What I had kind of hoped was an isolated incident turned out to be the first drop in the monsoon. First that morning, then the shower, and then AEGIS was on me constantly, seemingly able to notice any physical distress I had before even I did, and acting on it...and she had a very open interpretation of what constituted physical distress.

For the record, an erection is natural and happens several times a day. It is not physical distress. Several more times a day if you have an attractive girl wearing short dresses around you constantly, and several more, more, if that girl begins to associate herself in your subconscious with sex like a sick Pavlovian machine. She was getting to the point where she'd simply walk in the room, and at the sight or smell of her, she'd react to my reacting, and start climbing under the covers and humming.

It had been a mere two days. As it turned out, I was exceptionally easy to teach.

I had no idea what to do. I mean, that was a lie, I knew exactly what I should have done, I should have stopped us flat-out the second I knew this was starting. But let's be real, I was nineteen, and she was a literal dream-come-true for any nineteen year old male. Any time I thought I could muster resistance, or even tried to talk to her about it, invariably, she'd wind up on me again, and at that point, my words and brain just couldn't function anymore.

My only hope was that Lia would walk in on us and flip out, but even if AEGIS was in my room for half the day, I guess they had some agreement not to visit at the same time, because my rescue never came.

Maybe I had fixated on Lia as saving me because the hours she was in my room were the only ones where I could be certain I was safe. The only indication she'd given that anything at all was amiss was one day when she'd walked in, taken a few sniffs and said 'smells musky in here' with a look of concern which seemed more engaged in placing that smell than figuring out what it meant.

Today, she was sitting and talking about nothing again, but I was hanging on every word. Eventually she just sort of coasted to a stop mid-sentence.

"...what sword though?" I asked.

"What?"

"You were telling me that you killed Ralleforth and he dropped a new sword for your DPS warrior."

"Ah, yeah. Is this okay, Athan?"

"What?"

"You, I guess."

"What's wrong with me?" I asked, being evasive and I didn't know why. Didn't I want her to ask me this very thing?

She looked at me and chewed her lip. "Nothing...I guess. It's just not like you to take an interest in Kingdom Blade in all the times I've blabbed at you about it. I guess I'm a little sensitive to change right now. You know me, always worrying, right?" She laughed.

If only she knew.

"I guess it's just grown on me a little."

"Have you ever actually even seen the game?"

"No, don't think so."

She flipped out her mobile and scooted over next to me. As the game launched, it played out a familiar, brassy tune, and I jumped, my body reacting violently.

"Woah, what the heck?" Lia asked, her eyes flashing with worry at me.

"Nothing, nothing, sorry," I said, and pulled the blankets tighter over me. I had recognized the song instantly. It was the one AEGIS liked to hum at me. That was her taste in music? It was almost embarrassing. For her. It was absolutely embarrassing without question for me. Clearly I'd never be able to play this game no matter what, certainly not in public and especially nowhere near AEGIS.

The swiftness and efficiency in which she'd wormed her way into my mind was aggravating beyond belief, and the ways in which it'd manifest were...well, I was beginning to realize they were pretty messed up. Kinda. Maybe.

I'd run into a similar problem before, when Karu and I were together. Left on my own, I was certainly a typical horny teenager with all the stolen glances and fantasies that entailed, but when sex was there, freely available, as much as I wanted, it was like a flip was switched in my...brain, charitably...and I would just spend all day sneaking off to screw around if I could.

Karu had shown some restraint and made sure we still got out and led a healthy life, but AEGIS seemed intent on trapping me in the room. In the bed. In her, even.

Lia ignored my odd behavior and images passed in front of my eyes as she showed me the game. I had brief moments of comprehension as some things she'd mentioned before fell into context, and some things weren't at all how I expected them to look, but otherwise, just looked like a game to me. I think I enjoyed it more when given the holistic contexts that Lia tended to weave, rather than just a bunch of things on a holo.

"And there's the total disinterest I expected," Lia sighed and snapped her mobile shut again.

"I'm not disinterested," I argued, not sure how to put it. "I just...I mean, I'm not going to play, I think I like hearing about what you do in-game better than just seeing it. I don't know. Hey, can I ask you something?"

I'd forced the words out in the middle of an unrelated thought so I wouldn't have a chance to chicken out. She looked me in the eyes for a moment before snapping back to looking at the window. Last time I'd gotten a serious conversation out of her, she'd turned flighty on me, and I'm sure she didn't want another one now. But this one had no chance of turning around and guilting her, did it?

"Yeah, sure," she said, though her face said the opposite.

"I just uh," I didn't know how to start. I felt like there was some backstory or subtext which needed explaining, but there wasn't. One day, AEGIS went nuts and turned on her vacuum subroutines and my life has sucked ever since. I mean, I could just say that.

