Chương 88: Back to Basics

Addy and Smoothie pulled me through the underground hallways of the Kobayashi estate, separating me further from party, people, and my dear, dear methylcarbinol. And that, among one other reason, was cause enough to get a bit mopey.

"Addy, it's not fair. Addy, you don't understand. I've been building my following for almost two years now, a-and the people, they like you more!" Addy stopped, propping me up against a wall and snapped her fingers in front of my eyes.

"She's drunk. How did she get so absolutely, totally, entirely drunk in fifteen minutes?"

"Oh god, this is so embarrassing," other me noted.

"I thought I got more charming with a bit of buzz. Apparently I just get more clingy. Wait, are you drooling?"

"Addy, I love youuu," I said, tiredly sagging into her arms.

"But saying that is narcissistic. I, we, we can't be, can't… we love youuu, Addy! But you have ten times more followers than me even though you barely post and it's not funny and I want to cry."

"You're still on about that? Why the hell should I care what some people halfway across the globe think about me?"

"First off, it's not 'some people', it's over seventy million, a-and that's just the people who've actually subscribed to your accounts." If I scrunched the numbers (I told the system to do the calculus for me), then I came out to less than half that number.

"A-and second off, I only have almost five million." Addy huffed.

"Listen to yourself. Only five million people love you?"

"Y-yeah. Only. And I can't figure out how to make it more."

"I think it's the eyes," Smoothie muttered.

"People don't know where to look. Creeps them out."

"Uuuugh! I wanna be loved! I want them to make a golden statue in my name! A statue with a dress and a wand and a plaque that reads: Magical girls. They're… good." The two shared a look. It was a look of disappointment. Maybe that idea needed to simmer for a while longer.

"Look, Sam, I know this is probably the worst time to tell you," Addy said, activating a little buzzing thingy that made my system glitch out, "but you need to know that the envoys of the system cannot be trusted."

"Whaaat? Nooo. You're telling me that the emotionally endowed envoys of a pre-release magical girl system, the ones that are running around and enticing people to form pacts with them, have ulterior motives?"

"Yeah, exact— you know they're offering pacts to people?" I nodded.

"That's how you get Custodians after all. Haven't you seen Madoka Magika? Of course you haven't, it's a, a… a cliche. And cliches are popular and they make people understand what you're about quickly, which is what the envoys need when they're offering a pact to a dying girl in a burning car in the middle of a convergence event. Or something." Addy stared at me for what felt like a solid minute. She had such beautiful eyes. I wanted to kiss them. Err, kiss her. Not the eyes. That would be weird.

"Sam, you do know that the dumb part of the system, the machine part, is the one that determines whether you do or don't get to become a Custodian, right?" I nodded.

"And that the envoys are supposed to be emotional support programs that refocus a Custodian's mind between deaths, not arbiters of who does and doesn't become a Custodian?" I nodded again. My girlfriend was so smart. Addy groaned in frustration.

"On that note, how do you even know it's the envoys going around offering pacts, and not the fae, demons, or whoever else taking up their disguise?" For a moment, I tried to find the answer on Addy's increasingly concerned face. Nope, not there. I turned to other me. Lifeline please! Time to phone-a-friend.

The colors on her face were exceedingly interesting, morphing from surprise, to pondering, to realization, followed by an increased migration of red bloodcells away from her facial, angular, and supraorbital veins.

"Sam?" Addy said, turning away from me.

"What happened after you died in that car crash?"

"Uh. Um. Fuck?" she said.

"Heyyy, we don't swear, that's not part of our brand," I admonished.

"Of course, the extra essence slot." Addy muttered a curse.

"I thought you were like Clementine. But no, the envoy of joy did something to you. It offered you a pact and you accepted."

"I didn't…" Smoothie was flustered." We didn't know Mochi was offering us a contract in that sense when they offered to fix us. Mochi doesn't make any demands of us. Also, I'm pretty sure we'd be scraps of floating soul-stuff if we didn't accept it. So really, are the envoys all that bad?" Addy was looking more and more uneasy. Maybe she was afraid. Maybe she was afraid of us.

