“Hey Sam! Feeling better I hope?” Peter inquired as I sat next to him.
“Yeah. Sorry about that.” I answered sheepishly as the clatter of chairs around us continued from people filing into the meeting room. “Thank you for the drive.”
“No worries!” He initially went back to setting up his laptop, but he kept glancing back and almost asking a question until I rolled my eyes and said ‘get on with it’. “Do you know what’s happening when you get tired like that?
I shrugged. “Not precisely, mum thinks it’s probably an emergent behavior from my being a person and making use of my senses beyond just feeding a bodyguard expert system. Imparts more use on the mana circuits for my senses without letting them fully clear, sorta like a memory leak I guess.”
“Oh, that sucks.”
I shrugged. “Everyone has limits, that’s just how mine represents themselves.”
Before he could ask anything else, Summers cleared his throat and the meeting began. With how relatively restrained the clash had been on personal impacts, most of it was just Molly and I talking about the creatures we had encountered. Mary had checked out the tree while we were busy, so far it was pretty straightforwardly a large tree that had replaced a huge chunk of farmland, she wasn’t sure how compensation for that would work out but Summers said that wasn’t something we had to worry too much about.
The latter half of the meeting was going over Wilson’s document from yesterday, we went a whole lot more into detail then Molly’s quick summary yesterday, but she had pretty much listed out the important stuff. While it was kinda interesting to hear about the specifics of the artifacts found in Europe, they sounded pretty mundane and after a few years of clashes they probably weren’t going to stay in any of our heads for long. I did learn a decent amount about the behind-the-scenes relations with our rough foreign equivalents from it though, admittedly mostly from Wilson complaining about a lack of consistency, which makes sense given that so far as institutions go ours had barely existed. The EU nominally had a body that organized responses, European Union Agency for Dimensional Affairs or EUADA, but I had barely been aware of them before I had signed on with the CRD. In retrospect, that was probably because it was mostly a cherry on top of a chaotic mix of smaller organizations on a per nation basis. Mind you we couldn’t be too high handed given our effective coverage was limited to about 35 percent of Canada’s population given our lack of real presence outside of Southern Ontario.
As the meeting wound down some idle speculation around the lack of local artifacts found started between Peter and Kat, but the most practical answer was probably just it being an unpopulated area for whatever reason.
“Hey Sam, stay back a moment.” Molly called as I was getting up.
“What’s up?” I asked as the room emptied out having walked over to join her the end of the table.
“Nothing dramatic, just that two of the offers to some potential recruits were accepted.” She said with a smile. “So we have a couple of new people coming in on Friday to get an initial welcome and to get some paperwork done.”
“Oh really? That’s awesome.”
“Hell yeah it is! It was pulling teeth to get the budget and sign off for approaching you, so the smoothness of this time was a bit wild.” She paused then continued with a somewhat guilty expression. “On a sort of related topic, how do you feel about being involved in a bit more training? It might be early for you having just come off your exams and gotten back and all, but between new people and a thing in the pipeline I would kinda like to step it up a notch.”
“Sure I don’t mind,” I said with a nod. “I guess you mean the ambush?”
“Ah, did Oeter blab about it to you?” She asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Er, yeah, was he not supposed to?” I asked guilty that I might have ratted him out.
“Nah I was going to raise it with you sooner or later, I mostly just wanted to give you a bit more time to get back into things.” She said looking apologetic. “I didn’t really want to drag you into another incident when you really haven’t gotten a break.”
“It’s fine, I did sign up to do this job and that means doing work.” I pointed out. “I don’t really mind the training we had been doing before, and I don’t want to entirely monopolize Anna’s time.” I finished with a chuckle, then another thought crossed my mind. “Although I need to keep checking in on her, as she isn’t the most proactive about doing stuff following up on her own change.“
“Ha, I think that technically does count as work since you are engaging members of the public on good post-change behavior.” She joked before clearing her throat to get back on topic. “I am still working out a schedule with Mary, but I would expect less than full-time for you given you don’t need to devote as much effort to gunnery or maintaining physical fitness.”
“Ah, makes sense. I did promise mum to help her out with getting my sister up and going so I might be around during those times anyway.” I admitted.
“How has that been going so far?”
“Good! Although its going pretty slow I think. It’s one thing to have access to my mind versus actually being able to understand how I think and make practical developments, particularly given I don’t want them to just like copy and paste it in.”
“Can’t say I like that concept,” Molly commented pulling a face. “Could they actually just like clone your mind?”
“Uh, probably?” I responded uncertainly. “Unless there’s some weird undiscovered magical interaction involved with my circuits or something, I’m technically just software running on this body and there is transfer hardware for doing that sort of thing available off the shelf back in Mech-tech.”
“Ugh, fuck that. Last thing I want is the moral nightmare that represents.”
“Mum threatened bodily harm to someone who suggested it if that makes you feel any better?”
She chuckled. “Setting that aside, she thinks it can happen still though? Like making your sister a person too.”
“Yep!” I confirmed cheerfully. “Mum is more confident than ever if anything, her explanations of the specifics kinda turn to technobabble though.”
“Good to hear.” She said with a grin, then tilted her head at the door. “Ready to go and grab dinner?”
“Sure.”
