B 3 C 2: RECAP
Lil spots my gaze and rides my thought waves, so they hop over so they can headbutt my chest while laughing at the situation. I catch Lil for a hug and noogie my little dragon buddy, My Heart. Or as Teuila might call Lil, a dorky little dragbutt. I roughly smooch the top of Lil’s head, which also happens to be the top of their entire body more or less, since Lil is in sphere form. Lil’s reptilian draconic tail is their only limb in this form.
Teuila, My Wings that make my spirit soar approaches from the north. She drops her Valkyrie form to sprint at me in her beautiful bare coppery-furred otter form. Te’s side swept mohawk-style hair that adorns her head fairly flows behind her. Teuila leaps into my arms and I actually have the strength to catch her and spin her about because she’s light as a feather. Between being slender and athletic and her special bond with gravity, Te can virtually float in someone’s arms. She can almost freely mess with gravity in coefficients from almost zero to about double. Most others that leap into my arms at a full sprint would tackle me to the ground as I am a scrawny creature. Still, Teuila plants kiss after kiss on my cheek and ears in pride before she nuzzles into my left clavicle. She’s chuckling at my inner monologue narrative description of her, slightly embarrassed, but mostly flattered. Lil’s nickname for Teuila is literally their “It’s-A-Secret.” I still get a kick out of it.
Luni leaves Priscilla’s side, I’ve no idea what she was doing over there, and she sprints my way as well, her short dark bob with bangs bounces with each of her strides. Her curvy form is hinted at by her poofy green and white dress with bronze diamond accents. Where Teuila is all firm yet supple muscle across every inch of her body, Luni is soft, plush, um, she has nice soft curves to feel against oneself, like now as she’s thrown herself at the three of us, bowling us all over, pinning me under herself and Teuila. I flush with embarrassment as my entire party is riding my thought train while I think about Luni’s soft curves. Lil is squished between the rest of us, and they’re jokingly sending waves of jealousy into our telepathic bond, which Teuila joins in on as well, for the opposite reason. Luni is My Anchor, but she’s Lil’s Gal Pal, and Teuila’s Luuuu. Lu thinks of Teuila as Big-Sis. Luni calls Lil her “The-Best.”
Speaking of nicknames, the names my party helped me come up with for my abilities cause me to laugh. My umbral copies of equipment from my inventory we call Umbral Shots or Umbral Stabs, either way, it’s USes. My barehanded fighting style we call my FrostBurn Fist, or FBF style. The punches I throw in that style we call my SIPs, Subzero Ice Punches. My defenses that are like pinpoint shields of ice almost passively as needed, we call my FFS, my Frozen Frost Shield. I get the most kick out of that one when interacting with humans, since they use the acronym for something different, and I look like a child to them, so I look like a child swearing my brains out in combat. My Flash Freeze Storm is also an FFS. I basically glaciate an area close to instantly.
By far my probably most useful ability for saving others lives, and my own, is probably my JT, my jettison-thrust, or JetThrusts. I expel matter from my inventory with a directional velocity from any point nearby so that it rams me or the person I’m trying to move out of the way of something. When my mana pool is higher, I can almost remain perpetually airborn with it due to regenerating more than I expend. Right now I’d have to be careful to use exactly the right amount when falling from great heights. Oh yeah, I fall from great heights a lot.
I call into my telepathic bond, “Hey fam, how many times have I crashed out of the sky or fallen ridiculously far?”
Since Lil’s been with me the longest, Lil starts reciting, “Not sure about before me, I don’t think there were any before we met, but definitely first time in the swamp when running from Octorochi, first time, you drank a water walking potion to go boom and make all the water take the fall rather than you. Then again when we actually went to fight Octorochi at the same spot. Back then you didn’t know you could fly, so you almost died, you also forgot you had another water walking potion on you, which was dumb, but you’re a dummy sometimes Pal. It’s okay, we forgive you. Um, I think you almost drown a lot more than you fall, honestly.”
Even though we’re using telepathy, Lil pauses for a breath before continuing, “Still, after you came back to us, you and Teuila flew up real high, then rocketed back down like a meteor while I was trying to fly up to meet you. Not cool beeteedubs fam. Hehe. Kidding, it’s fine. Then uh, when we went to Fire Biome, you realized you could do your flying JT stuff, but you got distracted in midair, ‘cause you’re always getting distracted, so you faceplanted pretty hard. I think you fell a couple of times when you went to find a phoenix to bring me back. We only have the one plume left now. I hope we never have to use it.”
At Lil’s mention of the phoenix plume, I remember how I earned five total plumes. One was used on me because the phoenix had inadvertently almost killed me, when controlled by my greatest enemy. One was used to bring Lil back to us from a quarter century of loneliness. Two were used to save Lao and Lucky from Lava on the Night of All Burn. Luni has the only plume left, and I’m positive her powers of foresight, or her messages from the future know who it’s destined to be used on. I’m not allowed to guess though, so I have to shove that information to the back of my brain.
