"So what happened after you left with the other three?" I asked, implying that Marguete continue her story.

"The first day we were going through small condos, and I mean these were older peoples mainly, we found so many interesting things that there were probably only very few of you couldn't help but be inspect them in detail.

"Props and failed merchandise either ahead of its time or behind, some of the stuff must have been meant as private collectibles the public wasn't meant to see, some might have been on a list somewhere none of us would know about but there was nothing so remarkable it would have really been worth mentioning.

"We were just looking for things to enthrall us the first day already from our situation. That night we holed up in a larger apartment complex, one that wasn't as much for the elderly as also handicapped individuals most. There were many elevators, and a building that had a ramp for wheelchair accessibility incase of power outage. A pretty large side building, basically, with limited air conditioning.

"The third floor access was a ramp a bit steeper, but only barely, and we literally walked this thing back down facing backwards that night. Why we went up, I can only attribute as an instinct to try to be further from the direction and the distance from the street.

"We ended up in an older couples room. The husband was a smoker, the wife wasn't exactly shy about doing so when she was younger either. He'd collected that type of memorabilia, the showcase of which seemed to be a set of everything you'd need to smoke but in some set I doubt many were made.

"Maybe it was a movie thing, or an attempt at a marketing gimmick that never found funding, all I know is that I studied everything in this cabinet of old smokers utensils and paraphernalia waiting for sunlight that still hadn't come by seven in the morning when it should have been up an hour.

"I'd made it to his gun cabinet from her china one by then, and the others had found me to show me that in the night one of the three guys had started downstairs and turned solid. They'd found him like that. Catherine had wanted a drink she wasn't going to search through more apartments for all night.

"By then they too realized the sun wasn't coming up. We didn't try to find the other two, we left from where we were towards a store that wasn't far, but we found others who were too still yet hadn't exactly died or fallen on the way. We couldn't even get a backpack off one guys shoulders.

"So we took used long sleeve shirts the store sold to carry what we needed, all of us carrying more than that for each other, and we started the same crisscrossing routine until we made it to the ocean. When we couldn't go further, it didn't panic us as much as you'd think, where was a safer place with a second sun than water?

"We were in this game instead of our old one, when we woke up like we fell asleep together, but that was just about two weeks before the three of us met up with everyone else in this world."

"Okay. I call bullshit now, Jack was the only one in this world that long ago and everyone knows it, and if there was a second sun in the world then there is no way we would have not known. You're suggesting it was that long ago, that wasn't even the world fair, so that many missing people would have really been noticed.

"Not unless it was only a few of you that were effected, but the only other experiences I've heard about that crazy were the abductions. Everyone heard about the abductions, the ones it seemed players of Akyria were having every few months alone more than the rest of everyone else combined in our world in a year.

"That's why many of us who play started to agree there might be a connection between abduction like experiences, and some type of post-waking dream that occurs between a body and a brain that is entering REM cycles of sleep while conscious. Think about it for a minute.

"They imagine they are abducted, and abductions would be like being carried somewhere you can't recognize but your mind tries to anyway. It would be a completely alien experience, for you to be awake while your brain was asleep.

"It explains how a person could claim honestly to be conscious or asleep either when it started to happen, why they felt drugged or unable to move. None if it was any new theory, or theories people weren't coming up with again of their own volition, and magnetic variations we experience more of are a common factor.

"They were suspected before of having the potential to cause hallucinations, or at least distort the senses, and that's exactly what our VR gear uses to carefully lower our brains into REM sleep states. Staying conscious while you do so twelve hours a day, you can cut the amount of sleep you need a day down to an average of half.

"That's day one until one month. Then until a few months period, half again and after a year, just an hour of sleep in which you'll enter REM within an hour. Those of us who have done so don't do well with our sleep schedule being altered, our brains can fall asleep easier because they have been conditioned to fall asleep fast and stay more conscious.

"It all adds up to you three didn't sleep as deep or long as you should, but were somehow only conscious of each other and dreaming the rest or could sense other people in your same sleep walking like state."

"Paige. We may have all hallucinated the exact same details somehow, I'll take a leap since you will not, but even if we did you can't fake some things. Show her Catherine."

"No! Shut up Marguete."

"Damnit, do it Catherine. Or do you not care if they know you're an anime and manga otaku, one with dreams of a reverse harem, and who foolishly thinks her martial arts will lead to immortality still?"

"I'm passionate about all of those, I don't care who you tell now that Father is dead." Catherine said smugly, cocking her hips and folding her arms together cooly, and just in time for a stronger draft through the broad tunnel to blow her bangs whipping with the wind. She painted a cool picture naturally, but this fool breaking her neck had been the sound that made me aware of her true nature.