----------------------------------------
I was reading through a book on suit-making when my phone rang that evening.
“Hi mom.”
“Hello Sam, I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
“Nah it’s fine,” I answered while placing a bookmark at my spot. “What’s up?”
“My family is having their usual Canada day get-together and I was wondering what you wanted to do about it.”
“Oh, right.” Her side of the family was big on doing those sorts of things, it’s not like I hated them but I was glad when university gave me an excuse to avoid them. They could be a bit much for me given how much of her extended family could be there. “I can’t say I really thought about it, I guess I could probably go.”
“Are you sure?” She asked uncertainly. “It’s going to be awkward, particularly with my parents.”
“Yeah but putting it off might just make it weirder later on, I think I must have at least some of them on Facebook so they’ll probably know.” I pointed out, the idle thought that it had been months since I’d looked at any of my social media accounts besides discord flitted across my mind. “Has anyone talked to you about my change?”
“Not yet, I told Leah months ago, but she hasn’t brought it up besides asking how you were doing a couple of times.” There was a hitch in her voice. “Not being able to tell her about you being…”
“Ah.” We lapsed into an awkward silence that I tried to break. “Have you talked to mum, uh Jess, about it? I don’t really know if she would have interest in going.”
“Yes I have, she seemed interested in going.” A mischievous tone entered mom’s voice. “We were thinking of pulling a prank, it wouldn’t be that hard to do.”
I laughed. “Sounds good, did you discuss coordinating the trip?”
“Only a little, she might bring you so we don’t have to backtrack down from there.”
“Works for me.” There were a few more moments of awkward silence.
“It’s good to talk to be able to call you again dear.” She said with a sniff.
“You don’t have to hold off on it you know, I might be busy these days but I can make time for it,” I said gently. “It doesn’t have to be for a specific reason, I’m happy to just talk. It’s not like I have a shortage of goofy stories anymore.”
There was another sniffle before she responded unsteadily. “Like what?”
“What’s a good one… Oh! On Monday this person’s budgie gained like twenty kilos and rather a lot of volume, which alone is weird enough, but it hadn’t quite figured it out…”
----------------------------------------
I sat up Friday morning to a gross itching running through my body I hadn’t noticed the day before, the infinitesimally minor difference in my movements suddenly distractingly present at the front of my mind. I groaned at the realization it was time to do another oil change, right when we were supposed to be getting the new people.
Fantastic.
Pushing that topic out of my mind for the moment, I tried to focus on my morning routine whenever I wasn’t actively exchanging bodily fluids. Once I was fed, cleaned, and mostly presentable I wasted the rest of my free time alternating between feeling like shit and figuring out lengths and types of fabric I would need for Anna’s costume. I almost ordered a mound of stuff before the thought that I probably should double-check later when I was feeling better.
Without anything better to do, I collected my exchange supplies into a box on a strap Alica had put together after my first ‘robo-period’ then dragged myself out to the bus stop. After a deeply uncomfortable ride wherein I was acutely aware of being stared at by the few people aboard, I found myself in our office with a bit of time to spare. I could have spent it productively, like catching up on material our linguist, Ed, had been putting together with his team since I last did anything of the sort. I mostly just spent it face planted onto the surface of the desk instead, regretting that I hadn’t just turned my brain off by visiting Anna.
I was in the middle of drawing from the fresh container when the door opened to a grinning Molly.
“-and this is our office!” her grin faltered a bit seeing what I was doing. “Ah, bad day Sam?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I answered trying to keep any discomfort out of my voice, sounding a bit flat instead. “Hi, nice to meet you.” I called out to the two tall guys looking in the door around Molly.
I think one of them is probably a better part of double my height, although I was sitting down which would exaggerate the difference more. I looked away from them for a moment to mess with my shirt so my oil feed tube wouldn’t get caught up as it retracted. Molly had started up again while I was working. “This is Sam, she’s this world’s premiere expert on working in other dimensions and probably one of the best people to have by your side in a fight.”
“Molly that’s probably the most embarrassing way to introduce me you could have found.” I groaned prompting a laugh as she continued into the room
“It’s true though!” She countered. “No one else has had the immersion education or number of hours racked up in another dimension that you do.”
“That’s like one dimension, and I had inherent stealth advantages in it.” I pointed out a little annoyed, then I realized I was getting wound up and sighed flopping back on the table.
Stupid irritating oil blending.
“Ah, sorry for bugging you.” She said apologetically as she passed behind me, pausing long enough to pat me on the shoulder. “I hope you feel better soon.” There was a slightly awkward pause before she addressed the other two. “Come on in and grab a seat, I have a couple of laptops and a pile of forms for you.”
After the sound of footsteps entering the two chairs across the table audibly rolled away before returning sounding occupied this time. I could hear Molly looking through the drawers at her end of the desk, but while she was doing so the person right across from me started introducing themselves.
“Hello Sam, I’m John Park.“ He started and I pulled myself off the desk so I could at least attempt to be polite and get a better look at him while he talked. I couldn’t really tell how old he was but there were a few streaks of grey in his short black hair, I would guess he was of SEA decent, but he didn’t have an accent, nor could I have told you where from exactly. “Used to be a social worker out east after I couldn’t make it with the police.”
