Chương 40: 39 - Argument

"And?" Joe asked demandingly.

"And I'll nevuh do it again…" Amy mumbled, head bowed.

"Except you said that last time. Are we making promises we can't keep again?"

"But I feel so bad for Itchy!" the girl whined.

"He's always stuck in the dawk place! He gets lonely!" The man raised an eyebrow and looked at Maggie in the bedroom doorway.

"Is that a thing? Can, uh, yessari feel lonely?"

"Yassari. And no, Ic'thagrig was not programmed to feel," she insisted.

"Neither were you."

"… Fair point. Hold, please." She focused her attention, though not her eyes, on the sitting child's shadow. It quivered imperceptibly in response as she probed the entity buried in it. The tangle of orders and absolute obedience she carefully, meticulously, and forcefully instilled within it were still there, but there was something new mixed into it. It would seem the creature had indeed developed a rudimentary emotional core that was not supposed to be there. A mutation, of sorts.

The cause was Amelia, but the responsibility was Maggie's.

"It would appear I have made a miscalculation." Yassari were a species of predatory psychic parasites that fed on memories. Also flesh, whenever the mood struck them, but mostly memories. Ic'thagrig was a special case in that its mistress gave it a steady supply of psionic energy to keep it sated. It was also thoroughly programmed to never harm its host in any way, not to mention Amelia's innate psychic resistance would make those attempts too difficult to be worth the effort.

It was a three-fold layer of security that ensured the Class-2 entity would never harm its adorable little host. However, Maggie had failed to consider what influence that host would exert upon said entity under those circumstances, because she had no frame of reference for any of this.

"So, Itchy can actually feel lonely?" Joe probed.

"In a sense. It seeks companionship without understanding why." She could uncross those wires, but she would rather not. This was a genuinely fascinating development with some groundbreaking implications. She would ponder those in depth at a later time.

"Well, I guess that kind of explains it," the man sighed.

"We Mulligans never can say no." The drive to please others was a sort of family tradition, and in his attempts to raise his daughter right, Joe had unwittingly instilled it in her even at this young an age. What that meant for little Amy was that she couldn't help but let Itchy out of her shadow. She knew she shouldn't and would get in trouble for it, but that didn't matter once it started begging. Something it did a lot, by the look of things.

It had barely been a week since that first incident in the park, and she'd already done it twice since. Those were thankfully in private, but this was a concerning trend.

"Since you admit fault, it is only proper that you offer a solution." Maggie's words sounded accusatory, though they weren't meant that way. Despite his generally goofy disposition, Joe took his job as Amelia's father very seriously. More importantly, he seemed to have a knack for it. This trait was crucial since motherhood was as alien to the Class-4 entity as she was to this reality. There were plenty of books and studies on the subject of parenting, but very few of them were applicable to Amelia.

At the very least, Maggie was damn sure there was no guide on how to keep a pet shadow-demon from acting out because it accidentally learned to be lonely. As such, she was relying on the man to do the 'heavy lifting' when it came to discipline.

"Right. I think I got this." Joe was more than happy to help. That wasn't all that unusual, and in some ways part of this problem, but he was particularly emboldened by the implicit trust in Maggie's words. He took a few moments to ponder his approach and arrived at a very human solution. Meaning that he sought to correct the immediate consequences rather than address the core of the issue. He crouched to put himself on the same eye level as his sulking daughter and put a firm hand on her head to get her attention.

"Listen, Amy. As much as you feel bad for Itchy, you can't just let him out like that. He scares people."

"He doesn't mean to!" she protested.

"I know, but that's still a bad thing to do. You're making a lot of trouble for your mama, and you don't want that, do you?"

"… No."

"Right? So, here's the deal. It's your job to keep Itchy happy. Whenever we're at home you have to let him out so he can play and cuddle with you as much as he wants. But once we're outside, or if we have company over, he has to stay put." If Itchy didn't feel lonely, he wouldn't ask Amy to come out and play all the time. That was the crux of Joe's plan. He threw Maggie a probing glance as he outlined his idea, silently testing its feasibility. A subtle nod was all the confirmation he needed.

"Can you do that for me, kiddo?" he asked with a smile.

"Yes! I'd love to!" Amelia was positively thrilled. Though her papa phrased it like a responsibility, she interpreted it as a treat. When she said Itchy was her 'best fwend' she truly meant it. How could she not, with how much they whispered into each other's heads? However, she was never really allowed to actually hang out with him, and now that she had permission she was eager to do so.

"Can I call him out wight away?"

