Chapter 21
Early to Rise
I woke up in a cold sweat the next morning. Nightmares, wouldn’t you know it. Getting killed by an eldritch horror and then spending your evening watching other people get eaten by a similar monster would definitely do that to a person. I wiped my face on my blanket and sat up.
Sam tried to get me to sleep on the couch again but I was able to convince him that I really needed to get some good sleep. I made a deal that we could have sleep overs as much as he wanted once I beat psycho girl. I told him a condensed version of what happened yesterday and what I had to do now. He didn’t really seem to get it but he knew it was important, dangerous, and difficult. So he was understanding.
My bedroom was not fitting of a twenty-five year old woman. It looked a lot more in line with what a teenage boy’s room looked like. Posters lined the walls, ranging from anime, movies, and games. The wall directly across form my bed could be changed to anything. Right now it was showing a bubbling underwater scene, but instead of normal blue the water was purple. It was based on a lava lamp but if it wasn’t for my mom I wouldn’t even know what that was.
Clothes dotted the room, thrown around in weird places. That wouldn’t have been out of place on Earth, but in the Interverse it was especially weird–cleaning clothes was seriously as simple as pressing a button and dragging and dropping a file. But, damn it, you just didn’t understand the full depths of my laziness, okay.
The ceiling was my favorite part, another screen, and it was pretty much always set to a starry night sky. I often lost myself, staring up into its depths. My mom said that it was a cheap imitation; there was no beating the view from topside Earth. No matter what the humans did to the planet, those stars were still out there, still shining above us all, here in the underground and lost to worlds within our own minds. If you thought too hard about it it was enough to make you want to cry.
But there wasn’t time for that today.
I got up, stretched, and started a voice call with Stephen. It rang forever before he finally answered, his voice all crackly, “Hello?”
“Dude, are you still asleep?” I asked as I headed out of my room.
“That’s a normal occurrence at–” he paused to look at the time in the corner of his vision. “Ten-thirty. What are you doing up?”
“Uh, we have to be there at noon.”
“Yeah, so I’ll get ready at eleven-thirty.”
“WHAT. That is not enough time.” I made it into the living room, Sam had been sleeping on his little pile of blankets but my outburst caused him to stir. I lowered my voice, feeling guilty.
“Darcy. How long does it take to teleport somewhere?”
“Point five seconds. What’s your–”
“I’ll talk to you at eleven-thirty.” He dropped the call.
Rude. Like, yeah, I get his point. Driving and traffic were a thing of the past, but that didn’t mean I didn’t like to be ready way ahead of time. I needed a lot of extra time to prepare.
And worry. There needed to be a lot of spare time for that. Especially for something as important as this. I had a lot of thoughts bouncing around my head, worrying about what he would have me do. He gave Stephen a bit of a run down on his plan for him but, me? He didn’t provide any details. But maybe that was my fault, I said yes literally immediately. He didn’t have to win me over.
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So I was left with a lot of unknown elements of what I was in for today. And the unknown bred worry like a plague. I sat down at the table, slowly eating my cold pizza as the worries washed over me.
What would we be doing? What if he only had a plan for Stephen? What if I was un teachable? What if Stephen got to learn cool psychic powers and I was stuck doing chores? Oh no, what if he was sexist and thought that's all I was good for? Did he look sexist? He was old. Oh shit, am I ageist?
On and on it went until 11:55. Stephen called, breaking my concentrated worry.
“Y-yeah?” I said.
“You ready?”
“I was up at ten-thirty.”
“Good point. I retract my dumb question. Should we go now or wait until noon exactly?”
Oh shit. Another thing to worry about.
“I can’t wait any longer, let’s go now,” Stephen said, graciously deciding for me.
“Sounds good!” We joined a Party and Stephen set us a course for Kenzo’s office.
Usually, when your place of a meeting had an exact time it would send you to a waiting room kind of area, one set up and designed by the host. But weirdly we were let right in and we materialized onto that godly couch.
“Welcome!” Kenzo said, holding his hands out behind his desk. “You’re early.”
“She’s been up since ten-thirty,” Stephen said.
He nodded and scratched his chin. “Impressive. We could set an earlier time tomorrow if you need it.”
“No!” We both said, panicked.
He laughed. “Alright, alright. Once you’ve vanquished the cthulhu monster we can do later meetings. But, for now, noon is good. Are you both ready?”
There was no hesitation, not even from Stephen. We nodded in unison.
“Good, good. Where should we begin…”
“Sir, I had a question.” I said. “Do you have plans for me, too? You gave Stephen a sort of battle plan but… you didn’t give me one.”
“Of course I have a plan for you, Darcy. As of now I believe you will both be learning the exact same things from me.”
“So, I get to learn cool mental Magic, too?” I scooted forward in my seat.
“My dear, I specialize in those abilities. You have just as much potential as Stephen, I can already tell.”
“I do?”
“Yes. I’ll show you. For our first lesson, I’m going to teach you both the simplest of abilities but also the one with the most potential for expansion: telekinesis.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Do you know the Stat, Object Movement?” We both did. “Telekinesis is another name for it–the true name. I’d like to say it has just been forgotten but the truth is worse. Like many of the mental power truths, they have been erased. Speaking of, it goes without saying but just to be clear–do not repeat things that we talk about in here around others. Dropping lost language in front of the wrong pair of ears can land us all in a bit of trouble. Are we clear?”
“Totally,” Stephen said.
“We both don’t have any other friends, so all your secrets are safe with us.”
Stephen echoed my observation.
“Funny, that describes most the people I end up teaching. There’s power in being an outcast. Average people can sense it and it burns them up inside.”
“So that’s what my problem is, huh?” I asked. “Any way to give up that difference?”
Stephen looked offended. “You want to be like everyone else?”
I shrugged, “I mean, isn’t that what we are fighting for? A chance to be closer to normal.”
“No, I want to boost my weakness to make it a strength. I want to be better than normal.”
“You both already possess that, from where I’m sitting,” Kenzo said.
“You really believe that?” I asked. “That the outcasted are that way because we are better? But we fail at so much that they accomplish with ease.”
“Ah, but Darcy, there is so much below the surface that you can succeed at. Wonders that they have no understanding or knowledge of. Things they can not even hope to dream to be possible.”
Our positions seemed to have switched, I was a little skeptical but Stephen was eating up every word.
“Now you’re kind of sounding like a snake oil salesman,” I said.
He laughed. “I haven’t heard that expression in such a long time. I believe ‘NFT Bro’ is the slightly more modern expression that overwrote that one. Where ever did you hear it?”
“My mom. Most things I know that are from Earth came from her. She would have liked you. But definitely thought you were selling snake oil.”
He smiled. “Well, what do you think?”
“I think I’m ready to make things float with my mind.”