"I, uhhh…" Panic, fear, anticipation of the worst. I leaned forward and kissed Addy deeply. Then picked her up. Then kissed her some more until I felt a bit better. By the time we parted, there was a hint of a blush back on her face.

"... don't leave me. Please?" After a few moments catching her breath, Addy muttered into my nape.

"Don't say that. I could never. This just means I'm keeping an extra close eye on you." Smoothie sighed.

"Look, as much as I'd like to play the neutral arbiter of all things, you two kissing was hot as heck. Let's get those futons. Worry about tomorrow in the morning." Now that sounded like a great idea.

"I wanna hug baddy Addy," I blurted out.

"... baddy Addy?"

"She means your hybrid form," other Sam said, looking aside with a blush.

"And… I wouldn't be against trying something new with some transformations." Something behind Addy's eyes told me she was charging an anticipation spell.

"... I'm banning your eldritch form with all the eyes."

"And I'm banning your literal tanuki form. But besides that, anything goes. Anything." +++ Haruka Haruka, aka Medusahead, aka the smartest bitch on the block, had woken up early in the morning to make some Şekerpare, a sort of turkish pastry soaked in lemon syrup. Nezahualcoyotl's cookies had earned him critical acclaim among the adults, and incited a bottomless desire for novel sweets among the kids, of which there weren't few.

The Kobayashis were like dragons, except their hoard consisted of orphans and other children instead of gold. The ravenous horde demanded a regular influx of sweets, and since her cousin could neither be relied upon for baking, nor for waking up at a decent hour, it fell solely on her shoulders. Well, mostly.

"You really enjoy baking, Nezahualcoyotl," she said, one snake drone eying the vampire putting the finishing touches on his own pastries.

"Please, Coyote is enough," the vampire responded. Coyote had stayed the night. It wasn't exactly a reassurance knowing that someone of his capabilities was staying here for a friendly visit. Ergo, she was keeping an eye on him.

"Nezahualcoyotl Acolmiztli. The name of a historical king in pre-Columbian Mexico. But you're not him, are you?" He didn't pause kneading his part of the dough.

"I met him, once, during my American period, during the golden age he ushered for his kingdom. We were… friends, or so I hoped. There was a forward-looking air about him, one I sought to emulate. After the Spanish conquered his kingdom, I took his name to remember him by, though this was years after his death." He paused.

"It was a childish idea. I could well have taken direct action to prevent his nation's conquest. But I didn't. I looked at the work before me and turned away, my ego bruised, but content with an act of symbolism that cost me nothing in the moment. The name, the comparison embarasses me now. Hence, I am simply Coyote." Haruka whisked a couple eggs into a batter, all while keeping a snakedrone's camera on Neza… on Coyote. Eventually, she finished her part, and turned to him, crossing her arms.

"I don't suppose this connects to your interest in baking?"

"After spending millennia having to bargain, trade, or steal the lifeblood readily packed into others, I suppose I've come to enjoy the process of carefully measuring and making my own food." Coyote licked his lips as he ground a stick of cinnamon over some Pastéis de Nata.

"Sweet tooth?"

"Nothing I eat tastes like overmuch without blood." He sipped from a cooled blood bag through a straw.

"But watching another person benefit from something I made with my own hands is quite pleasant, as far as alternatives go. Watching the way oil and water and egg mix to become something wholly new… simply entrancing."

"Hm." Maybe he was onto something. Haruka was feeling quite pleasant herself. The low-thrumming joy was out of place in her stable heart. As an anticipation-trust mage, joy was a result of achieving beyond what she expected, and there wasn't much to expect from egg custard pastries. And yet, she was getting happier and happier. The distant sound of heavy footsteps grew close quickly. Someone squeaked to a halt behind her. Haruka turned, wooden spoon in hand to defend against the unfamiliar intruder.

Or, rather, the half-familiar intruder? There stood one person, Samantha, but not Samantha, and Addy, but not Addy. Her hair was of a mixed length, floating as if buoyed by invisible water. She still had six arms as well as six eyes, but a pair of them were glowing golden in the exact color of her cousin's eyes. And she was shining from top to bottom with an odd, giddy glow, especially her hair, all in spite of her evident distress. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road.