"Uh… Let me just… give you some space first." Joe wisely retreated to the other side of Amy's bedroom, formerly their lavish apartment's sitting room. It was now host to an entire menagerie of stuffed toys, a small gallery's worth of vibrant pictures, and a fluffy bed that was buried in frills and pillows. The couple absolutely spoiled their only daughter when it came to material possessions, but were decidedly strict about her behavior.

Balance was important, lest Amelia grew up into the notorious 'entitled princess' stereotype. That aside, it was fortunate they gave the girl so much living space, as Ic'thagrig needed all of it.

"C'mon, Itchy! Play time!" Her father had barely reached the doorway when the creature exploded from the tiny girl's faint shadow. It was like a lump of darkness in the vague shape of a canine beast with entirely too many heads and legs, its malleable size instantly filling the room. Calling this thing an umbral hound was about as accurate as referring to an interstellar freighter as 'a flying metal box.'

The term did little to convey the primordial terror this shifting mass of nothingness inflicted upon the human mind. Not Joe's, though. Even Magh'rathlak's true form barely phased him when they first met, and he'd only gotten more used to this sort of thing since.

"Ehehehe!" As for Amy, her sense of aesthetics was warped before it could even fully develop. The way she merrily cuddled and petted a fang-mawed head as big as her entire body made it obvious she thought that Itchy was absolutely adorable. Thankfully, this was an exception. While it would've been funny if she saw the grotesque as cute and vice-versa, neither Joe nor Maggie actually wanted that for her.

Normalcy was going to be a rare commodity in Amelia Mulligan's life, and her parents wanted to give her as much of it as they could. Well, aside from the whole pet shadow-demon thing, but its presence wasn't optional. The girl was such an anomalous existence that it seemed inevitable she would be targeted by someone or something from either side of the veil.

The yassari had a rare blend of predatory instinct, rational thought, and psychic potential that made them uniquely suited to both avoiding and resolving violent conflicts without getting too… rebellious. This was the primary reason why Maggie had one such creature anchored to her only daughter, though she also had a secondary, more selfish motive. She wanted to see if Ic'thagrig's presence would disrupt Amelia's psychic camouflage, like throwing a bucket of paint on someone invisible to reveal them.

This Joe-like plan produced a Joe-like outcome: the paint in question simply vanished instead. Maggie's last ditch effort at finding a solution to this blind spot problem also involved Ic'thagrig. It boiled down to tapping into its senses directly. As Amelia's shadow, the yassari practically lived inside her mind and body, which gave it a back door into her psyche. Probably where this learned loneliness seeped in from, but another side effect was that it had adapted to her anomalous gift.

It wasn't able to weaken or nullify the psychic camouflage, but it could see right through it. Therefore, all Maggie needed to do was 'borrow' Ic'thagrig's 'eyes.' The theory was simple. Its execution, less so. The gap between mistress and familiar was so wide that commandeering the Class-2's senses without snuffing out its existence was comparable to shooting a pinhead with a handgun from 1. 423 light years away.

Far from impossible for Magh'rathlak the Observer, but formulating an appropriately delicate mental function took a while. Just as much time was spent refining and tweaking the sensory connection. All of it a wasted effort. Maggie was indeed able to perceive the world through Ic'thagrig, and the yassari's senses continued to observe Amelia unimpeded. However, there was no way of transmitting that critical information without relying on telepathy, so it never made it past the girl's anti-psychic filter.

Having given this matter everything from her best shot to her worst try, Maggie had no choice but to admit this was one problem she couldn't brute force her way through.

"Joe. It is time."

"Hm? For tea?"

"Yes. But also, I am ready to accept your assistance with that matter."

"Oh! Right. After you. And, uh, try not to break too much of the room, young lady," he told Amy.

"Rember it's your mother who has to put it all back together."

"Okaaay!" The couple left their lovely daughter to play with her shapeshifting monstrosity in peace while they retreated to the living room. Jeeves was still serving their afternoon snacks and drinks, so they took a seat and waited patiently for the robo-butler to finish. Well, Maggie did. Joe was pacing about, stalling while he gathered his thoughts. His wife's inability to spy on their daughter was by no means a recent development.

They'd been aware of it from the instant Amy was born, which meant Joe had nearly six years to think about it. Which he did, albeit in short bursts and only every so often. That was a lot of loose mental threads that he wanted to pull together before he opened his dumb mouth. It wasn't until he had a long drink of freshly brewed tea that he finally felt ready to tackle this problem.

"For starters, I suppose I should make sure I fully understand the issue, yeah?"

"Agreed," Maggie nodded.

"It's not really that you're worried about Amy. If anything, this mental block thing she has going on sounds pretty useful, so it's not like you want to get rid of it entirely."

