If there was one thing Momo had specifically avoided in her life on Earth, it was small spaces containing a lot of people. Due to her slight stature and general disposition, she was, when exposed to a crowd, always at a high likelihood of being tossed around like a salad.
Thankfully, navigating the tubes wasn’t nearly as bad as Momo envisioned it to be. Sergeant Gulp possessed a type of magic that was very earth-like in nature: he screamed at people, and they fled. It was odd watching such a loud, frightful sound come out of a man that looked more like a nervous capybara than a person, but it was efficient nonetheless, and Momo was grateful. Her [Crowd Control] helped too, of course, but his magic was better.
After pressing through several sweaty mobs, they arrived at Zephyra’s VIP chamber. It was hidden in plain sight, the innermost tube at the center of the giant, translucent organ. The guard knocked thrice, mumbled a shy “the kin has arrived”, and Momo heard a button being pressed on the other side. In response, the circular door opened like a sphincter.
“Guinevere be merciful,” Kasula muttered, drawing what looked like a religious symbol on her chest. She then turned to Momo and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Momo, whatever you do, don’t speak until I prompt you, alright?”
“Might be more of a problem to get me to speak at all, actually –”
“And if her eyes get all big like this,” Kasula said, widening her eyes like a bug. “Just think the word potato. Nothing else. Only potato.”
“What?”
“No time,” Kasula said. The guard was leading them in. “Walk.”
They stepped inside, eyes adjusting to the fluorescent light that bathed the large dressing room. A giant cloud of sweet-smelling perfume wafted out, causing Momo to feel like she was suffocating on roses. Sergeant Gulp gave a salute to the other bodyguards, who all were similarly thin and rabid-eyed, and exited quickly. They were left in a pink-tinted, circular room, absolutely drowned in supernatural clothing and accessories: blouses with sentient spikes, necklaces with blinking googley eyes, heels with… heels on their heels.
Sitting at the center of it, reflected a dozen times over by the surrounding mirrors like a hivemind, was a female figure completely coated in rose-colored armor. A rosy helmet, salmon-colored cowboy boots, blushing guantlets with red, spiked bracelets. She sat in a chair that looked like one of those Gamer Thrones you’d find advertised for an exorbitant amount of money online – the well-cushioned, plush, four-wheel drive kind of thing that Dae-hyun was always begging for for Christmas. Not that they even celebrated Christmas.
“Is that really you, Kas?”
Zephyra – and it had to be Zephyra – had the voice of a honeybee. Quick and fast and flighty, but smooth as butter. The moment the words came out of her mouth, Momo was almost choked to death by the Charisma entangled in them. It was like the very syllables were gripping her around the neck, shaking her around, and whispering love me, love me, love me.
“I see your color palette remains as subtle as a sledgehammer,” Kasula responded in lieu of an answer. She was trying to sound apathetic, but Momo couldn’t help but notice the way her foot was tapping anxiously. “Gods – it’s an assault on my eyes. Pink. Pink everything. I don’t even want to know how much that suit of armor cost. Twelve million elk? Twenty-six million?”
Zephyra turned slowly in her seat. Her diamond heels scratched along the floor, leaving a jagged, lightning-shaped mark. As she came to face them, she peeled off her helmet, handing it to the guard beside her. He jumped at the opportunity to cradle it in his hands.
Although Momo was shy to admit it, she was now, with no excuses, gawking. Zephyra’s face in the plain, fluorescently-lit daylight was the most striking thing she’d ever seen. Her cheekbones looked as if they’d been chiseled by a sculptor; they sat on her face higher than the heavens.
An awkward silence hung between the two sisters for a second, but then Zephyra stood, took two steps forward, her shoes clacking like bells against the glass floor. She then embraced Kasula with the full force of an ape, tackling her into a hug that crushed down so violently on the other elf that she struggled to breathe.
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“You idiot,” Zephyra spat, not relenting even an inch despite Kasula’s loud protesting. “The helmet alone is worth one hundred million elk at the very minimum. Did you not spot the crystalline lining? The magically-tinted floral hue? This is what happens when you’re away from home for so long. You lose all common sense. That skull of yours must just be full to the brim with human-made nonsense.”
Finally, after several more seconds of chiding, she released her. Kasula tried to spit out some sort of comeback, but she was still struggling to get enough air in her lungs. Momo hadn’t expected Zephyra to be so strong. The woman had the physical build of a pin needle, lanky and delicate, but there had to be hidden muscle rippling beneath all that extraneous gear.
