Under the pretense of ‘doctor’s orders,’ I kept busy enough to not think about what had happened with my handler for the next few days. It worked great since if you’re constantly doing things, then falling asleep from exhaustion, there’s no time for the creeping loathing to sink in- and eventually you’ll become numb to it.
I was fairly drained after talking with Miracleworker, so I didn’t bother calling anyone. Instead, I started pouring over his notes. It was a mess that was clearly collected over many years, and provided an interesting insight into either his mental state or cares to give. The earliest dated documents were nice and cleanly written or typed neatly with additional notes for clarity where necessary, however, as the dates on the documents got closer and closer to the current day, the formatting got more erratic and the handwriting got lazier.
The small collection from the past two years was almost entirely illegible. With the help of a handwriting parsing website I found after digging around for many minutes, I was able to chisel away a few more lines, but some just couldn’t have been an actual attempt at language.
After assembling the useful documents, I was able to figure out a few very important consistencies across the people Mircleworker oversaw taking a morph.
First, it was expensive. There was some speculation that the process altered most if not all of someone’s physical, magical, and ontological existence- that last one essentially being the associations and connections underlying one’s existence- regardless of outward appearances. The first two make sense as to why they'd increase the cost; getting my horns and tail attached took ten tokens, and those would be minor changes compared to a more complete reconstruction. The last aspect was speculated to be needed to seamlessly convince the individual and the universe that everything was normal and correct for the individual.
Next, in most cases, there was a good amount of setup needed before the morph could be gone through with. Minor changes like using this process as a way overkill cosmetic surgery only required the generic [Bio-Aug Initializer] and a similarly generic [Body Sculpting Package]. When people went for more in depth alterations, the requirements exponentially increased. One person in particular morphed into a pseudo-ghost and required perks for stuff like telekinesis, phasing, teleportation- standard ghost stuff. Another person going for a full-robot thing needed to take computer integration, nervous system strengthening, and mental stability perks.
Finally, the process was way cheaper than it should be. Again, my prosthesis cost ten tokens. The full cost, including prerequisites, for even the most in depth changes never exceeded fifty tokens and 300 experience- before the scaling tax Cleo has been apparently factoring in and omitting.*
After figuring that out, I dug into what I would need- with help from Cleo. Assuming I was going with the dæmon idea, I would be on the ‘in-depth’ side of the spectrum. To be safe, my Semiseelie suggested I go heavy into the prerequisites and symbology of those perks. With that in mind, we compiled a list of perks to grab after a pass by Miracleworker for a sanity check.
That entire process took the batter part of two days, with the second broken up by some visits when I finally got around to telling people how I was doing.
A mere few seconds after I sent the message, Rebecca replied saying she was on her way. A more reasonable timeframe later, the rest of the squad trickled their replies in as well- mostly in the form of well-wishes and promises to come visit the next day. To be honest, due to how my bed was covered in haphazard stacks of papers, I wasn’t prepared to see anyone and had to scramble to get everything organized in the face of the looming visit.
Rebecca must have been close by or dropped everything and sprinted over because just over ten minutes after I received her message, the door to my room swung open and she walked in.
“Hey Silvia, how’re you feeling? Besides bored.”
Looking past her, I shrugged my remaining shoulder at the exasperated nurse and said, “Fine, I guess. Been staying busy with some stuff from Miracleworker.”
“Oooh, what’d he give you?”
“Notes of declining quality talking about morph perks.”
Nodding for a few seconds while thinking, Rebecca quietly asked, “and how are you doing with the… handler incident.”
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I immediately locked up, but shakily choked out, “I hate that it happened again.”
As soon as I finished and saw Rebecca’s eyes widen, I started mentally cursing at my screwup. Brain racing at how to deflect, the inevitable question was asked. “Again?”
The little tension I was able to release to get out my previous reply was tightened up again as I shriveled under her gaze. Anger at myself for ruining the already awful situation I was in chipped away at my panic and let me start to stabilize myself with many deep breaths. On the edge of my mind, a warm and calming sensation helped suppress the pressing negative emotions.
