her nonexistent skin as it flailed around for a bit before power cut off and it slumped, inert. Backup biological systems activated and the frame took its first breath, a minuscule intake of oxygen more than enough to keep the essentials alive for long, long years.

Weightless, she floated in the same space as the frame. She couldn't see herself. Warframe really had something of a third-person shooter element to it, her awareness of her surroundings somehow including what was happening behind her. It made sense, given that most warframes didn't appear to have eyes at all.

She didn't even have time to consider whether she should transfer to operator form. Am I the Operator?

Shouts and the clanking of armor approached. Several men in frankly medieval outfits surrounded the warframe. Shields raised, spears and swords pointed at her warframe. Her first instinct was to recoil. Not going out of my cozy war platform, no siree! But as they gradually gained courage and started poking at them, she realized that staying still was the best she could do. She highly doubted regular swords could do much to a warframe's sword-steel skin… unless they decided they really wanted to destroy it.

Please just think I'm a weird statue… in this weird… bombed out… ruins of a… church? Are those giant crystals? Those are giant glowing crystals. Oh just where am I?

The bandits going 'demon this' and 'magic that' around weren't helping. It wasn't quite 'Tenno Skoom!' but not an unfamiliar sentiment to anybody who played Warframe. At the very least, they weren't picking up axes and trying to chop her for parts like Alad V, so she gues— and there came several men and women in much fancier armor. Smoke encrusted, dirty and banged up plate armor, but definitely ornamented armor. These people were in charge, and they appeared to be discussing what to do with her.

Stopping several paces away, a scowling woman with dried blood running down her face shouted for everybody to get back. She braced herself. A light shot from the woman's sword and struck the warframe like the hammer of god.

–Wait. That didn't hurt?

Opening the eyes she had metaphorically closed, she examined herself. Nothing had happened, not that she'd noticed. Well, her warframe now seemed truly dead. It wasn't, she felt it was still there, but all systems were down. Even the HUD that had been flickering in the periphery of her not-vision was gone. Her limbs felt like real lead, which she was not strong enough to lift.

The only difference was that her left hand was sparking madly, sending spasms up the warframe's arm. If she paid attention to it, she could feel its echoes. But that applied to anything she paid attention to if the warframe should be feeling it.

Guess they knocked me out, -ish.

She felt more vulnerable with the warframe in that state, but at least now the real fantasy people around her seemed more relaxed. That could give her an opportunity to slip out later. For now, nothing was safer than the unreachable, if boring, inside of a tortured eldritch biomech.

She was not lucky enough to be completely ignored. Instead, after some poking and a few aborted attempts to lift the warframe's dead weight, the soldiers procured some rope and dragged them away. Well, first they rolled them into a makeshift stretcher and then they dragged them, but they were treated as a piece of luggage nonetheless.

Watch it! If you scuff my paint job I'll… hm. You might be doing me a favor actually. She loved Volt, but its default colors weren't great.

They formed a small procession as they dragged Volt, and her by extension, out of the ruins and into even more desolate ruins. She stared at the destruction. She'd been thrown into its epicenter, which meant that nothing had remained of whatever and whoever lived there. Just bare rock, evil magic crystals and piles of bricks. Past the blackened walls that still remained standing, the damage was less instantly lethal, and much more horrifyingly survivable.

For a few agonizing minutes, and a given definition of survivable.

Some people had gone straight to Pompei. They wouldn't ever leave. Others left only shadows in the ground, and bits and pieces of themselves here and there. Snow was falling, lightly but with a green tinge. She looked up, past the spiky edges of the crater the remains of the cathedral were in.

Oh. Fuck.

There was a rend in the fabric of space–time, high up in the sky. The same green tonality of that dream she'd been in cast its otherworldly light on the landscape. As she looked, through the warframe's sensors, she saw arcs of not-lightning and something like a malformed bird detach from it. That's not good. It explained why everybody was on edge. Monsters from another world. From that perspective, doesn't a Warframe also count?

To her amateur eyes, the green wasn't quite right for it to be a Void Storm. It also begged the entire question of the Void. A Tenno would be… mostly fine, with the Void, unlike these normal humans. She just wasn't sure she was a Tenno, and she wasn't in a position to test it. If she had been exposed to the Void, she should be insane. Of course, if she was insane, she wouldn't know. That's the thing about insanity.

So far, she thought her actions and reactions aligned fairly well with morals and logic, and so did those of the humans around her. If she was insane, or they were insane, she would have noticed. Surely.

Well, at least it wasn't the Infestation. Helminth is a good boy and not dangerous, Helminth is a good boy and not dangerous, nopety-dopety! Please. Just, please. Let's stop thinking about the big things before they actually appear!

She turned her attention back to their surroundings. Should be information-gathering, not wool-gathering. She was high and deep into a mountain range, and apparently had been thrown into some sort of monastery in the wake of a catastrophe. There were many sorts of monks and nuns in red and white robes running around, and a big number of injured she'd bet were pilgrims. An exceedingly large number of armed security forces from around the same time period were also in attendance. A great many of them carried the same symbol or variations of it.

Paladins? Urgh, I hope they're not like the Tem– wait, did you just say Templar? Hey, pay attention to the ghost here buddy! Templars, like… come on. Could this get any wo– no. Don't do it. Don't jinx yourself.

People also spoke in heavily accented English, something she hadn't taken as strange before. But now she also heard what sounded like French from another woman and maybe Italian?

The current topic of discussion was Volt. Or rather, herself. It seemed to have made the rounds that the strange maybe-demon had come from the breach. More, as a brave soul examined her. It was still alive. It's alive!! And that the mark on their hand was connected to the hole in the sky, bursting into bright sparks when there was movement from the heavens. Apparently, it looked quite painful, sending uncontrolled jerks through the warframe's chassis, making muscles contract. To her, it was merely a natural reaction to a current.

I've disconnected tho, so I don't feel any of it. Don't worry. Oh, you aren't worried, you just want to lynch me. Oh, so you are worried… because you want to torture information I don't have out of me first! That tracks.

So she got a front row seat to her own imprisonment. A rare opportunity.

And then, propped against the wall, chained up in the basement of a church, under constant watch from four different guards, she got bored. It wasn't like she could do anything, locked as she was in a recovering warframe. She wasn't going to attempt leaving the warframe with four twitchy knights just waiting for her.

Not that there weren't a few interesting moments. First of all, when they noticed her Kunai holsters still had a few knives in them. The soldiers had picked up the Braton and the Bo, fallen to the ground in the wake of the magnetic proc, back in the destroyed cathedral, and those weapons were somewhere in the church above. She was glad the Braton was out of ammo, but wondered what they would make of the Bo's moving parts. The problem with the Kunai was that they were either magnetically or mechanically attached to the holster, and simply put regular humans did not possess enough strength to get them out.

Then they tried to remove the holsters themselves. A smart move in any other situation. Those holsters were a part of Volt now, literally.

It also led to the confirmation that she was in a fantasy world. They called in what they called a 'qunari'. Tall, burly, horned, and very much not human. From the way they spoke with him, he was a different race altogether, and there were also mentions of dwarves. She recalled then that she had seen shorter, stout people around.

The qunari also failed, so they stuffed their holsters with straw and tied some cloth around them. Inventive, but problematic.

And there were elves! Not the fun anime elves, no. From the way you talk, mister, and they talk to you, there's a whole lot of racism. Typical.

After enough hours had passed, and after several attempts to wake the warframe, via percussion and water buckets, they had decided to physically examine Volt. Hurray for the scientific method? It was still a bit disgusting and disturbing to see a grown man run their hands all over them, but the third person view they had taken and the disconnect from their senses made it tolerable. And after seeing Adan become increasingly more confused and disturbed by warframe xenobiology, hilarious.

Volt looked like it had a massive something between their legs. It was just aesthetics. Mostly. If one didn't think too much about where warframes came from.

Naturally, when interrogated by the surly paladin woman from before, the man could only explain with bafflement that all of Volt's armor was a part of him. A bit like an insect, or even a qunari's horns. Yes, even the bracers, the helmet, the pauldron and the skirt. Those were all part of the demon. If that thing was a demon.

The rogue accompanying the paladin suggested a possessed statue of some sort, since they could barely nick it with their weapons. As much as they dared for fear of waking them. So they called in the apostate, which was a type of mage. I need a thesaurus with all this old english. If anybody would be an expert in demons and spirits, apparently it would be this bald man. He certainly spoke like a learned man. She liked his scholarly hermit vibe.

A shame, for them, that he also didn't know exactly what they were. Apparently not a demon or a spirit, but perhaps something from 'the Fade', because 'the Fade' still held innumerable mysteries. What was of greater import was that the 'mark' on Volt's left hand was expanding proportionally to the Breach, now capitalized. It should be killing them, but they couldn't tell for sure.

From her part, she couldn't tell that at all. If she carefully brought her attention back to the warframe, she could tell, with some doubt, that the fibers in the left hand felt off. The surges that wracked it from time to time didn't interact with her or the warframe's more complex systems at all. Nevertheless, she was understandably concerned when they mentioned that the Breach wasn't slowing at all. If anything, it was accelerating, opening smaller space-time anomalies in the vicinity and reportedly, beyond.

"Pray to your Maker that your prisoner wakes up soon then, Seeker. He is your only clue to what happened at the Conclave and, if my theories are correct, our only hope to stop the Breach from engulfing the world."

That… changes the priority of things a bit…

look sometimes the brain worm just doesn't leave and this time the brain worm was like: well what if nothing actually happens and also don't you hate writing dialogues? ocp is going to be fun tho, eventually

minuseven · Jul 18, 2022

25.07.2022 several minor edits, some minor changes in the confrontation with Cassandra

Synaptic Architecture//Demon Somatic 1.1

I thought this was a dream. Maybe it's a dream within a dream. My own second dream. Or maybe, I'm wide awake.

Every hour that passed was another hour the world lost. More breaches. More demons. More dead. And it seemed to be accelerating.

It was not her fault, no matter how everybody glared at the warframe she shared an otherspace with. She might be needed to resolve it however, as befitting of a Tenno, an isekai or whatever. She believed everybody had at least a bit of responsibility for the world around them and she wasn't heartless enough to reject the responsibility placed upon her by virtue of being in a certain place at a certain time, wrong or right. People's lives depended on it.

Even if those people were religious fanatics from several centuries back and therefore could really use some divine smithing full of irony.

That's maybe not unfair, but unkind. Bet half these peasants don't know how to read. Save the righteous anger for after the end of the world is averted, girl. Even … urgh, certain distasteful groups are useful when fighting a war for survival.

Unfortunately for everybody, her warframe's systems were not cooperating. It was worrying; she didn't know if this would be a common state of affairs, she wasn't even entirely sure the warframe would reawaken by itself or at all. And it was very boring. Nothing to do but stare at the same old dungeon walls and scowling knights for hours on end. Nothing to stop her anxieties from spiking then withering on the vine, leaving her with nothing but sour feelings.

She'd even tried to transfer herself through reality as Tenno should be able to do, half a day before when the guards had seemed particularly sleepy, but found it impossible. If she was a Tenno, she wasn't a very good one. Or maybe she wasn't using Transference at all. An even scarier possibility.

She was stuck, had worked herself through a couple of purely mental panic attacks, and at some point started dissociating.

When the Templar shift changed, the chatter was it'd been two days already. There was a storm outside, and despair was starting to grip people.

Something changed. In the darkness of the cell, the warframe's light emitters blinked into life, a deep orange light that started out weak before the life within made them shine with ominous glow. And she felt herself settle into the warframe as systems slowly initiated after a long, long pause. The chassis felt heavy and creaky, like an old statue it had been taken for, but blood pumped through channels, fluids moved, interlinked organs restarted their functions, circuitry reacted and the rust fell away.

I… I think I could cry. No, I am crying.

As the neuroptics came online, the HUD bloomed into existence, all of its pieces clicking into their rightful places. Top left, radar. Top right, health, shields. Bottom right, energy, abilities, ammo. Bottom left, comms. Dead center, kill zone.

Alright, she thought as she flexed Volt's fingers, let's see what I got. No energy. Health is a bit damaged, shields are booting up… A faint shimmer ran across their form as the shields regenerated. Good. And I still have two handfuls of kunai… huh, 'obstructed'. Well, guess I know Orokin now. Somehow.

When she looked up, swords had been unsheathed and stances taken. She considered what to do. Perhaps a jaunty Gentlemen! or a casual Yo. would relax them… or maybe it would just make them even more wary. She considered waving. Hm, no, sudden movements are probably not a good idea. It was very much like an armed standoff. Well, an armed police against minority suspect standoff. Great, is ACAB applicable here? Please don't be.

Her ears (Volt's audio sensors?) caught the sure and angry steps of somebody in armor on the upper floor, then coming down the stairs. She didn't have to wait much longer for the door to bang and the angry paladin to come through. Seeker Cassandra. Behind her, the woman sometimes called Nightingale, with the name of Leliana. Apparently a nun? Brown and blue eyes roved over Volt's sitting form, meeting the glowing orange openings in its helmet as if they were eyes.

She tilted their head, deciding not to speak for now. Volt doesn't have a mouth, after all.

The rogue slunk in behind the warrior, disappearing into the shadows for anybody without biomechanical sensors.

Cassandra's frown deepened after long moments of tense silence and she almost spat as she spoke, hand clenched tightly on the pommel of her sword. "Tell me what you are and what you were doing at the conclave, and I might not kill you right here."

She couldn't help the frown at the warrior's tone. Volt's head dipped just slightly. The temptation to stick her metaphorical tongue out was there.

"Are you capable of speech?" The rogue's more calm voice was a stark counterpoint.

She bit off the Sure can, lady. that she wanted to throw in their faces. Like a normal person, she did not appreciate being threatened. Instead, she simply said "Yes." What came out was vaguely similar to her voice, through the warframe's lenses there was none of that annoying high pitched tone discovered when she heard recordings of her own voice. Instead, it sounded exactly like her mental voice, intonation and all.

The humans startled heavily, some cursing out loud. But after a brief widening of her eyes, Cassandra surged forward, banging her fists on the bars that separated the cell she was in from the rest of the dungeon. "Answer us! The Conclave is destroyed, everybody dead! And you, right in the middle of it. What did you do?"

Okay, one, fuck off. Two, fuck you. "What did I do? What did you do?"

"What did–"

"I was just minding my business when I got dragged into this frozen hellhole of a place. So the question is what did you humans do, huh, that blew a hole between realities and dropped my ass here!?" The stress and anxiety she'd been keeping at bay finally manifested. In one fluid movement, she had gotten up and was now looking down at the paladin. She could see the orange lights of her optics reflected in her brown eyes.

Before she could back down from her overly aggressive posture, the Seeker matched her in tone, grabbing the warframe's left wrist pulling it, or attempting to, up. "Well then, explain this!"

Wow, she's fearless. She realized. The guards had their swords pointed at her again, and even the rogue had moved, perhaps to grab some concealed weapon, but Cassandra had barely twitched. She'd reached into the cell containing what was, for all they knew, an extremely dangerous animal. She'd tensed and kept the warrior from moving her, and a warframe's strength should have given her pause, but no. It didn't seem to matter to the woman at all. Or she's too pissed to give a fuck.

"It's connected to the Breach, our mages confirmed it. You are lying, creature." She hissed.

Again with the dehumanization, lovely. "I didn't have that on the other side, lady." She snorted. "So, once again, you tell me. As far as I'm concerned, you're the ones who put it there, following my kidnapping and wrongful imprisonment." She gestured at the bars with her head.

"So you are from the Fade?" Leliana interjected before Cassandra could have a conniption. Clearly the good cop of this duo. Psychological technique or not, it wouldn't hurt to answer and be a bit more cooperative. Maybe they would even start taking a softer, much more welcome approach.

"No. I'm… hm." She paused, wondering exactly what she should say. A truth, because liars were always caught sooner or later. But how to word it… and really, what was the truth, when even she wasn't sure of what was happening? "I'm from… Terra," she used her native language to add a spice of otherness to the name, "and the Void. They… might be from beyond your Fade. I'm not sure of the metaphysical coordinates in relation to this reality."

"The Void?" Cassandra repeated in a strange tone, and her grip on the warframe's wrist tightened. At least two of the guards whispered some sort of protective prayer.

Perhaps void had a special connotation for these people. When doesn't the frigging VOID have a connotation? Still, it was the truth of the Tenno. "It's what we call it." She shrugged exaggeratedly.

"And what does that make you?"

"A Tenno." For all intents, purposes, and roleplay. "We're human-adjacent, if that makes it easier to understand. Started out human, still consider ourselves humans of some sort…" She explained when their faces made it clear how not-easy it was for them.

It certainly kickstarted something in their brains, because a ripple of unease ran across these humans.

"Human? That–?" A guard whispered too loudly.

She tilted her head, but managed not to snap anything that would reveal her as separate from the warframe. "Yes, bloody human." And it wasn't even wrong, from an etiological point of view.

They tensed.

Leliana approached from her position in the edges of the room. She had been constantly on the move, prowling, psychologically exerting pressure on the prisoner by introducing an element of uncertainty. It had a minimal effect on an ancient war machine that outmassed her by an order of magnitude and could see in the dark. She exchanged a loaded look with Cassandra, communicating with the kind of ease that only people that know each other extensively well have.

The paladin scoffed and released Volt. She took a couple of steps back and crossed her arms over her breastplate, a deep scowl on her face. Still, she let Leliana take the lead.

"You must understand," she started, in a radically different mood from her compatriot, "you have appeared at the center of the greatest tragedy of our time, armed and essentially… untouched. We had to be careful and assume the worst. Moreover, the Tenno are unknown to us and you resemble on some levels the demons of the Fade."

"Oh, I do. I don't have to like it though… Surely, you understand." The sarcasm was heavy in her voice.

Leliana was unruffled. If anything, she seemed pleased. "Of course. I am Sister Leliana, Left Hand of the Divine. I'm afraid I do not know your name…"

It was an invitation, but one she had expected from the very beginning, trapped in the warframe. And in her boredom, she had actually thought up a decent alias that was not her name or username. A homage as well. "Ren. Volt Ren, currently."

