Mark stood up halfway through dinner, smiling wide, saying, “They’re here!”
Sally jolted out of her food focus, rapidly wiping off her face, saying, “Shit. Okay okay.” She downed a glass of water and breathed deep. “… Okay.”
Mark chuckled on his way to the door, to throw it open and look out into the deepening night. A bright yellow car pulled up to the end of the driveway and Mark put on some slippers before stepping outside. Eliot and Isoko opened the doors to the car and stepped out at that same moment, the trunk of the car popping open.
“Welcome back!” Mark declared, connecting to them and trying to wash away the stress of travel. Isoko had already done all of that, but Mark was still here, so he still helped. “Let me grab the bags.”
Isoko stretched, moaning, saying, “Please and thank you!”
“The alarms said we had a food delivery.” With expectation, Eliot asked, “It’s from Equators, yeah?”
Mark grabbed Isoko’s big bag in one bit of adamantium, and then Eliot’s bags in another, pulling them out of the back, saying, “Yup! I ordered a lot! Sally is here now. She’s eager to meet you!”
Mark knew there was a tension in the air, with Eliot’s vector pointing at the house in a weird way, at Sally inside the house, who was currently standing behind the corner of a wall just beyond the door. Sally couldn’t see outside, and no one could see her inside. But Mark could feel where she was, and both Isoko and Eliot knew where she was, too.
Isoko quietly said to Mark, “So she seems stressed, which I can relate to.”
“… Yeah,” Mark confessed.
An awkward moment passed while the cab driver said some stuff to Eliot, Eliot paid the trip bill, and then the cab drove away.
And then Eliot, all smiles, went toward the house, saying, “I’m fucking hungry and it is cold out here!”
Eliot rapidly went inside. Mark and Isoko followed, though Mark briefly wondered if he should have raced in first, but Eliot was too fast. Their bags trailed them, gripped by adamantium hands—
“Hello Mark’s friend, and our new teammate!” Eliot said, waving, which was a normal greeting between people who didn’t know each other, but it seemed informal to Mark. Wouldn’t a handshake be better? Eliot continued, “I’m Eliot Cybersong! Man-made Manipulation. How was your shower? Your bed? I made it all, but I can make it better!”
Sally smiled brightly as she gave a little wave of her own, saying, “Sally Wuthers. Giant Strength. Nice to meet you, and the shower was wonderful and the bed was strong.”
Eliot happily said, “I can fix them better! Just tell me what you need, and I can do it— Oh I’ll take that bag now, thanks Mark.”
Eliot got his bag and then Isoko was there, giving a small half-bow.
“Isoko Kanno. Platinum Body. A pleasure.” Isoko rose to her full height, which was still much shorter than Sally. “I have heard you are a capable fighter who grew up alongside Mark. If you possess any of his own zeal for battle, I look forward to fighting alongside you.”
Sally awkwardly did her own little bow, mirroring Isoko, as she said, “A pleasure to meet you, Isoko. I look forward to fighting alongside you as well. I prefer dual greatswords and getting into the thick of it. What do you enjoy?”
“The same,” Isoko said, “Currently I use a longsword and a shield, in the European style. I plan on training for and gaining a modicum of magical might as soon as I can attend training at the settlement, though I expect any real magic to take years to acquire. Perhaps I will simply be able to gain some measure of better skill with my own Powers before then— Ah. My Power is Platinum Body.”
Mark tensed when Isoko mentioned magery, and Isoko gave him a wondering glance, but just a glance.
Sally had no such outward reaction.
“Sounds neat!” Sally said, without seeming to be concerned about the mention of magic learning at all, though her vector had turned from anxious to… anxious. No real change. There had been a fluctuation, but not much of one. With a normal enough tone that never wavered, Sally said, “Magic is neat, though I do worry about… magic.”
She kinda lost it there at the end, behind the front she was putting up.
Silence.
And then Isoko cleanly nodded, saying, “Magic is a dangerous prospect and I don’t expect to get far with it. Being able to achieve perfect flight through some application of wind shaping would be enough for me. I believe Mark has the same sort of goal, but differently.”
Mark said, “Yup! But hey! The food is cooling. We just dug in and it’s wonderful.”
Eliot eagerly took the exit from the conversation, walking to the table and exclaiming, “I love that there’s a Nigerian place right down the road. My dad is Nigerian, and…”
The conversation moved to the table and Eliot spoke of his family, half of whom was from the Nigeria area. Isoko spoke of Japan and her hopes to get Mexican food at the settlement, because some of her family was from there, too. She liked the mendicant place two tram stops over, and she wanted to go there before they moved on from Memphi, which would be happening in the next several days.
They ate the food, talking about a lot.
Soon enough, dinner was almost over.