"Indeed."

"You're also not particularly worried about keeping track of her. Itchy kind of does that already, yeah?"

"To an extent. Remotely accessing security feeds offers greater clarity."

"Right. So, then, what really bothers you is that you can look at her, but not sense her. You find it… uh… unsettling?"

"Precisely."

"Don't suppose you could elaborate on that?" Maggie paused for a few moments as she formulated how to convey the peculiar sensation in a way that Joe could relate to. Fortunately, there was a point of reference they were both intimately familiar with.

"Remember the third hospital arc in Love at First Flight?" Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. That being long-running soap operas.

"How could I not?" the man scoffed.

"It's only my fourth favorite storyline of all time. Wait, how is that relevant?"

"Hank Gilroy's subplot, where he has to spend weeks talking to Melanie Rogers through the glass of the isolation ward. I believe that captures how I feel about Amelia, except there's no prognosis for her getting out of that ward." Joe looked down at his half-empty teacup as he mulled over that mental imagery.

"What about the way you get all jumpy whenever she comes over?" Maggie previously described it as Amelia 'sneaking up on her,' but that wasn't quite right. If anything she detected the girl's approach from as far as thirty paces away using her lesser senses. It was the gap between those and her supernatural perception that truly upset her, like observing two conflicting versions of reality at the same time. This aspect, too, was encapsulated within the aforementioned storyline.

"That's the part where Hank dreams of finally hugging Melanie, only to suddenly wake up."

"Damn," Joe fell silent for a bit.

"And you go through that every day?"

"Yes. Often multiple times."

"Right…" the man rubbed his chin.

"Bollocks, Maggie. No wonder you couldn't keep a lid on it." While she let most of her emotions flow freely, there were some that she mercilessly quenched. Her inability to completely stifle this cognitive whiplash implied it was every bit as intense as the melodramatic example provided.

"Okay, I think this can work," he said reassuringly. Mostly to himself.

"The first thing you need to do is admit that this 'blind spot' thing isn't a problem you can just fix."

"Already there." They wouldn't be having this conversation otherwise.

"No, Maggie, that's not what I mean," he pinched his nose.

"There is nothing to fix, because Amy doesn't have a problem. She has a condition. Something that you– we, as parents, need to accept and learn to live with."

"Similarly to when Leah got boneitis in Season–""Stop that, will you?" he cut her off with a groan.

"Forget the soaps and analogies and just focus on what I'm trying to say. I get that Amy's camo-thingy upsets you deeply, but she's not the one with the problem in need of fixing. It's you. Your attitude, worldview, whatever you want to call it – that's what we need to work on."

"I disagree. Amelia's 'condition,'" she air-quoted, "is an unprecedented and undocumented anomaly that even I have not previously encountered. We have no way of knowing what sort of complications it could invite if left unattended. There's a very real possibility that the perception blocking effect intensifies and renders her imperceptible to even your own mind. Or what if there is an unrelated health issue that I fail to detect and treat before it turns chronic, possibly fatal."

Those were some very valid points that Joe hadn't really considered, and while he could argue against them, this wasn't that kind of conversation.

"Maggie. That's called being human. Living with uncertainty is kind of what we do around here."

"… I know. And I hate it."

"Odd thing to say for someone who loves mysteries so much. Those can't happen if everything's predicted and predetermined." The woman took a deep breath and cut straight to her point.

"I cannot embrace ignorance as you can, Joe. Mere acceptance of Amelia's anomalous condition will not alter my ability to perceive her, and will therefore fail to alleviate the autonomous reaction caused by doing so."

"Oh, so you've already become all-knowing, have you?"

"Excuse me?" she blinked in confusion.

"I mean, how else would you be certain it wouldn't help even though you haven't bloody tried it?" Maggie stared at Joe for a few awkward seconds before slumping forward, elbows on the table and face in her palms.

"Seriously, how did you get this good at arguing with me?"

"Practice. Lots … of practice," his eyes glazed over for a moment.

"Damn your human adaptability!" She shook her fist for comedic effect, prompting a chuckle from Joe. Mood sufficiently lightened, she settled back into her seat with a defeated smile.

"Very well. I will attempt to cultivate the mindset you outlined." She still wasn't convinced it would fix her jumpiness around Amelia, but, as the man indirectly pointed out, it was wrong of her to assume the outcome without making an attempt.

"That's all I ask. Just, uh, try to build it up naturally, y'know?" Trying to force an emotion or mental state was one of Maggie's bad habits. It rarely ended well.

"I know. Though, I may require some conjured patience, if that's alright with you."

