Taubitha looked at the dead corpse of her mother, slumped over with even wider eyes than normal. Her body was still bobbing slightly, no doubt due to the movements of her mother's houseboat.

"Oh my gods, this is awful," said Taubitha. She looked at her fony. "Wow, I am so glad we [paired]! I mean, like, wow. We are so in synch! I am so glad to have her out of the way. Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

The fony snorted.

[Please name _____ to continue]

Oh, that was right. Taubitha needed to name her strange, new, two-spired fony! She racked her brain, finally having an idea worth considering after looking around and spying one of her old dolls in a picture sitting on her mom's desk.

[You've chosen the name 'Princess']

[Continue?]

Taubitha was ready to continue. She never looked back unless it was at past slights that people had paid her, in which case she looked back all the time and never, ever let go.

[Naming complete]

[Would you like to see Princess' character sheet?]

Taubitha smiled a knowing, slightly sinister grin. Of course she did!

[Princess]

[Level: 0]

[Skills: Acid Blast]

Taubitha wasn't surprised by Princess' [skill] being called [Acid Blast], but she was a little surprised that her new fony was a level 0 while still having such a powerful [skill]. Then again, maybe she just needed to learn more about systems. Like her old gymnastics partner whom she now hated, Kahli, Taubitha had originally been enrolled in gymnastics due to having no system and therefore no innate [skills]. But now she had access to a system through pairing with Princess! Did that mean that Taubitha would get her own [skill] too?

Still, first things first. Taubitha decided to check out [Acid Blast] and learn a little more about it.

[Acid Blast]

[This considerably powerful, sometimes even described as 'over powered' skill, allows Princess to spew torrents of acid at enemies within a 25 foot range. The acid has a high chance of melting through just about anything it comes in contact with and also has a high mortality rate.]

Wow. That really wasn't messing around, Taubitha thought. She was really impressed with how powerful this fony that her mother had gotten her was. For a second, she almost missed her mother...

But Taubitha had other things to do, too. She needed to get herself together and figure out if she could level up.

"Well, well, well, fancy seeing you here!" said Taubitha's mom.

"What? Mom? You're alive?!" Taubitha looked around, but she noticed that her mother's corpse was still lying limp in her chair.

"No, no, dear. I'm not alive at all, quite the opposite," said her mother.

Taubitha jumped as she saw a purple skeleton wearing her mother's clothing standing beside her dead body.

"Mom! Oh my gods, you're a purple skeleton!"

"Yes, dear, that seems to be the case. And you don't seem too utterly torn up by the fact that I was alive a second ago and now I'm dead!"

"Mom I'm sorry, I just, well, oh my gods! Like, Princess used [Acid Blast] on you it's not, like, my fault."

"Well you're [paired] with her, so it might as well be. If I were you I'd keep a tighter grip on my [paired] fony."

"Sorry mom," said Taubitha sadly.

"It's fine, dear," said the Madam's ghost with a sigh. "Ready to learn about systems before I return to the great beyond?"

"Oh sure mom! Like oh my gods. Of course I do!"

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Kahli stood in front of the bonfire next to the Mayor and Omar, both of whom had thick cigars hanging out of the mouth-holes in their face wood.

"Ah, nothing like a good stogie and a book burning to round out the busy work week," said the Mayor with a sigh.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Mayor, I have a question about Gharlique but I don't want to seem insensitive."

"Kahli, you just helped me and Omar torch a bunch of books in the name of not keeping too many records. You’ve got me on your side. Trust me I'm not overly concerned with whether people are insensitive or not as long as they're respectful about it."

Kahli asked the mayor how exactly he could be smoking a stogey through his mouth hole if his real mouth was actually his entire slimelike body housed in the glass container above his large, round form. The mayor laughed and was happy to explain to Kahli that it was a simple mechanism where air the flowed from the outside, including smoke, into his ‘mouth hole’ was dispersed inside the glass capsule that stored his true body and then filtered out after a brief period of time had elapsed and the capsule had become over saturated. Kahli said that made enough sense to not continue asking questions. It also made her skin crawl.

The mayor and Omar then tried to pressure her into smoking, but Kahli said she wasn't interested in having a large stogie in her mouth and thought they smelled rather foul. Omar posited that it was the duplicate collections of poetry they were burning that truly smelled foul, but Kahli wasn't necessarily convinced that this opinion was accurate.

And then up he walked. The hulking, bulky man who ran the hot dog stand which had been cooking so much meat that practically nobody on the nearby street could tell that a book burning bonfire was taking place. The man was at least seven feet tall, if not even taller. His forearms and lower legs were encrusted in living wood. His face was shaped like a long oblong, and it too was wrapped in an especially wicked wooden bramble.

"Good evening gents," he said in a gruff voice. He regarded Kahli. "Oh, and hello there."