"Volt Ren." Leliana nodded. It took every single ounce of willpower she had for Ren to not break down laughing right then and there. "What do you remember happening? We might have a better idea of what happened if you could share your perspective."

Well, weren't they being accommodating… "I doubt it'll help you, but sure. I remember I was dreaming. That was very clear to me. I was fighting monsters I wasn't familiar with, insectoids of some sort, and then I noticed a light in the distance. I approached, a woman made out of fire reached out for me. She didn't seem hostile so I accepted, and suddenly I was falling here."

"The soldiers reported a woman in the rift behind you." Cassandra piped up.

That was interesting, she noted. "Likely the same person, or th—"

A crackle of green light interrupted them. Ren looked down to see the mark on Volt's hand raging, sparks flashing and creating deep shadows in the dungeon. Her hand twitched, just once, before she brought it under control, mechanical and purposeful. It took some concentration, but the fibers of Volt's muscles obeyed her above the external stimuli.

She looked up to see the entire room staring at her in apprehension. She tilted her head in question.

The paladin shook her head and reached for her colleague's arm. "The mark is growing. Leliana, we can't waste time here."

"You're right." Leliana sighed and gestured at one of the guards, the one that had the keys to her cell.

"Head to the forward camp. I'll bring… it to the rift." She raised a hand to forestall any objection. "I can handle it."

"If you're going to use neutral pronouns, I'd prefer they/them. If not, pick a gender and use it." Ren snarked from where she was busy unobstructing her secondary's holsters. The chains around her wrists were getting annoying, so she tested them once, then broke them with a little bit of effort. Not like I was expecting ferrite and high-tech carbon alloys, but still, good for me. She set to liberating her ankles as well, and deliberately ignored how swords were pointing in her direction again. "Oh, and by the way, I want my weapons back."

actually had this written the whole week end, images were the ones missing.
hmm, gonna change the previous ones too, to give tenno text! i am not that funny of a person
also, stupidly immensely proud of not redoing the initial dialogue like most self inserts, geez
ahah, everybody thinks we are an abomination from the abyss (da hell)! in the house! and technically they are not wrong

minuseven · Jul 26, 2022

10.08.2022 several minor edits to missing words and punctuation

Synaptic Architecture//Demon Somatic 1.2

Paraphrasing the following fifteen minutes: Of course I want them back, they're mine. Yes, now. You don't trust me? Boo-hoo, I don't trust you. Look, the Braton can stay, but I'm not leaving this place without the Bo. The polearm, ya'know? What do you think I need it for, it's a staff, you use it to whack people with it 'til they drop.

Truthfully, it came down to a simple thing. Ren wasn't helping them without a bare minimum of compromise. And if people were dying… she buried her guilt under anger. She was a person too, and their treatment of her hadn't endeared them to her at all. They must understand, you see? Asking for a simple, blunt melee weapon was her price. They were the ones that were acting like denying her such a simple thing was worth people's lives.

So, in the end, after ten minutes arguing, in which at least one person tried to push the warframe... (Something exponentially harder to do when said warframe was actively resisting.) Surprisingly, Cassandra was the voice of reason. Perhaps it was simply in her nature to not dawdle and just get down to business. Regardless, Ren appreciated it and so wasted none of her time.

She twirled the Bo once, nodded, then clamped it to its own holster, another partly mechanic, partly magnetic notch on Volt's back that was barely visible at all.

And so, Ren as Volt, walked under their own power out of the church and beheld the Breach.

"Oh, fuck. That does not look good."

To call it a breach was a severe understatement. Whereas before it had seemed like a light in the sky between parted clouds, occasionally sending eldritch lightning out, it had grown into a veritable storm. It looked like the eye of a hurricane as seen from space, but they were on the ground, a thing straight out of science-fiction and fantasy art. Green light almost overwrote the natural sunlight, what little made it out through the heavy cloud cover, and flashes lit up the storm like lightning. At night, it must have been ever more nightmarish. Rocks were suspended hundreds of meters in the air, rotating slowly, along with energy in the form of plasma and fire, a deadly green whirlpool in the sky.

In the vague shape of a lightning bolt, a rent in the fabric of space originated from it, down to the ground. It shone the same neon green, a solid mirage-like in quality to it, even to the warframe's sensors.

"It grows with every passing moment, and it is not the only such rift, merely the largest." Cassandra said, next to them. She and two other soldiers in light armor were escorting Ren. "We must move."

The natives formed a triangle around her and move they did, Cassandra taking a spot at the front with her. She gripped Volt's arm firmly and directed them through the path. Although there was strength, it was not forceful. Ren could see why she was doing it and for once, was thankful. I suppose I can cut her some slack, she doesn't seem to be a bad person after all. As long as Cassandra appeared to be leading a prisoner, the dozens of refugees in the immediate vicinity would probably not attack, panic, run or do anything similarly unwise. And I'd really not have to fight these poor souls…

She'd seen some damage when Volt had been towed in, but the following days had only made it worse. What might once have been a small town or village had turned into a half refugee camp, half military camp. Streets, houses and hastily constructed structures were overflowing with the wounded, the lost, and those taking care of them. Standing right next to them, pikes and arrows were being made, swords sharpened, armors repaired. Broken things and rubble abounded, sickness and blood in the air. Ren felt almost like the scent of gunpowder was missing. If somebody wasn't tending to the wounded, they were working, carrying supplies, weapons, messages… or staring brokenly into space. There was no shortage of help needed for any task, yet everybody stopped and turned to look as they passed.

I was already expecting the hate… but the sheer amount of fear, welps.

Cassandra was silent as we walked through the throngs of people, but upon approaching the gates, closed and armed, spears pointed outwards, she spoke up. "The people mourn our Most Holy, Divine Justinia. They need–"

"A scapegoat?"

Ren wasn't sure if the expression translated but it was english they were speaking, and indeed Cassandra understood. "Someone or something to blame, yes. The Conclave was a chance for peace between mages and templars, an end to the war ravaging the land. The Most Holy brought their leaders together. She was the only one who could have. Now, they are all dead."

Somebody double-tapped peace and left it dead in the gutter. Yikes. "Well, that's just about the worse that could happen." Not only Cassandra but the rest of her escorts made noises and expressions of agreement. "Both sides are going to point fingers at the other and renew the fighting extra-hard. Who was winning, by the way?"

"Nobody." Cassandra said in a way that encompassed much more than either mages or templars. She raised one arm to the soldiers manning the gates.

Arcane magic against holy magic, she could see that tying and causing great destruction to everybody in the vicinity. If it even works that way here. "I'm not surprised. Do you– Well, you basically said I was your only suspect, but besides me: do you have any idea who could have destroyed the Conclave?"

"None. Or rather, Leliana has too many. The Conclave hosted many factions interested in the discussions. Peace, what kind of peace, the new relationship between templars and mages… everybody wanted to know, and to influence those decisions if they could." She scowled. "One way or the other."

By then, the group was walking through the gate. Cassandra stopped holding Volt's arm. A stone bridge extended for about fifty or sixty paces, another gatehouse at the end of it. There were nothing more than light wounded here, only soldiers ready to join the fight, or return to it. This group was visually and verbally more aggressive. Once more, it would scare Ren, if she wasn't currently towering over every single human present.

She'd noticed it before, in the church. Volt was tall enough to almost hit the ceiling of the dungeon, and she'd had to hunch to avoid scraping the top of their helmet when they were leaving through the narrow stairwell that led to the ground floor. She hadn't thought much of it. She'd been to medieval castles before. Many passages were small even for five foot tall people, which made it rather funny to watch when the six foot plus tourists had to almost crouch. But Cassandra hadn't had that problem, had she? And even the big double doors of the gatehouses and the church looked smaller than they should be.

Wait, is Volt actually… really tall? The only people with size parity seemed to be the qunari race, and they were so rare that she'd only seem two so far.

A resounding boom in the distance and a prickly feeling in their arm made her look up at the breach. It was currently spewing out meteors. Big and small, rocks enveloped by eldritch energy used the kinetic energy imparted into them to crash into the landscape. If Volt could gape at the sight, they would be doing so. "It's… meteors." She managed.

"It does that." Cassandra almost grumbled.

Oo. Kayy. She waited until they were past the second gatehouse, and too many prying ears, to ask something that had been nagging her. "By the way, couldn't help but overhear, but what is an abomination?"

Behind them, one of the soldiers tripped. Cassandra shot a look at Volt's faceplate that told her just how stupid she thought that question was, but it quickly passed and she shook her head with a sigh that almost visibly expressed her tiredness and frustration.

One of the soldiers, a blonde woman with noticeable eye-bags even beneath the dirt and grime of battle. "Beg pardon… si-sire?" She seemed to be trying to be polite, and suddenly realizing she didn't know why she was being polite. "An abomination is when a demon possesses a mage or… another person. It… warps their body and… yes."

You didn't have to be very intelligent to realize what the natives thought Volt was. And from the name itself, what they thought should be done to such things.

Holy… "Huh. Hm. I see." Isn't that… a bit too accurate!? Tenno are essentially children with void-thing ghost-like powers possessing warframes, which were people. Sort of. Needless to say, this was a comparison she was not going to admit to any time soon.

"The rift is not far. This way, through the valley." Cassandra started up a jog through the snow-covered path that led vaguely in the direction of the Breach.

They, that is to say Leliana, had explained that they needed to test whether or not the mark would be able to seal the original rift in the sky by trying it on one of the smaller off-shots that had sprung up. This was information Ren had been able to mostly put together. After all, she'd been awake and listening when the elf mage expert had started theorizing. Still, she'd appreciated the details and transparency, even if she had no clue how she was going to seal a space rift. She didn't have operator mode available after all.

The mountains surrounding the valley path seemed to amplify all sounds. The crackling of still burning wood, screams, and the irregular, unceasing thunder from the breach. It wasn't just Ren's mind playing tricks on her. Cassandra herself commented that the mark was reacting faster every time. Every group of soldiers they passed was a little more bloody than the last and they all reacted with fear at seeing her.

"Andraste protect us!" "Maker, the demon!"

Only Seeker Cassandra, scowling and leading the charge with an even more unyielding fire in her eyes, kept them from being accosted. Ren kept being impressed with her. She wasn't exactly her type… but she was slowly being reminded, even in this dire situation, how she favored the fairer sex.

And since Cassandra was going in front, she was the one in danger when, crossing a bridge, one of the Breach's meteors decided to fall right on top of them. One blast of green and rock missed the bridge by scant meters. Urgency compelled Ren to start really running. Not even a warframe, especially an unmodded one, would survive a direct hit from one of those. There was a flash of green and she just reacted, throwing herself at the paladin and tackling her out of the way as stone crumpled beneath them.

The sound was deafening. She felt the warframe's filter's engaging, cutting out the majority of it from overloading her senses, and letting the screams of those soldiers not fast enough be heard. If Ren could still feel her heart, she was sure it would be beating out of her chest. Instead, she pushed herself off Cassandra with hands that didn't shake and tried to assess the damage.

Oh thank fuck, looks like it missed most people. She and Cassandra were stuck on one side of the bridge along with some soldiers. One of their lesser escorts was on the other side and the other two had fallen among the rubble that the bridge had become, along with a few other soldiers. And several, she noted, were not moving. Or missing parts entirely. Shouldn't I be smelling… oh, right, warframe. Ehe… why doesn't this nauseate me? Is it the filters? Is it me?

By any definition, Ren wasn't a soldier, or accustomed to violence.

This, even filtered by the lenses of a true war machine, no longer bound and helpless in a coffin of her own, was brutal.

"Demons!" There was no time for self-reflection on the battlefield. From the remains of the fade-borne rock, more still careening in their direction from the sky, creatures unfolded themselves into realspace. Ugly, mismatched things, in ragged robes and hoods, blue-black leather skin clinging to disproportionate muscles. The same sort of little insectoid creatures she had been surrounded by in the other side chittered at their heels like hounds.

Beside her, Cassandra unsheathed her sword and was directing the troops to shoot even as she looked for solid enough footing to descend into the main battlefield.

Ren didn't have those limitations. "Leave it to me!" In one move, she'd drawn her staff and literally sprung into the fray.

She landed staff point-first into the body of the closest demon, piercing it nearly through. She kicked it off her weapon and spun, sweeping the Bo like a golf club and nailing a smaller demon. The bo twirled in her hands like she'd been born with it. A strike finished off the first demon, crushing its head. Then she was on top of the demons harassing a lone soldier. Each blow struck with decisive force, crippling if not outright killing.

However, the demons weren't pushovers. Their claws were as tough as metal, backed by inhuman strength and uncanny movements just not-human enough to throw combatants off. They rent through armor even as their flesh resisted the blades of mortals in ways that didn't make complete sense. To Volt, a hit just meant losing a big part of their shields, already somewhat alarming. To the humans surrounding Ren, it meant traumatic injury at best. It further constrained her, leaving her to use the Bo's longer range to keep two or three of the demons away from the soldiers who had fallen at the bridge.

Those further away she could barely help, reduced to distracting with a well-placed kunai when she could. And those who fought their own battles, many succeeded as those who didn't.

The skirmish seemed to take forever, and was over before Ren had had time to process. As much as she was combat-capable, tracking several enemies and overseeing the battlefield, never hindering Volt's reactions, Ren herself was stuck as if she had dropped from holding a controller and slicing through Grineer to… standing ankle deep in their blood and organs.

And so they stood, in a body that was breathing a little, over half-dissipated demon corpses and the injured. Ah, I leveled up. Uh. Fuck. She twirled her staff and re-slung it. Forced herself to move, because she didn't have adrenaline and so this was all purely mental shock. Volt's shields had come down one time, but she had not been hit before they regenerated. As such, the warframe's state was as before.

Cassandra, who had joined the fight halfway through and flanked the demons, ending said fight, gave her one thoughtful look amidst a grateful nod.

Ren shrugged. Instead, she took stock of everybody else: it did not look good. Three were dead and another was on his way; Volt wasn't trusting medieval surgery to fix that hole. Both their escorts were among the dead. Of the soldiers that had also been present on the bridge, none looked to be anywhere but moderately injured or worse. Truthfully, only Cassandra had escaped with her armor in one piece.

Ren wasn't sure what to do. It wasn't like she could just leave them here… This would be a perfect opportunity to just… abscond. Think about the meaning of life. Leave possibly thousands to die…

The Seeker made the decision for her. "We must continue." She said, as darkly resolute as ever.

"Alone?" Ren asked, then thought it was a stupid question. She amended herself even as she started walking after the paladin. "Are they going to be okay?"

"They will be, if you can close the Breach." She narrowed her eyes as she mentally calculated the path, and gestured with her hand for the unknown spirit to follow her through the frozen river. "We have done what we can here. And I left them a few of my own potions."

"Oh, ok." Ren looked up from where she'd been marveling at the warframe's perfect traction on ice– Funky shield applications? –as something the paladin had said registered. "Wait, wait– potions? You guys have actual potions?"

"Of course…" Cassandra frowned minutely as she seemed to think it over.

"Healing potions that heal you?"

"Yes…" The paladin met her eyes with a look that was less severe than usual and mayhaps even curious. "Do… Tenno not have potions and tonics? Elixirs?"

Ren opened her mouth, a motion that was wasted with a warframe, closed it then raised one finger. "We have stuff that works the same way… but you don't have to drink it. And then we have, hm, medicine, which works… differently." Meshing both real world and unreal world facts was making it confusing. It didn't help that she had very little idea about the levels of medical care available in the solar system when it came to non-warframes. People certainly survived with… varying levels of augmentation and 'reposition'.

Actually, can I check my gear wheel, do I have a– oh. There it is. Compleeetely empty, figures.

As Ren started having thoughts about her equipment, Cassandra spoke up. "Back on the bridge... thank you." She kept her gaze forward even as the warframe's head snapped in her direction. "You didn't have to do that. And personally as well, for getting me out of danger."

She tapped down a sudden urge to shake the woman next to her and instead managed a deep sigh, whistling strangely from the warframe's chest. "Of course I had to. I'm not fucking heartless."

"... Regardless."

They continued on in silence, but the tension had eased a little bit.

boy, has life been... a thing. switched out all old images in the previous parts. this one was actually cooperating very nicely... until my whole pc lost the battery and that had to be fixed...
in the meanwhile, boi! volt's dropping hideously alarming bits of lore for thedas natives! imho 'bloody' must mean something way darker in a place where blood magic is feared that much ahah
also, going with an estimate for warframe lore heights that puts the average warframe at 2m+. because i like it that way. war machines be war machines. necramechs should indeed be mech-sized.

minuseven · Sep 5, 2023

Synaptic Architecture//Demon Somatic 1.3

Whether it was the lack of other soldiers accompanying them or the urgency of the slowly worsening raining demons, Cassandra moved at a faster pace, jogging determinedly over snow-covered ice. Volt followed half a step behind, forward facial sensor-pits glowing without a flicker. Mute of breathing to human ears, the focus of a Tenno on the hunt was probably disconcerting.

Certainly, Cassandra seemed somewhat off-put when, ambushed by lone demons, the warframe reacted like a coiled spring and laid low the attackers with two or three devastatingly strong blows.

Truth be told, Ren was letting the equipment do most of the work. Her focus was on keeping her will steady. Rather than immerse herself into the warframe's body, and feel the ice, the wind, the stray branches, the fires from lost barricades, the smell of blood and offal, she took a step back. Unbound from her weak mental constitution, guided only by the detached orders of a mind that knew what was to be done in theory, the warframe moved like the machine it was meant to be. Smooth, strong, silent, mechanically precise if predictable in its flawlessness.

And as much as Ren would like to not see the corpses of soldiers and civilians, and hear the screeches of things that were quite probably literally born from nightmares, she was unable to close her eyes. She shouldn't either, as she was in hostile territory, and because her humanity almost demanded it of her. A careful balance between caring too much and breaking down, and caring too little and just leaving it all behind.