"Should be fine, yeah."

"Any suggestions on how to actually start?"

"Well, you seem fine whenever she's right next to you. It's only when she goes off and comes back that bothers you, right?"

"Wrong. The dissonance is still there. It lessens, but never truly fades. It is… difficult to admit, but there is a sense of comfort once Amelia leaves the range of my mundane perception."

"Oh. Huh. Does that make you want to get away from her?"

"Naturally, though I make an effort to not let it show."

"I mean, I had no idea you felt this way, so good job on that front, but it probably still nudges you to keep your distance, yeah?"

"… Minutely so, yes."

"Then all the more reason to stick close. Call it a form of exposure therapy, like when you tried to cure my astrohodophobia."

"Not tried. Succeeded."

"Sure, whatever," he rolled his eyes.

"Point is, you need to really focus on her. Always be looking, listening, or touching, without breaks. Sleep in the same bed, if you have to. Might as well spoil her rotten while you're at it, get some good vibes going."

"Are you sure that is wise?"

"Worked for Itchy, didn't it?"

"Not what I meant. Amelia is still in her formative years. I do not wish to smother her emotionally."

"Amy will be fine. Just tell her it's an experiment you need help with. She'll eat that up like it's fresh pizza. Heck, you wouldn't have to lie about it." Not that Maggie was capable of stating outright falsehoods, but she had gotten pretty good at flirting with the truth.

"Very well," she nodded.

"I shall subscribe to these terms and conditions." Joe squinted at her with mild disapproval. He really wished she wouldn't use that phrase. It was so utterly meaningless since nobody in the entire galaxy actually read those bloody license thingies. Well, nobody except for Maggie. On second thought, hitting that checkbox actually mattered when she did it. He set aside that mental tangent.

Though pulling Maggie's brain out of her own butt was the main point of this discussion, he did have something else he wanted to talk about.

"I was thinking, by the way. How much do you actually know about Amy's condition?"

"I believe 'very little' is an apt summary." The effects and reach of the psychic camouflage were obvious – in a sense – but how they were achieved, where they stemmed from, and other such details remained shrouded in mystery.

"But it's still a psychic power, right?"

"Most likely, though I cannot be certain."

"… Are there non-psychic powers out there?"

"It is a big galaxy, Joe. With trillions more beyond it. It is a statistical inevitability that there are other methods to subvert this reality's natural order."

"Right. But, for the sake of argument, let's say Amy's just a new kind of psychic."

"Alright."

"Can't she train to control or suppress this thing? I mean, human psionics have been around for ages, and Amy's more human than, uh, you. So, maybe if she gets a bit older and we… send her to… a special academy… you know?" Though it was his idea, the more he thought about it, the less he liked it. After knowing, living, and on occasion working with AJ, he really didn't want his precious little girl to be sent off to become a government lab rat or military lap dog.

Realistically that would never happen since she was Maggie's daughter, and the Supernatural Eviction Agency knew better than to rattle that cosmic can of mind-worms. Still, even the fleeting thought of Amy being taken away made Joe stumble over his words.

"That could be considered a best-case scenario," the woman admitted.

"However, with so many unknowns I find myself unwilling to entertain it as anything beyond a remote possibility."

"Yeah… Except you're a time traveler. Can't you just, like, take a sneak peek a decade or two ahead, see what's what?"

"Joe, we've been over this," she groaned. While Maggie could technically slip through the temporal barrier, the process was far too complex for the human mind to even imagine. Navigation alone was an extremely tenuous prospect since time, space, and gravity were intertwined on a fundamental level, and this reality had an abundance of all three. Popping back and forth was a lot simpler beyond the veil since things worked differently on that side, but there were still other factors and restrictions to consider.

"No, no, hear me out. I get that there can't be two versions of you at the same time." This was one of the biggest hurdles. The Class-4 entity could not meet its past or future selves. Even if there was such a desire, the attempt would automatically fail as there could only ever be one Observer. The instant Magh'rathlak became itself, it shut the door on any other cosmic entity that might encroach on its conceptual domain. Even if it was another version of itself from a different timeline.

The only reason Maggie was able to return to Joe's side at all was because of the dimensional border separating this reality from her currently imprisoned Class-3 self – a loophole in that otherwise immutable law. The man should've known all this, seeing as this was far from the first time they'd had this conversation and his wife had done her best to explain these circumstances.

"But, what if you set, like, a mental alarm clock," he forged on regardless.