I’m sure there’s more to the story than that from his discomfort at the admission and the fact that Molly had been willing to let him in, but I offered a hand to give him an out. Wincing a bit at the mixing the motion brought, I tried to do an intro for myself untainted by Molly. “I’m kinda new to this stuff, I was just a local student until recently so don’t overvalue what Molly says of me.”
“Ha, I look forward to getting to know you- Oh thank you.” He interrupted himself to take the laptop with a thick binder atop it from Molly.
I glanced at the tall guy on the left who had an interesting mix to his features and a dark-tanned skin tone, he looked ludicrously fit too but in like a practical way rather than being a gym rat. “And you?”
“Marcus!” he offered a hand with a slightly nervous grin, he was perhaps a bit enthusiastic with his handshake. “EMT, uh ex I guess, I was in Oregon for a while before moving in locally a few months ago to be closer to family, and uh, the pay was shit to be honest.” I bobbed my head to acknowledge, then regretted having done so.
Molly then offered him his own stack of material, before addressing them. “I’ll let you two get a bit to read through that stuff, “ She said then glanced to me and pointed her head out the door. Once we were out in the hall, she turned to me. “I will remind you that you didn’t have to come in today, particularly if you aren’t feeling well.”
I shrugged “Didn’t want to not be there to meet them.”
She gave me the eyeball. “So here’s how the rest of the day will go.” She started in a no-nonsense tone. “They are going to spend until lunch signing stuff and some basic set up nonsense, then after that, I have a catch-them-up meeting this afternoon after which I will turn them loose on the operations manual I wrote while you were gone. You though are going to be doing something different, after lunch you are going to go check in on the newest changee in the region to see how she is doing and I’m expecting that will take long enough that it wouldn’t make sense for you to come back in.” She gave me a pointed look hands on her hips. “Got it?”
“Yes ma’am.” I responded sheepishly.
“Good!” She flashed a quick grin then returned to a concerned expression. “We start training on Monday, but you will only be there if you feel OK, right? This stuff isn’t that urgent yet and while you seem to be doing better than the last time, there’s not really a reason to force it.”
“Yes, Molly.” I will admit to feeling a bit awkward being lectured by her, but I was grateful she was giving me an excuse to not have to hang around all day. She went to open the door back into the office again but a thought crossed my mind. “Oh uh, they seem to have a lot more to sign than I did.”
“Yeah, there’s a whack load of stuff for the portals, other dimension operations, hostile organizations, and risks that we didn’t have when we were brought on.” She answered pausing at the door with one hand on the handle.
“Do I need to do anything?”
“Nah, we got grandfathered in.” she dismissed my concern with a wave of her free hand. “Our old one was broad enough to cover it, but we just wanted it really specific now that our scope of operations have changed. And this is like the second round of a pile of shit to do after we gave them a bunch with the offer itself.”
“Ah, makes sense.”
I passed the time until lunch flipping through Molly’s new operations manual on my laptop, she had sent it over to me at the same time as she gave it to them. it was mostly just stuff I already knew at this point, but it was something to distract myself with that required few enough motions to not be too uncomfortable.
I am pretty sure that I was still making noises or grumbling unconsciously sometimes as I noticed the odd glance from one of the other two, but they seemed too polite to actually say anything.
Once they had both finished up it was about the right time for lunch, I kinda trailed behind the other three and didn’t really engage in the conversations that started up after we had gotten food. I was too focused on trying to move normally and not make noises at every motion. I vaguely tried to at least follow the conversation while I ate a remarkably good attempt at replicating a lasagna, but Peter had joined us early on and had somehow steered the topic to baseball which went right over my head. I excused myself a bit early to do another stage of the oil change and take off.
I realized after as I rang the doorbell that I hadn’t actually messaged Anna to see if it was fine for me to drop by. “Oh, that time again?” She asked sympathetically once she had opened the door.
“Yeah, sorry I didn’t let you know I was coming.”
“It’s fine! I’m pretty sure I’ve told you to come by for this before.” She said moving aside to let me enter. “Besides I wasn’t doing school work or anything, so it’s not like you are interrupting.”
I was early enough into this oil change that everything felt gross all at once without even the phases thing, so it took a bit longer for me to get downstairs than usual. I looked around her desk as I settled down onto the stool beside her chair, one end was covered in loosely connected electronics that I recognized as drone bits I had gotten for her. The other was occupied by a handful of raspberry pi-s, a mechanical computer that mum had given her along with a mess of cables and busy breadboards.
“You’ve been busy.” I commented as she sat down beside me.
“I guess, but it’s not as impressive as it looks.” She argued, I leaned against her while closing my eyes and just letting her ramble on. “I just followed a guide for most of the drone part and doctor Woodward gave me a pile of stuff to work off for the interface side.”
I felt her wrap an arm around me without any apparent interruption to her chain of thought. “I am still working on getting a signal to and from both types of computers, and it’s being a drag. Depending on what I am trying to send the thing-“ I felt her jostle as if she was doing a particularly aggressive gesture. “Expects a digital or analog signal without any straightforward pattern and I don’t really know working with hardware that well.”
“Better than I do,” I admitted eyes closed and resting my head against her, getting enough contact to dull the discomfort. “Have you done much with electronics before?”