If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it." Haruka. Help! We screwed up!" Her voice was oddly distorted, like it was spoken with two voices at once, one stumbling after the other in an echo. The echo-y figure took a step forward, tripped, and fell on the ground." Ow me nobse. I don't trip. I never trip, not since [Proprioception sensors]. I knew that stupid Soul-transformation was hiding something!" Haruka squinted and pointed at them with her spoon.

"How in the hell did you… are you two fused?" +++ Sam? We totally fused. We absolutely, entirely, possibly irrevocably fused. It happened quite suddenly. Addy and I had woken up, entangled as usual, and after a bit of cuddling and friendly ribbing, things got heated. We tried some new transformation constellations. Gummy-spider-me was impractical and unattractive to Addy, as was both Addy's and my own big body form.

That didn't leave much, and hey, when you're trying to make your partner happy, why not try the harmless transformation that literally radiates joy and does nothing else? Wrong move, apparently. One moment we were in each other's arms, the other, well… I looked down at my hand, which felt like someone else's hand. I felt Addy's gaze follow it as well, because she was inside my head, or body or, well, yeah.

"I suppose we are sharing a body right now." I chuckled.

"So in a way. Yeah, we did fuse."

"My life is almost as weird as dragonball," Medusahead muttered quietly.

"Almost. That should be a positive qualifier. It isn't."" Dragonball GT was a hell of a lot weirder than this shit,"Addy said with my mouth." Also, regrettably, we don't know how to undo this."

"Can't you just undo your transformation like normal people?" Medusahead asked.

"We tried," Addy and I both yelled, lying/flailing/spasming in place. In trying to push myself off the ground, all I managed was to punch it and myself in the face. The wooden floor cracked under the impact.

"Oh come on, am I going to have to relearn this multi-arm stuff again!?"

"If you do, do it outside. And don't you have one of your doubles to help you?"

"She… won't be waking up anytime soon." I barely remembered Addy and I falling upon her like a pair of wolves yesterday. The poor girl was tuckered out." We could use the training field. Wait, you have a training field?"" Aunt Nagi uses it for her communal yoga classes. People from across the world come to enjoy her in-person lessons. They give her the honorific of Nagi-sensei. Wait, why are you searching her name on your system interface… aunt Nagi has a youtube channel!?" Medusahead snorted.

"It is seriously freaky watching you talk to yourself. Now go, and don't come back before lunch is ready." We trudged/shambled/stumbled outside, gathering odd looks and bruises every time we slammed into a stone wall. It made a sound like metal on stone. Somehow, my forehead was much harder than before. I felt quite a bit taller, stronger too, but everything was out of proportion. Technically, this was our forehead now. Wow, that was going to get confusing real fast.

"So," I said, looking around at various sand pits.

"How many laws of physics are we breaking just by standing here today?"" I don't know," Addy groaned, sending a rumble through my throat that echoed pleasantly." We already have enough problems. I don't need this one on top of all the other ones." Mood.

"At least you're keeping a close eye on me."

"Not funny, Sam." Addy sighed. I also sighed, delayed by tenths of a second. Together, we made a strangled sound somewhere between accidentally swallowing something, and a burp. We stiffened. For a while, Addy just stared at the robotic arm she'd now inherited from me.

"Why do you still have this?"

"You know how after dying you can modify your starting loadout while your soul's in low-earth orbit? Mochi allowed me to get a body with one less arm!"

"And why would you do that?"

"Because Sin is really good at making me shoot spiderwebs from my hand, which feels great by the way. Also, it lost most of its turret body. It has nowhere to go." <<beep boop>> my arm bleeped. <<i am poor turret>>"It talks. Of course it talks," Addy muttered.

"Why is it sending me requests for steel brushes and gun oil?"

"Because it's a greedy bastard begging for scraps at the table. Sin, stop that." <<boo>> <<i require nanobots>> <<pls invent nanobots and then give me lots>> Feeling Addy's need to lie down and think, I loosened up and let gravity drag us to the floor. We hit the sand pit with the thwump of a sack of grain.

"I'm sorry about this," I muttered." Don't be. Magic is poorly explored. Sometimes, accidents happen."

"Look, this is one of my transformations, as long as we don't feed it any joy it'll run out in a couple minutes. Then we'll separate and go about our merry day doing… not much."