It was ultimately an untenable state of being, but Ren was going to stick with it until she couldn't anymore.

Procrastinate your well-deserved breakdown just like old times, dear chap!

Concrete sounds of fighting increased. Cassandra pointed to the left side of the river. "Over there, up on the bank." Eldritch light and the sounds of combat originated from somewhere behind the pine trees blocking their view.

Volt nodded, then Ren hesitated. Will I get shot at if I burst into scene? But the heavily armored woman behind them didn't have the benefit of techno-augmented muscles and would still take some time to climb that. She shook the warframe's head, willing herself to fall back into the armor. "I'm going to scout ahead."

Breaking from her light jog into a full blown sprint, she rushed the stairs cut into the hill. The path culminated at one end of a bridge, now broken and littered with flaming debris. The large torches that topped the structure held their own fires, struggling to exist in the harsh wind blowing through the valley. On the same slope, the path dropped down, cutting through ruins that days before must have been some sort of building or fort. Ren's sensors sharpened as she focused on the hole in space, fractal edges intercut by stony protrusions that faded out of existence at the edges and intersected like an alien sea urchin. The rift. Shit. A green cloud emanated from it, blanketing the battlefield in a ghostly light.

Ren stepped back, looked over the stairs to see Cassandra just only now starting to climb them. Her head swiveled between the woman and the figures fighting for their lives not a hundred meters away. Priorities. Well, in the worst case scenario I'm still a goddamned warframe. They can't hurt me that bad. "Found it! I'm going ahead!" She pointed to her objective as she hollered to Cassandra, then started running without waiting for an answer. To the defenders, she shouted. "Reinforcements!"

Soldiers attempted to surround and hold down the demons with the sheer force of numbers, while archers fought to not hit them, and a single mage cast homing ice bolts. And then a small-point war machine barreled into a demon, all the weight that had been negated while traversing over ice made manifest. It had about the same result as a car hitting a pedestrian at full speed. The demon was launched away, broken body dissipating as a crackle of electricity ran through it in its last moments.

Volt didn't stop, twirling its bo and side-stepping the terrified soldiers to bat another enemy into oblivion. There were actually only three demons present, although all of them humanoid-ish in shape, the stronger variants she'd observed until now. "Three. All demons defeated." She spoke loudly, hoping to broadcast, if not her allegiance, then her intentions. Please don't shoot me. "Cassandra, the Seeker, is inbound."

The soldiers looked among themselves, looking for anybody to step up and do something. Ren immediately noted the two non-humans in the bunch. To be fair, they were very noticeable. The elf she'd seen before, it was the mage who'd examined her before. And the dwarf, richly dressed, cut an interesting figure himself, what with exposing his chest to the frigid air and the small-scale balista in his hands. Before she had the time to examine the first bit of technology she'd seen in this world further, the elf stepped up.

Apparently unsurprised and unbothered by Volt, the mage had only taken a moment to catch his breath. "We have no time to lose." He fearlessly approached the rift, motioning for them to come closer. "Quickly, before more come through!" He opened a hand to her, asking for Volt's own.

After a moment of silent and unmoving contemplation, Ren moved. With deliberate movements, she presented the warframe's left hand, palm up.

The mage took it, his own movements deliberate as he pulled it closer to examine it. Now with, relatively, time to look closer, the mark on the warframe looked like fade-light had been wedged into small fissures, or scars. Like Volt had cut its hand on the fractal glass-like edges of a rift. Or shrapnel. The mage quickly measured the width of the mark with his fingers, then, pausing to look the warframe in the eyes, or equivalent, he thrust the glowing hand towards the rift.

Something that wasn't electricity arced between the mark and the rift. The edges of reality, visible like rippling water, started to disappear. The stones fading into reality faded out, and the green light physically bleeding onto the ground sputtered out. With a final thunderclap, the rift closed in itself, and Volt's HUD became a gibbering mess. A magnetic proc again? Twice was the start of a pattern.

Ren flexed Volt's hand. Nothing appeared or felt out of the ordinary.

"You closed the rift." Cassandra's amazed voice interrupted her thoughts.

Ren flashed her a victory sign. Whoohoo. Yay. Go team.

With demons no longer invading reality, the soldiers had relaxed, and Cassandra sheathed her sword. The mood was, for now, favorable to the statue-like possible abomination towering over even the tallest of them. As the paladin converged on them, the mage spoke up. "It seems I was correct. The mark can close rifts."

"And it could also close the Breach itself." Cassandra almost smiled.

The mage demurred. "Possibly."

They seemed to be forgetting, or were trying very hard not to address the elephant in the room. Namely, that this mark was attached to Ren's hand. She blinked at them, a purely self-directed action, seeing as warframes lacked such things as eyes, much less eyelids. She must have unconsciously shifted the warframe, because both turned to her.

The elf addressed her, almost nonchalantly. "It seems… you hold the key to our salvation."

"Wonderful." Ren deadpanned.

"That's the spirit." The dwarf joined them, brushing snow from his coat. "I thought we'd be ass-deep in demons forever."

"Not dead?" Said Ren.

"Well, details." He shrugged with a roguish smile. "Varric Tethras: rogue, storyteller, and occasionally unwelcome tag-along." An actual roguish smile, complete with a wink and everything. Cassandra's smile disappeared in response.

Varric was, however sad it sounded, the first person to introduce themselves normally to Ren. Leliana had been part of an interrogation, Cassandra had let Leliana introduce her while she glared, and Solas… Can't give away that I was actually conscious that whole time and know your name, buddy. The elf hadn't introduced himself yet, but she was expecting good things from his previous behavior.

A bit happy that at least one person in the whole world wasn't chomping to kill them, Ren joined their hands at chest level and bowed in greeting. "Ren. Volt. Nice to meet you."

The elf huffed, amused, and Varric opened his arms in mock outrage. "You wound me, Chuckles. It's a pleasure to meet me."

"I have met worse people indeed." The elf conceded with a tiny smirk, and turned to Ren. "If there are to be introductions, my name is Solas."

Varric leaned in. "He's the one who's trying to convince people you aren't a demon."

Ren bowed to Solas too, in gratitude as much as a greeting. "Well met. I appreciate your efforts." As useless as they've been. This old timey speech is influencing me. She clapped their hands, making half the people around jump like scared rabbits. "Okay, rift closed, time to take care of the big one?"

Cassandra traded a look with Solas. He nodded. "Yes. We must get to the forward camp. Leliana is waiting for news there."

"Let's go then. Never a good idea to keep her waiting." Said Varric.

It was like stepping on a landmine. Ren tilted her head as she observed Cassandra step up to him, towering over the dwarf in intimidation. "Absolutely not!" She gestured with an open hand. "Your help is–"

"Needed. Have you been to the valley lately, seeker? Your men are barely holding on. You need all the help you can get." And he was offering.

"... Your help is appreciated." The tall woman huffed, like she was making a great concession. Ren wanted to trade a look with Solas, like. Are you seeing these two? Old married couple, enemies to lover in two hundred k, or, well, I'd say Legolas and Gimli but you're the elf here. Tho, Cassandra's prettier.

The party, now a proper adventurer party! Warrior, mage, rogue and… robot?, departed. The regular path blocked by snow and debris, they descended, returning to the frozen river Cassandra and Ren had come from. The path following the river's bank was narrow and barely there, the mountains tight over their heads. Cassandra led, followed by Varric, Ren and finally Solas. The cover also kept them safe. The river widened into a lake, as frozen as the rest of it, sporting what would be a few rustic fishing cabins if not for the demons. And the fact that they were on fire.

Varric crowed at Cassandra and the three of them, obviously used to combat, fell into an easy-looking coordination. Ren took one moment to brace herself, twirling the bo, before finding the biggest demon and sliding down to meet it. Hi. Bye. She probed it with a couple of strikes but despite being tougher than the ones she'd faced before, sporting even spiky armor, it could do very little to Volt. She was strong enough to keep it staggered, and the one hit it got in didn't quite manage to down her shields.

Alone the demons were not so tough, even to an unmodded and unmastered warframe. It was in groups that they became dangerous. Jot it down: under duress, I will admit that having religious nuts at my back isn't… maybe… the end of the world. The group dispatched the demons gathered, wiped their brows, and continued on.

Featuring: stairs. I'm so glad I don't tire. The path picked off on the other side of the lake, and climbed sinuously behind the houses. Pine trees, or their planetary equivalent of needle-leaved evergreens, formed an almost untouched forest around them. It reminded Ren of the most remote walks she had done through her home's trails. She wondered how the bark would feel to a warframe. She clearly had tactile sensation, but would it be the same? It couldn't, her logical mind dictated before her emotional heart discarded the topic. She shouldn't lose focus now.

"So." Varric, certainly the most social out of them all, breached the silence as they jogged on the snowy incline. "Not trying to be rude, but what exactly are you? Because I've never seen anybody like you."

Unseen, Ren smiled at his easy tone and irreverent way. "A Tenno."

He nodded. "Fascinating…"

"I'll explain later." Well, parts of it. It wasn't like Ren herself knew how she'd become… them.

"I must confess," Solas gave his two cents, "I am curious as well." You and a bunch of others, magic man.

"You know what I'm curious about?" The dwarf again. "Do you know how that." He meant the fuck-huge hole in the sky. "Happened?"

"No." Ren snorted. "I was minding my own business. Then there were demons. Then I got dragged into this hellhole!"

"Sounds like it was a shit day for everybody." Varric tsked. Besides him, Solas nodded, giving the warframe a curious look.

They were reaching the top of the last flight of stairs cut into the mountainside, like any proper devoted pilgrim path, when Ren's hand twitched and sparked. The mark flared and the warframe registered something attempting to send signals through the neurons in the area. At the same time, Solas and Cassandra both snapped to attention.

"Another rift!" The warrior unsheathed her sword and prepared her shield.

They crossed the last steps at a run, just in time to see the space in front of a fortified gate crunch in itself with jagged green-edged teeth and rip apart, dropping half a dozen wraiths and demons on top of the soldiers guarding it.

"We must seal it! Quickly!" Solas reached for Volt before they bounded into the fray. "Use the mark on the rift! It might affect the demons!"

Ren nodded. This, she was uniquely equipped to do. Go and slide, bullet jump and double, I love being a warframe! The soldiers watched, surely amazed and flabbergasted, as gravity decided to quietly submit and let Volt walk all over it. The war machine landed in a slide, having crossed something like fifty meters in two seconds, and righted itself jump behind the rift. Now, hmm, like this? Just, gotta not trigger Shock… not that I have enough energy for that. Ren thrust her hand forward.

An eldritch arc sprung from the mark on their palm and hit the rift, striking like a pebble into a pond. The rip in space-time was still there, but it rippled and the demons seemed to feel it. The slightest waiver was enough for the soldiers and Ren's adventuring party, who brutally capitalized on it. They started moping up the demons and Ren, very aware of their supposed role in this venture, focused on closing the portal to the Fade.

I've the macguffin power. I'm in the usual protagonist position. Except for, well. A pair of soldiers were pointing their spears at them, wondering if they should also stab her, and in the arrow slits above, the archers also had them in their sights. That.

"Open the gate!" Cassandra, ordered the soldiers. "We've arrived at the forward camp. Leliana should be waiting for us."

A place where I'm surrounded by people who want to burn me at the stake. Ren didn't say. Joy.

I've always wanted to return to this and finally, finally I managed. i don't know what exactly was blocking me but it's gone. I'll probably get another part of this before anything else (i know i know, both runless and sakuragachamon need my attention. ... and others).
i want to finish the prologue already, come on!!
also, no images. i've had no time or inspiration for them unfortunately

minuseven · Sep 12, 2023

Synaptic Architecture//Demon Somatic 1.4

The forward camp had clearly been established on one side of a bridge. Unfortunately, there was an active demonic invasion, so its perimeter had shrunk until said camp was limited to the two gatehouses on each side of the bridge. On the one hand, it was a defensible stone structure; on the other, if a demon meteor happened to land on it like Ren had seen before…

A squad of mean-faced soldiers greeted Ren as the gates opened for their party. Some even had their weapons unsheathed, although none of them were actually pointing towards them. She imagined it was because none of them wanted to be on the very bad side of Seeker Cassandra. The mood was roughly the same as in the town, but some people were looking at Volt with something like curiosity. Or maybe even hope. They spotted Leliana's hooded head ahead, and were a bit impressed. She must have laid the groundwork for this change of opinion. Just a bit though: religious types were easily manipulated by people they considered authorities.

"You brought that thing here!?!"

But of course. We can't have nice things.

A man in one of those priestly frocks, red over white robes, was shouting. And gesticulating. Pointing at Volt and clearly wanting their 'demonic' head chopped off. Leliana, next to him, was keeping a praise-worthy diplomatic face, and surreptitiously gesturing her people to not. Engage. Cassandra herself was now wearing a scowl comparable to the one she'd greeted Ren with. Her steps hurried, shoulders squaring so much a person could use her to teach geometry, she moved like the medieval tank she was.

The non-humans of the party had slowed down, and Ren followed their lead. "Should we…?"

"Let's leave the Seeker to handle that." Varric turned smoothly to go sit on a bunch of stacked planks.

"Discretion is the better part of valor." Solas agreed, taking the opportunity himself to lean against his staff and rest.

Ren didn't begrudge them for it. For one, she didn't need rest. I'm really impressed actually, they're still squishy mortals, who were fighting demons and then did a forced march up a mountain side. So many stairs. Even the wizard kept up. Not everybody could literally be built for this sort of thing.

Across the bridge, Cassandra was somewhere between an epic dressing down, or a shouting match with an equally stubborn person. Leliana had gotten involved and was playing the conciliatory party. That was one smart woman.

Now that Ren had a moment to stop… Well, what should I do? Nothing that'll send people jumping off the bridge either. Right, let's see if I can do that. Logically, she was now in a safe zone, like Cetus maybe. Or perhaps just before a survival mission. In any case, there was something that a warframe should be capable of doing that she hadn't tried yet. She opened her left hand palm up. Do I–

NAVIGATION
EQUIPMENT
MARKET
OPTIONS

Oh, here it is. Shit, this is not the normal menu.

There were things missing, like Operator, Communications, Quests, Profile, and especially the Exit option. It told her a lot about her situation. She was definitely stuck, at least for now.

After a brief check: nobody was seeing the holographic menu, everybody thought she was looking at the air, good. She quickly went through the Navigation and the Options. One was a map of the area she'd traversed before. No fast travel, but she knew that was asking too much. The options were all related to her HUD. The rest seemed too sensitive, but worth going back to later. Perhaps she could figure out a friendly fire opt-out in this very real world.

The fact that the Market was accessible was hopeful. Not sure by how much, seeing as she didn't have any credits or platinum. But at least the option to expand her arsenal was there. Now, Equipment was the goldmine. Arsenal, Abilities, Mods, Inventory, even the Foundry!

It'd be helpful if I had, you know, anything. A mod. Any mod. But Volt didn't. In fact, as far as the arsenal was concerned, they didn't even have their Braton! The only thing Ren could do was… well, Fashionframe. Hold that thought.

"Hey." She called out to her friendliest companions. "I'm going to do a thing."

Varric looked at Solas, who shrugged minutely. "A thing?" He said, wary. "What kind of thing? Nothing explosive, right?"

"Purely cosmetic." Ren assured him with a-okay sign. Then she started cycling through colors. Since it's winter, let's go for something that doesn't stand out in stark white. I wish I had all the regular colors unlocked, but this palette is good enough for something simple.

Murmurs erupted as the warframe was washed over by waves of invisible light, its colors changing. Before its shell was a light gray with a blue-green undertone, its undersides in two tones of brown. Now the gray was replaced by a tone just a shade off white and the browns by rock gray. Accents around the curves of its shape, previously blending in with the browns, were revealed in a sky-blue tonality. Lastly, the color of the various sensors and lights speckled in strategic points changed from orange to blue. Ren didn't have to look to also know that the sparks that occasionally skittered across Volt had turned white like any ability they cast from this moment on.

"What's going on here? What have you done?" Cassandra walked in, closely followed by Leliana and, surprisingly, the priest from before half hiding behind the nun.

"I changed colors." Ren replied in that tone of voice that showed exactly how stupid she thought the question was. Then, she applied the colors she'd just chosen to the Mk1-Bo. She twirled the staff. Not bad.

The warrior didn't respond in speech. Rather, she was incapable of that much. Instead, several incredulous and furious grunts escaped her.

Ahah, did I break her language processor? Ren was amused, but she also knew she would have to give at least a bit of an explanation to keep their relation to these people non-hostile. "You humans, and elves and dwarves," she nodded to Solas and Varric, "change your appearance too, don't you?"

"That's a bit different. We don't change colors like an octopus." The dwarf pointed out.

"Forgive my presumption, but is changing colors the way that a Tenno changes clothes?" Asked Solas.

"No. I'm not wearing anything right now." Volt crossed their arms, ignoring the reactions to that declaration. "I don't even have a Syandana." Practically naked in Tenno terms. "No," they answered Solas, "this is probably closer to hair dying. I really can't find a non-transhumanist equivalent. Maybe something like tattooing, but that you can change at will?" Or would sigils be the equivalent for that?

"This discussion has gone far enough!" Said Cassandra, ears and nose visibly flushed. Not from the cold. "We need to stop the Breach, not… urgh! Lose time with meaningless details!"

Leliana smoothly interceded. "The Temple of Sacred Ashes and the Breach are directly ahead. However, the concentration of demons is at its worst in our path. Commander Cullen and the majority of our troops are doing their best to hold the line there. Alternatively, there is a mountain path to the East, longer but likely safer." She laid out the situation. "Ren Volt, you know your capabilities the best. How would you proceed? A full frontal charge with the soldiers, or a path while the demons are distracted by the soldiers?" Cassandra nodded to me as well.