A jackass.

"Oh, you cute thing, your dreams were so pure. Til' you decided Kate and Jack were at the top of your list, and that this world was your reincar-."

"Okay! Okay. Just don't say the last part Alyssa! Sheesh, if you embarass me you know I won't do it."

"You should already be embarrassed." Alyssa complained mockingly. "Most of what you should be ashamed of is thinking to use a husband and wife to lure in men. Only more foolish is doing that thinking to abandon both after, using Jack only to enchant them to follow your every command and treat you as their one wife."

"What else should she ask of my husband?" Kate queried with defiance rather than jealousy.

"Not even close to what she wants." I said, after a good 'Kek' I didn't want to burst out. Chortling after came natural with the faces, Kate annoyed at Alyssa, Alyssa feigning innocent eyes with a smug smile at Kate, Catherine looking at me pleading desperate and choked with hurt. The others just seemed to be wide eyed making an 'o' with their mouths and eyes.

"You said it, not me. You should know better than any of us, but you were the one who kept insinuating about him as if we should all make a contest of him. If you hadn't kept strutting up to him more boldly and directly, I don't think it would have been so clear why you didn't seem to feel the tension we did. Was it to make us moon over him?

"No, you didn't want us to try and take him, you wanted us to watch him take you. You just lied to yourself that you were doing it so we'd be more motivated to trust and engage with him, the truth was your pride and sexual motivations moved you to do what you did."

"Wait, she did what, Alyssa?" Catherine said exaggerated and high pitched, before giggling in a high voice. A good third of her excited laugh was choked, about as whimsical as a tire screeching, but when she did Catherine looked way too young for this game. And she had braces on.

'Braces?'

"I made a mistake and admitted it to you the next day, you're just trying to throw that in his face since you know he is attracted to an intellegent woman. Jack, I'm sorry, I'll have to kill this one."

"Don't joke about that baby, Alyssa is psychotic, and you've just essentially challenged a shark to a fight to the death over a piece of meat. Alyssa, don't take what she said like that, even if you could kill her there's no way I wouldn't know exactly who did it."

"I don't know, I just realized a mind-reader would be quite useful, I'm sure you could be happier if you lost a nickel and gained a d-."

"Dumb bitch? If he gained one of those though, he could only treat her like the infirm-dog she was."

"Challenge accepted. Are you comfortable dealing with that short-sword, or do you want to find another weapon for me to take from your hands and beat you half to death with? Half is fine, hm, Jack?"

"Oh, this is terrible." I complained.

"She started it." Alyssa noted.

"I finished it, you just keep trying to flirt with my husband in front of me, he may ignore it but I won't."

"Not that, it's just, there are people already in every location but our destination so now things get worse faster. We'll have to teleport to the way in when people leave it. Oh, and yeah, both of your arguments are stressful, it's too erotic for me to take and walk straight after. Kate, do you even realize how serious I was being?

"Do 'martial-sexual-competitions' for 'psychotic-personalities' have some type of mentally restorative effect on a psychopathic brain mainstream society isn't aware of?"

"My brain is just fine, thanks. Be quiet, meat."

"No it wouldn't. She isn't psychotic Jack, they can't control their emotional desires. Acting upon them is not like it is with us all, it isn't want so much as they need and are far more compelled to enact what limited emotion they do feel. If they experience minimal emotion, it's more confusing for them than an intense emotion overwhelms us.

"In other words she would have tried to kill me by now, since I stand in the way of her getting to you."

"You're overestimating what you know, and underestimating what you don't. She tried to kill you just now, by revealing a secret you didn't want me to find out. That you tried to manipulate everyone at first, which you told me not long after you told them."

"He understands my motives and thoughts better than she does, and he didn't go to school for over ten years. Did you girls hear someone call themself intelligent, earlier and a little too early?" Someone was a little too excited. She spoke so quick, anxious, flustered and sultry I barely understood her.

"Nobody understands her when she gets like that. Alyssa, chill out." Catherine said with a shrug, after glaring dumbly and annoyed at her sister.

"It sounded like she had plenty to say, none of that was intelligble though. Just gibberish." Kate agreed.

I repeated what she said, but even Alyssa genuinely wasn't sure if she said it. However what lit up on her face was different, though how she looked with her eyes was confused her body yet seemed to literally allign with me and straightened as if aware where her mind wasn't. "..sounds about right. My thoughts come out like a stutter, it felt like only a few words.

