Before I rounded the corner, I disengaged [Act]. While it might have been funny to wait until I had sat down across from Kay, it was more polite to let her know I was coming. As expected, as soon as I entered the street the cafe was on, Kay looked up from her book and waved me over.
“Sorry for making you come out here so early,” I apologized as I sat down and grabbed one of the small menus.
“It was no issue for me. I was meaning to come down to the city for some supplies anyway- you just gave me a good excuse,” Kay replied as they finished their page and closed the book. “You wanted to know more about the party later tonight?”
“Yeah… Like I said before, I don’t like the idea of being the center of attention, and I recently heard that there might be reporting done on this either by an official news team or some of the MGs who like vlogging or whatever. I just want to know how prepared I should be for my face getting out there- and if I could avoid that.”
After taking a moment to think, Kay started, “When it comes to live news broadcasts, they have to ask permission to be on the facility's premises. However, we do have a designated team that has an easier time for when publicity is needed. Their broadcasts are then distributed to actual news companies with a few minute delay for the footage to be reviewed. You could easily request that they stick to entrance interviews and or avoid broadcasting you. As far as other MGs…” She took a break to take a sip of coffee before slowly continuing, “on the whole we could be described as generally polite, but ranging on a scale from socially oblivious to surprisingly shy. Since you are the excuse for SEYA throwing the party, it is likely that more public ones will try to record your speech and at least one interview for whatever social media they use.”
I had kinda forgotten about the speech, so I cut in while she took another sip. “So for the speech, what would be some specific topics to cover or avoid? Do I need to do a whole icebreaker thing, or can I get away with a brief ‘hello, here I am, goodbye’ cop-out?”
“As your mentor, I will give a brief introduction with your name and how long you’ve been an MG, as well as anything else you might want me to cover- although anything else would be better for you to say yourself. I suppose I should have asked this sooner, but seeing as your parents are somewhat well known- or at least easy to find- why are you so averse to being known?”
“My dislike of publicity is because of- not in spite of- my parent’s growing status. Suffice to say, when I was growing up, they were totally unknown, so the sudden increase in visibility shocked me. From there, I found that I hated people poking around in my life. My parents respected this and allowed me to sneak off to a small college where no one knew me or them- and I never was in a position to be news or gossip worthy until now.” After thinking for a second I added, “they also don’t know I’m an MG… because I lied and had SEYA cover for me.”
Nodding slowly, Kay said, “That certainly warrants further consideration on all our parts. For now, I’ll see if I can get the people running the event to be a bit stricter when it comes to anything about you being shared. Although, I expect there will be heavy requests for you to have some sort of public statement and image.”
With a sudden realization, quickly mentioned, “I don’t know if the perk that disguises the more… unique parts of my appearance works with pictures or video. Can you take a picture of me to test that?”
“Of course.”
By the end of our impromptu photoshoot and subsequent tinkering with the photos, we figured out a few things about my perk. While it did interfere with how pictures of me were perceived, it didn’t actually hide anything from the camera. While I might appear like a normal person to someone looking at the photos, trying to pick a color from a region where my horns or tail were would return their actual color. Similarly, distorting the image would create regions around where my prosthesis should be that clearly had something wrong with them. Worst of all, after the image was copied and shared a few times, the magic would degrade and completely stop working.
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As I took a long drink from some tea I had ordered as we were messing around, Kay said, “if you want to prevent your real face from getting out there, it will be necessary to completely ban cameras. While it should be doable, a few people might be grumpy- especially since that means we will have to stop anyone from bringing in phones.”
“Yeah, people wouldn’t like that- and it would be unsustainable as they will just talk later. Could I just wear a mask and not bother with my perks? Although if I did that, I wouldn’t want you to introduce me with my name… And I wouldn’t want to share anything too personal. Huh.”
“That suggestion is actually very reasonable. Many MGs do something similar when talking to the press so they can have the illusion of separating being an MG from their personal life. This might be a step up from that, but I would still run it by the event coordinators. In fact, let me… There we go. I told them the plan. Now we just have to make sure to pick up a mask while shopping somewhere.”
With a few ideas for designs already spinning around in my mind, I responded, “don’t worry about that. I’ll fabricate something in the machine shop when we get back. On that note, how fancy is the party going to be?”
With a slight chuckle, Kay said, “there isn’t a set dress code, however, many MGs like to take events like this as an opportunity to cement their image. Expect a lot of very nice but eccentric outfits mixed in with MG in their actual costume. It's not quite on the level of some of the weirder fashion shows, but you should still wear something nice. Probably a dress or suit unless you have figured out how to summon your costume and want to wear that.
“Most of the aids and advisors will wear suits so they don’t stand out too much, and I’d bet that the paladins have been polishing their armor to see who can get it to be the most reflective- so take those as the two ends of the spectrum. I have a few shops in mind where we can pick something out.” Taking a brief pause to think for a second, she continued, “excuse me if it is rude, but I presume you don’t exactly have an upper limit to your budget as long as we stay reasonable?”
“Yeah, I should be fine on money. While we’re out, I also need to get some more clothes in general- I’ve been wearing these for like three days. Although they were reconstructed by nanites along the road, so let's call it a little under two.”
After a few hours and a lot of shopping, we ended up back at the same cafe for lunch. Over the course of our shopping, I had picked up a small but full wardrobe of clothes and placed an order to get a very nice suit tailored to fit me. Given Kay and I’s status as MGs- and the extra fee I paid- the tailor promised it would be done in a few hours.
Kay had also received a reply to the idea of me wearing a mask- which basically amounted to ‘it won’t be the strangest thing one of you has done, and we can’t stop you anyway.’ Once I heard that, I started sketching designs in CAD as we walked along- not the best idea since I was very distracted, but the worst thing that happened was only a near miss from a car. After I had finished a few very simple models, I spent a token and had the Semiseelie’s computer optimize it and get everything ready for production.
Doing so had taken such a small amount of one token that I just let Cleo do whatever else they thought would be good with the remaining time- as long as they left enough time for it to be assembled by nanites. They had complaints about how inefficient I was with tokens, but said that I’d have a few more parts to make when we arrived at the machine shop- and refused to elaborate.
After we were done in town and were walking up the hill to SEYA, I asked the question I had been pondering for a while: “I have a cover name idea, do you want to hear it?”
Clearly a little surprised, Kay replied, “why yes, of course.”
“Well, given my appearance and apparent knack for troublemaking, I was thinking ‘Better Devil.’ You know, from that old saying, ‘better the devil you know than the devil you don't.’ It’s also kinda ironic with how we’re fighting demons.”
After a moment of consideration, she said, “that should be fine. It certainly is on the darker end of the spectrum, but not quite into what might be considered edgy territory- especially in comparison to some of the more independent MGs. Although, I will caution that it will probably still attract a lot of criticism.”
“...And my plan to not hide my prosthetics or scars, wear a full face-covering mask, and not be introduced with my real name won't?”
“Fair point, I just wanted to make sure you knew how much of a stir you’d cause. Did you not say you disliked attention multiple times earlier?”