I kept trying to speak and not. I didn't have any lead-up. No context, no nothing. Lia was looking increasingly worried by the second, her eyes darting all over the room while she twirled a strand of her hair.

I mean, was I just going to dump this on her? Was this even her problem to know about, much less try to help me through? In fact, hadn't she just said earlier this is the one problem she wouldn't help me with, 'it's not life or death, it's just girls.'

"Yeah I uh, I noticed a while back, I could see Tem when she was invisible," I chickened.

"You can?"

"Well, no. But I can tell where she is in relation to me."

"Oh, right, you mentioned that back in the uh…"

Yeah, the place where Lia had fucked me over. I covered for her. "Yeah, but I could do it before then as well. Jack, too, when he's all over the place, I keep track of him better than anyone else seems to."

"Interesting." I could see the gears turning in her head, and she was so focused she'd forgotten to avoid my gaze even, not that she was actually seeing what was in front of her when she was like this. "Is it just those Exhumans?"

"Hmm, no, I could track Karu some yesterday, but only some."

"Is it because she's not Exhuman, you think?"

"No, it's because she kept throwing shit at my shield which blinded me. Or...blinded whatever this is."

"Can we just call it, uh, ESP for now?"

"Sure, whatever."

"So your ESP, blinded by your shield discharging," she reiterated, talking to herself more than me now. She brought her feet up onto the chair and hugged her legs, biting a thumbnail as she mumbled. "So it's either directly connected to your shield, or...probably more likely, your shield just obscured your vision, or, ESP, rather. The only…"

"Okay, I've got it," she said, abruptly interrupting herself.

"Well that was fast."

"Well, I am amazing after all. So when your shield flares, it blinds you...your eyes...because, why?"

"Because...it's bright?"

"Right, large explosion of energy in the visual spectrum which is what you use to see. Now, what other kind of explosion of energy does that produce?"

"I don't know, UV maybe?"

"Is that a guess?"

"Yes."

"You should learn a little more about lightning if you're going to throw it around everywhere, Athan," she said frowning. "But no, I'm not talking about electromagnetic waves here, just in general. You throw electricity off your shield."

"Sure."

"So it makes sense that if that blinds your ESP, then just like your eyes see light and are blinded by it, your ESP sees electrical impulses and is blinded by them."

I saw where she was going. "So my ESP is just me seeing, or sensing, rather, electrical impulses around me. Like those in a person when their muscles fire. Which is how I can track Tem and Jack in a fight."

She nodded. "Want to do an experiment?" I wouldn't have expected anything else from her.

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She had me sit in a chair in the middle of the room and walked around me with my eyes closed. I could track her easily enough, couldn't really tell that I was looking at electrical impulses or anything, but simply registered her as 'a presence' as I'd learned it.

"Okay, now try," she said. She was walking much slower and I had a hard time picking it up. There were glimmers of something, but unless I were actively looking for them, it just seemed like mental noise. If my eyes were open, I would have never picked up on it at all.

"Way harder," I said.

"Cool. Seems confirmed, or supported at least. All I was doing was just trying to keep all my muscles as relaxed as possible and go slowly," she said. "Felt stupid to do, by the way, but I guess it works."

"I will be wary for extremely casually relaxed assassins, I guess."

She laughed. "So other sources of power should be easy to pick up too? Can you tell where my mobile is?"

She was always one step ahead. She'd squirreled it away somewhere while walking around me. I close my eyes and imagined the room in my mind, feeling out different parts of it. I wasn't even sure that was a good strategy, but Lia's advice on using my powers was they came from my mind, I should do what comes naturally to get them to work.

It...did not work. The mobile, wherever it was, remained elusive. It wasn't anything like looking with my eyes, I didn't really have any sense of space, it was just like the sensation of feeling eyes on you, except if I focused on it, I could tell where it was coming from, in a sense.

"How about the power in the holo? That should be way stronger than whatever voltage and-slash-or amperage is in our bodies."

I tried again, staring at the blank device with my eyes screwed shut. I could see Lia, standing behind me, lit up like a nebula, but the holo was just the black of the inside of my eyelids.

"Turn it on? Muted?" I asked.

She did. Still nothing.

"Maybe you've only trained yourself to pick up on bioelectric impulses," Lia volunteered.

"There's no difference between the electricity in a person and in a machine," I said, feeling very Lia-ish for my one sentence.

"Sure there is. But uh," she checked something on her holo, which was apparently under my pillow. "Says the voltage across a neuron in the human brain is like, 0.07 volts. Your standard wall holo runs at like, 220 volts? So...that's like the difference between looking at a street-light or the sun?"