“Sorta, I’ve done some lighting and stuff like that on props sorta recently, and there was that chip design course I did for fun in second year. And I guess I did have a couple of classes back in high school when I was hoping to get on the robotics team.”
“Did you?” I mumbled back in response.
“Nah, the year I was going to there were some people I really didn’t get along with on the team.”
“Ah, sorry to hear that,” I responded softly, I think I had dozed off for a moment or two before I question came to mind. “Did you hear anything back from Summers?”
There was a moment’s delay as she finished typing something. “Not yet, apparently, the blood work is taking a while to process.”
“Mmmmm, how do you feel? Everything OK still?” She didn’t immediately respond and I thought I must have been drowned our by the loud clacks of her keyboard again before the mechanical computer’s continuous whirring stepped up a notch as she sighed.
“Yeah, honestly it’s really easy to forget anything has changed unless I check in a mirror or go outside.” She answered slightly distractedly. “I won’t quite fit into my carefully fitted costumes anymore with the half-inch I picked up, but otherwise it’s not really had any negative effects that I have noticed.”
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“That’s good to hear,” I mumbled before my brain caught up a bit. “Other than the costumes, that kinda sucks.”
“Eh, I usually don’t wear old stuff that much anyway so it’s OK.” She answered, before lifting her arm off me to do something that sounded fiddly. “Really I should probably clear out a lot of it because they don’t see use, but I guess I’m still attached to them as things I’ve done.”
“Yeah that makes sense-ergh.” I winced at some particularly strong feeling of clean and dirty oil mixing in my upper torso.
“How is it compared to the previous two times?”
“I’m more used to it I guess. “ I admitted while clutching at her t-shirt. “It still feels like shit thou- mrrhgh.” Fuck that felt gross, it was in my neck that time, it was bad enough to knock me out of the comfy fugue I was slipping into.
“Did you talk to Dr. Woodward about it?”
“Yeah,” I answered with a sigh. “My system is convoluted enough that even a big fancy replacement system would take hours to do a flush and I couldn’t be conscious for it. Apparently this was chosen for greater uptime and lower reliance on specialized hardware support.” I continued to explain while cracking an eye open to watch her messing with the programming for the pi. “A few minutes of needing to exchange every once in a while seems like a great upside over potentially having to get a professional oil change that might take the synthetic away for a day or more normally…“
“If it weren’t for feeling like shit during it. It’s just a thing to get used to, like getting regular rebuilds.” I finished with a sigh as she watched some process or other on the pi run, getting a ding from the mechanical computer.
“Hell yeah, it worked!” She declared cheerfully, then cleared her throat and focused on me again. “What do you mean about rebuilds?”
“Uhhhh,” I struggled to remember if I had told her about the full maintenance, I guess I had alluded to it but never really went into details. “Well, I’ve told you how my repair buddies check me over at night and do small things right? Well, take that a bit further ...” I told an increasingly horrified Anna about the experience, by the end, she had turned away from her desk and was clutching me to her like someone was going to take me away or something.
“You let her do that and you were conscious for it all?”
“Yeah, it didn’t really start out as something I wanted but it’s fine, it felt nice to move again after with everything refreshed,” I answered while patting her back and ignoring the gross feeling that brought. “While I didn’t really need it done that time, but I will in the future as there is stuff Lilly and co can’t do.”
“But-“
“Try not to give mum a hard time about it, it’s not like she could have possibly known, and if anything it’s like someone had done a knockoff of her daughter.“ She pulled back just a little to study my face before sighing and pulling back in close.
“Alright I’ll try.” She said reluctantly.
By the time Monday rolled around I was feeling significantly less gross, still not great but good enough to be doing stuff again. While I could probably whittle away an eternity snuggling with Anna, she did have assignments to work on.
I spent most of that morning with Molly while Mary was putting the other two through her firearms intro, while John had obviously been trained when he was a cop it had been almost a decade since he had held a gun so he went through it as a reminder. Despite my insistence that I was fine to do physical activities, Molly used some excuse to force us to go and work with Ed for a while. I has all but forgotten the exa-dimensional language work I had done, so I mostly spent time playing catch up while Molly spat tongue twisters that sounded like someone choking a squid at me.
We eventually got a text from Mary that she was opening the range for the other two, so if we wanted to make use of it now was as good a time as any. Given that both of us were getting a bit worn out by Ed’s enthusiastic lectures on replicating various sounds with a human throat Molly agreed to bounce. If nothing else I hadn’t used my weapons much since I had gotten back from mech-tech and Mary had complained at us for taking out my rifle without any practice, ‘regardless of how good you are with it’.
I lamented about the lack of applicability of half Ed’s descriptions to me to much amusement from Molly as we made our way down. It was a bit of a convoluted path that I mostly followed her on, as we needed to stop by the office and its locker for our pistols and then swing by the armory to pick up some ammo. It ended up being the first time I interacted with our armorer; he was a shortish guy from nova scotia who still towered over me. Any lack in height was more than made up for by his booming voice, as he introduced himself and gave an extremely short tour of his domain. we basically only had an oversized broom closet for the actual armory, so he had gotten the room across from it as a workshop.