"Did I actually say all that? The first part I'm sure sounds wrong, I was about to say something of the latter half, but then I thought about how little perspective she had on the dark side of peoples minds."

"..you're joking right? I might not have the perspectives of them firsthand personally but I have been volunteering in psyche wards and facilities since I was a freshman. Since then I've spoke to, and helped care for all types of people, I fit the profiles many of them raped or killed by. I felt that look on me that's worse than being sexualized by eyes, being brutalized by them instead.

"I'm not blind to darkness, I went looking for it to try and help people find the light. An emotional stutter like that isn't as indicative of psychopathy, at worse she'd be closer to the unofficial sociopath where her emotions were stunted."

"She doesn't, can't produce her own emotions Kate. I'd tell you her fear but it's her and I won't tell it, she will tell you or she won't."

"Stay out of my head! You're going too far Jack!" Alyssa warned. "I didn't look in your thoughts, I don't have to." 'It's too obvious, you have your sisters with you when you could have gotten yourself away from your situation, you stuck with them for years and their emotions kept you healthy. You lived off each other, you were the most selfishly selfless, so you gave up your own goodness to protect.'

Kate had to know, I knew that look. "Don't Kate. If you try to use what's in her head against her to help her, you'll only do all of us wrong. You just become more biased the more you think you know, remember?"

"I don't want to try to do that, I just can't see how you two can be so sure when what I know tells me different."

"Can't we pick another topic?"

"Not yet." Alyssa and Kate, the former first.

"I want her to see my thoughts, and she wants to."

"I'm doing it. Now."

It only took a few seconds. Kate was streaming tears, utterly shocked and gasping shallow choked breaths. Her eyes narrowed sharply more than a few times, and what Kate choked down was not a lie. It wasn't the truth that Alyssa was a psychopath, she was, but people aren't so limited to be simple. She didn't have her own emotions, but she had her sisters.

Most of the motivation a human being feels is their own emotional motives, they can inspire us to do things logical motives just never can, like live and die for people besides our own self. What if you didn't have that for yourself? What if you were only psychopathic when it was required, because your solitary emotion was placed outside of yourself into the only two people in all existence who mattered?

It wasn't just that they made you content at that point, you made them content. They had to be content, if they weren't, you weren't. They needed to be. It wouldn't matter anymore if you were, you were the one outside of it, after you stepped outside that they would become content naturally because you were a worse threat than any other and you were their threat that did not threaten them in any way.

"Psychopath? She's been tortured by the world Jack, if she is anything she is an empath! Why did you have to be so stupid and mislead me to what to expect? You almost had me convinced and then you were completely wrong!"

"No. She's only an empath when she turns herself outside-inward again, I told you exactly what to expect but it only appeared like the opposite to you because you missed something. Her life would be said to have made her tough by fools, Alyssa chose to be savage. Life did not make her anything, Alyssa made her life for herself.

"You can't confuse cause and effect situations with people like you want to, there are more than two dimensions for us, we get to decide plenty more how to respond to cause and how to direct effect than that. Instead of killing, she very nearly chose beating. If she had relented before taking it too far, Alyssa wouldn't have ended up killing most of the people who most offended her and her sisters."

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"But she did it for-."

"Herself. Selfless and selfish are just two sides of a coin. An empath and a psychopath are much the same. Because she was born more special, it was only more natural she felt all the pain around her more, and like her all psychopaths are those who were once empaths on the inside. When you turn your love out, it becomes hate, you only assume it means they'd hate all things good.

"She's a person too, the things she hated most were dangers to her sisters, we're not a danger to them so we'll never really see her direct that nature at us. They're what heart she has, and in a way she is their safety, but she is only Catherines peace. For Marguete she is safety, but guilty is what Marguete feels, she feels that but doesn't realize Alyssa is supposed to.

"It's a limited psychotic motivation sure, but you know better than me now how many times she has had to harness it, and you know why her brains empathy doesn't work for itself but can work. It will work for them."

As soon as I'd lifted Marguete with ki over the ten foot mark, Alyssa balked and entered a panic. Before she could look at me good she was nervous in a second, but when Catherine screamed as she was jerked up more suddenly the eldest sisters eyes changed completely.

Pupils dilated and contracted, it alternated between each eye with one maximizing while the other minimized and vice versa, the two stabilized together and went to the schlera and wavered down like a fire. The moment they narrowed on me, her pupils went to a pinhead.

"Stop." She squeaked, hurt and meekly, then accelerated at me impossibly quick for such a straight posture. Her second step, she was already reaching the speed of a top athlete her sizes third step, by her third you had to add two. At the fifth steps she'd leapt and was set to land where their twentieth would running, more than enough to reach me, enough momentum to have sailed over me if that was required.