Errr… I'm not actually a soldier from the Old War! I'm just a gamer! Ren inwardly panicked for a moment, disconnecting herself from Volt as much as she could. Right. So, as a Tenno, my instinct is to be sneaky. I don't even have my primary gun to sweep enemies. Plus, working with the soldiers? Do I trust them not to accidentally hit me in the melee? I mean, what are the disadvantages of the mountain path? There had to be downsides, or the choice wouldn't even have been presented to them. Well, it's longer and we're on a time limit… and, maybe, less support because the soldiers will be distracting the enemy? Ahh, I can't think of anything on the spot. Gut feeling it is.

"I'm better equipped for a stealth mission." Said Volt. "I'd take the mountain path."

"So be it." Cassandra nodded. "Bring everyone left in the valley, Leliana. Every single one of them. Varric, Solas, we will escort Ren through the mountain. Ready yourselves."

"Time to go. You ready?" Varric asked the warframe.

Ren hummed. With their Arsenal empty, they were already as good as they could be. "There's one thing actually. Do you have money?" Varric nodded. "Cool, mind lending me a couple of coins? I'll try to pay you back."

"Sure, I have a few silvers on me? What do you need them for? Nobody's exactly open for business right now."

Ren pointed to a spot about five meters away. "I need you to throw one to the ground over there, and to give me the other one."

Varric shared a look with Solas, who blinked, nonplussed. "Right, why not?" He tossed a silver coin to where the weird not-demon had pointed, then dropped another in their waiting palm.

Volt looked at the singular coin in their hand. I hope this works. Just… think and it'll work, Ren. They closed their fingers around it and when they opened them again, the coin was gone. Then, they walked over to the coin on the ground. Before Varric and Solas' eyes, as well as several soldiers watching the proceedings, the coin simply disappeared when the Tenno got close. It stopped where the coin had been, staring at the ground, then at their marked hand.

Inwardly, Ren was crowing victory. It works! I can LOOT! Loot all the things!! She quickly went through her menu. It's not in the inventory, and my credits are still zero? Did it… did it count as real world money? A world of possibilities opened before her.

Oh. Oh yes. Now we're talking.

They just needed to take care of the Breach, then they would be free to use this.

somehow this was finished and ended up resting on my drive instead of being posted. oh, right, because i'm job searching rn.
Anyway, this introduces how Ren will actually be getting possibly OP. these are the gamer elements people should be worrying about. Also, yes, Ren's been running around in a baseline warframe, for shame.

minuseven · Jan 17, 2024

omg these last months were so... urghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. also, the last what... 3 paragraphs of this chapter have been slowly strangling me for several weeks. but i did it. i prevailed. it's bad writing, but its done. just one or two more to finish up section 1.

Synaptic Architecture//Demon Somatic 1.5

Whereas Ren and her guards had followed the river up to the forward camp, low in the valley, now they went high. Heading East, the trail disappeared beneath the snow. Varric was buried nearly knee high in it, but he persevered. They climbed the slope, the majestic view spreading out before them, tall, snow-covered peaks crowning the horizon like shark's teeth.

These, Varric introduced, were the Frostback Mountains. As inhospitable as they looked, there were some tribes of humans? That hadn't been clear. Anyway, the Avvar lived on them. Despite that, they were mostly considered Ferelden territory. Ferelden was the country they were in. To the West of the mountain range lay Orlais, which was, some would say, fancier. Well, it's good to put some context to the names I've been hearing. Also, they were in the planet's southern hemisphere, on account of things getting hotter the norther a person went. Just something to know.

The march wasn't conducive to conversation. Trudging through snow and the rarefied air, the mere mortals among them had to conserve their breath if they wanted to make good time without being exhausted. There were probably going to be demons in the way. They'd lost contact with a scouting party earlier. Ren wondered how people lost contact when they didn't even have radios. Feeling the cold merely as another facet of the air, unable to feel the discomfort of it, and quite grateful for it, Volt walked leisurely. If they went any faster, they'd lose the rest of the party.

Good to know I can ditch the religious fanatics if I want to.

She admired the landscape. She doubted she'd ever been so high up. The closest she'd come to when she'd, well, not been a warframe, had been those snow days at the tallest peak around. A miserable title for a place that didn't have permafrost, and barely more than fifty meters of its height ever did get snow. There were a lot of little hills and mountains back home, and she'd seen some foreign ones on trips. The Frostbacks put most of them to shame. They were gorgeous to boot. The mood lighting ruins the image a bit, but there are things you don't complain about during demonic invasions.

The rest of the time, she kept trying to fiddle with her warframe. The system wasn't customizable in the game, but now that she was actually in a warframe. To be or to inhabit, that is the question. She could bring up the warframe's own settings. Of a kind. It was a lot of trial and error, going through the HUD with focus and attempting to mentally bring up orokin-written menus. She couldn't change her pick-up radius, for example. That made sense, as there already existed mods for that sort of thing. But she could determine what she wanted to pick up. Ren might have ended up with a cubic meter of snow in their inventory by accident. Instead, she prodded the system until she was automatically picking up the local currencies so long as they were resting below a certain height.

Let's not call attention to myself by making people's wallets fly. At least IFF is finally functional.

Another thing she managed to do was to add Cassandra, Varric and Solas to her nominal party. As regular, if magical people, all Volt could do was add neat little markers on their minimap. People on the origin system were all augmented of some sort, that was Ren's feeling. So, being able to gauge their health and shield levels was automatic. Not as simple in low tech fantasy land. This should be enough to stop friendly fire, at least from abilities. Which… I can't use for lack of energy. Likewise, there were no comms and she wasn't hopeful about being able to revive any of them should they go down. The green healing fog used by Tenno had to have some technological base. Nanites, at a guess.

This messing around distracted Ren, but not to a dangerous level. The moment she saw the path, an invisible dirt trail beneath the snow, turn into wooden slats, she turned her full being towards reality. The next step Volt took had their entire focus behind it.

A building in rough stone was built into the mountainside, long ladders leading up along with hefty pulley systems. The ladders went really high. In fact, Ren estimated that each of the two ladders was about two whole storeys tall.

The others were taking a short break, Cassandra informing them of what came ahead.

Ren looked at the ladders. Looked at the mere mortals. Looked at the height again.

Yeah, I'm not betting on the hum– humanoids. "Hey, I can make us get up there in a jiffy." She pointed up.

"How?" Asked Cassandra.

"By picking you up and jumping."

"No."

"Why not?" Ren tilted their head and crossed their arms. "I'm strong, I'm not going to drop you."

"Well… Because…"

Varric snorted. "That's not exactly dignified."

Volt tilted their head the other way and Solas raised an eyebrow. "What is the worth of dignity in the face of disaster? How would you carry us?"

Ren turned over bullet jumping in her mind for a moment. Right, it happened from a crouching position, so as funny as it would be, she couldn't bridal carry them. Maybe with some practice, but not currently. A lot of her transversal abilities were still dependant on the warframe's control. The more she mastered Volt, the more liberty she would have. "Either piggy-back or over my shoulder like a potato sack."

Solas ended up being her first test-subject, regally grabbing onto Volt's shoulders before the warframe rocketed upwards, grabbed onto the first ledge, climbed, and repeated the process. A height of over fifteen meters done in an instant. Volt carefully deposited Solas down, the elf having wisely clung to the warframe like his life depended on it. Then, they jaunty saluted him and stepped back into the drop. Eheheh warframes don't take fall damage! They landed with a puff of snow and a deep thud that belied only a bit of the weight the cyborg war platform should be transmitting.

Cassandra gave up and stepped up, leaving Varric the last to be carried, over Volt's shoulder due to having unfortunately short arms.

Atop the last landing, the incline was soft and there were wooden steps peeking out of the snow. The path curved back to the West, giving the four of them a magnificent view over the breach and what had once been a glorious temple. From their vantage point, they could see the skeletal ruins of the holy building, jutting like blackened ribs amidst the green-tinged haze that covered the valley's depths. Perfect as Volt's vision might be, there was something to be said about the ability to zoom. Did medieval people have binoculars? She thought so, but wasn't sure. She couldn't make out more, and in that moment wished dearly for a sniper.

After one last bend, there laid the entrance to the path they were going to take. It burrowed through the mountain, connecting several old and unused mining tunnels, surfacing every now and then until they reached the eastern border of the temple. The entrance itself was carved like a church's atrium, several pillars meeting into a classical rounded arch. Whatever illumination was supposed to guide travelers through the tunnels was absent in the chaos, leaving only darkness after a few steps in.

But Volt, stopping at the sill, took in the ambush laying in the low-light conditions. One demon of that variety that vaguely imitated a hunchbacked human ahead, and the low but telling green glow of at least a couple of wraiths waiting in the corners. Right. "Ambush, I'm dealing with it." They said over their shoulder, and jumped in.

The moment they crossed into the darkness, the warframe activated its torch. I'd forgotten we had that. I need to be able to turn it off for stealth missions… hey come here! Ren swept the bigger demon's feet with her bo, only to find out it was a lot less solid there than expected. It still unbalanced it, giving her the perfect opportunity to smash its head with a two-handed strike. The two wraiths were easy prey for the rest of her squad.

A quarter of said squad then fell on her like the wrath of an angry mother superior. "What were you thinking! You can't just charge ahead like, like you want to get killed!" If Cassandra hadn't been holding a sword and shield, she was sure she would be grabbing Volt by their nonexistent lapels. Her hands were raised halfway there, face red and trembling, inches away from Volt's collarbone.

I- I suppose I did Leroy Jenkins myself so… Ren caught herself cringing and stopped. No.

No.

The familiar shame at being chastised evaporated from her veins, sublimated. Realization rang in her non-existent ears, increasing in pitch until it blocked out all other emotions. I don't owe you anything. They stepped away from their body, distancing their self from the woman and the other two. You, who wanted me dead without cause or trial. You… zealots of an unknown faith. You people who don't see me as human. You think a little banter is going to make me forget that?

Ren took a deep breath that didn't move Volt's chest. When they replied, their tone was as bland and glacial as a computer. "I was thinking that none of these things can hurt me." They tilted their head. "Unlike you." But that's what I get for trying to be helpful.

The indignation was a sting that would readily morph into resentment and Ren was letting it. Lost as she was in this hostile world, she probably should. She needed to be decisive, steadfast and above all, not a doormat. The hours spent traveling with these strangers and fighting through hordes ever more alien and demonic had created enough distance from that cell under the church that for a moment she'd almost forgotten the paladin's very first words to her.

Tell me what you are and what you were doing at the conclave, and I might not kill you right here.

Very calmly, Volt raised its chin, straightened its spinal core, optics peering down at the woman, and turned on its heel. Their sensors had detected a wooden door in the gloom. It was worth exploring. Medieval ruins, no matter how well preserved, looked very different from when the structures were still being used. Wood rotted, fabric and furs disappeared, the wind picked up the smaller objects and took them away.

Looks something like a guardhouse, or maybe an office? They deliberately and definitely weren't paying attention to the hushed voices behind them. The money they were picking up was more important. Should they also put some of this in their inventory?

The sound of metal on stone announced the Seeker approaching. "I apologize." She was blunt. "I understand that I was… too harsh but…" There she stopped herself, seeming to rethink her words. "Ren, you are the key, our only chance to close the rift. The lives of everybody in Haven… the safety of everybody in Thedas perhaps, depend on you. There cannot be room for recklessness."

And your concern would sound so much more genuine if I didn't know that, if I wasn't so needed, you would already have tried to destroy me. Ren let Volt's head fall back, 'eyes' pointed at the ceiling. But it was true. Ren was these people's one and only plan to stop the sky from literally crashing down upon their heads. Is this their plan, softening me up by making me develop a few personal connections? They thought, glancing at an unknowing Cassandra, both contrite and firm. Finally, the warframe moved as if sighing. "Seeker. The only time I've ever been in actual danger was when that meteor almost hit us; and I'm not sure it would have actually killed me. Worry more about yourself." And keep your fake concern.

fuck where do i start.
hm. so i quit my masters became officially unemployed, had that initial phase of optimism about getting a job. ... swiftly crushed, along with my hope and little remaining self esteem over the following three months. THEN, after seeking even more mental health help, i got into a government sponsored programming course (i'm liking it), but then december and the dreaded christmass, aaand my grandma is finally dying after ten painful years of worsening dementia. i'm good, but it's wrecking some people, who can't use their time anymore and so everybody is suffering. i think i've only really managed to write any decent amount in january.
ALSO along the way I played waaaaayyyyyyyyy too much Warframe. good and bad. Annnnd Fontaine's story arc in Genshin Impact had me by my little lesbian brain with a deadly chokehold, so maybe expect some writng about Furina. ... And Arlecchino. I have so many Arlecchino headcanons I've already resigned myself to getting disappointed when she officially comes out. (leaks say she's aATK scaler? plz, she needs to be HP scaling with a mechanic like Star Rail's Blade to really get the connecting threads between Fatui Operative, the curse of wilderness and the Narzissenkreuz that are hinted at in her character design). ... .. you see what I mean, she doesn't live rent free in my head, i'm paying her extra to stay.

ANYWAY the characterization in the last part of the chapter probably feels clunky i know, but i've also given up on caring, if anyone has ANY good ideas... you can comment on the thread. might as well get some use out of it that's not archival...

minuseven · Mar 8, 2024

title still being workshopped. usually not what i write here (romance? in this thread?) but i don't want to lose motivation to finish this longass wishy washy oneshot so i'll put here every scene i finish before posting it on ao3.
part 1.

╳ ╳ ╳

"Oh? Come over here, you little critter you!" The god ran carelessly through the streets at night. She was like a child, twirling and chasing the cat that caught her attention. "You dare to run from me?"

Wasn't she so vulnerable, all alone?

"Stop right this instant! Oh?" After turning a corner, the cat was gone. She looked around, but couldn't find it. It escaped, leaving her all alone again.

A rustling sound. The god perked up and slowly turned on her heel. Beneath the bench to the side, she spied two glowing orbs. Like a thief, she tiptoed closer and bent down carefully. In the gloom, a round furry form was barely visible.

The god's hands shot forward. "Got you! Ah?" This was not the black and white cat from before. "Who are you?" It was a big white and black… cat? That dangled from the god's hands.

It was a very weird cat. In the light of the lamps, the big round eyes didn't shine and revealed their bright red color. Sturdy, short paws connected to a wide torso and a long, plume-like. It was entirely white, except for its paws which were black to its cat-elbows, where they faded into a very marked striped pattern. It was…

"Cute." Adorable. "Fluffy." Positively furry. "!" Furina, archon of hydro and justice, ruler over all waters, gasped. She was… holding a cat! Actually holding a cat! "Oh goodness." She'd never gotten this far. Animals didn't seem to like her for some incomprehensible reason. What should she do next? She couldn't let it go, it might run away!

But ultimately her arms couldn't deal with the quite heavy feline. With effort, she managed to hug the cat to herself. The soft fur tickled her neck as she pressed the animal closer. It was… such a heavenly sensation! She squealed and sat down with it on her lap.

"Who's a pretty boy? Who's the softest, fluffiest, bestest kitten in all of Fontaine?" She cooed, rubbing its belly. She patted its head, played with its huge paws while it sat slumped in her lap, even flipped it over so that she could scritch and scratch it all over. "You are, oh yes you are, eheh!"

All along, the creature suffered her ministrations with a half-lidded look on its snout.

But eventually, even Furina had to leave. It was late. "I wish I could take you with me." She confessed to the cat. Alas, the Palais Mermonia had strict rules on pets, considering certain… incidents. Really, it was ridiculous, it'd been centuries since!

Sad, she got up after squishing its head one last time. Perhaps she'd meet this lovely cat again one day. With all of her willpower, she walked away from that magnificent beast.

A soft brush of fur at her calves made her stop. The cat rubbed its flank on her leg once more before sitting down, looking up at her. "We can't." Furina sobbed dramatically and resumed walking faster. The cat followed, trotting at her side. She turned and it did too. She stopped, and it waited for her.

"You… you want to come with me?" She asked it, eyes shining.

The big red eyes of the cat seemed to convey its desire to be taken to a home where it would be spoiled and receive pets and lay down in a special cushion just for it.

Furina bit her lip. She couldn't… "Unless." A devious, duplicitous plan came to her. "Leave it to me, mister kitten!" She grabbed its paws. "I'll take you to your new home, I promise."

It wasn't like anybody had to know what, or who, went inside their archon's bedroom.

╳ ╳ ╳

IDK seriously. You know that old, i think it's from anime trope, where a girl takes a cat or other animal home and the next morning it's a naked guy? Yeah, that but Arlecchino is 1) a terrifying shapeshifter of the depths, 2) not turning back into a human bc that would defeat the purpose of spying in animal form, and 3) kinda not there bc i wanted it to be the least problematic possible.
On an important note.... read the webcomic "Tiger, Tiger" it gave me so much inspiration for Arlecchino and it is *chef's kiss* horrors of the depths, bisexuals and queer horrors of the depths wrapped in a packed of awesome art. SEA SPONGES!!!

minuseven · Jun 23, 2023

___Introduction

"—? What do you say?"

She blinks. Her fringe brushes her forehead (she doesn't have a fringe?) and she looks up. Faces she doesn't know stare back at her.

"W-well–" She inhales at the wrong moment and (mercifully) chokes on air. Around her, they fuss to get her a glass of water. Red-faced, she struggles to get her breathing back under control. (and her wits)

She doesn't know what's going on, surrounded by people she doesn't know, sitting at a table she's never seen, hair falling long over her forehead and back like it's never been.

"I–" Her voice is still raspy from coughing. She covers her mouth with the handkerchief provided and decides to just breathe. Lips covered, she gives the rest of the table what she hopes is an apologetic smile. Hopefully, they'll leave her alone to recuperate (help!).

"Oh dear, this dinner has been nothing but bad luck." The brown-haired woman in front of her comments. She is beautiful, an european face with brilliant green eyes, pearls draped over bare collarbones, ears adorned with heavy jeweled earrings and white skin contrasting with a layered magenta dress. "First Aria, and now Mielle…"

She knows those names. She knows those names together. (wait)

Her eyes rove over the people sitting at the table. She knows how these faces would look when drawn. (impossible)

She knows exactly where she is. (this is a joke, right?)