"We don't have anything planned?"

"Nope."

"… having a real weekend feels weird."

"You can get up and do something anytime." In response, I felt six hands start to roam. Chest, face, arms, thighs, every part of me was brushed, squeezed, and catalogued.

"Thank you for feeling me up, Addy, but I don't think this is what either of us had in mind with 'adding transformations to the bedroom'."

"I'm not — look. Our body is as hard as steel. We're over eight feet tall. And… our stats. The transformation added them together."

"For real?" I shot up, feeling various muscles cramp and convulse.

"Aaah — okay, wait, you just used six arms without a problem. Ouch. Let's try giving one person the reins while the other just relaxes." My head bobbed. With an exhale, tension bled from my frame. I was in control of the body again. It felt ungainly simply because it was different, but Addy was right: I was an eight foot goddess of a magical girl, with floaty glowing hair. I jumped, and my body soared. I landed, and the earth shook.

I got into a two-handed handstand, hopped onto one hand, then an extended index finger, wrenched my free hands to the left, and twirled, spinning in place like a top. Once the fun was spun out of it, I hopped back onto my feet.

"Addy, are you seeing this?" I looked around, finding a big wooden pole dug into the ground, nearly as wide as I was at the hip. My system told me that it was a teppo pole, the type that sumo rikishi used to build upper body strength by slapping and pushing against it thousands and tens of thousands of times. It looked quite sturdy, and only wobbled a little bit when I punched it. There was a dent left in the wood in the shape of my knuckles.

"That should've done a lot more,"Addy mused." Did it hurt?"

"[More Arms] divides strength gain from Body between all arms, so by six. And no, not a bit." Addy grunted, and suddenly I felt myself pushed to the passenger seat again. She twirled in a semi-circle, did a frankly ridiculous flip, and landed a shin kick. The tenpo pole bent, folding over into two uncleanly shattered halves. Addy paused, and I could feel the giddiness mixed with the guilt of having broken something you probably shouldn't have.

"I… didn't expect that," she said." Neither did I."

"I blame the stats." Which were patently ridiculous. Body: 822 Sense: 879 Mind: 690 Soul: 1301 Addy and I squinted in unison.

"It took our soul stat, added it together, then multiplied it by the normal multiplication you get with your transformation. It's as if we're fifty levels higher. We're a full-caster at this point, but without needing to compromise any other stats."

"The scaling for our spells have gotta be through the roof." My tongue darted out, licking my lips.

"Hey. What? You licked my lips. I licked my lips. Our lips. Communal property? I can get behind that." A shiver went down my spine as Addy sunk into the backseat. I was in control again.

"Alright, before we fall out of this transformation, wanna cast something?"

"Absolutely." Addy licked our lips.

"I want to see how far we can go. I've got [Pounce]."

"Since when?"

"Since level 15. It doesn't need a chant and has a minor cost in anticipation. It makes my next jump go further and faster. Also, it makes my next melee attack deal extra damage. Scales off of Body." I'd always thought she was a bit too fast for a sense-focused build. Turns out she'd been spamming a cheap movement spell that could be recharged with her best emotion within seconds.

"Alright. I'll contribute a meta spell then. [Concentrate Spell] is technically a passive that triggers when I add the words 'concentrate spell' in front of a chant. It consumes more charges to make one big, fat spell."

"Sort of like my [Overcharge]. That just increases a spell's effectiveness by a percentage, scaling off of Soul, in exchange for giving the spell a cooldown afterwards proportional to the increase in effectivity."

"Nice. Oooh, I can double dip one of those with [Echo]." Though this was approaching a scary number of multipliers. Once again, I came to intimately understand what exactly made the soul-focused flying caster meta so scary.

"Hey Addy? Let's not go absolutely all out right away, okay?"

"... Fine. But you give me control over our body."

"Deal. Alright, I'll start. Echo—"" Overcharge"" Concentrate Spell — wait, did you just say overch—"" Pounce!" I blacked out immediately. Moments later, my eyes fluttered open, and I was seeing clouds. At eye level.

"Aaadddyyy, what the hell did you dooo!?" I yelled. The only answer was a manic laughter coming from my own mouth." Look at us, we're flying again."