"They're down, there, safe and sound." I'd had to start saying something fast, I didn't imagine she would let loose so quick, and already knew it would stop even more quickly. A completely different woman was set down by ki, not near her sisters, but they'd been behind me where she could keep them in sight and see what I said was true.

In front of me, Alyssa only looked a little startled. Then she was quickly looking for her sisters, pushing me out of the way to see the one and then peeking around the same side towards the other before pulling at the collar of my cloak roughly.

"What happened? What went after them? Is it dead, are they alright? How can we- no nevermind, it's a stupid game anyway."

"I picked them up to know you were still safe in there. You shouldn't just be you when you're like that, so I'm about to correct the problem." 'Her voice changed. She changed quick both times. Whatever hormones does your body produce in that state? They have to be harmful.' Heart-to-heart, that's how telepathy works, masterminds long knew what real talking was all about.

Who wouldn't want their wives voice in their ears, where their heartbeat was, so should hers be naturally. 'You're killing me with this, let me try to turn her in really quick.' 'Jack Legand, if I thought you meant that differently, I'd use this games psychic speak to scream in your ear the frustration this woman is causing me. But if you help her, maybe I'll forgive you. And her one day soon.'

"You what?"

"Breathe deep once."

Alyssa mocked a deep breath, but that was more than enough to blow her up inside with chi. The results were about as you'd expect.

It was like when an indoor cat finally wandered out the door, only to instantly be overwhelmed by seemingly nothing, running in panic as all manner of never before sensed stimuli completely overloaded all that appeared sensible to an outside observer.

It wasn't exactly fitting to tell a vulnerable woman whose life just changed, 'Okay now go to your sisters, or my wife will be pissed.', but at least when she can hear you thinking that you're above any real reproach later. "Catherine, Marguete, go to your sister. He just forcibly expanded her mind."

"You're fine, Alyssa. It's not really that different right?" I said suggestively.

"Make the sun go down again, you're too pretty not to kill her for and I can't do it with all the lights in the house on." She was carrying herself like she felt sick, but the tone of her voice was flat as a board now, I'd hardly say she looked any better or felt it.

"Uh-oh, I'd stand back, I overdid it with the qi and she's about to blow."

"What?!"

Both of the two sisters were covered in vomit a second later, and then I went back to comforting Alyssa, humming and stroking her upper to middle back a little firmly and consistently. "There, there. Doesn't it feel better with all the lies out now, the weight of them is a burden right? I shit myself instead, guess I swallowed my own too deep to throw up, your less foolish than I was."

"What did you do to me? Why would you make me sick? I trusted you, I didn't hurt you and you hurt me, why wouldn't you just trust me like I was?"

"You didn't love yourself. How can I trust you with the only thing that's important, you, when you can't control you in order to protect yourself? You might hurt you and them both in your desperation, and you have been, but it doesn't matter anymore because you won't have to again. You're not what you were, or what you became.

"It's better if you don't venture the extremes right now, I suppose, yet I was attempting to return you to your empathic state. I think I could now you threw up, crazy as it sounds more than food and digestive stuff came out. If you spend some time in central ground it might be better, for now. You should find your own way to it if you want."

"I just want to lie down."

"You are already, you need to get up. You'll feel better when you do."

"Kill him a little Marguete, I'm tired."

"I can't remember? He isn't a sigma. Catherine can't because he isn't beta, he must have been an alpha or an omega, but since he got to you first there's no way. Which are you now anyway? I mean, things are different, since you are different right?"

"Beta. I think I'm cascading to zeta again like he's saying 'cause I really didn't want- to kill. I thought I had to and I felt scared for us, then that made it like I felt like I had to.. I only stuck the gun up a little, just bracing to scare him, and then when he knocked us over it went off between us. After that I used a knife, I didn't want to have to tell the police if it happened again and not everyone who started trying to take advantage was a person you could kill, not even if they were scum."

"It's okay, darling, you won't have those worries anymore. Even if when you go home, there are people waiting, you just tell us where so we can find you." Kate cooed, crooning Alyssas head in her lap. While she told Kate where they were by address Catherine had come over to give her sister a foot to the mouth.

"You're useless now, you broken idio-."

"You're turn, older sisters biggest fan."

She'd gasped with the ice-cold water running down her back before Catherine inhaled as much qi or more than her sister, it earned a grimace from me as much as it did her, and her experience was between mine and her sisters.