After bidding him farewell, we continued down to the range. We only had three lanes in the little chamber but given Mary would be supervising them one at a time today that wasn’t really an issue. I had decided to skip hearing protection since between my experiences and talking to mum I knew that the volume wouldn’t negatively affect me.
It looks like John had already fired off his magazine from the empty brown box he was rolling over in his hands as we entered the range. He stared at me and tapped his ear muffs which I dismissed with a wave of a hand.
I watched Marcus going through the motions while I loaded magazines, he looked nervous as hell. Not like I blamed him, but it was interesting to see how my brain was classifying him. He was under the ally category but with a wary undertone from his inexperience with the weapon.
He flinched on his first shot causing it to whiff through the lower corner of the paper target.
Well, it was in the right direction at least.
He got a few of the later rounds close to the middle at least, so that was a decent bit of improvement I would assume. They were starting to pack up as I got the last magazine I was going to use filled.
“May as well stick around to see this.” Molly declared before the others could start leaving. “What’s the plan Sam?”
“I was going to practice overall time with reloads from my holster. “ I answered while sticking the two spare magazines into their pouches.
Once those magazines were in their place and another laying on the table to start with, I unholstered my P226 and went through the usual safety checks. Once I was satisfied, I loaded it before centering it on the target that I had moved to the far end of range.
15… 10… 5… 0. Empty.
I went to reload, I had been practicing the motion a bit as while I had a really good positional awareness of my hands I don’t think I was particularly unusual so far as the clothing or pouches were concerned. I could move pretty quick though, so it was but a moment to get the next magazine in.
15… 10… 5… 0. Empty.
Reload.
15… 10… 5… 0. Empty.
I think that time was pretty good overall and as usual, the grouping was basically just removing the center black dot without much in the way of deviation beyond that caused by variances in ammunition and motions of the gun’s mechanism. I lay the pistol down and started collecting the magazines together, then looked to see if the others were still there.
“Fucking hell,” John swore, while Marcus was just staring at me wide-eyed. Mary had that smirk again, I am pretty sure she finds other people’s surprise amusing. It occurred to me she might have intentionally set this up with the timing of her text.
“Whatever you do, don’t judge yourself off what she does,” Molly declared with a wide grin. “Like I said, probably one of the best people to have with you in a fight. Were you going to be doing anything else here Sam or will you follow with us?”
“Uh, there’s not too much point besides burning up my training allocation which I can always do later,” I answered still a little off-kilter from their reactions. “Er and I need to do another, you know.” I tapped my hip to indicate an oil change, getting a nod from Molly.
Lunch was a different kind of awkward at the start, the two new guys seemed reluctant to start a conversation and I didn’t really know of a good topic either, Mary and Molly weren’t helping break the ice either as they were distracted discussing some bit of the training schedule. Fortunately, Peter and Kat turned up before it got too awkward, they both were looking excited.
“Something good happen?” I asked as they set their trays down.
“Yeah!” Kat started. “We got a few minutes of a portal being sustained even after the normal machine shut down!” She frowned a bit. “The setup needed isn’t looking as portable as we were hoping though.”
“You have a bit of time to work on that,” Molly interjected, the topic apparently more important than the schedule. “The operation is currently planned for July fifth or thereabouts, General Synthetics needs a bit to let the bait mature.”
“Oh, we have a date for it then?” I asked while Peter and Kat launched into a discussion of their options, food forgotten in front of them.
“Yep.” She confirmed. “Summers was busy over the weekend, I think we have a meeting on it tomorrow afternoon.”
“Molly.” Mary chided.
“Oh uh, right I’ll tell you more later Sam.” Marcus was looking between us a bit lost, while John seemed to be paying more attention to Peter insisting that ‘Alica’s approach’ would work to a skeptical Kat. “Don’t worry about it Marcus, just we will be busy for a bit around then.”
“Cool? What will we be doing if you aren’t around.”
“Mary and I’ve got that mostly covered, I wasn’t going to be doing all of it anyway but for the physical stuff one of the soldiers got tagged to give you a hand. Sargent Davies right Mary?” she nodded and Molly continued, John was paying more attention to us at this point. “Beyond that Summers is going to be taking you two out visiting people one day, Alica and Drew will teach you two the dos and don’ts of artifact collection, then Ed will fill up anything left over.”
“Oh, Sounds good.” Marcus accepted, I think it somewhat went over his head but I expect it will be fine.
“Hey Peter, Katherine, your food is getting cold!” Molly pointed out, startling them out of their discussion that was threatening to turn into an argument, after giving Molly a sheepish look they returned to their meal.
----------------------------------------
AceW0mbat: Yo wtf
IndustrialCat: ?
AceW0mbat: Imma plant
IndustrialCat: really?
AceW0mbat: summers just told me yeah
AceW0mbat: apparently not the first though
AceW0mbat: one of the early waves had a few plant people
AceW0mbat: But they were obviously plants unlike me
IndustrialCat: how are you doing with it?
AceW0mbat: uh
AceW0mbat: I dunno
AceW0mbat: I can’t really tell I’m a plant I guess
IndustrialCat: would you like me to come by to talk about it?