Speaking of my greatest enemy, I’ve been trying to be strong all this time, but now that my inner circle are cuddled atop me, I break down in sobs. My greatest enemy took my brother from me, Mataalii, I’m sure of it. Sure, a brother that had always hated me, but a brother all the same. Something broke the ten obelisks that were keeping the being from our world, and somehow when the tenth was broken, my enemy was sent all throughout time and space across this world, to the point when I first began existing, and all over the world after that. I’ve overcome one traumatic stress panic trigger, that was my own Teuila, a situation I still can’t think about without breaking down. It took me a long time to even be able to see my dearest, the love of my life, without shrieking in terror and scrabbling away in fear. I regret everything about that every single instant of my life. My-Wings has absolved me, but still, it was horrible for both of us.
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One trigger I will never overcome though is that dastardly red eyed entity that possesses others to seek me out and hunt me down, the thing released into this world by the destruction of the obelisks. Even as I’m thinking this, my limbs are spasming and seizing. My pulse hammers into my ears as my vision narrows, tunneling to the size of a pin prick. Tinnitus fills my hearing, drowning out all other sound. My inner circle comfort me as best they can, they know that they can’t control my panic or end it for me, but they can ease its effects. Since we’ve spent decades in accelerated thinkspace, nearly centuries, we’ve worked through so many issues together. We accept every bit of one another intrinsically.
I like to remind myself of the major bits of my life now and again, for my memory logs. I do this since I can review them at any point. It’s easier to read a summary rather than reading through every word I’ve ever thought in my inner monologue every day I’ve been alive. Y’know?
Plus, my fam, my inner circle, my SAP get a kick out of it since they are a huge part of everything I’ve ever done, wanted, or been.
Lil, My Heart exclaims, “Darn tootin’!”
Lu, My Anchor chuckles and adds, “Because you’re my hero, always have been, always will be. You got this.”
Te, My Wings also adds, “Yeah dork, we get it, you lo, luh, lur, you words us. We do too punkbutt.” My Wings has a hard time expressing herself, she always will, but we’re as intimate as two beings can be, able to literally explore the depths of our feelings in her mindscape that is a tumultuous sea of moving emotions.
Teuila flushes with embarrassment as I reiterate our relationship for my logs. I kiss her forehead repeatedly in apology. My heart soars sharing affection with her. Luni presses closer to us, intercepting one of the smooches and causing my heart to flutter as she presses closer against my torso with her softness.
Sometimes Luni has fun teasing me and making Teuila jealous, she’s really effective at it. I’m blushing harder than Teuila right now. Teuila stands up and knocks everyone away from me with her ridiculous raw strength, enhanced by the gemstone that orbits her head. Once everyone is off of me, she offers me a hand up, on the way up, she playfully socks me in the gut, then bops the top of my head as I jokingly double over.
Te mutters, “Serves you right, dingleberryhopperbutt.” She then sticks her tongue out to blow a raspberry at me before offering up an SFS. Te and Lu both share the Shellcracker Family Squee, an elongated single laugh of “heee” accompanied by a closed eyed barely-open-mouthed smile.
Oh, what Teuila’s doing right now is another thing the Shellcracker family shares, the Shellcracker Family SlapFight I’ll call it. Teuila plaps one hand across my face, I chase it away with one of my hands, her other hand ends up on my face, I chase that one way, the other one returns, rinse and repeat until we’re both laughing like lunatics. Luni has done it to me on occasion as well, with, um, different results.
Teuila eyes me suspiciously at that last thought. She squints for a bit but then she shrugs and slugs me in the shoulder playfully.
I flush with embarrassment at Teuila’s suspicion, defensively asking, “What? She just, y’know, lets me catch her hands, and uh, we hold hands.”
Lu jumps aboard the teasing train to insinuate, “Suuuuuure that’s all it is.” Lu waggles her eyebrows at me right in front of Teuila. My heart skips a beat and I think steam is going to explode out my pointy ears as they burn from my blushing.
Teuila shouts, “Luuuuuuu! Knock it off ya borkbutt! Hey come back here!” Luni giggles and takes off with her Seven Leagues Song. She and Teuila are both speedsters, if I had to put them into archetypes. Lu’s power set is more magical speed and assorted abilities, Teuila’s seems like it’s raw physical prowess with some weird gravity based ancillary powers. Te engages her umbral Valkyrie form transformation and launches towards Lu at ludicrous speeds.
Lil transforms into Lilagnewt to fly to the defense of their Gal Pal as Teuila tackles Luni at high speed, the three of them laughing and rolling around what’s essentially a battlefield. I call out to my dearest friends to be careful. There are still weapons strewn about where they’ve been abandoned when the soldiers realized that they were not only not going to be fighting a war, but they might be dying to a flood of lava. Then we brokered the peace with the critterkin, and the freedom of the critterkin.
Our friend, a shop owner named Berthalina, Bettie or Bertha for short, was instrumental in that, as she’s one of few humans who can now understand the critterkin. She somehow was blessed with a mote of wind magic during the Night of All Burn. It was likely from Har and Sal, the two wind mages who lost their lives. Those two also had a connection to Sylphie, some sort of wind spirit who’d been so instrumental to succeeding during a devastating period in my life.
Regardless, I want to chase after my beloved inner circle and join them in goofing off, but I feel like I’m forgetting something.