After a few long minutes of me trying to get a grip back on myself, Rebecca apologized, “I’m so sorry for that. I tend to just catch things and say or do stuff before thinking while trying to help. Oh, crap- like I’m doing with my magic. Should I stop?” After a small shake of my head, she continued, “look, if you don’t want to talk about it, don’t try to force yourself. But if you ever do, I’ll be there to talk- or sit and say nothing if that's better, alright?”
Another few minutes of her shifting in her seat in silence and a handful of false-starts from me later, I asked, “how are you doing that?”
“Ahh, part of my magic deals with ‘light.’ Admittedly more attuned to the lasers and burning side of the concept, but I do get some healing abilities. And since my magic is much more conceptual and idea based, I can help ‘heal’ people’s minds. Not well, and only with help from the inside, but enough to stop panic attacks.“Technically, I can also do the opposite with shadow magic, but that’s pretty much useless. Demons can’t get depressed or homicidal- for each other, they’re pretty homicidal towards us. And it would be really bad to do that to a person. Crap, I’m rambling. Uhh, what’d you find in Miracleworker’s notes?”
Taking another few deep breaths, I pulled up my notes and started explaining. Rebecca listened as I explained the background information I had learned and moved onto what I was planning on doing to myself. “So my Semiseelie and I’s plan was to buy a bunch of perks that are analogous to the, like, eleven systems of the human body so they can be taken into the morph and help define it a bit better. It also works out a bit nicely because I probably don’t need to buy that many perks; we can probably finagle a few to map out multiple systems.”
“Interesting…” my audience of one hummed as she processed the small lecture I just gave. “Do you need to worry about bending reality too much?”
“I didn’t see anything about that in the notes, but there was a consistent pattern of additional morphs being harder- even if smaller in scope. Do you think that could be what's going on? Miracleworker didn't mention anything like that.”
Cracking a small smile, Rebecca smugly said, “well, he isn’t that experienced of a mage, preferring tech and more physically ground healing methods. I’d wager that you guessed right. In fact, I would go farther to say that if you compare the cases, the MGs who use more magic had less difficulty than those who didn't.”
“Let me see,” I muttered as I took a few minutes to compare the cover names on the documents to a random MG wiki that was the first result when I searched. “Damn, it looks like you’re right. Do you know why that's the case, or is it just a lucky guess?”
“Well, let's see. Have you ever felt pain or pushback when trying to use a perk or magic?” After I gave a quick nod and winced at the memory, she continued, “that's the universe trying its best to stop you from breaking things too badly. As you use more magic, you get used to it or find a way to sneak around getting ‘fact checked.’ Stupid name, I know. I’ve even heard some whispers of a few MGs somehow negotiating with the universe, but I think that was just a mistranslation. Out of curiosity, how was your experience with it?”
“Well, when I was… dealing with that last demon,” I briefly paused to push the thought of it out of my mind, “I felt like I had pulled a magical muscle from my previous work. The whole thing was do-or-die, so I just pushed through. It still kinda hurt to use ULE in general when I first woke up, but I think it's better now.”
“So you were already feeling strained and still fought hard for an extended period of time? No stuttering or failures when casting?”
“Just a bit of pain- a lot of which was probably pushed aside by adrenaline.”
Exasperated, Rebecca asked, “do you, like, I don’t know, challenge mind-mages to contests of will for fun or something?”
“N-no.”
“Alright, who was it that tried screwing with you? I’ll go deal with them.”
“It’s not like that. They’re already… I’ll tell you later, maybe.”
Giving me a very disappointed but still caring look, she relented, “fine. But you better work out your problems with someone. I can tell the memories hurt, but they aren’t going to get better if you keep suppressing them.” I unintentionally shot her a glare, which she responded to with a labored sigh. “Alright, I get it’s a touchy subject and that you want me to leave. Just think about it, okay?“Also, I like your idea for the morph, keep working on it. Just remember that it will literally be you afterwards so get everything- and I mean everything- squared away and spend whatever you have to to get the highest quality out of it you can.”