IndustrialCat: gonna be home in like 10 or 15
AceW0mbat: Yes
AceW0mbat: please
IndustrialCat: you doing ok?
AceW0mbat: I guess so
AceW0mbat: it’s weird
IndustrialCat: It’ll be fine, be there ASAP
Anna was looking distinctly uncomfortable when she opened the door for me but brightened up a bit after a quick hug before I took my shoes off. “Have you been talking to anyone else yet? I know Reiko is back at her parents” I asked cautiously, not expecting an answer I would like.
“No, not really.” She admitted looking away as I pushed my sneakers to the side.
“Your cosplay friends?” I asked hopefully.
“They don’t even know about this.” She said pulling at an errant green hair, I nodded resisting the urge to sigh.
“I can stand here forever, but do you want to take it to the couch?” I asked, then brought her along with me when she hesitantly nodded. I noticed she started leaning towards me as we sat down still expressing possibly excessive interest in how I smelled after her change, but then she pulled back and looked away shamefully. I decided we were not having any of that, so I grabbed her and pulled her head into me, causing an ‘eep’ in response.
“It’s ok Anna, you know I’m not going to mind, for fucks sake I am probably still weirder with what’s gotten me off.” She spluttered and started to push away for a moment. “Relax, it’s all going to be fine.”
“But like, it’s weird, isn’t it?” She started while giving in and flopping down onto me. “I guess it’s because I’m a stupid plant.”
“I just went over this Anna, and it’s not like being a plant really matters right?” I pointed out. “Your still you, and before you learned that you hadn’t even really noticed the differences, I’ve been reminding you of most of them.”
“Yeah but-“
“Anna, you are still a biological being that can pretty convincingly pass as human, it’s really not that dramatic to other people. Besides-” I took her chin and raised her head and she reluctantly met my gaze. “I don’t care other than knowing you are safe and well, I love you Anna, and something as minor as this won’t change that. “
She swallowed while holding back tears. “You call this minor?”
“Sure, and I will have you know I basically spent the whole first week blubbering from anything, crying is a healthy reaction.” She nodded uncertainly while breaking her head out of my grasp, then pulled herself against me, she shook as she quietly wept.
“Sorry, I’m being all weird when my life hasn’t even changed much compared to yours.” She admitted after her sobs subsided, still muffled a little by my shirt.
“It’s really fine, but you shouldn’t be comparing your experience to others, just because you might feel like you haven’t suffered or experienced distress to the same degree as someone else doesn’t invalidate your own.”
I stroked my hand through her hair, it’s cool how it’s behaving pretty similar to how it did before, considering again with the revelation it made more sense that it feels like it’s thicker and more structured than before. I guess it's like grass leaves, chives, or fine vines more than hair.
“Uncertainty and confusion is entirely normal for changees, even for one’s with only minor changes.” I started explaining. “Your body is different from what you had before, ewgardless of if that changes your lifestyle. I don’t know what the best course for you from now on is, but we can play around with your plant speech more, and I am sure Summers has a whole swath of tests lined up for you.” She nodded. “What I can tell you for sure is that I don’t want you to think you are alone through this. It’s probably good to self-reflect on what’s changed, but you can still lean on people when you need it.”
“But I don’t know anyone who’s here.” She argued. “Reiko is gone and you have work.”
“Mike and River are mostly at my place, and might I point out that they haven’t blocked you from coming in with me? That temporary ID of yours is still active, I even checked with the guy at the front desk.” There had enough regular update meetings while I was gone they had given my immediate family and roommates limited passes, they needed to be with an employee at all times and I expect they would be cutting them off at some point but they were still active for now. I grinned as a thought crossed my mind despite her not being able to see it. “Molly might try to recruit you though.”
She snorted. “What for? It’s not like I know how to do anything.”
“Eh, that wouldn’t stop her and besides you didn’t see how badly Marcus did the other day.” I countered with a chuckle. “You do seem to have some degree of plant superpowers too, maybe you’ll figure out how to like make them attack people or something.”
She was silent for a moment. “Wait, do you think that’s possible?” She asked an edge of excitement getting into her voice.
“I dunno, but you made a tomato grow insanely fast at the very least,” I answered with a shrug before grinning. “Only one way to find out, trial and error!” She started fidgeting excitedly against me, prompting me to laugh. “It’s like finding out stuff about me right? You don’t have to be scared of what’s different, maybe you can look at it as a whole range of new possibilities.”
“Yeah!” She said looking up at me with a grin, as another thought crossed my mind.
“Have you considered coming to the next changee meeting?” She blinked the grin faltering a bit.
“Not really.” She said looking a bit pensive.
“It’s a great crowd, Mike and River were going to come plus you already know a bunch of them. Just think of it as an excuse to eat a bunch of junk food and chat with people, its not even going to be a big group with the summer and all. I was going to go over to it directly from the facility anyway and Molly would probably give us a ride.”
She nodded awkwardly, then paused for a second repeating the motion more confidently. “Sure.” She then got a sheepish grin. “Mind if we stay this way for a bit, it’s nice.”
“Of course, I can’t complain either although,” I twisted a little bit more so that I was under her more so her head rested closer to mine, letting me touch my face to hers. “Now it’s even better…” I mumbled in the blissful feeling that followed to the sound of her giggling.