Yes, this is surely a joke. She brings a hand, trembling, to her hair. Blonde strands that, pulled lightly, prick at her scalp. Her hand fists and the sharp pain is the only thing that's real in the moment.

A girl gets up, chair scrapping the floor. "Apologies, I–" her throat is inexplicably tight "I'm not feeling well."

The girl leaves, a maid at her elbow. The girl's eyes take in everything around her but she doesn't see anything.

Breathing. Breathing is important. She can think about breathing, about her lungs (not the way they seem weak) and the airflow (not how these regressive clothes tighten over her ribs) and the oxygenation of her red blood cells (not how wrong her body feels).

A girl lays down in bed and passes, as one might colloquially say, the fuck out.

===

She wakes up. Many times she has wanted to fall asleep and not wake up, but she's never been that lucky.

Many times she has dreamed of leaving her stressful life behind and going to another world.

This time, apparently…

She is that lucky. (?)

Her mouth opens and, in the silent and dark room, she hisses as low as she can. The murmured expletives are all she can do as her mind rapidly remembers her situation and the conclusions she had taken.

The Villainess Reverses the Hourglass was a webcomic she had read before (well, Before). The villainess returns to the past and relives her life, but better. It is a classic premise, with the addition that the original timeline saintess character had been the real villainess all along, so the revenge plot had the new heroine take on the actual villainess. She overcame those who manipulated her and, along the way, the disgraced prince fell in love with her, she elevated the commoners, became rich and educated and powerful. Ultimately, she revealed and defeated the conspiracy against the throne and the real villainess of the entire story.

There was even a sequel, epilogue comic about her time-traveling children.

But at no point in that entire plot had the villainess become an actual heroine.

It was a story that engaged the reader because the protagonist was still, bluntly put, a manipulative bitch. A better person, yes, but hardly a good person. She was a character deserving of awe but many flaws, just shy enough of making her unlikable. She was selfish, but not too much. She had empathy, but not for everyone. Cruel, but only for those who deserved her ire.

Almost only.

There was one person that the villainess wanted more than dead. She wanted her suffering. She wanted her ruined.

That person was the original timeline saintess. A girl that, in the new timeline, had been shown as petty, pathetic and out of her depth, manipulated by more ambitious evils.

Aria had not rested until Mielle was dead. Aria took immense pleasure in Mielle's suffering. Aria hated and blamed Mielle for all of her past suffering.

She wasn't wrong.

It was understandable.

(but I'm Mielle right now)

She is so fucked.

===

Bare feet on the ground, she navigates the dark room with her heart in her throat. There has to be a bathroom attached to this giant room (why does she think that?). She searched the bed for her cellphone but cellphones don't exist. If she wants a torch she has to light a candle.

She moves very slowly, very quietly. In the darkness of the room, she can only barely see the bottom of the curtains over the windows. She heads in that direction, hands spread in front of her, moving at a snail's pace to not bump into anything.

(last thing I need is to make something fall down and crash!)

The fabric is heavy in her hands as she pushes it aside. The window opens to a garden, maybe the countryside. The moon is a pale light in the sky, barely illuminating the greenery. Truly, in the time before electricity, darkness reigned over humans.

Electricity, medicine, running water… no, Louis XIV had toilets and pipes, and this looks like a slightly more modern world. The printing press definitely exists. The faint illumination strikes all the frivolous richness of Mielle's room. If anything, she could certainly have been born into worse conditions. At least she has access to medicine and a roof over her head.

What she looks for is the bathroom. To and fro, as she remembers that there are no light switches, and she will have to light a candle. But first, finding the matches to light the candle.

Eventually, after many false alarms, she manages to gently close the door behind her and, in the total darkness of a closed room, she manages to ignite a match. The light is bright and painful against her eyes. Hoping not to start a fire, she raises the candlestick above her head and steps in front of the washbasin.

There is a mirror here.

(not)

She stares. A deep feeling of unease rises in her gut.

A girl stares back at her. Her teeth grit together. A small turned up nose so unlike hers. A soft chin, round jaw. Eyes dark green like she's wearing contacts. A wig of blonde hair, soft and fine and straight and not hers.

Where are the red marks around her nose, her cleft chin, her dark eyebrows, the stripes of her eyes, the damnable curl of her hair… Where is her father's nose? Where are her mother's cheeks? Does she not share eyes with her brother?

A buzzing cloud overtakes her hearing.

She sets down the candlestick on the ground and divests herself of the frilly nightgown that clings to the girl. It looks like a girl, young and prepubescent and so weak. Nordic pale skin, crowned in fine blond hairs and missing all the freckles of the sun. A curtain of hair falls down to its butt, like all the dolls and pretty things she liked but never wished to be.

"Eh." The need for silence is forgotten. "Now I now what it feels like."

(IHATEIT)

It's fine tho. It's alright. This child is still young so it doesn't show a lot of the things she hates. She wasn't very curvy either in the illustrations, was she? And the thin arms, well, some exercise will fix that right up. Swimming, pushups… She always wanted her hair to be straight and easy to tame when she was this age. This is a healthy body without hearing loss and old pains.

There are positives. Not many. Maybe enough to survive, for now.

Child hands grip the basin's porcelain edge. Eyes closed, the weight of the hair is the only thing about this body that she can feel is wrong. She was thrown into one of the worst situations by Gods know which will and…

…and she must refuse. She cannot give up. She has to take that part of her that always imagines the worse and flip it upside down. It should be easy. Imagination is a two-edged sword. She can die, be executed, tortured, persecuted, starved, drowned, burned— she can pick up a sword, she can run, she can break a wine bottle in Aria's face, she has become another person, she is free from late-stage capitalism, she can look for the magic pond, she can do so much. She can.

She has no real attachment to this collection of people. No strings tying her to this land. Everything can be reduced to a question of practicality. She cannot just leave because she is a child. There is money here to exploit, basically handed to her free of charge. Food, water, medical access, material wealth and potentially information. The Roscente family will give her that.

Emotionally, she might just hate them wholeheartedly.

The nausea makes her spit in the porcelain basin, a rancid taste in her mouth, but it's receding. Something hotter and more volatile takes its place and she fans it higher. She is going to spite the orchestrators of her fate. She's going to leave this narrative behind.

She stares into Mielle's hateful eyes, a smirk playing on their lips. "So fuck me running."

I don't know how many people know The Villainess Reverses the Hourglass, it's a korean? villainess returns to the past novel/webcomic. I fell in love with the outfits. Also, both are finished and it's a good read. By the end of it, I felt a little bad for the Roscente family (a little, particularly for Cain). But like... Aria is ruthless. This is a little fun experiment in Gamer systems without magic and... hm, the agender trans agenda? (like, an SI of me would not be okay with Mielle's body)
Also, going to avoid using any gamer screens or depict the least numbers possible.

minuseven · Jun 30, 2023

___Discoveries

Making plans is the easiest thing in the world. They only require some thought and a modicum of imagination. The candle wax dripping down, she sits on the floor and uses her mind.

She wants to survive and, more than that, live a good life. She has no desire to have revenge or hurt Aria in anyway, and if she did, she would discard that out of practicality. It's possible, maybe even likely, to survive Aria if she doesn't act like Mielle. The villainess softens and while Aria might think Mielle would suffer as a maid… she's perfectly comfortable taking orders and cleaning. She's even willing to live her life in prison if that's what it takes.

Living comfortably is her maximal goal, no mistakes. She even has opportunities she didn't have before. Like Aria, she's older than she appears, more experienced. She knows what mistakes not to commit or paths that don't suit her. Academia? No, carpentry is good!

She's not going to fool herself into thinking her procrastination habits have mysteriously disappeared, but hindsight is not to be underestimated. Again.

Then there's her situation. It's tricky. A time-reversing bitch with a death grudge against her, an arranged marriage of all things and just the very present and awful misogyny from everybody. Aria had been unusual for wanting to study as a woman, she recalls. She managed to survive as non-binary in the modern world but here… well, she better start thinking about what ways the transmen of the past used.

"Yes, that's a basic swot analysis alright…" A few strengths, a few weaknesses, a few opportunities and so many threats it's overwhelming.

The prospects are bleak. This body is tired and needs sleep, even as the anxiety and anger rise and fall like waves inside her gut.

One last thing, before snuffing out the candle in the dark. She needs a name for herself. They really, really do, before she goes mad. She can't think of herself in singular plural. She can't be Mielle in any way, not even the past.

Mielle, honey in french. Then maybe… She turns her linguistic knowledge over. She wants to avoid the french, and to make it sharp, but still a name that she can identify with for a long time. Something meaningful.

(yes, let's have thorns for once) Silvas, brambles in portuguese. A common plant, found everywhere, hardy and harder to get rid of. She likes it. It's a surname too, so she can use it later, when she chooses another name.

Smiling with happiness for the first time of the night, Silva wets her fingers and snuffs out the candle.

A light appears in return.

===

Silva sleeps uncannily well that night. She wakes up with th the sun, in an incredibly soft and luxurious bed. She has slept one hour.

The rest of her night had been spent exploring and understanding the System.

God does exist, and they are not their enemy. A good thought, because they distinctly remember that in the epilogue, Aria spoke to God or something about her pregnancy and fate. (and God listened maybe)

If there is one blessing that Silva can understand and exploit, it's the gamer system. She's not even mad that she doesn't have magic. It makes sense. A gamer system usually works within and exploits the reality it exists in. The original webcomic took place in a universe where magic was very present. Silva currently lives in a world where magic is a nebulous, soft thing that belongs in the realm of the divine.

Not having an mp gauge does not mean the system is useless. She explored the totality of her options during the night, and she's quite confident that she can use it to survive. She has an inventory and just that is almost enough. The map, the codex? Cherries on top.

A maid opens the curtains while another girl starts preparing what must be a bath. She observes from beneath half-lidded eyes. One of the first things she's going to have to do is to get a handle on the servants, both of what they do and what their loyalties are. That's something she learned from the original story.

An older woman approaches her with a slight smile. "Are you feeling better Miss?" (not really)

She knows who this must be. The servant that raised Mielle, a former noble herself, and the woman responsible for the horrendous personality of the true-villainess. Her name, however, escapes her. "Yes, I am. A good night's sleep was just what I needed."

The day after Aria's turnback is a bit too much of a coincidence. Aria needs to not suspect 'Mielle' had any knowledge of the future. So for now, Silva limits herself to observing.

She lets herself be pampered by these strangers. Aside from a quick opinion on which clothes to wear, or which perfume to use, very few things require Silva's input. She draws on years of classical dance and the most rigid lessons in manners from her distant youth, and moves gracefully and with care. It's exhausting to think she's going to have to do this the entire day from now on.

It's repulsive to contemplate the complete loss of privacy she has to endure. There are three people in the room. There are more servants outside. A maid brushes her hair, another makes her bed, and both helped her get dressed. Their touch, both familiar and impartial, makes her gorge rise up in her throat. She already feels tense. She has to keep her chin high and her heels pressed against the ground.

She cannot bounce her leg, she cannot tense her jaw.

She meets dark green eyes in the mirror. Impractically long hair requires long minutes to brush and prepare. She cannot afford to have a deadpan look on her face. (it's my default FACE) Silva takes all of her feelings and hides them beneath an empty smile.

A pretty girl watches her back. The hint of a smile makes her almost a Mona Lisa, inscrutable.

For now, it will have to be enough.

===

The days of noble ladies are fairly leisurely. Mielle has lessons, as young noble ladies do, in manners, literature and mathematics. All formatted for a thirteen year old, which made Silva capable enough even when the source material was so alien. History is a different topic, and Silva would have given herself away in thirty seconds if it wasn't for the codex.

The lessons are also all given by tutors, older noble ladies, which allows some latitude. She can simper that she had a bad night, or that she isn't feeling too well, when she trips up.

She trips up enough, she can tell by Emma's face. That's the name of Mielle's nanny, and Silva's greatest obstacle. She's the hardest to trick, but even she will get used to Silva's much quieter mode of living.

She can't do much about the clothing and the furniture that exude extravagant and richness. She has to use what Mielle already has, and agree with magnanimity when the servants say something is too old or not good enough. What a joke. She used jeans until they had holes in inconvenient places, and didn't care if her shirts were scuffed. Now, a thread out of place or an inch too short is reason enough to stop wearing something.

She has yet to gather the guts to ask for things to be repaired instead. She takes her cues from Emma, much as it galls her. So long as the topic is not Aria or her the Countess, Emma can be relied upon to instruct her.

To be fair, it's only been two nights.

And Silva doesn't require sleep.

A lie. Silva's body functions at its peak so long as she spends one hour asleep every twenty–four. She is a player character, as is written over her head.

She has a health gauge, for now untouched. As she is, it possesses the same regeneration speed of a normal human. Days, weeks. It is merely a handy way of visualizing her state.

In as many ways as she does, she also does not work as flesh and blood humans. Aside from sleep, she does not feel hunger or thirst, and likewise does not require a fraction of a real body's consumption. The manual implied that she would start having penalties if she stopped taking care of her body, but she has not tested it. Sleep, food and drink do appear to re-apply whatever regenerating buffs she started with.

The greatest advantage of the system is that she does not decay. Nothing she gains is ever lost. No skill can degrade from lack of practice, or any muscle atrophy. She can only improve, even if her learning speed does not appear to be much better than a regular human's.

Knowledge seems to be trickier, memory tied directly to her mind, and only an increase in intelligence would help.

A shame that levels don't exist.

No, she can only strengthen herself by practicing. There are no free points for her.

===

Her back against the window, she reads. The light of the moon during these late summer nights was being generous, unhindered by clouds. She's not paying a lot of attention to what she reads. It's literature, which she's unlikely to be quizzed on. Speed is her focus here.

The codex records every text that she reads, from simple notes to books, in their full or partial forms. From that moment on, she has an encyclopedia in her head that she can navigate at the speed of thought. She still needs to know what to look for and in which texts, but it's a decisive advantage for somebody entirely out of their usual context.

When she finishes the chapter, she sets down the book. The curtains are closed and she moves to the center of the room. A quick swipe through her inventory removes her clothes and she hurries to equip comfortable underwear and chest wraps. The inventory's equipment system allows for these sorts of quick changes.

Then she drops and gives twenty. There is no need to warm up, only the grind matters. She doesn't skip leg day. Push-ups and burpees and lunges and crunches. They burn through her muscles pleasantly, then painfully, until she collapses. A seemingly arbitrary amount of time will pass before she's ready to continue training.

She takes out a candle, lights it, and returns to the book. The routine will repeat throughout the night.

The plan is simple. First, she builds up her base stats by exercising. Mielle's body is spoiled weak. Strength exercises are easy to devise, endurance ones much more challenging in her confined environment. Likewise, she builds up her knowledge and archives by speed-reading through as many books as possible.

Next, she can start on skills. Things like stealth, crafting, martial arts. At that point, her body should be sufficient to sneak through the house. The goal is to be able to leave and return through the window, expanding her range of options. As that happens, she can start building up a stockpile of everything that she might need, grabbing anything remotely useful and filling her inventory with clutter.

Once those basics are down, she can start making more concrete plans for her future escape. She's probably going to need a horse, since magic won't allow her to run the distances she needs. Getting a better handle of the relevant geography is also essential. Without it, she doesn't know where to go, much less how to escape here. At least the neighboring Kingdom of Croa will be hostile to Mielle in the future, from her memories of the webcomic.

If she doesn't want to spend her whole life running, she's going to have to find a way of changing her appearance. Oh, Silva has ideas, from cutting her hair to ripping her skin off. Her arms tremble and collapse under her. She breathes in, holds it in.

Good thoughts only. She exhales slowly.

Let's be honest, currently I'm a mess. So SIs it is. Also, I've been writing but not posting bccccccc schoolwork.

I've reached the point where I want my teachers to fail me so that I can give up. Just... let me go. Let me go so I can apply to jobs in other countries without a care in the world.

minuseven · Jul 22, 2023

Vain Prayers

You know those wish-fulfillment fantasies? It's something like that, except you wake up and realize that no, it's not a fantasy. Surprisingly, that's not a good thing either.

Back when we still lived together, my brothers and I often debated which was the best superpower to have. We all wrote fanfiction, of course we did. I can't remember what their choices were, but I always ended up debating with myself between time-stop and shadow clones. Even back then, the world was moving too fast for me.

I like my nap times, maybe because I don't often get to have them.

So now, staring down at a rough sheet of paper with my status written down on it, it took my remaining mental strength to not make some sort of undignified noise. Because there they were.

Kage Bushin no Jutsu

Magia Erebea

Akemi Homulily

The first one was self-explanatory, although in her haste, my goddess had not transcribed anything but the name. I wondered how handseals would translate, if they even would. The second one, well. Magia Erebea is, in my most subjective opinion, just plainly the most awesome, full of potential, broken magic ever. If I had to choose one spell, not power, to know, this would be the one. Unfortunately, my goddess was freaking out about it and had just scribbled the last one's name without any more clues. Something about a hole in my soul.

I was more worried about the last one, honestly. Puella magi were not a fun prospect in any way. Holes in my soul? I'll be lucky to keep the whole thing if this spell worked like I thought it might.

So how had I ended up here? In the second-floor storeroom of a bookshop in Orario, holding a piece of paper with the most ridiculous things written on it, while short but stacked Hestia herself paced around me, biting the ends of her hair in distress? I don't know.

Let's go back a couple of days.

+

There's a village in the Beor mountains, just a day or so away from Orario. Apparently, since that's where I woke up. It's fairly isolated, but actually, a fair number of ex-adventurers ended up retiring there. By which I mean, the washed up and drop outs. Beor is as monster invested as it gets near Orario and its bustling commerce. Pros, nobody will question my origin story. Cons, it's really not a good place.

So I came to Orario. What else was I supposed to do? I didn't even have a plan then. There were absolutely no clues that I had three overpowered spells somewhere in my soul. I was willing to start from the ground up as an apprentice or goffer.

I still went to the Guild first. There's a proper order to these things. And Hestia Familia sounded too good to pass up. It was probably my only chance at the adventurer gig.

