The Tall and Short Problems of a Cute Gamer Girl
[20]
For the Alt Branch [20A]
Dale, returned to his male state, set a hand on his head, and considered the parts that Blessin Cross had filled him in on before declaring, “Sounds kinda like an episode of Rick and Morty.”
Blessin raised a finger and noted, “Actually, a good analogy would be season two, episode one. The one with Key and Peele as time cop testicle monsters.” Oddly enough, or maybe not so oddly, Giselle vaguely remembered that one. Blessin emphasized, “Our evil friend also doesn’t want us to split this reality into several other ones.”
Gwen had to do a quick Google on her phone but was soon caught up with the concept as well. “So, this Cerberus is trying to contain us. But don’t realities multiply infinitely and all the time?” Rachel offered a faint smile.
As simply as possible, Blessin reiterated her theory that Cerberus was pruning or trapping them. Hanako, who couldn’t contribute much to the pop cultural analogies, relayed that the entities seemed to contain a plethora of strands that removed hope, light, warmth, and possibility.
Sighing, Blessin fretted, “I’m concerned that the bastard may be playing us with the whole three-headed analogy. That’s why I desperately want to extend my original investigation of this to that warehouse in DC. I have all my notes from when I encountered Flush with Pride Corp originally about five months ago. I can prepare all that, along with protection for our group… At least as much as I hope I can give. If you all know anyone else we can trust who can join us for further protection, I’ll gladly welcome that. Meanwhile, the uh…baby and Miss Hanako likely need more recovery.“
Giselle questioned if Blessin wanted to do like Gwen had so they could cycle through more people. Giselle gladly offered herself up but knew she would need something like a towel for the clothing situation.
Blessin cracked a faint smile. “If I could, I would. But I’m not a good prospect. I’ve already taken that journey. If you know what I mean. I transitioned a while ago.”
Gwen gave a quick nod. She was the one who introduced the group to Blessin. Giselle widened her eyes. She knew several transpeople. One of the moderators for the streams. One of her collaborators from a creative fan project a long time ago. And of course, if she thought about it enough, herself considering the fact she still identified as a man despite the physical trappings of her form. Likely Rachel too.
Blessin’s long hair, luminously golden bright, appeared perfectly natural. She had some makeup on, and her eyebrows were firmly sculpted punctuation points. Giselle wondered more if she was some sort of elf princess than anything else. But beyond the gossamer layers and ornate details with her bracelets, jewelry, and lovely adornments, Giselle marveled at the cadence and feeling of her voice.
Giselle‘s voice naturally settled into a girlish range because of anatomy but it took her quite some weeks to pick up what sounded like her voice. In listening to several of the streams, she thought it sounded more tomboyish than she intended. But then she wasn’t completely sure what she intended, she was just talking in what felt the most natural way. Blessin made it clear, when Giselle asked, that her sound did not come easily, especially at the age when she “finally figured things out”.
Hanako eagerly accepted all this but noted that she could do other changes and not just the familiar ones enforced through the toilet seat. Blessin did give this some consideration but ultimately resolved that any change would either be too small or too great to help. However, she promised to gather up what energy from her artifacts and crystals she could muster to emotionally augment everything for Hanako and Mari.
“I actually have an idea for that ‘wrong one’ Cerberus alluded to. That place where Giselle may have kicked the baby and created a different reality. I have some mild experience with dreamwalking. If that is the main point of bifurcation, then there should absolutely be another version of myself who can help us.”
At this point, Giselle just rolled with whatever all that meant. Hanako had recovered enough that she easily transformed Finn, Dale, and Gwen a second time and still had enough oomph left over to include Giselle. She had spent enough time away that becoming a man again felt surprising. A towel was necessary, but Blessin provided one, followed by a long, deep breath as she gently brushed back her golden hair.
Rachel cozied up to him and stared with her remaining eye. Instead of the natural pain and visceral yearning to do something more for the soul that meant everything to Jeremy, he churned the waters of their love. He focused it with every quiet glance. And when it flowed away, like eddies snagged by winds, he just drew upon further reserves.
Blessin worked diligently, first of all, making absolutely sure that any visitors to her business knew that the store was closed for the time being. She remarked that the energy within the building felt animating and empowering, like building up a fire but one that renewed life and living things instead of consuming them. It didn’t take very long at all before contented energy showed in Hanako‘s eyes along with a nuance that crossed the tense, uncanny valley of her disposition and seemed far more like a human girl.
Meanwhile, the core heat that Giselle felt as the presence of that little girl nurtured inside her was stoked to a burgeoning radiance that warmed without overheating her. All that settled, Blessin prepared herself on the same lounger that Giselle had used when she put her under.
“Before I start, I need to know exactly what information I should pass along and look for. I assume I need to contact Giselle. Last name and most likely residence?”
On this point, Rachel and Jeremy, who were running out of swap time, considered whether Huber or Conway based on how reality had changed for them already. Blessin just absorbed both. She also took in the information about the recent move as well as where they lived before and presently. She gathered everything she could from Dale and Gwen to hold in her memory and then recited the key points about Cerberus and what their plans were.
She put on a breathing mask that connected to a device that pumped in her own formula of aromatherapy and scented oils then added several other things to block out sensory information. It wasn’t anything approaching a deprivation pod, but Giselle still thought it looked cool. Before she settled in, she made sure that Gwen knew the wake-up procedure with a needle poke right by her shoulder, because that’s what she trained herself to recognize when dreamwalking.