A big aluminum pan rested in the middle of the table, bits of red rice clinging to the cracks and crevices, the remaining jollof not enough to save. Half a loaf of bread remained, though Mark grabbed that for himself, to eat along with the last bits of seasoned chicken, making himself a tiny sandwich. A pan of what were basically mashed potatoes, but not that at all, was down to two small bun-like balls of white. It was mashed yam. Isoko took one of those final bits of food and Sally took the last one, while Eliot finished off the last of some soup.
Isoko leaned back in her chair, saying, “We’ve got four days to get to the settlement ships, yeah?”
Eliot did not set down his soup. “Yup! I’m pretty much all packed and ready to go.” He continued eating, but he was going slow. Dinner was over.
Sally asked, “What kind of ship are we going in? Air ship?”
“One big hovership, yeah,” Eliot said. “We’ll have semi-cramped quarters for two weeks of travel, but we’ll get to the southern crossover within a day. You’ve crossed twice now, right?”
Sally said, “Yeah. I was scared shitless the first time, but we didn’t see any kaiju at all, and I went in the big convoy with some big Powers to protect it. A pair of superheroes named Valor Knight and Celestial Champion.” Sally cautiously asked,” Will we be, uh, getting those big Powers?”
Mark didn’t know those two, but everyone else seemed to know them.
Eliot waved a spoon, saying, “We’ve got all the powerhouses we need on the transport. More than enough, really, though seeing a kaiju on a transport is kinda rare. We’re gonna be self-sufficient from the start.”
Sally nodded, though she was still concerned. “I hope so. Like… I can’t do shit against a kaiju but die.”
Isoko smiled a little. “I know that feeling.”
Mark didn’t speak about his own feelings at that moment, but he wanted to be able to kill kaiju eventually. He wasn’t sure how, but he was going to get there… You know. Eventually.
“We have General Aurora Valen, House Valen, and several other kaiju killers in the program,” Eliot said, looking secure as he said that. And then he grinned. “I’ve seen her do her thing and it’s magical. When she really gets going, it’s like she’s brought Daihoon to Earth.”
Sally quirked an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
Eliot said, “She was forced by Malaqua to take the Tutorial at 12 like her entire family before her, or else forgo it entirely.”
Mark gasped. “Really?!”
Sally said, “Oh yeah. The nobles are like that. Some of the older houses don’t even name their kids until they pass the Tutorial. Some still call it the Thresher.”
Mark hummed. He had known that’s how it was before the Reveal. He said, “I didn’t think they still did it that way with the advent of the System.”
Eliot was eager to continue with his story, so he did so, saying, “When she came out of her Tutorial at age 12, she took the name Aurora, which befits her double Skill of Telepathy and Supreme Telekinesis. You know. As in the Supreme Body that Glorious Man has? Well there’s a Supreme Telekinesis rank, too.” Eliot drew a hand through the air, like he was brushing clouds aside, or painting the world with his fingers. “Aurora pulls at the very fabric of reality with her Telekinesis, stressing color from the world.”
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Mark felt a chill, even though he had heard some of that before.
Sally went wide-eyed, though. “Holy shit.” She asked, “Like Glorious Man?”
“The very same!” Eliot smirked, adding, “And she might even be a tri-Talent, like Mark, with some sort of Astral Manipulation. But that’s just a rumor.”
Sally was stuck with wide eyes.
Mark glared a little at Eliot. “A tri-Talent?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s true,” Eliot said, smiling, knowing he was teasing Sally.
Isoko rolled her eyes, saying, “Eliot is being dramatic, which I normally appreciate, but Aurora cannot control the world with her Supreme Telekinesis… Though she might be a Tri-Talent. That much I can believe.”
Mark said, “She always tells people she’s a bi-Talent, though.”
Isoko shrugged. “Aurora can touch another astral body of any sort and use it to expand her range, and she has some mage training to achieve a high level of Seer-like Skill. So she can’t really flex the sky. She can just flex kaiju and everyone else that gets within five kilometers of her, or someone she knows.”
Eliot smirked. “Like Glorious Man but at range.”
Sally shuddered at that comparison. “Holy shit. Sometimes some Skills are truly terrifying.”
“She barely uses her powers in that way, anyway,” Eliot said. “Mostly she coordinates with Telepathy. She’s a complete workaholic, just like her brother, Kandon Valen, who is like a mini-Glorious Man himself, but with some Telepathy instead of a Supreme Body. He still has some high rank Brawny Skill, though I forgot what it was.”
Sally got a little miffed, now, saying, “Every damned noble on Daihoon has a bi-Talent, at least! It’s infuriating.”
Eliot broke out in a sudden laugh.
Isoko’s vector connected to Sally in an easy sort of way, as she commiserated, “It’s true! It is infuriating!”
Mark grinned, and said nothing.
The conversation turned easy at that point, with Sally talking about her time on Daihoon, but heavily edited and spoken of in pleasant ways, while Isoko shared her history with her supervillain family, but also in heavily edited ways, and Eliot spoke of the Cybersongs, and how he was nobility—
“But I only have one Talent,” Eliot said, grinning. “You can get mad at other nobles, but not this one, please.”