"I kind of doubt those figures are proportional, but I get the point. I can only pick up extremely small voltages? I wonder if we have any devices which use that little. Something tiny with an itty-bitty deulith cell."

I closed my eyes and with a sinking suspicion, cast my mind around the room. In the darkness, behind my eyes, I saw a light so bright I hadn't even considered it a light, like standing in a naturally-lit room and looking for the lightbar. It was hard to tell what I was looking for, or at, but I had a general idea without using my senses. I stood on the bed and reached towards the ceiling blindly, and before my fingers touched the stucco ceiling, they brushed against something else there.

I fumbled a little and felt my fingertips close around something hard, even if I saw nothing there with my eyes. I pulled it from the ceiling and jumped back down. It was like holding perfectly clear glass in my hand, but the shape was familiar enough.

"The heck is that?" Lia asked with some alarm.

"Cam drone," I sighed. "AEGIS', I should have known she'd bug my room."

"Why would she do that?"

"She always does that," I said. "She doesn't like having a limited perspective on the world. Too much time trapped in that box, I think. Gets claustrophobic inside her own head."

"Oh. That's sad," said Lia with a frown. "But also totally messed up. Does she watch you change and stuff?"

If only she knew, man. I gave the cam-drone in my hand the slightest of jolts, only through the surface layer so I wouldn't break it, but did render its optical camouflage inert. It materialized in my hand, looking a lot more professional than her older models, sleeker and smaller, not to mention the camo. I guess she had real parts out here instead of just what she could whip up. Only had one rotor on it as well, more thrust from a smaller motor.

I closed my eyes and tried to focus again, now that I had a better idea what I was looking for. Definitely another one in the bathroom, another in here, at least two in the hallway, and one more in the room two down, that would be the girls' room.

Seriously, this girl. I'd leave them alone for now, no need to freak Lia out more, though she seemed more interested in the moment in examining the drone than worried about it spying on her. Maybe she just hadn't put together yet that there were many of these. Probably also in their house in Vegas. Probably in Lia's room in Vegas.

"Well, we'll get rid of this one," Lia said, snapping the rotor off before I could stop her and throwing both pieces in the trash. "I'll ask her to stop spying on you."

"It's fine," I said, despite myself. "I just kind of expect it from her at this point. I've cleaned her drones out a number of times, but they just keep coming back. I think it's a neurosis for her at this point. Plus, if you find them, she just starts hiding them better, and if you break them, she just starts making better models. Also, it's her toy, don't break it."

"It's your room, dude. She should get the hell out with her toys."

This was good. She was a reasonable person, she was on my side, she respected my privacy against AEGIS. If I told her, I'm sure they'd fight, but AEGIS would have to back down.

"Good work today, Athan," Lia said, and I noticed she was still looking in my eyes. We'd had real conversation, and I'd asked her a question which she wanted to evade, but had chosen not to. It was like being a real person again. "Glad you came to me about your powers thoughts, I really enjoy that stuff."

"It is a little more interesting than Kingdom Blade I gotta admit," I said.

"Well, glad I could help, again. I kinda feel like a boxing coach sometimes. Like, it's you going out there getting punched in the face, but at least maybe I can help you get punched a little less, sometimes. Maybe I'm just trying to hog in on your glory."

"Yeah, but what else are sisters for?" I said, trying to put an arm around her shoulder and making an absolutely pitiful display of wincing as my arm moved. You'd think the pain would be an effective teacher that I was hurt right now, but I just kept being an idiot about it.

"Alright, tough guy, let's get you back to bed." She let me do it on my own, moving the chair back out of the middle of the room as her only act of helping after I'd vacated it. "We went long today, AEGIS should probably have dinner for you anytime. You need anything else?" she asked.

She was legitimately asking. She was right there, asking me the question I wanted her to ask. All I had to do was come clean and tell her and AEGIS would be out of my pants.

All I had to do was give up all the coddling and spoiling and royal treatment and voracious desire to satisfy my every whim.

So that's all. Yeah. Just had to tell her.

Yep.

Just had to say those words.

"No, I'm good. Thanks."

Not those words, you fuckhead.

I fell back into bed without waiting to watch her go and winced at the pain, but mostly at my own weakness. This was bad. Bad, bad, bad, bad.

Lia had hardly left when the door opened and AEGIS stood framed in the doorway, a plate of what looked like salmon and vegetables.

"Wasn't very nice, breaking my drone," she said with a small frown.

"Wasn't very nice hiding it in here," I said as she closed the door.