It turned out that Hestia was still looking for her first member, something I picked up from a list of gods with no or small familias that were recruiting. Curious about the timeline, I inquired off the cuff, with the acting skills of a somebody who spent half their life hiding their screw ups from their family, if the members of familias were public knowledge.

The rank ups were. It stood to logic that that too did. And it did, even if consulting the books was an incredibly time-consuming process considering they are literally brick sized tomes. No, there were no convenient things like indexes, much less supernatural search bars. Naturally, it only had names, aliases, level and race (and sometimes not even that).

I looked through it. Loki's, in their resplandecent glory with a lot of high levels, Freya's too. Everything looked fine. But then I looked through Hephaestus, and I couldn't find him. So I looked again. I checked the other familias, and nothing.

Welf Crozzo of Hephaestus.

Liliruca Arde of Soma.

Yamato Mikoto of Takemikazuchi.

Sanjouno Haruhime of Ishtar.

Their names weren't there. They were not where they were supposed to be.

By that point I looked sufficiently freaked out that I attracted the attention of a guild member. I made something up about not finding people I was looking for. So he helped me. He clearly was more savvy than me because he did find Mikoto and Lili. In the obituaries.

One reported as dead by her disgrace of an excuse of a familia. Went with a party, party didn't return, she's dead now does that mean a few less members will lower our rankings and taxes? At least the other's body had returned, and her family had given her a grave with all the other adventurers.

I didn't hold a lot of hope for the other three members of Hestia Familia.

There's a weight to knowing you doomed something. Presumptuous maybe, to think I have that much control over my fate, or theirs. But people don't just pop into fantasy worlds without something. I didn't know what, but something.

I moped for a few hours. Found the cemetery, hunted around for the only grave that proved these people had existed, dropped two weedy flowers on it and moped a lot more. I still wasn't sure if I considered these people real or characters. And my level of emotional attachment to them was also frail, another problem I also had back on Earth. But I did feel a bit of duty, mixed with some self-preservation. I wasn't sure how much this would change the timeline, mostly because I didn't know the timeline. I really should have not based my media consumption on what fics I read.

Maybe I could do something. Maybe, maybe, I was capable of doing something. Really maybe… I should do something? Not sure.

However, right now there was a human who felt lost and desperately needed a roof over their head. And there was a goddess who was really lonely out there.

There were a lot of potato puff stalls in Orario. In the main streets you could have four or five to block. The sun slowly setting, I started seriously eyeing the gods and goddesses I could see out and about. Something about them just drew your eye. Still undecided on my agnostic feelings about that whole topic. Gods here didn't have the best reputation, not with the people who actually interacted a bit with them.

Then I stumbled upon Takemikazuchi, merrily garbed in a server's uniform, politely asking for my potato puff order. I stumbled. My heart skipped two beats. It was him. A Japanese man with a traditional hairstyle, deceptively broad-shouldered, calloused hands that didn't at all retract from his air of general divinity and perfection.

I'd always thought he sort of looked like a dad.

"Oh. I… ah." I am so sorry. So sorry but my head needs to be in the game. "S- Lord God, would you know where I could find Lady Hestia?"

Takemikazuchi blinked, then gave me a more attentive glance over. My spine straightened without permission as I stood almost at parade rest. "I do. What is your business with Hestia?"

"I heard she's looking for Familia members, right? And I'm looking for a god. A Familia. What- yeah." Do not 'whatever' in front of a martial god. He could kill a person with those tongues in his hand. "I heard good things about her."

"Really?" The god perked up, then immediately got suspicious. "From who?"

Hestia had good friends, but this was really underscoring how bad her reputation was in Orario. The dirt poor, lazy, mooching goddess. Was it an accurate representation of Hestia at this point in the timeline? Well yes. It was also an incomplete one. Hestia had depths. Or so I hoped.

Takemikazuchi had probably been expecting me to either lie or tell him the name of a god, Hermes' faker face came to mind, an adventurer… people who would cruelly play a prank on Hestia. The truth was: "Honestly, I just read about her. Legends, myths and other... stories. She seems like a good person… goddess."

"Oh." I had surprised Takemikazuchi, but pleasantly so. "Is that so. Well, I am almost finishing for the day. Give me just a moment!"

In five minutes, Takemikazuchi had wrangled an early leave from his boss and was directing me through a set of backstreets down from West Main, where I'd found him, all the way to North Main. We passed through several blocks in disrepair and dark alleys with suspicious individuals but Takemikazuchi exuded an aura that, beyond godly, told me and everybody that he could and would punch somebody's teeth in with their own fists. Just as impressive was how calm he managed to keep me as he interrogated me. All the way, a good twenty minutes minimum, he kept a steady but spaced out stream of questions about my background and motivations.

In hindsight, if I hadn't given him answers he liked, he could have taken any turn in those crooked streets and kept us walking for however long he wished. Or, you know, pinned me to the wall and squeezed the truth out of me.

As it was, he probably caught on to my evasiveness, but I restricted myself to the truth and a few uncomfortable no comment kind of answers. Like, I gave him the name of my birth town, it wasn't like he would have ever heard of it or would find it in a map, but I also preferred not to tell how big of a town it was. Keeping my motivations as honest as I possibly could might have moved him a bit. I was being entirely truthful when I said it was a mix of desperation, ambition, and guilt.

Takemikazuchi didn't ask me about what. I could hope he would forget. Let a person dream.

We did manage to catch Hestia just at the endtail of her workday. Hestia's figure was as… existing as I was expecting, and she was as short as the shortest person I'd known in person. In short, pun intended, she was eye-level with my collarbone. I noticed she didn't have her signature bells on. Maybe those came later?

"Hello." Takemikazuchi had given me a push and now we stood face to face, a grinning japanese god a few strides away. "Hi. So I heard you liked a Familia." Social anxiety, why? "I mean, I heard you were looking to start a Familia! Can I… join, Lady Hestia?"

The goddess looked up at me, eyes wide and mouth open. She looked between me and Takemikazuchi. "I didn't do anything, they were already looking for you when they came to me." He headed that off before Hestia could accuse him.

"Really?" She turned to me.

"Really really."

"I'm a poor goddess."

"I have 15 vals and the clothes on my back." I'd found two coins on the ground and that had been the luckiest I'd been all day. … I don't have enough money for chicken nuggets, I mean, potato puffs.

"I work at a jagamarukun stand all day."

"Okay?"

"I'm lazy and- I'm not good at anything in special."

Girl, if only you knew me. "Yep."

"And you want to be my Familia?"

"I do."

Then I almost had my ribs crushed by a wrestling-worthy hug, and before I could recover my breath she was dragging me away. I threw Takemikazuchi a wave of thanks before we were out of sight. Running through the streets of late afternoon Orario, Hestia dragged me to a bookshop where she had promised she would start her Familia.

That brought us back to the now.

+

"Goddess, goddess. Goddess Hestia! Calm the... calm down!" I grabbed her by the shoulders and pointedly did not shake her. Fearful, tearful eyes looked up at me.

"But, but!"

"I am not dying at this precise moment. Let's take a deep breath and think this all through, okay?"

A cavernous sound was heard. As if on cue, both Hestia and I looked down. First at our bellies then at each other's. I had eaten stale bread for breakfast and kept the one carrot I'd been given for lunch. I had also trekked several kilometers from the mountains to the closest village, slept in the back of a night convoy, literally on top of a bale of hay. I was starving, my whole body had declared sore was its default state, and only Orario's public fountains kept me awake and hydrated.

"And maybe eat something?"

As soon as we got home to the church Hestia lived in, and now me as well, we could discuss and test my very unexpected spells. What actually happened was that I ate potato puffs until I was full and felt like crying about it. I laid my head down on my arms and fell asleep on the table. I don't remember that part.

I woke up at the ungodly hour of sunrise, on the bed. No boots, but still fully clothed, with a lamprey called Hestia hugging me from behind. Her sleep looked peaceful. I disentangled myself like somebody who has two younger brothers who like suffocating people- I mean cuddling. I regretted getting up, as my blistered feet met the floor. Limping to the couch, I sat down and grimaced as I saw I was bleeding a bit through my socks.

I was accustomed to walking long distances, but that's on modern pavement and modern shoes. My clothes had been translated into a lower technological level, and they just didn't fit me exactly like mine had, even if they looked similar enough. That's fine for say, my trousers, but for shoes it became the equivalent of breaking in new shoes by power walking through a day of standing retail work.

God...dess? Bless thick socks.

Unwilling to part my butt from the couch and doubting Hestia would have paper and pencils lying around, I settled in to mentally review the last 48 hours. Setting aside my entrance, stage left, there were a couple of things I had to think about.

First there were the timeline changes. Bell was… I wasn't quite sure he was responsible for saving the city? I'd read that he was somewhere. But he definitely was super important for the xenos, whose arc I hadn't read, and apparently for Ais. And she was a topic better not touched so I could only hope that Bell's protagonist aura could be replaced by… something. Lili was actually not essential for anything outside Bell's adventures. Sorry, but true. Mikoto either. Welf, I thought he had something to do with Ares' country. Who had invaded. That was another thing I had not read about. And finally Haruhime. It was awful to think but she was probably in a better position dead than in Ishtar. It was really awful, but it also wouldn't impact the timeline as far as I remembered.

So in conclusion! There was nothing I could do, probably, and maybe even nothing I should do. I'd given Hestia her first familia member and realistically that was the only amend I could make.

The other thing, a far larger topic, was me and my future. Or rather, mine and Hestia's future. We were a household now, in many, nay. In every way. My eyes skittered across the cracked ceiling, the holes, the spiders. I did not think about the centipedes. The list started composing itself in my head: finances and the division of wealth (marriage was an institution I'd read somewhere), registration with the guild, classifications, taxes, aid… then spending priorities like food, equipment, home repairs, clothes, soap…

I kept at it, my mind fluidly transitioning from the immediate necessities and practicalities to future planning. And therefore, my spells, with all their incredible potential but also all their potential drawbacks. Ultimately, I didn't know enough. I was nose deep into overly complex ways of testing each parameter of my spells when Hestia started making waking up noises.

They were cute waking up noises, and it was cute watching her snuggle deeper into the covers. I wanted to sleep in too, but I'd forced myself to get up. In short, if I couldn't, neither could she.

"Hey Lady Hestia! Good morning! Wake up!" I cheerily called, louder and louder.

"Mwah? Huh? Ah!" I watched her go from startled to confused to effusive. Her eyes sparkled as she looked at me. I felt my grin turn a bit awkward. Hestia's wholesome expectations...what did I do to deserve them? The bare minimum?

Well, when in doubt, deny, deflect and bury your problems until you have to fix everything at the last minute. "Sorry about that, but I think it's getting pretty late," I glanced at the clock on the wall. It was half past seven. A good enough hour for a retail worker, provided you didn't have to take three or four different busses to work. "And I wasn't sure when your work starts."

As an aside, it's incredibly convenient that I can read, speak and understand the local language because it is not english and it does not use the latin alphabet.

She shot up. "Oh no! I'm- wait! It wasn't a dream! I have a Familia!" She pointed at me. I couldn't help but smile back stupidly. Then her face fell. One-hundred to zero in point one seconds flat. "Y-y-your magic! That wasn't a dream either! Oh no, oh no."

Five minutes were spent explaining to Hestia that no, I felt fine. I hadn't tried to use my spells, because I wasn't a complete idiot, so nothing had happened and likely would not happen. Unless I used my spells, and that was what I wanted to talk to her about.

"Well," Hestia declared as she plopped down on the couch, arms crossed, "I'm not going to go to work today! We need to figure out your magic and besides, it's our first day as a Familia! We should spend it together!"

I was sitting sideways on the couch, facing her, and I objected. "Well, actually maybe it would be better if you went to work, Hestia. Right now, you are the Familia's only breadwinner and I'm… well, I'm really not helping."

Hestia closed her eyes and groaned. "Ah, that is a really weird feeling, being the one with money…" In yesterday's panic, she hadn't really noticed how dirt poor I really was. Not that I had particularly ragged clothes or anything that would make you think of a bum… but I literally didn't own anything but what I had on my body. It led to funny things like having to wait naked until my one set of clothes was washed and dried. "It can't be helped, I'll have to break out the emergency food money to buy you clothes."

Oy, oy, oy! "Wait a moment, if you're not going to work and you're spending the emergency food money, how are we going to eat tonight!"

"We can handle one night without dinner!"

"Hell no!"

Hestia's job was enough to feed her and save some. Nothing else. And when she wasn't forced to spend what she saved on emergency repairs, like buying a new dress, new soap… she spent it on alcohol. Happy hour. I was not a happy penguin when I forced her to admit that.

"You're just like Hephaestus!!" "Apparently that's what you need!!" "I don't deserve this!" "We'll see about that!"

Somehow, we'd ended up with me still sitting on the couch while I lectured her on the evils of alcohol, namely how it sucked your wallet dry. Hestia kneeled on the floor, chastised.

"God-s, we need to get a handle on our finances like, right now." I pulled her up and sat her next to me. Darn puppy eyes. "And while we're at that, we should talk about what we want out of the Familia more concretely."

Hestia gave me a peculiar look. "What do you want out of our Familia?" Before I could get properly startled at the change in maturity, she continued. "I want our Familia to write their own familia myth, like in the books. To have adventures and their name and renown proclaimed by everybody! And then I want everybody to gather and have a feast and tell stories and be happy together." A fantasy where everybody would come back victorious, where Hestia would watch them grow and never be alone.

"That sounds nice." Shame that Bell likely was dead, no? "I would like that."

She pouted. "That didn't answer my question, mister!"

That's right, because I was avoiding thinking of how pathetic I was. Still, she waited as I thought about what I wanted. Since I had to be honest, I told her most of what was going on in my head. "I want to survive. I want to live comfortably but also to go on adventures. I want to make up for some stuff and become a better person. I want to be strong and looked up to and good and I don't want to be alone in the world." I like my space. I like being left to my devices. It's selfish of me, but I do need an anchor and without my brothers, my father…

A small shoulder bumped into mine and I looked down to see Hestia's serious eyes. "You're not alone."

That was almost true. "Thank you. Sorry for being such a downer."

"Nope!" She rejected my apology.

We squabbled lightly back and forth, mood lightening up as I apologized and she insisted me being honest about my feelings was good, which it was not! I got the upper hand though, by bringing us back round to money.

+

"So, in conclusion," I taped the pencil on a sheet full of scribbled out words and arrows pointing at numbers. "Hestia Familia will have mostly joint assets. So, buildings and other communal assets belong to the familia, under Hestia's name. Along with food, water, basic hygiene products, that will make sure the familia ensures elemental… no what's the name… elementary, ah, fundamental. Fundamental necessities for all its members. This will be paid for by a piggybank, the familia… funds, yeah. Each member, goddess included, will contribute three-quarters of their earnings to the funds. The remaining quarter will be personal money to spend however they want." I was forgetting something, what was it?

"Cheapskate, miser, val counter!" Hestia pounded on my knees weakly.

Oh yeah! "Taxes are also paid communally, obviously. Equipment may be paid for by the familia under the discretion of the quartermaster, which will also be in charge of the rest of the finances, and the captain, me. Considering the familia's state."

"Scrooge! Hoarder!"

"Discussions about spendings will be allowed, of course. And this document will be put up for revision in… three months unless something spectacular happens. What do you think, Goddess?"

A pathetic pile of divinity clung to my legs, eyes tearful and betrayed. "You said you hated finances and management."

"I do. Or at least, I hated the way they were done back home." Capitalist hellhole. Too many weird rules that only served to enrich the rich, punish the poor and give people excuses to fire employees. "This is just common sense and honestly, I am just throwing the numbers around. At least it fits in one single sheet."

Hestia grumbled but sat back down next to me. If she wanted more pocket money, she shouldn't have said she wanted her familia to provide for its members. Society lives on taxes!

"Okay, we're done. No more of this talk." She grabbed our fledgeling charter from my hands and replaced it with the bare status sheet from yesterday. "This is more important!"

The three spells that broke all the rules, in-universe and out, stared back at me. I wondered…

A traitorous finger poked me on my side and I jumped, a giggled half-strangled like a drowning cat escaping my lips. "DON'T Do that!!"

The goddess who I had been tormenting smirked evilly. "Are you… ticklish?"

"No." "Liar~!" "I meant- No like- Don't Even Think About It! Goddess! Goddess!?"

The following five minutes were not pleasant. Was I asking for it? I maintain that no, it was a completely inappropriate and excessive response from Hestia. The breach of trust was deeply hurtful and Hestia stopped once I started crying. I can handle pain just fine, but suffocation by laughter is upsetting, let's say. My goddess, now apologetic, played with the status sheet in her hands. I could hear the paper bending and crinkling, but I couldn't see her, since I was sitting on the floor on the other side of the couch.

I looked up. Hestia peered over the back of the couch. "Let's not do that ever again."

"So…"

"My spells. Let's get back to that thorny issue."

Hestia hummed. "Actually, I noticed… but you didn't seem too surprised when you saw your status."

I sighed. "Believe me Lady Hestia, I had no idea I was going to receive those spells. I sure dreamed about overpowered magic and a protagonist's power but something like those?" I threw my hands in the air. "Not even close."

Now Hestia was bending over the back of the couch, her head closer to mine. "You know what these spells do? I didn't have the chance to look too deeply. I was just transcribing your initial status when I noticed that this one… could hurt you." She tapped my shoulder. "I should check again."

I nodded. "Definitely. They might actually be different from what I think they are." I could feel the goddess' curiosity rolling off her in waves. Also, her worry. I had really chosen well, this goddess. "They're spells from stories I read back home. The Shadow Doppelganger Technique, that created solid copies of the user, signature of the number one unpredictable ninja. Magia Erebea, invented by a vampire, allowed you to make any magic your own. And Akemi Homura. That's the name of a heroine who could control time itself and used her shield to save her… person she loved."

Hestia's eyes were wide open. "Maybe I should check the blessing now." Yeah, I had a feeling she would after listening to that.