"She picked out what to burn today," said Omar. "She's a real pyro. My apprentice!"

"What's that... thing she's got with her?"

"Her name is Froufrou!" said Kahli protectively. Froufrou squelched affirmatively.

"Well, even with all this smoke, I can tell that Froufrou needs a bath. Please let me know if you need help, I know a lady who's a real pro at bathing pets. She's so pro she's got a truck she drives around town with a huge clawfoot tub in it, and all kinds of nice foreign soaps."

Kahli thanked him and stared at the fire, hoping that its bright lure would distract her from how uncomfortable she was around his looming presence.

"What are you doing here, anyway, Hauff?" asked Omar with a puff of his stogie. "Oh, and would you like a stogie?"

"No, I'm trying to cut down," said Hauff as he lit a cigarette. "Anyways, everything's all set the way you want it, guys. That's what I was coming to tell you three. Oh, and to say, you're welcome to some of my hot dogs if you want." He held out three juicy cylinders of oily meat with a huge, wood-encrusted hand.

Kahli didn't know if she liked this guy. She'd always seen him cooking his hot dogs, and now here he was offering them for free. Who did he think she was? Did he think she was a guard or something? If this guy knew the stuff Kahli had been up to just the day before, would he feel this casual around her? Kahli doubted it, and chuckled inwardly at the thought. Yea, he's just some hotdog guy. I'm not scared of him, even if he looks like he's hoisted up on a big exoskeleton of muscle and stilts!

Before the mayor or Omar could take a greasy dog for themselves, Froufrou leapt out of Kahli's arms and attacked the meat. In a mere moment, the dogs were gone, and Froufrou let loose a squelch that sounded suspiciously more burplike than normal.

"Wow," said the mayor. "That was rude."

"I'll fucking say," said Omar as he burned a small bird out of the sky. He shrunk as he noticed looks of disgust aimed his way. "Sorry, everyone, force of habit."

"You might want to get a leash for your, uh, for your pet," said Hauff as he spat out his cigarette and stepped on it with a perfectly proportional, wooden foot.

Kahli never felt more jealousy for anyone than she did for him in that brief moment. Well, maybe that wasn't accurate. She thought he generally looked disgusting and his voice sounded like something out of a nightmare, but Kahli still was very jealous of his symmetrical wooden feet.

"Hey, Hauff?" asked the mayor. "Can we see it?"

"Oh? You want to see it? Now?"

"I agree," said Omar. "Give the people what they want, Hauff!"

Hauff looked nervously at Kahli. "Should she see it?"

"Oh, who gives a shit," said the mayor, patting Kahli on the shoulder way too hard for it to be comfortable. "She's cool, right?"

Omar looked at Kahli approvingly. "Oh, yes. She delegated away a whole session of spiral staircase scrubbing!"

Hauff gave them both a funny look. "Very well. Follow me, all."

----------------------------------------

Kahli had been right to always be suspicious of Hauff's hot dog stand. Inexplicably, if Hauff hit a jar of ketchup in just the right way, one of the side panels swung open and a control panel with numerous shells and gears popped up.

"Here's the real cool shit," Hauff said. With a pull of some shells and a twist or two of a gear, they suddenly and inexplicably found themselves in a dark cave lit only by torchlight.

"How did that just happen?" asked Kahli.

"Hauff's got... a very powerful [skill]," explained Omar. Omar explained, through a sea of sore expletives, that Hauff could use his system to build mechanical creations that were part engineering, part magic, allowing for mechanisms usually created with fairly scarce materials to be crafted out of more simple materials. This was the same kind of [skill] that the creators of sending conchs used, but Hauff's was even stronger. It was ostensibly one of the first [skills] he learned, and he'd used numerous skill slots on improving it so that he was incredibly proficient in building much of anything.

"So he built, what, a cloaking mechanism for some sort of... what would call this... some sort of lair inside his hotdog stand?"

"Exactly," said the mayor. "And - this is really cool by the way - he also added a similar panel to a bookshelf in my office."

"Yea, he gave me one too," said Omar. "It's okay I guess."

Kahli suddenly noticed that Hauff, the mayor, and Omar were all wearing strange, beaded necklaces.

"Oh, wow, um, those are quite a statement," said Kahli.

"Indeed." Omar smiled. "Maybe you'll get your own one day, apprentice."

"What exactly is happening, though? Why are you wearing them?"

"Oh, come on, Kahli. I know the plaster on your face hasn't hardened, but you weren't born yesterday, were you?"

Kahli shook her head.

"Turn the lights up, Hauff," said Omar.

With a knowing smirk, Hauff snapped his wooden fingers. The flames of the torches engorged, and Kahli gasped. She saw a large carving behind the three authority figures that made it abundantly clear just what she'd stumbled upon.