Sally chuckled. “I’ll keep it in mind— Oh yeah! We’re all basically paladins, aren’t we!”
Isoko smiled a little. “We are.” She thumbed at Mark, saying, “He’s the only un-Chosen here.”
Mark scoffed.
“Paladin party!” Eliot said, and then he got up from the table, saying, “And this paladin has to go to sleep, now. Sally. Tell me what is wrong with your room. Tell me now. I want to fix it, and I am absolutely sure that I got some of it wrong.”
Sally was about to say that everything was okay; Mark could tell.
Mark told her, “He means it for real, Sally. What’s wrong with the room?”
Sally breathed deep, then said, “The bed is too soft, the shower is too small, and the floors are too thin. Everything is too weak. Everything needs to be at least twice as thick, as though you’re building for a thousand pound person to walk around and actually relax, because I can’t relax with any of this furniture at all. I always have to have perfect TT control because if I slip up, I will break… a lot of things. I cannot imagine how bad it is for someone like Glorious Man, but I imagine it’s not good.”
Eliot winced. “Shit. I thought I had… I reinforced it all for Isoko who can become 750 pounds, but… Shit. Yeah. Okay. That is my fault. I should have overengineered. Let’s go over it all, please? We’ll only be here for another week, but there’s no reason to not be able to relax in your own home.”
Sally smiled and stood, saying, “Thank you very much, Eliot. I… I really appreciate it.”
Eliot walked forward, down the hallway, and Mark could tell that he was already thickening the floors everywhere and reinforcing the walls, drawing from the reserves he had stashed in the basement as he began, “So what about color…”
Sally and Eliot talked as Eliot shifted things around—
With the two of them out of sight, Isoko leaned in to Mark, whispering, “I like her. The Drakarok thing doesn’t freak you out?”
“It absolutely does,” Mark whispered back, “But she has very good reasons and… And it’s all good, Isoko. You’ll love hunting with her. I could barely keep up, physically, but you definitely could with your speed modifier.”
Isoko looked at Mark for a moment, and then she nodded, seeming okay. She spoke in a normal voice, “I’m up to a 2-times speed modifier now. I have a cousin back home who helped me with some meditation tricks that he wasn’t sure were going to work, but they worked out well. Christmas was fun.”
Mark smiled wide. “You cracked 2-X! Congrats!”
Isoko smiled softly, adding, “And I have some presents for you and Eliot.”
Mark felt jubilant. “I love presents— Oh! I got one for you, too.” Mark got up and called out, “Eliot! I have a present for you!”
Eliot called out, “I got some, too!”
Isoko smiled and soon Mark had a fancy bathrobe that Isoko called a yukata and told him that he could wear it as a bathrobe if he truly wanted. It was white and lined in black, with black branches and little pink flowers upon the branches, and it fit wonderfully, and it was meant for casual wear. Isoko got a nice blue yukata for Eliot.
Eliot got Mark and Isoko pairs of mithril carving knives, which turned out to be very funny when Mark handed out mithril carving knives of his own, inscribed with his own adamantium.
They had a good laugh at that.
Mark said, “You can sell them for their worth if you need to, obviously.”
“I’m not selling it,” Eliot said.
Isoko teased, “I might. I want a real sword, Mark.”
“I’ll get there eventually!”
Isoko nodded, and then she looked to Sally, who had been on the outside of the gift giving ceremony. Isoko said, “And I am sorry, but—”
Sally was already deflecting, “I didn’t get you anything ei—”
Isoko brought out another package that was bigger than the other ones and handed it to Sally, saying, “I guessed on the dimensions. It is likely wrong, because you are bigger than I thought you would be. I was basing my assumptions on a lower level of Giant Strength than your own.”
Eliot said, “I can fix the size! And in the process, also claim partial credit!”
“20% credit at the most,” Isoko said, without taking her eyes off of Sally, who was still holding the package.
Sally was looking very out of place in a way that she did not know how to handle, but she opened the package anyway, revealing a soft pink yukata. She tried to put her arm through the sleeve but there was a little ripping sound. “… Ah, shit.”
Isoko winced. “Ah. My mistake, it seems.”
Eliot held out a hand. “Give it!”
Sally handed it over and Eliot promptly flapped the fabric with both hands, as though he was waving a towel. The fabric expanded twice over, and Eliot smiled as he handed it back to Sally.
The pink yukata fit her this time, giving her a dignified, comfortable sort of look, and then Isoko brought out her own yukata and put it on. Hers was a bright white and grey thing that looked like wind in stormy skies.
Isoko wrapped it around herself, saying, “They really are quite nice for warmth.”
Sally smiled softly, saying, “They are. Thank you.”
“Merry holidays,” Isoko said.
“Happy Festival!” Eliot exclaimed.
Mark grinned. “Merry Christmas.”
Sally repeated, “Merry Christmas.”