And since I was going to have to take off my shirt, "Might as well wash all of my clothes now then. If we want to have them dry at a reasonable time and make it to the Guild." It would take some time considering it was the middle of winter, if sunny. "Plus, you'll have to be the one to hang them outside since I'll be, well." Lacking in clothes.

So I started very normally undoing the laces on my shirt and trousers, only for Hestia to loudly splutter and turn away, blushing furiously. "Y-y-you can't just get n-naked just like that!" It was literally nothing she hadn't seen before and I told her so. "I'm a virgin goddess! I don't g-go to de-depraved parties like other gods! My eyes are virginal too!" More quietly she mumbled something that sounds like, "Is this what other gods do? Isn't it going too fast?"

"Okay," I stopped and stared at her, turned away but occasionally looking over her shoulder to see what I was doing, "that makes no sense. Which part of this," I gestured to the entire room, "made you think we were going to even touch? Let alone have like… sex. We are not. Is this a …" Greek "god thing?"

I knew Hestia had deserved to go to horny jail in canon, but: One, that was for Bell, which I was very much not. And two, she didn't usually act like this.

Hestia's face had reached critical levels and looked redder than a tomato. "A man can't just show a virgin goddess his body like t-"

"Wait what?"

"What what?

I stared at her in such complete bafflement that even the wind seemed to have disappeared. "Hestia. I am a woman."

Silence. "Eh?"

"Don't 'eh?' me. I don't have a bra, you saw my tits yesterday."

"No I didn't, you had your back to me the whole time!"

"Dude, my chosen name is Nana. Na-na."

"I thought that was your family name!"

"I have long hair! I have a girl's voice!"

"In a ponytail! Lots of men have long hair! And your voice is fine for a boy too!"

"Oh my goooood…"

I couldn't believe I was actually this non-binary. Ever since I had stopped cutting my hair like a soldier, my ability to confuse people about my gender had diminished severely. I could still make people look twice and frown in confusion, but Hestia being 100% convinced that I was a man after seeing me half-naked and cuddling me during the night? Something didn't add up. My goddess insisted she'd never seen somebody as flat as me (she'd choked on her laugh and gone very pale, dismayed? At me being flatter than Loki). I pointed at my throat and asked about my lack of facial hair and adam's apple. And found out that, apparently secondary sex characteristics work differently here.

I misspoke. What I actually mean is that, among human men, they either are very prominent or they barely exist. And women, of course, always have… titties. The less was said about sex dimorphism in elves and pallums, the better. As a mostly androgynous female wearing pants, I was indistinguishable from a quarter of the male population.

Rule of thumb: if it doesn't have B-cups, it's a dude. The joys of living in an anime?

Okay, let's get back to what people really want to know. How overpowered I was (not).

+

My clothes were drying, I was comfortably wrapped in a warm, cozy blanket, and Hestia had spent at least one hour trying to make sense of my spells. There were several sheets of paper with different translations and amendments spread on the table. An adventurer's status is written on their back in divine hieroglyphs. Although puny mortals can learn how to read the divine script, gods just transcribe and translate it for us. What I hadn't known is that even gods can get stumped by the very blessing they gave.

Hestia had been incredibly vague about it, but the gist I got was that the divine hieroglyphs were a higher form of divinity than gods themselves. Or at least, gods with their arcanum sealed. The script looked like an alphabet to the untrained eye but it actually read like said hieroglyphs and worked on a base of symbols equaling ideas. It also had layers only gods could perceive and had to interpret.

So there were several possible translations for several different parts of my spells. Hestia looked like she wasn't sure if she wanted to be happy or panicking.

"Okay, let's put these two aside for now and focus on the simple one." I pushed most of the sheets aside and took the only spell that hadn't made Hestia want to cry.

[ Kage Bushin no Jutsu ]
Multiplication magic that creates physical but fragile copies of the user. The user remains connected to all copies.

There were other notes written down. Different translations like shadow doppelganger or shadow clone technique, the fact that it didn't have a chant at all and the hieroglyphs had drawn this vague hand shape here, how expensive it felt to Hestia and properties she thought the spell might have.

"Looks about right. In the stories, Shadow Clones could take a few hits depending on how much chakra was used to create them. They also transferred all their memories back to the user when they were destroyed, making them great scouting and training tools. The clones looked independent, but they coordinated effortlessly with Naruto so it could very well be that he was more or less in control of them."

"It's not a super-powerful attack or a legendary healing magic," said Hestia, "but I can see how useful and incredible it is. Other gods would definitely want to take you away if they got even a whiff of what this can really do."

I nodded grimly. "Especially the evil, unscrupulous sort of gods. Kage Bushin is a top-tier spying tool. Heck, any exploration familia or even the guild. Being able to check ahead for monsters and traps without risk is a gamechanger."

"I'm not sure if I'm the luckiest or the unluckiest goddess to ever exist. Ahaha." Hestia said spiritlessly.

"We're going to have to lay low." In other words we were doomed but alas. "Anyway, it's not like this spell doesn't have some very real potential drawbacks. The story always described it as very expensive chakra-wise, so I'm not even sure I'll be able to cast it without passing out. And the memories from the clones could overwhelm me and even fry my brain." Now Hestia was staring at me again. "On the other hand there are fun probabilities like exploding clones and weapon duplicates."

"I'm starting to think you enjoy this, Nana."

"There are a lot of things about this situation that I'm enjoying. "

"Urrgg." She scowled and mock hit me in the arm. "Just tell me about the original story you read this from, you scoundrel."

I winced, regretting promising that I would tell her the stories I knew. "Naruto is at least fifty volumes long. How about I tell you the beginning and how he got his ninja headband? So, imagine a city, like Orario but there are large trees everywhere and there's a cliff. It's a very important cliff, because that's where the faces of the Hokages are carved!"

I got into the rhythm of storytelling fairly easily. It didn't take much to have Hestia hanging on my words. I still had Naruto's first episode and chapter engraved in my mind and the fact was that I loved Naruto. Always will, some part of me. And by the end of today, so would Hestia.

+

"This one… it's not a good magic, Nana."

I winced. "... You're not wrong goddess. It's not evil or anything but it is really dangerous magic. It's the one I understand the least too."

[ Magia Erebea ]
Stagnet - Complexio - Supplementum Pro Armationem
Forbidden Magic that devours everything. Grants the user many times the power of absorbed magic. Anima Erosion. Animus Erosion.

"You shouldn't ever use it. I forbid it." She said, small hands around one of my wrists.

I tapped the paper instead. Besides that, there were several translations and scribbles of what Hestia had thought might be other activation words and strange details. She'd dug deep, trying to find as much as she could about this one in particular. "Anima and animus erosion worries me. I've heard it somewhere before, but I can't remember where."

"It means something that destroys your very sense of self." Hestia's voice was harsh by my side. There was a reason I was keeping my eyes glued to the paper. "It attacks your mind, spirit and soul!"

"That makes sense." I paused. "In the story, to learn how to use this magic, Negi had to face his inner darkness. He fought through a magic dream in which he died over and over again until he overcame that darkness inside of him. If he gave up or took too long, he either died or lost his ability to use magic forever."

"Nana!" Hestia grabbed my hair and pulled so that I had to look at her. Her eyes were red and her voice reedier. "And knowing all that, you still want to use it? No, that's stupid! And you're not stupid!"

I grit my teeth and almost spat the words out. "I don't know if I'll have the choice. The dungeon, hell! The world is dangerous! If I'm going to survive, I have to use all I have. I can't hold back and Magia Erebea is my greatest force-multiplier."

Hestia didn't release my eyes. "You don't want to use it. Why are you insisting on this, Nana?"

Gods and their stupid ability and intuition! I forced my head out of her grip. A few ripped hairs would be worth not having to meet her eyes anymore. "... I want the power of Erebea. That magic was… so cool. You know it was invented by a ten year old child? A kid forcibly turned into a monster that became monstrously strong so she could survive in a world that hated her for no reason. Magia Erebea works by absorbing a spell and fusing it with your soul. It's crazy powerful and crazy dangerous. The spell itself begins to feed on your soul and lifeforce and whatever else."

Hestia just waited.

"I am afraid of using it. The more I think about it, the less simple it becomes. I'm scared of what I'll have to fight, and I'm almost certain I'd lose." I wasn't delusional. A young adult from the modern world that had rarely faced hardships? A mediocre person by all accounts? I didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell. "And then I'd be taken over by dark magic and literally turn into a monster."

I felt Hestia's touch on my shoulder and felt my eyes prickle with wetness. "So don't. We don't need this spell. It's forbidden after all."

I had a premonition then that I would use it. Of course I did.

+

The final spell wasn't actually any better for Hestia's blood pressure. "Honestly, Lady Hestia, by this point, I was expecting you to exert your divine authority. I mean..."

Hestia opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again and then whimpered, suddenly looking very defeated. "I almost did but I can feel it in the blessing. That magic is not against the laws of the lower world. It's cheating, almost! But only almost! It's not against the rules or in violation of the laws." She bit her lip. "Thank goodness. I… don't want to think about what I might have had to do."

Me neither, boss, me neither.

[ Akemi Homura ]
Creates a lost heroine's shield with the ability to stop the flow of time and store items inside. Its durability and abilities depend on the user's magic stat. Sacrificing a shield will allow for a chance to change fate.

This hieroglyphic translation was apparently the hardest because, according to Hestia, the hieroglyphs and their meanings kept changing. The name, especially, varied between Akemi Homura, Homulily and other variants that included Nutcracker. I was appropriately terrified. Hestia had checked for me though, and nothing in the spell indicated any sort of corruption, turning, transformation. It was one 'simple' spell that just created the shield.

So we only had to deal with the possibility of time travel and whatever complications, likely divine in nature, could arise from it. It was a very big 'only'.

We were probably going to have to test this magic before anything else. Hestia had been freaking out, again, about the possibility of other gods noticing me messing around with time. And not just the ones in the lower world, no! We also had to worry about the ones upstairs.

"Okay so, the way I understand, the shield is actually something like a sand hourglass." I explained. "Homura could stop time by halting the flow of sand in it, like stopping an hourglass by putting it horizontal. And she could reverse time by turning it around, just like an hourglass too. I never quite got the exact mechanics of it, like if she could only turn time at that one spot in the timeline, or how the sand in the shield got there or if it represented the universal time flow or just something more local and a bunch of other little details. I do know how the time-stop works functionally though." Through direct and contiguous contact, essentially.

"That's not a power any mortal should have." Hestia said, and to me she sounded more serious than usual. I turned from the paper back to her. "It's almost… blasphemous. Tell me about the story of Akemi Homura."

"... it's funny that you mentioned blasphemy. Akemi Homura's story… well, she's just the most important character in Madoka's story. Kaname Madoka was just a normal girl. And for her, it all started with one very strange dream, a dream with a girl fighting a monster, and a small white creature with red eyes…"

+

Somehow, it was already mid-afternoon when we were done. In between debating and writing down what we should do to test my spells, eating more potato salad, and waiting for my clothes to dry, we'd wasted almost the entire day. A good chunk of it had been spent storytelling. Hestia really loved stories and she wasn't just interested in listening about other things I'd read or watched.

I happened to go on a bit of a rant about the lack of good character writing in Naruto when it came down to girls, which led to things I'd have written differently, and suddenly fanfiction! Ironic, I know. But it seemed that Hestia and I would get along like a house on fire.

Since Hestia hadn't gone to work, I considered taking care of the Familia's registration, but there was something we ought to check before we made any moves at all. Before I even considered taking one single step in my adventures. After all… would anything matter if I got smited from existence?

Hestia was biting her nails, hair raised.

I stood ready in the middle of the room.

I was not ready.

You Only Live Once, probably.

I closed my eyes, right hand over my left forearm. Inhale, exhale. My heartbeat got progressively louder as I focussed. There was no chant, so it was all down to instinct. Ba-dump, ba-dump. I was looking for an energy for which I had no reference. I was a blind man trying to swim towards a patch of dyed water. ba-dump ba-dump. And the waters were shark-infested. This was a horrible idea, I should have started with the shadow clones. No, I had to focus. ba-dump ba-dump. Breathe and think of nothing but yourself. Self-awareness. Your body, a machine constantly there. baa-dump baa-dump. Your mind, freely letting thoughts go. baaa-dump baaa-dump.

My soul, touched by divinity.

baaa-dump baaa-dump

tick tock tick tock

ba aa-du mp ba aa-du mp

t ic k t o ck t ic k t o ck

The power to protect. A shield. I could picture that. I'd held shields before, felt the way they dragged my arm down. Keep your hands up. Guard.

b a a d u m p b a a d u m p

t i c k t o c k t i c k t o c k

The power over time. An hourglass, a grandfather clock, a sundial. I could envision that too. Still-motion. Photographs. Moments frozen in time. The steady beat of a pendulum, the murmur of sand sliding against glass, a shadow moving back and forth over carved stone. A film being rewound.

b a a d u m p b a a d u m p b a a d u m p b a a d u m p b a a d u m p b a a d u m p

Why was… my heartbeat so… loud? Why was it so steady? Why couldn't I… control it?

No! I yelled in my mind, but my eyes would not open. This was not right. My breathing continued unhindered and steady, to the rhythm of the universe, despite the panic building inside of me. Every beat, I lost something. Some warmth, some form of… me, was being drained away. I got colder and colder, yet I did not shiver, or felt the need to do so. It continued to flow out of me and very soon, I was all tapped out. Then, the shakes began, rocking my bones, my body, my head.

It was the pain of a migraine, that awful sort of pressure that just did not want to go away, leaving me stuck in bed and crying in frustration. It was the pain of food poisoning, kneading my stomach and intestine with large claws. It was the flu with all of its weight pressing me down to the floor while poking my body to move just to get away from the discomfort. It was like collapsing after running under the summer sun outside, no water, no breath, my heartbeat in my throat, my ears, my eyes.

This spell was too much. That was my last thought before the world fell into incoherence.

Not unconsciousness. Not until I felt it around my wrist. Only then did I fall into blissful oblivion.

This is 99% abandoned.

Yeah, I just wrote this months ago to get the juice flowing. It's 100% wish fulfillment, but you can see some places where I had the bare-bones idea of a plot. You can also see here why RunLess is classified as an SI-adjacent story, there's a lot of similarities between how "I" here and the RunLess version see the world and interact with Hestia.

Anyway, not planning on continuing this any time, parts of these ideas having been moved to other projects. So here it is, for future perusal.

minuseven · May 2, 2023

Where cats fear to tread
1.1

"Stupid."

When Maki woke up, spying the familiar ceiling of the infirmary, that was the thought she had. However, it wasn't her mouth that said those words. Confused, she looked for the source of her spoken thoughts.

Mai sat on another bed, brow furrowed in anger or something. "Stupid." She repeated, words acerbic on her tongue. "How can you be so stupid to get cursed like that, hm?"

But Maki couldn't focus on that. The sister she'd left at home was there, wearing a Jujutsu Tech shirt like her. And… "Wha-what happened to you?!" Her hoarse voice called out, eyes jumping to the top of her head.

And the two furry triangles emerging at a slanted angle from the hair at the top of her head.

Mai's eyebrow twitched, and the ears –because they very much were animal ears– lowered even further. Something dark, long and equally furry shifted near her knees –tail– and she spat out. "You happened. Why don't you look into a mirror first, Maki!"

She raised a hand to her face, vaguely noting her glasses were missing, before moving upwards and making contact with something. The itchy sensations that had been plaguing her made sudden sense. "Shit."

*

"So, Maki fought a tricky curse that got the wrong ranking, and because she doesn't have a resistance, she got cursed." Panda summarized. "And that was how Maki became cuter. But not cuter than me."

"Sake."

Sitting sideways at her desk, Maki growled, stopped herself at the too realistic sound and settled on threatening her stupid classmates by starting to unzip her nagitana's case. She was not, and never would be, "cute". Gods, she could already imagine what they were going to say back at the house… at least she'd gotten cursed with 'cat' instead of 'monkey'. That old drunkard was probably laughing and thinking something asinine and disgusting about 'nekomimi' or some other bullshit.

She sighed, trying to ignore the way that her new ears wanted to fold down. Keeping her new… appendages in check was a pain. What a way to start her sorcery career. A month into Jujutsu Tech and this happened.

Great.

"Hello, hello!~" The blindfolded bastard burst into the room. "I've got excellent news everybody!~"

Suspicious silence greeted him. One of Maki's ears had flattened itself, parallel to the ground.

"Due to certain events~" Could he get any more annoying? No, of course he could. "We're getting a transfer student from Kyoto." Wait. Maki's tail uncurled from where it had been resting around her legs. He couldn't mean– "You can come in, Zenin-san."

Mai walked in. She wore a different uniform from hers, a longer skirt. A black, long-furred tail, and a pair of feline ears, just like the ones Maki had. She stared blankly ahead and, when silently prompted by Gojo, bowed primly at the waist. She didn't look at Maki.

"Zenin Mai. Just call me Mai." Since there were two Zenins here.

"I didn't know Maki had a sister at Kyoto Tech…" Panda said.

"Well, yeah…" Neither had she.

*

A curse like that was supposed to be dispelled by exercising the curse that originated it. Simple, easy: see curse, kill curse. Any and all animal traits imposed on the victim, gone.

Then, however it was that the curse supposedly worked, it tripped on Maki's Heavenly Restriction, crashed and burned. Leaving a tangled mess of cursed energy people didn't have a clue what to do with, which included the physical manifestation of aforementioned character traits.

"Well, now that the cursed spirit is gone, it doesn't appear to be harmful. Lucky!" Gojo was way too amused by the whole thing.

"Unraveling it is going to be a pain, tho…" Even as she said that, the doctor's eyes shined with just too much curiosity. Wasn't there a rumor that she enjoyed dissections?

"That doesn't explain why my sister was also affected." Maki hissed, trying very hard to not pay attention to the fidgeting tip of her… tail.

Mai scoffed from where she was sitting rigidly in a chair. Two paces away. "We're twins. Of course it affected both of us. When doesn't it?" She glared at Maki, arms crossed.