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After that, it didn’t take long for her to enter a dream state. The others could only wait.
They didn’t have to wait that long though before Blessin snapped up with her eyes bulging and her breath caught in her throat. She was on the verge of screaming as Gwen dashed in front of everyone to try to help her. “What happened, what’s wrong?”
Finally, Blessin ripped off her mask and managed to pull in a breath and expel it. Struggling, she raspingly uttered, “… fucking bastard… evil fuck. Everyone’s dead. Everyone. He did something. Everything around me was a wasteland. I had no body to land in, but my spirit was still around. He ruined that universe, that reality. It’s just us now. There’s nothing I can do about it… well… mostly nothing. Maybe…”
Hanako dipped her head down towards the floor with her eyes shut and her hands clenched. Giselle could feel a ropey, flaming tension in her side. After carefully drinking the water Gwen provided and collecting her thoughts, Blessin did some breathing exercises and elaborated, “I can go back. When did you first encounter Cerberus and he made the comment about the other one?”
Finn had the date in mind. Roughly three months ago. Blessin grabbed her planner and a journal to do some checking. Dale presented his thoughts, “If you can time travel like this, can’t you go back and stop a whole bunch of this from happening?”
Blessin immediately shook her head. “Paradoxes. Anything that could interfere with us from reaching this point in this reality from the moment of bifurcation onward creates a paradox. We both exist and don’t exist simultaneously. Not a fan of finding out how that feels, considering I just got a big horrifying taste of the non-existing.”
Hanako contributed, “Our kind has a similar relationship with the nature of reality. We can’t change someone so that when reality bends to accept them, it does not make sense that we still exist. I believe Cerberus faces the same limit as well.” Blessin massaged her forehead and nodded.
After plenty of looking and checking, Blessin managed to find a Saturday soon after the initial events during which she actually spent some time to the south which put her quite close to where Giselle and Rachel used to live. Blessin cautioned, “Past events are set. It’s a part of the river of time and reality which has flowed past us. However, this situation is a little different than how it would be if I attempted this in any usual fashion. All I can really do is whisper to ghosts. It’s something, at least.”
Gingerly, Blessin composed her thoughts again and worked through everything she needed to know and pass along. She appeared far less optimistic though, admitting, “I can’t change anything over there. All I can do is tell them what I can. And promise we will avenge them. I will try my best to glean any information possible. Same protocol.” Blessin appeared far warier as she shut her eyes and shut out this world.
And again, they waited. Giselle returned to her female shape soon before Finn. She joined Hanako, who tightened her cap on her head. She appeared so tensely uncomfortable. Giselle pressed her about what was wrong. The reserved, simple, and robotic motions of earlier had evolved into subtle, girlish gestures. Hesitantly, Hanako lifted her hat. The horns still arced and shifted like ripples of water contained in a different form, but they also had a certain firmness that appeared more like a prop than a radiance.
She knew that back home a couple of the high schools had ears for their animal mascots that students would wear walking home. It was just one of those things that she would see outside the window of the car when driving around. Jeremy‘s high school was private and religious so the closest they got to that kind of thing was either fake halos or holy crowns.
Before Hanako could restore her cover-up, Giselle reached over and touched the top of her pale head. She wasn’t sure what she expected to feel. Down by the beachfront where she grew up was one of those science shacks and a multitude of plasma globes. Those didn’t feel like anything in particular. She also thought of the Van de Graaff generators. But this was different. It was like passing your hand through a beam of sunlight in a cold room.
However, the feeling when she touched that light was uncertain. Like shy sunlight afraid to harm anything that fell beneath its beam. It wasn’t intense. Rather it felt like a pliable foam of perfectly warm water that yielded around her fingers. The properties were inscrutable but fascinating. Hanako appeared nervously uncomfortable but didn’t warn Giselle away from touching. As she drew back, something shifted.
She teased it more, like running her hands across an ephemeral harp. And there, like a tangle of light fluttering in unseen air, she saw more. It spread and echoed across Hanako‘s body. It kept flowing and Giselle could see the faintest traces of it before it slipped away.
A gasp came from behind Giselle as she turned around to see Finn with his hands cupping his mouth in surprise. He said only, “I saw something, something immensely beautiful. Like stained glass butterfly wings as an echo in the dark. Where my right eye should’ve been. So beautiful. So so beautiful…” He sniffled and wept out of his left eye. Giselle understood as Hanako cast her eyes down with a subtle blush coloring her cheeks.
“That bastard is so wrong. Or maybe he actually knows. You’re not a demon, Hanako. Or your sister. You never were. You’re an Angel.” Naturally, saying the word in reality to a being standing before her set off the chagrin of an entire landscape in her brain. The realm forged by readings of the natural world, space, and scientific methods. The realm with Carl Sagan as its cornerstone and cats named for William Herschel and Tycho Brahe.
But here she was, so deep in something that somehow existed in this and other universes despite scientific rigor. Mysteries like what Gerald felt as a child when hovering at the edge of death. Mysteries of little moments and synergistic happenstance. The great shrugs of teachers she had in high school who leaned on the Bible for the sake of curriculum but also offered infectious curiosity. No matter what her head said, they knew. Meanwhile, quiet Mari lingered within and beside her.
The notion of an angel wasn’t something that Hanako could claim or refute. She had little idea. But she vehemently professed that she would do everything in her power to stop and heal the harm that Cerberus had inflicted on those she loved. She looked at Finn’s gouged right eye for emphasis despite the fact they’d known each other so briefly.