"With what propulsion!? We're falling! Without magical protection!"

"So what? Just do a superhero landing, we've got the raw stats. I'm sure your followers will love that."

"... hey, you're right." I grabbed my old phone — not much use for anything but selfies these days — and started recording.

"Heyo, 'tis I, the magical girl arachnid—" A gust of wind knocked it out of my hands.

"Crap." Then there was a twist in space and a plop. Suddenly I was looking Addy in the face again, curls flying everywhere like wind-whipped flames.

"Double Crap," she said. I shot a line of silk to reel her in. And that was when we reached the peak of our arc.

"Crap, crap, crap — system, two parachutes, instabuy." [System shop access is currently unavailable. Please check your connection and confirm that you are within serviced areas. Serviced areas include: Earth, Cauldron (human controlled).]"Addy, is your stupid jammer still on!?" I asked while she frantically searched through her pants, practically tearing them apart.

"Shit, I don't know where it ended up after last night — we have maybe thirty seconds until impact at terminal velocity." We wouldn't survive that in our unfused form. And I'd just gone through nearly all my transformations last night. Irresponsible, I know, but it was for science and love! Mostly love.

"Oh, I hate this Idea," I said, firing up [Elasticity] to full channel capacity, then started making one-cost body doubles, doubling up with [Echo] wherever possible. Soft and softer Sams appeared out of nowhere, linking up in a giant ball of me's. We hit the ground like a giant gumball. The orb of slightly elastic Samantha's contracted, then bounced even as bones broke and the damaged ones poofed back into the ether.

Addy and I were launched through the forest, bouncing off trees, then the ground, then something that made me see stars. Then we stopped. Everything was quiet for a while." We'll be—" Addy coughed.

"We'll be fine." The dizziness in my head lessened, Addy taking half the concussion before disappearing it with [I'll be fine]. Then she did it again, until I could focus on one point in space with all six eyes again.

"I said don't go full tilt right at the start, Addy."

"I know, I know, I…" She wiped blood from her mouth and looked away.

"I'm sorry. After seeing your body doubles, I wanted to show off a bit."

"I'm pretty sure I'm the body double." I grabbed her into a hug from behind.

"Don't be too sorry. It was fun. Up until the landing. And now we know that layering meta spells on movement skills is dangerous."

"Mhm." She was one step beyond sulking. A part of her actually seemed afraid that she'd hurt me.

"Should've used a different spell. With [Shadow step], it would've just increased the range, probably by hundreds of yards. Or maybe you could've made another you, turned her into the ultimate body double."

"Haha. Hahaha. Ha. No." Two hyperrealistic versions of me was enough. I didn't need an inferiority complex over a perfect copy on top of my current identity crisis.

"Alright. I lost my phone. Let's go find that, and on the way find out where the heck we are."

"We jumped for a mile or two, but it's still the same forest," Addy noted. I nodded and helped her to her feet. The forest was quiet, but for the distant chirping of a single brave bird.

"Sorta feels like we're stranded out in the middle of nowhere," I said. Addy shrugged.

"I suppose. I haven't really been to this part of the forest much."

"Two lovers, lost all alone among pines and vicious songbirds." I put a hand dramatically to my forehead and swooned.

"Oh, but they still have each other." Addy paused. Turned around. And decided to play along.

"They saved each other's lives. But in the aftermath, a primal hunger sets in. They don't know how to resist it, only to satiate, for nature has given them a hunger for—" Slightly above and to the right of my head, Mochi poofed into existence.

"Gosh golly darn dang do I have some gossip for you two. But first, there's a convergence event nearby. I bet you can deal with it. In fact, I bet you can deal with it before that other stinky Custodian." I blinked.

"What?"

"Oop, can't say who. But I'm betting on you. Can't say what! See ya around." Mochi poofed into non-existence again. A small quest window opened up on both our system interfaces. [Special mission: Cu-Cu-Custodian competition] Assumed difficulty: One Sam, one squeaky tanuki (optional) Primary objective: Find the convergence event! Clear the convergence event! Do it faster than that ugly toad, or anyone else! Primary reward: Soulcoins. Lots. Ivory. Not so lots.

Also, x1 hug from ya favorite sentient library of code, Mochi <3: * XD.