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“Hey Anna!” A cheerful Molly greeted as we entered the office the next morning. “I haven’t seen you for a bit, I like your hair!”
“Uh, thanks I guess.” Anna said a little startled.
“What’s up with the plant?” Molly asked before Anna had a chance to recover pointing at the small pot with a fern that she was carrying.
“Um, Sam suggested it,” She answered embarrassed, then continued when Molly looked confused. “To practice my plant stuff.”
“Plant stuff?”
“Telling them to do things.” Anna mumbled flushed while looking away.
“Wait you can do that?” Molly asked excitedly while suddenly standing up from her seat, startling John and Marcus from their laptops.
“Summers didn’t tell you?”
“Nope! He doesn’t violate patient confidentiality for no reason you know?” Molly explained while moving around the desk to lean over to look at the plant. “Have you already told it to do something? Can I watch the next time you do?”
“Uh, no, and yes I guess,” Anna said blinking. “It’s mostly not that exciting with the things I have tried though.”
“Cool! Have you noticed if you have any other abilities or like changes in your physical capabilities yet?” Molly asked straightening up with a grin.
“No? I mean Sam has been trying to get me to try it out, but I have mostly been doing school work or working on props.” Anna asked bewildered, not used to Molly’s relentless attitude. “Summers is going to have me do some tests on Monday though.”
“Ah but I expect he did suggest you get used to things right?” Anna nodded. “I wouldn’t suggest we do anything fancy but maybe I can have Sam get you to go through some of her training with you and I can have you join us for some exercise.”
“Uh ok?” Anna responded uncertainly, and at least somewhat being dragged along by Molly’s enthusiasm. “I don’t have any of my gym stuff though.”
“Not a problem!” Molly dismissed beaming. “You aren’t a shrimp-like Sam and we have a bunch of spare stuff for the soldiers on the facility so I expect we can rustle something up.” She got a thoughtful look. “We might even have some branded stuff of our own lying around.” She whirled to me with the look of a seasoned salesperson who had caught a mark. “Hey Sam, mind staying here to answer any questions while I drag Anna to find stuff?”
“Sure,” I answered my grin from observing the interchange this far undiminished. “What would I be answering questions on though?”
“Oh, anything that’s happened so far with FFIA, basically just the last few months in general I expect. All shit you will know off the top of your head.”
“Cool, yeah,” I said with a nod settling into my chair while opening the lid to my laptop. I had gotten into the habit of just leaving it here as it wouldn’t be disturbed, and I didn’t need it for school right now anyway. I received the potted fern from a confused Anna before she got almost dragged off by Molly as I watched amused.
I spun my wheels for a bit reading emails and messages, there were a few project updates but the main attention-getter was Wilson’s report on FFIA activity for the past few weeks. They had nabbed a couple of people in the US, and it looked like they were using increasing numbers of what we would consider artifacts. The obscuring ones from before were being thrown around like candy, but they appeared to be using one that made it impossible to recognize faces on video footage, any possible angles were replaced with abstract geometry. They seemed to have armed themselves with unknown rifles too, but no one had seen them being used so we don’t know what they did.
The tech was a pretty good indicator they must have been doing raids into dimensions other than Mech-tech but we had no idea how they were dividing their effort besides an increasingly apparent focus on the states. Wilson was certain that whatever infiltration they had done was getting increasingly influential as by this point our american counterparts should have been able to predict the attacks. He also reiterated that thanks to some agreements he had been forced to hand over a bunch of the tool kit he had been using to predict them in Canada weeks ago, so they should have been doing the same thing particularly with how astronomically bigger their budget probably was. The FFIA was clearly not bothered by how predictable they had gotten or with increasingly operating in the open as they were either, which was concerning, to say the least.
“Woah, you spent a month and a half there?” Marcus asked pulling me out of the email I was in. “What’s it like being in another dimension? I’ve seen the news stories on that place, and I guess there’s the rest of the document…” He trailed off when I looked up.
“Hm? First part kinda sucked not gonna lie, otherwise, it’s mostly like visiting another country - stuff is different but there’s still some familiarity.” I answered while John glanced up from his own reading. “I expect you will get a chance to visit at some point if you’re interested.”
“Huh, really?”
“Yeah, I took my girlfriend there on a date, so I don’t see why not.” I answered with a shrug, Marcus blinked in confusion. I wasn’t quite sure what he was surprised about but there wasn’t really an opportunity to say anything as Molly returned with Anna in tow at that moment. It looks like they found a CRD-branded shirt and some gym shorts, the shirt was a bit short so there was a hint of midriff when she moved. I bounced my eyebrows at her with a grin getting a blush and a ducked-away look in return.
“Are you two fine with us pushing up the physical stuff for today?” Molly asked the others cheerfully ignoring my interchange with Anna. “It will give us some time to have Anna mess around without us worrying about interfering with the meeting Sam and I have this afternoon.”
“Sure.”/”Sounds good”
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“Hey Anna.” I started before hesitating a bit.
“Yeah?” She asked while halting the overly telegraphed and slow mock hit I was doing a little too late again.