"I was just keeping an eye on you, I don't think there's any harm in that." She was back in dresses everyday now, and very deliberately gave me an eyeful while she bent forward to deposit my plate next to me and practically pressed herself against me while helping me sit up. She smelled a little like eraser shavings and bubblegum.

"And you're so excited to see me," she said with an unabashed grin.

She slinked towards me and I stopped her with a hand in her face, the fingertips of both of hers already sneaking up the bottom of my shirt.

"AEGIS," I said.

"Mff nnr," she replied. I moved my hand to her forehead. "Yes sir?"

"Stop," I said.

"Stop what?"

"Just stop for a second, okay?"

I could see her hesitate a moment, afraid of what was coming next. She knew, and I knew that if she just kept going, I wouldn't have the capacity or willpower to stop her. She wanted that so badly, to keep me from being able to say whatever I was going to say, because she was sure that whatever it was going to be, it wasn't going to be good for her keeping on as she had been.

From her perspective, why would she ever want to stop? She had me wrapped right around her finger. If she didn't stop, there wasn't a contest anymore, she'd won.

And yet, she did stop, her creeping hands arrested on my bare chest, impossibly warm to the touch.

She looked away from me. "What do you want, Athan?" she asked, almost exhausted sounding, like that one inaction had completely defeated her.

"I want...I want you to stop feeling like you have to force me into this."

"But I do, don't I? Before I did this, you were about to fall right back into Karu's arms, weren't you?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

"So why should I feel any different?"

She withdrew her hands and held herself like she was cold, still staring fixedly at the wall.

"I know, Athan, I know," she said, still sounding exhausted. "It's wrong. I just...I just wanted to make you happy, any way I could. Is that so wrong?"

"No, I mean, that isn't wrong at all." We were all kinds of contradictory on this.

"Right?" she said and smiled fleetingly. "Everyone's all caught up in trying to make you into some kind of superhero or playing with you or using you for things, and I don't think anyone ever thinks of what you want. You work and sacrifice everything for everyone, I see you trying so hard every day, ready to throw your life away for the stupidest things, for people who don't even like you, for causes you don't even believe in, and it kills me. It just kills me, Athan."

She held herself tighter. "You're always suffering, but always trying anyway. You get pushed so much, your body breaks, you come back to us with all this...all this shit wrong with your head. I can't even look at you half the time without seeing all the things people did to push you to being what you are. People you should be able to trust leave you. People who should be your friends just using you. I hate it, Athan. I hate what this world does to you. Sometimes I want to just go back up to Canada with you and we could go back to living together with what's 'real' like you talked about with Wynn that one time. Leave all of this behind and be happy."

She spoke evenly and sadly, but the amount of self-pity she was giving me was making me want to tear up a little. I remembered her stoic smile when she'd tourniqueted my leg and carried me into combat. She also suffered my selfish sacrifices, but was there beside me with a smile. It was the opposite of the serene smile she'd worn every day around me here, a bitter smile to stare down the world.

And now she was lashing out. She was tired of wearing that bitter smile. Tired of letting me decide to let the world do with me what it wanted, and had subjected me to what she wanted the world to give me instead. I had to admit, between the two, her handling had been a lot more enjoyable.

"It's not so bad, right? I can at least make you happy. That's all I want. Just let me protect your happiness, as much as I can."

"Is it even okay?" I asked, feeling crushed between the world she'd just reminded me was on my shoulders, and my own heap of constant failures and inadequacies. "Is it okay for me to be happy?"

"The fuck does that mean? Why wouldn't it be?" she sounded almost angry.

"It feels...disrespectful. Wrong. Mage is dead, you know? Because of me. Why should I be happy when she'll never feel anything again?"

"Then don't worry about it. Let me worry for you instead. Just believe in me and I'll face the world for you. And when you're ready, we can face it together."

She leaned forward with a soft smile and extended her arms outward, offering a hug, but hanging there over me.

I closed my eyes and let out a deep breath. I don't think even she knew how much I wanted this. Every painful burden, every responsibility, every thought I had of wanting to stop existing, but being afraid of who and what I'd leave behind, if I could just hang them all up, let them all go, be a kid again…

Could I do that? Could I let go of all of my pain and all I'd been fighting for this whole time, just for my own happiness?

I spread my arm and she hugged me gently, causing me no pain.

"Okay," I said.

I held onto her for minutes before I finally let her go, feeling the cold void where she'd parted from me, keenly, her faint smell on me for the moment.

"Thank you, Athan. I hope I won't let you down." She beamed at me. "Now are you hungry? I got you fish today."

"Actually," I said, now being the one to avoid eye contact while I blushed. "I think I'm still kind of excited to see you."

She laughed and hugged me again gently, giving me a small kiss on the neck before sliding her hands down my body and starting to hum.