I guess it takes a lot of muscle mass to walk around dressed like a Barbie-fied Christmas tree.
“My skull is just fine,” Kasula muttered. “Yours, on the other hand…”
“Have you talked to mom? How are you even alive? Gods, I have so many questions,” Zephyra said in a flurry, cutting Kasula off and gripping her arms tightly. “Also, before I forget, fuck you. Fuck you so much, Kas. By Guinevere, I can’t believe you didn’t write or send me a transmission or even a note by bird for six entire years. Six years I’ve been touring around, hopelessly praying my baby sister might show her snide little face in the crowd, but nothing. Dead, sad, embarrassing silence. And yet here you are.”
Zephyra crossed her arms. She tipped her chin up.
“And yet here you are,” she repeated wryly. “I can’t help but ask myself what crime I must have committed to deserve the honor.”
Momo’s mind went to the dagger. She took a subtle look around the room, but the place was too cluttered for any specific thing to look out of place. She would have ordered Dusk to invisibly rummage around in it, but she feared the cat would get noticed. The guards were way too attentive for guys who were probably being paid below minimum wage.
“My friend here needs your help,” Kasula said, diverting the topic. “Coco, this is Zephyra. Zephyra, this is Coco. Be acquainted, or whatever. No need for all those elvish practicalities.”
“Tch. You really have lost all your manners,” Zephyra said, rolling her eyes. “Coco, ik il via freut du’st. I apologize for my sister’s lack of home training. But with all due respect, before we continue this conversation, I’m going to have to read your mind. It’s simply protocol.”
“Read my – what?” Momo stuttered, cheeks flushing. The elf turned all of her full attention to her, and it was as if a surgical spotlight was suddenly shining down straight onto Momo’s amygdala. She didn’t mutter a spell or anything, she simply gazed at Momo with piercing blue eyes, smiled, blinked, and it was over with. Her mental defenses had been so weak that she had barely even registered the intrusion. Of course, she had forgotten, critically, to think potato.
After taking a moment to stare blankly at Momo, Zephyra’s expression changed. It went from bored and annoyed to mildly… intrigued? Whatever it was, Kasula took advantage of the shift in attention. From the corner of Momo’s eye, she could see the elf subtly step backwards. Momo wished at that moment for the power of telepathy; she’d yell very loudly DON’T LEAVE ME WITH HER into Kasula’s synapses until the elf reconsidered her plans.
“Huh. Your mind… it is fascinating. Like a tangled web of increasingly ridiculous propositions,” Zephyra said, pulling Momo back into her sphere of influence. The elf’s pupils were fully dilated. She licked her lips. “Your name is Momo, yet as a disguise, you call yourself Coco. A truly terrible alias. You’re an alleged queen of a foreign nation, yet you dress like a wayfaring, homeless pirate. You’re a necromancer, yet your mind shivers at the thought of a skeleton. The list of inconsistencies go on and on.”
Zephyra looked truly vexed, gazing upon Momo as if she was a science experiment.
“You must be playing with me. No one’s life is this counterintuitive,” the elf said defensively, her mouth flattening into a line. “You have to be counter-broadcasting a thought into my head. Leading me astray of your true nature. But that means your Charisma… It’d have to be far higher than my own to pull off such a maneuver.”
“I can promise you wholeheartedly I’m not doing anything like that,” Momo said miserably, feeling her ego suffering a considerable loss – she thinks I’m so stupid that I have to be some kind of genius – “You’re right, my name is Momo. For whatever reason, I ended up becoming the queen of Aloysius. And I am a necromancer, and I am terrified of skeletons.”
Zephyra laughed. That sort of laugh that happens when you’re in such disbelief that air just sort of falls out of your lungs by accident. At the same time, a piece of parchment slid through the sphincter-like door, slunked like a snail across the ground, and sat flatly at Momo’s feet.
Congratulations! Using nothing but the sheer power of your garbled brain, you left the individual with the 15th highest Charisma score in the entirety of Alois completely speechless. You heard that right – the whole goddamn planet. As a result, your [Pitied] skill has been upgraded to [Aura of Utter Bewilderment]. In and out of combat, opponents with a low Intelligence score will be Stunned for 5s by their sheer confusion when you speak.
Momo groaned. “Oh, come on.”