"Tell your future self exactly 10 years from now to pop back home for a spell so you won't get in your own way." Maggie smiled as she listened. Though his idea was utterly devoid of merit, the sheer sincerity with which he presented it had a peculiar charm to it. Joe knew next to nothing about the actual mechanics of time travel, and even less so about her self-taught methods. He was fully aware of that, yet he still dared to voice his ideas and opinions without shame or hesitation. And Maggie loved him for it.

She almost felt bad that she had to rain on his parade, so she tried to soften the blow by focusing on the most egregious flaw in his suggestion.

"I'm afraid I cannot simply 'pop back home.' Because my home isn't now. It's so far in the future that I cannot reliably find my way back unless you perform my summoning ritual. Which, as you no doubt recall, can only be performed at a very specific time of year, and I would sooner see the universe implode than miss even a millisecond of our time together." A familiar chill crept up Joe's spine. Maggie was dead serious about that last part.

He quite liked his universe unimploded, so he decided it was best he did not tempt fate by pushing the matter.

"Haha… Yeah… Anway! Amy's psionics training. Let's call that Plan B, shall we?"

"Plan A being the acceptance cultivation experiment?"

"Mhm. And if those don't pan out, I'm pretty sure I've also got a Plan C or maybe even D floating around in here somewhere," he tapped his forehead.

"I dare not imagine what those could be, but I look forward to them all the same." Having spoken aplenty about a range of hefty topics, the two of them settled into a comfortable silence and immersed themselves in the afternoon's teatime. Joe's idle thoughts ended up drifting towards that Lightspeed Patrol show that Amy got hooked on recently. He couldn't help but notice that the production value was awfully high for such a basic program.

Meanwhile, Maggie was quietly searching the web for hints and ways to 'cultivate acceptance.' A tricky prospect considering her nature as a Class-4 cosmic entity cosplaying as a human being. Unsurprisingly, she found no textbooks that could possibly fit her specific circumstances. The closest thing she got was a 200-year old essay from some guy who chose to subsist primarily on organic footwear. A fascinating read, but ultimately unhelpful.

The couple were just about to wrap up teatime and look towards the evening's entertainment when Joe noticed Maggie get micro-startled.

"Mama! Papa!" Sure enough, it was Amy. The girl trotted into the dining room positively overflowing with excitement, no doubt eager to tell them something incredibly important. The parents locked eyes for a brief second, and Joe encouraged Maggie with a firm nod. The woman discreetly braced herself and pushed her seat away from the table, then patted her thighs. Amelia eagerly accepted the silent invitation and headed over. Maggie bent over and scooped the girl up in her arms, then gently sat her down on her knee.

"What is it, Amelia?"

"I taught Itchy a twick!" The parents shared another questioning set of looks. Joe's face blatantly asked whether the Class-2 umbral hound was capable of learning tricks. His wife replied with the tiniest of shrugs – a cautious 'apparently.'

"Truly?" Maggie turned back to the girl.

"Uh-huh! Can I show you?"

"Please do."

"Yess!" She threw her tiny fist up in triumph, prompting the yassari to explode out of her shadow once again. The living room was substantially larger than the former sitting room, yet the Class-2 still filled almost all of it.

'Almost' being the operative word. It did not dare encroach towards the table that its mistress and her mate were at.

"Okay, Itchy!" the girl pointed at it.

"Get weady!" The vaguely canine shadow-thing seemed to stand at attention. Somehow. It was honestly hard to tell exactly what it did with all those faceless heads and morphing limbs, but the sentient silhouette's shape was most assuredly standing and undeniably at attention.

"Aaand, sit!" There was a rush of air and an audible 'fwomp' as the monstrous mass of psychic energy instantly compressed itself to size comparable to Amy's and assumed a much more defined shape. It had exactly four legs, ending in four paws, situated in entirely normal positions along a reasonably proportioned torso that ended with a furiously wagging tail-like appendage in the back. It still had a few rebellious tendrils poking out of it from weird places, but for the most part resembled an actual dog.

Except for the head. That part was more like a T-Rex. Or perhaps a dragon? It was a big, blocky snout with lots of teeth and a pair of shimmering white circles where the eyes would normally be. And yes, the creature was, in fact, sitting.

"See? See!?" the girl pointed and bounced in Maggie's lap.

"Isn't he cute?"

"Absolutely fascinating," the woman agreed, eyes locked onto the creature.

"And very impressive. I truly had no idea that Ic'thagrig could achieve such darling dimensions." Something about that probing glare and insistent intonation would have made the creature sweat if it was physically capable of doing so. Joe knew those signs far better than Itchy, which was why he couldn't help but feel a bit sorry for the eldritch pooch. Though Maggie had learned to be gentle with her organic test subjects, that courtesy didn't extend to her familiars.