"Tch. There's a reason I left, ya know." Maki couldn't help but shoot back.

"Oh, I know." Mai drawled venomously. "How's it going? No wait, don't tell me. I can guess." Her ears wiggled on purpose.

Damn her.

*

"So you're actually transferring here?" Maki asks her bluntly.

"Until the curse is unraveled," Mai explains, keeping her eyes on a notebook as she writes down notes. "Ieri-sensei believes it to be dangerous for us to unravel the curse just like that because of the physical changes. She will need to be monitoring us at each step. The more gradual the better, so it's easier for me to stay here instead of condensing the treatment during the weekends."

Right, Mai had stayed behind to hear Ieri-sensei and that idiot. Maki had needed to leave. A summary was enough.

"How long?"

"Don't know."

Mai closed her notebook and got up, pulling a phone from her pockets and– since when did Mai have a phone? Had the clan given it to her? They'd never been allowed to…

"Hey, why did you join Kyoto Tech?"

Mai's head snapped up to meet her gaze. Her eyes were wide and disbelieving, angry, a storm of things Maki hadn't seen in forever or perhaps ever at all. She opened her mouth, but didn't say anything. Maki's brow furrowed even more. Mai's breath came harsh. Both their ears slanted down.

Mai broke off and turned away. Her chair clattered as she almost ran to the doorway.

"Hey, wait!" Maki chased her, went to grab her so she could stay still and explain what that was all about.

Panda and Inumaki were in the hallway, paying too close attention. She hesitated for an instant to take Mai's arm, and just like that her sister slipped away. Ears flat against her hair, tail swishing dangerously behind her.

I've been wanting (and writing) lots of Zenin Twins because they break my heart like... auuuu. But, mmm, while waiting for really long fics that explore Construction CT, and a bunch of time-travel fixit and non-fixit, have this. It's... crack taken seriously because I will milk the fact that these two are forced to interact in their first year. It's like locking them together in a room. Brilliant.

minuseven · May 14, 2024

When I woke up, I was riding in a

carriage
Ћьԙ чұнћхинлԙнћ чұхчь рұчҩԙд ьхрѧьљї. Нхьидх ҩԙҁћ ьԙр ԙїԙѧ чљұѧԙд.

I'd just had a dream…
Ѧхид ѧьԙ ђуѧћ дрԙхлԙд х нигьћлхрԙ.

I dreamed it was

Дрԙхлԙд ұф ћьԙ дхї ћьхћ ѧьԙ ъхѧ ћхҩԙн.

In the dream, the

and his retainers found me
Дрԙхлԙд ұф ћьԙ дхї ћьхћ ћьԙ Дұчћұр ћұұҩ ьԙр.

"Oh Archon, we've finally found you. The

can't wait to

you"
Хљхѧ, ћьԙ ѧхгԙѧ ҁрхїԙд фұр х нԙъ гұд. Ьԙ ԙхгԙрљї ћұұҩ ћьԙ ұҁҁұрћунићї ћьхћ ћьԙ ѧхгԙѧ ұффԙрԙд.

The

began, and everyone smiled as they gathered around me
Рԙхљизинг ћьԙ Љићћљԙ Љұрд ъхѧ хћ ћьԙир лԙрчї, хрұунд ьԙр ћьԙї љұұлԙд. Ћьԙї ѧлиљԙд.

Finally, I got back on the

, and

Ин ћьԙ ԙнд, Нхьидх ъхѧ љұчҩԙд ин бї ћьԙ бљхѧҁьԙлұуѧ. Нԙәԙр, нұ ұнԙ рԙхчьԙд ұућ ћұ Нхьидх.

It couldn't be said that the Knave loved the homeland. The natural beauty of its landscapes, its hidden wildlife and its night sky were soothing. She even held a certain fondness for its people; hardy, loyal, of a temperament not dissimilar to hers. But in her cold heart there was no love for Snezhnaya, especially on such an overcast night.

Certainly not while traversing the coldest corridors of Zapolyarny Palace, so devoid of anything resembling emotion that even her Majesty's frigid abode was warmer. Had she had any other option, she would not be in the Doctor's domain, but minor discomfort was not enough reason to bother the Marionette for her facilities. The bottled flames had been extracted successfully, leaving no reason to linger in this place.

Her footsteps were loud on the marble and mosaic floor, but quickly smothered by the very air, echoless on the grand corridors this side of the palace. It wasn't worth thinking why these walls were more soundproof than others. Despite that, trained ears caught an uneven rhythm, an odd sound between dreary walls. She raised one hand, briefly, but did not stop, shifting only slightly the way her heels hit the ground.

The hurried pitter patter slap of barefoot feet, the huff huff puff of panicked prey.

At the turning of a corner, a small shape barreled into the Knave's knees. Despite their differing momentum, the smaller, lighter one of them was sent sprawling backwards with a cry. Utterly unfazed, the Knave considered her unfortunate assailant. Strewn on the floor like a discarded doll, a child shook. She noted her peculiar appearance, long, pointed ears and waist-length hair of a shade just a tone off Arlecchino's own; and her clothing, if it could be called such. A plain white shift, two rectangles of cloth tied together, stained by darker residues, ash, soot or grease.

She knew where she had escaped from before the child's eyes opened, terrified, horrified, looking up past the great white regalia with its black collar and numerous insignias. Starry green met black pits criss-crossed in blood red, glowing balefully down at her.

The Knave leaned forward and the child leaned back, shaking like a bird. Her fear did not dissipate as Arlecchino knelt down, reducing the difference between their heights. She cowered even more as a black clawed hand, adorned in silver jewelry and red talons, emerged from the folds of that coat and reached for her. Those fingers brushed her cheek and the round line of her jaws, briefly, gently, and painfully.

The child flinched away with a pained gasp, hands flying to her face to pat down the burning licks of flame that had begun to spread from that single point of contact.

"Mmm." The Knave finally made a sound, a deep, thoughtful hum. She had remained completely silent until this moment, only the slightest rustle of cloth betraying her physical presence in the hall. Her shadowed gaze dissected the child's countenance. Whereas before a small spark of defiance had trembled with fear and tiredness; a new primal, atavistic despair now shone in those eyes.

The Knave pulled back her hand, extending it sideways, curling her fingers in some obscure pattern. At her signal, the form of an agent stepped out from the shadows they had concealed themselves with a few moments prior.

The child on the ground jumped out of her skin. Searching the dark corners of the hall, she discovered another fatuus idling behind her, and realized she was and had always been surrounded. Frustrated tears shone in her eyes as she curled in more on herself, ready to run while knowing there was no gap in their encirclement. Motion from the threat in front of her, closest and most dangerous of all, had her flinch. She made herself as small as she could, drawing her arms in front of her face and closing her eyes instinctively.

That hand returned, bypassing her meager protection without effort and grasping once more the edge of her face. The burning did not. The worn touch of scuffed leather yielded against her skin, holding her jaw without force. The little girl dared to open her eyes, slowly, following the grey patterns on a white sleeve to the black and red, ill-fitting glove covering the skin that had harmed her.

"Come with me." Said the Knave when their eyes met again. Her fingers receded, hanging in the air between them. It was not an order, or a question. It was a statement, open like the hand offered to her.

The child on the ground stared into Arlecchino's eyes. There was still fear in her, and a rising hope, tempered by a distrustful frown and the heavy caution holding her limbs ready to run. A shrewdness not found in innocent children's eyes sharpened the gaze searching Arlecchino's cursed orbs.

There was nothing to be found. The dead, black pits of her irises did not even reflect her form, her existence rejected by the image of judgment. An omen if there ever was one.

"Or would you rather stay here?" The Knave's voice broke through the dread her eyes invoked.

The child closed her own eyes, taking a shaky breath. No, she did not want to remain in this horrible place. She took that hand, placing a bet on this unknown, letting herself be pulled to her feet.

The same cold eyes that had frozen her in place appraised her bare limbs and tenuous stance, something approaching disdain in their glow. Somewhat mystified, the child observed as the Harbinger, still kneeling, released the clasps holding shut her greatcoat. A tiny gasp escaped her lips as the Knave took hold of her by her armpits and lifted her body as if she were a simple leaf. Without thought, her hands grasped the Knave's suit as she was pressed against her body, held in one arm at the woman's side. The great coat covered her in darkness, blocking out the outside world, and the invisible weight that emanated from the flesh of the Harbinger settled like a heavy blanket over her.

"Be careful not to touch my skin." The Knave warned before she started walking.

She did not hurry her pace, or slow herself. She paid no attention to the death grip the child had on her clothing, nor even to her presence, bundled close to her shoulder. The agent that had provided her with his gloves followed her silently three steps back, more of a secretary and errand boy than his deadly skills would suggest. Her operative had already departed. She allowed herself one single exhalation, carrying into the wind feelings that had no place in the present.

The Knave left the frigid, desolate hallways. Beneath her wing, freezing at the sound of every footstep and word, expecting to be discovered or revealed at every moment, Nahida hoped she had made the right choice. The black fur of the Harbinger's collar tickled her scalp and ears, and the near scorching warmth of her body felt like being too close to a devastating wildfire. Nahida was so tired and so sick that all the things she was tracking, that she needed to be aware of, muddled into an homogeneous, incomprehensible mass. In the darkness every so often invaded by the northern wind, the fire was almost a comfort, like a bare fireplace. Children just needed to be careful not to get too close to the flames.

Nobody stopped them or dared to approach them, gazes finding reasons to avoid the Knave, and Arlecchino left Zapolyarny Palace as she always did. Without looking back, heading to the House of the Hearth.

Title sort of taken from Dark Souls II with the Fire Keeper's quote: "I am a Fire Keeper. I tend to the flame, and tend to thee. The Lords have left their thrones, and must be deliver'd to them. To this end, I am at thy side." Which fits a bit with this situation.

minuseven · Jul 18, 2024

There is a House unlike any other in Snezhnaya.

The door closed behind them, the flurries that chased after their footsteps breaking against the solid wood. The dark evening was replaced by the warm glow of the candelabra, and beneath a great white coat, Nahida jolted awake at the sudden transition. Beyond that great white coat that separated her from the outside was an atmosphere so very different from the cold that had permeated her being ever since she'd been taken to Snezhnaya; a feeling she hadn't felt in a very long time. Perhaps, a warmth that she'd only experienced in dreams.

Like a magician twirling a cape for a grand and miraculous unveiling, the barrier of cloth that isolated her from the outside world was lifted away. Nahida closed her eyes against the abrupt brightness, gripping the shape that held her aloft white-knuckled for an instant, before her tired mind remembered who it was. Perturbed, she froze in place, her eyes flying wide open, searching for answers.

An entrance hall greeted them, a well-worn rug spread over a diamond patterned scuffed stone flooring. One wall was covered by coats and jackets of all sizes, still dripping melting snow onto a long brass tin. A staircase in wood and wrought-iron ascended into a second floor and more. The chandelier above cast its artificial light over the teenagers who waited for them.

"Welcome home, Father." The two bowed quickly at the waist.

The girl between them straightened with a smile directed at the child eyeing them warily, sky blue eyes clear and inviting. "Somebody new?"

"No. A guest." The Knave stated as she handed her cloak to the boy, an older, more taciturn teenager on the brink of adulthood.

"A guest?" Both straightened their postures to a military precision, gazes appraising the child with newfound intensity and curiosity. "What kind of guest?"

"The kind of guest that's not to be bothered." The Knave chided, not raising her voice, its low timber carrying it easily to the ears of those it was intended for. "We've had no guests for quite a while, but there's no need to make a fuss about it."

"Yes, Father." Was answered in unison.

"Has everybody already gone to bed?"

"Curfew has been called. Only those who have late work are still up." The boy confirmed, cloak folded neatly over his arm.

"Very well, do not bother them. Helena." She called, and the girl stepped forward. Long black and red nails threatened to poke the pale digits still holding on to her suit and Nahida released her before she could be burned. She was lowered to the floor, where the girl gently steadied her. The child flinched slightly at her touch but did not avert her distrustful glower from the Knave and her cruel hands. "The House of the Hearth extends its hospitality. Helena will tend to you. Georgi, help your sister. Bring her to my office when you are done."

"Of course, Father." Her two children responded obediently and the Knave marched forward, leaving the three alone in her wake.

When her back had disappeared behind a closed door, Helena bent down to address their guest. Her light brown hair was tied neatly behind a wide, kind face. "Hello. My name is Helena, what's yours?"

The white-haired child looked between the two that had been assigned to look after her. "I'm Nahida." She eventually responded.

"Nahida? That's such a pretty name. Is it from Sumeru, or Natlan?"

"Helena…" Her sibling warned.

"I was just trying to make conversation." She stuck out her tongue at him.

"Father made our guest's well-being our responsibility." He murmured. "And she's clearly not well." His eyes were dull, stone grey and half-lidded under the light, but they cut to the heart of the matter. Their guest looked not much different from the orphans that their Father brought to join them, bedraggled and suspicious. Her clothing could barely be called that and her limbs were riddled with small scrapes.

It was fortunate, then, that the House had more than enough experience in the matter.
"Ah, sorry." Helena smiled at Nahida and let her decide her next steps. "How about this, would you like to clean up first, or to eat something nice and warm before taking a bath?"

The desire to cleanse herself became near overwhelming when the option was presented to Nahida. Every pore and follicle transmitted to her brain the need to utterly remove from herself all the things that had made up those awful spaces within the palace. The scents, the sensations, the very air of it created a dreadful aura, carrying with it the pleas of uncountable poor souls. From a supposedly sterile place, its ghosts clung to her like tar.

Her hands dug into the threadbare shift she was wearing, even that imposed on her, another symbol of what had been taken from her. Beneath it, her nakedness became an intolerable vulnerability. "A bath, please." She managed.

Helena beckoned with an open hand. "Sure." She led the way up the wrought-iron stairs, keeping a close eye on the smaller child's pace, but besides some initial stumbling, Nahida did not fall behind. As they reached the second floor, the flooring changed, the material becoming smooth, softer than stone and warmer as well. The snezhnayans were amused at Nahida's perplexed expression. "It's linoleum." Explained Helena. "It's a new material that got invented by the Fatui. Father arranged for the House to get some."

"It's a lot easier to clean than wood." Grumbled the boy. "Here we are. I'm going to get some clothes." He left the two girls in front of a non-descriptive door.

The washing room was communal. Several open stalls with shower heads lined one of the tiled walls, the water-marked metal shining clean. Another wall had a row of standing sinks and mirrors, a myriad variety of little soaps, bottles and brushes in neat rows on little shelves beneath them. But rather than any of those, Nahida's guide dragged over a dented copper tub, more of a large washing bowl than anything. It was just about Nahida's size, one of many small tubs, all nested in a corner.

"Alright." Helena said after she finished filling the tub. "Clothes off and let's wash you up."

And Nahida hesitated. She wanted to take a bath, to wash off everything and let the warmth of the water soothe her, but looking at the open hand in front of her, at those blue eyes…

"Oh, sorry." The girl's voice broke through the distance, making the smaller child startle. She rubbed her forehead with a strained smile. "I'm being an inconsiderate idiot again, aren't I? Here I can turn around," she did as she said, presenting her back to Nahida, "or close my eyes, or even go away for a while. Are you hurt anywhere? Can you take a bath by yourself? We can find some way for this to work!"

A small hand grabbed hers. "Thank you." The white-haired child looked up at her with star-eyes that belayed a wisdom beyond their years, and a tiredness to match. "I… I think I need some time for myself."

With only some reassurances and instructions given, Nahida convinced the teenager to leave her. Perhaps Helena was used to small humans that acted so much more grown up than they looked. Looking at all the things that surrounded her, so many of them in child size, Nahida knew with certainty where she was then. A House that took in all those left alone and adrift for the Fatui to collect.

Was she safe here?

It felt warm, she pondered as she let the hot water sink into her. She soaked in the warmth like arid desert soil, greedily taking all the comfort she could, unstiffening toes from the northern cold, scrubbing and washing away the past from her skin. Unmarred as she was on the outside, not even the water could do much about the fear and dismay that had taken root in the most inner recesses of her soul. She was all alone.

This place and its people were warm indeed, like being covered by the Knave's cloak. But Nahida wasn't a fool, and she had not forgotten how that black hand had burned her. They were also dangerous, and she couldn't be sure of when those claws would be turned on her as well.

Knock-knock, echoed on the tiled room. "Can I come in? I brought clothes." She entered at Nahida's affirmation. "Are you feeling better, warmer? A bath is just the thing, isn't it? Oh, have you washed your hair yet or can I wash it for you?"

Nahida's white and green strands floated on the murky water. "Nobody has washed my hair before." She said, grabbing tangled locks and looking at them as if she was seeing them for the first time.

"Well, can I be the first then?" The other girl kneeled by the tub, uncaring of the water on the floor. "Trust me, having your hair washed feels amazing."

It did. Careful, calloused fingers rubbed suds into her scalp, kept warm water away from her eyes, and untangled her hair. It felt like caring, the child thought as she stared at the water-spotted ceiling, blurring as a sadness she knew all too well was alchemized into a yawning gap beneath her ribs. A hand rested gently on her shoulder as she fought back the tears. These foreigner hands that treated Nahida with more care than the people of her homeland.

They helped her dry herself without intruding. They handed her long-sleeved tunics and trousers to choose from, and brushed her hair with a comb that was missing teeth. They anxiously fussed at the redness of her eyes. They cut fruit and broke the bread for her to eat. They were always looking to know if help needed to be offered. The hospitality of the House was made of meticulous hands and watchful eyes, smiles and gestures betwixt trained professionalism and empathetic friendliness.

They stopped in front of a dark wooden door, engraved with no particularly distinguishable patterns. The children gave their guest respect akin to gods, but now the time had come for Nahida to meet with their Father, and know what reciprocity would be expected of her.

I wanted to get the nahida-arlecchino conversation here but i need to post or ill be too tired to write. guess ill up the chapter numbers by 1.

Title Here: Multi-fandom Writings

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