“Were you always this uh, slow to react?” I know I’m not exactly going to be the best judge of these things, but I am pretty sure she would have been faster before. I grimaced realizing I hadn’t exactly been polite in my wording. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine, and no, I don’t think so.” She admitted shrugging. “It’s like I see you moving but then it just takes a while to respond, I hadn’t really noticed back home but it’s not just you.”
“Well, I would guess if you actually want to learn to fight, it’s probably not going to be as a light and agile fighter,” I commented wryly as another mock swing was caught, it occurred to me that she didn’t even jostle from the hit. “One second,” I mentioned before stepping away to go fishing around in the stuff Molly had at the side of the room. After a moment or two, I returned having pulled out a mini punching bag that molly had picked up so she could teach me to punch without injuring her. “Hey swing a punch at this, hard as you can.”
I offered it up to Anna, causing her eyebrows to pull together looking at it uncertainly. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, go for it.” I said with a reassuring smile.
She wound up and threw a slow and sloppy swing at me, it was at least roughly like I had shown her earlier though.
Whoomp
To be honest, that was a hell of a hit, I even rocked back on my heels a little. I was pretty sure that was way heavier than I had ever taken before, which is saying something as despite Anna being approachably taller she wasn’t quite as visibly dense with muscle as Molly.
“Ok, Anna big thing for you,” I said seriously getting a startled look from my rapid 180 in attitude. “Don’t hit someone like that without being extremely sure it’s needed. You could genuinely kill someone if you aren’t careful.”
“What?” She asked incredulously.
“Yeah, people are squishy and that was a hard hit.” She made a fist and then stared at it wide-eyed. I hummed for a moment, the sound coming from deep in my chest while considering what to say. “Any clue if you can still build up muscle as you are now?”
“Uh I dunno, I haven’t tried.” She answered off kilter.
I got a grin. “I bet you can, want to develop another superpower?” She looked at me confused. “You were that strong without trying, how about going for super strength by working out?”
“Is that really a superpower?” She asked with a crooked smile.
“Sure, why not?” I then leaned in close with a broadening grin. “Besides if you were strong enough to lift me, that would give us more options”
Her eyes widened before she nodded enthusiastically getting a laugh out of me, then another thought crossed my mind. “Hey remember how big a deal it was that I could haul around that cannon we made for my last cosplay, this could open some stuff for you too.”
She paused thoughtfully. “Yeah you’re right, it won’t be relevant for what we are working on but that’s actually a really good point.”
Suddenly a grinning Molly appeared wrapping an arm around Anna’s shoulders. “Saaay Anna, how do you feel about gainful employment?”
“Uh,” Anna answered looking sideways at her, while I set the punching bag aside. “I don’t know?”
“It’s nothing you have to decide now anyway!” She said the grin still in place. “If nothing else I haven’t run it by Summers, but hey it’s an option if you want it.”
“Um, thanks, I will think about it.”
“That’s not a no, so that’s all I can hope for!” Molly called out cheerfully while slipping off to return her attention to the other two. “Hey Marcus, don’t do that, you will hurt yourself!”
I moved close to Anna and then glanced around conspiratorially. “I told you she would try to recruit you.” I whispered while standing on my tip toes to reach her with my hand beside my mouth.
“I thought you were joking!” Anna whispered back. “Like I don’t know anything and I can’t believe this place is that desperate for people.”
I shrugged before returning to a normal conversational tone as I settled back to my feet. “We are expanding again and honestly attitude seems more important here than prior experience.”
I gestured quickly across the room to where Molly was. “ you know for those two new people one is ex EMT and the other is a social worker who was a cop like a decade ago from what he said. John might do ok in a fight but he is super rusty, and Marcus knows only what he needed against unruly patients. Hell, I knew nothing besides brute force when I started, so I wouldn’t worry about that.”
“Oh.” She responded looking a little conflicted.
“I’m not really sure I should be encouraging you to join,” I admitted with a frown. “If it was before all the portal stuff and when I came on, I would be because these are good people trying to do good things. But to be frank it’s dangerous now and I am… reluctant to let you put yourself at risk.” I sighed before continuing. “It is your choice of course.”
She looked at me with a complex expression for a few moments while I shuffled awkwardly, I felt tears start forming in my eyes and I abruptly stepped forward and wrapped my arms around her. “I love you, Anna, I want you safe even if it’s selfish of me.”
“Selfish? Do you not want me to join?” Anna asked confused while embracing me back.
“I don’t know,” I answered unsteadily. “I think I should still be here as I know what will be happening to people if we don’t do anything, but we don’t just deal with normal people, animals, and artifacts anymore. Remember back like the week after I met you? When I pointed out the risk of harming people in a fight?” She nodded. “This is getting into a tier above that, we are looking to take the fight to armed and dangerous people.”
She took a deep breath. “I am going to think about this Sam, I hear all your worries but I think you are forgetting something.” I looked up confused, then she reached to cup my face. “Everything you said about me applies to you too.” I blinked in realization as she continued. “It feels like you only just got back, but you are going straight back into it. I refuse to try and stop you, so maybe the best way for me to know you are safe is if I am with you.” She was smiling as she finished, before pulling me into a kiss, as she released me she giggled a little. “Besides it seems like a waste to get abilities and turn down the offer to join my girlfriend in fighting interdimensional crime right?”