Cold water wasn't the only thing running down her leg, and between throwing up and down at the same time from both ends abruptly, it was only a wonder she didn't have a hemorrhoid tear out of her. Still, looking down at her stomach the moment before it happened, she'd literally fouled most of herself front and back.

I couldn't douse her fast enough with warm water to escape being clung to as violently as her episode of sickness, and all I could think as I doused her consistently was simple. 'Kate please put Alyssa near Catherine.' She didn't, and wouldn't. 'You made them sick by healing them, you clean up the mess you made. Alyssa is cuddling up to her old nemisis and it's too cute to miss.'

'You were only like enemies two seconds!'

"Stop diminishing this for me, Jack! You're being mean!" Kate responded out loud, upset.

"My goodness, are you sure she isn't the psychotic one? He helped those poor tortured womens minds, and she not long from a psychiatric degree is offended because she couldn't? What a stiff neck to be so shameless!" Eleanor declared this out loud. Kate's eyes almost wanted to do what Alyssa had with hers, but twitched only, before she closed her eyes and envisioned herself blowing out steam.

"You're like the town idiot Eleanor. Full of useful information. Maybe more than anyone, your brain is full of it. That said, you just can't figure out anything with them after they go up there huh? Did your parents have any children that lived?" Paige retorted Eleanor brutally, though I could hear her facing the way we'd been going still, and could sense the impatience only in her taking it out on Eleanor.

"Hoh!" Eleanor had scoffed, confused and shocked at Paige turning on her. "Of course they did. My only sibling is my sister, and she lived." "But what about you?" Paige carried her further. "Wait, what do you mean? What about me?" Eleanor asked, lost. "Tttrrttthahahahah!" Skulde laughed and lost it, squeaking out laughs wilder than Catherines.

Quiet, squeaky less like tires braking, more like a gas escaping and overcoming heavier resistance than Catherines to it. Once she started, this one, her silly heart didn't stop soon. Skulde laughed, and her full-throated laugh was honestly then the most beautiful sounds I'd ever heard.

Nobody moved when she started. By the time she began to slow down and I could tell she was sore from it, I didn't want her to stop, because all the different tones she carried were her using all the different parts of vocal chords and each time sections got tired she would alternate which parts of them she laughed with instinctively.

"That poor woman doesn't even know she's alive, I guess some people look like they're here even though they're some place else, where, they just don't know." I added. It set her off again more, somewhat. This time it was pure childishness in a burst, something I'd never heard an adult do. Unrelenting joy and happiness turned into sound.

"I'm right here, idiot, can't you see? I know you're a man and a bit more stupid but nobody warned me you were blind too. She asked if my parents had any children that lived, and I told her that my sister- Oh."

Before long Skulde had broken into racking sobs, not only streaming tears and snot she'd kept fighting away but turned to hide her face while she did, and by this point been crawling away from us as if we were a poison gas that she struggled to escape from.

"Laugh it up, buttercup! Good thing those yellow panties will blend with you peeing on yourself, when you keep on like that!" Eleanor harrumphed after she said it, and walked away the direction we'd been going. Skulde pulled down at her skirts, snuck a groan in between laughs, then started again for a short time off and on before catching her breath.

"..no..huh..no more, please. Uh, ohh." She groaned like she was much older than she was, probably felt it with her stitches feeling busted like that too. 'Kate. That woman needs to laugh more often.' 'No she doesn't, either. If she laughs like that too much I'll want to keep her around, and you already said you had the hots for her.'

'I basically did, in a way, but I already told you it's stronger with you and that the-.' "Can we go, now?" '-quantum state was what I was most attracted to about her.' 'Yeah, but you flirted with Marguete, and I'm feeling it now. It hurts me.' 'I'm glad things worked out like they did, though I regret thinking like I might not get home and acting on it.

"Not long before, I'd changed so much I could go back in my memories and find things I missed. I'm sorry I acted on my pain, but I'm grateful it didn't work out like I wanted it to then.' "Hello? Anyone in there? You accuse Eleanor of being empty upstairs, so what, now you mock her?" Paige asked, baiting Eleanor again.

'Me too. I couldn't handle that, and it might sound selfish but I hope you couldn't.' 'No. No, we have enough drama, I just don't think this group could survive much more of it.' "I love you Jack."

"You two look at each other twenty seconds to say that? You're pissing me off now!" Paige threatened us with.

"He wasn't mocking me, Paige, you filthy liar. Stop interrupting them."

"I love you too Kate. I'm going to try to take us to the keep, but I'm going to try it with spellwords."

"How's- wait, there are no spellwords here, though?" Skulde questioned, still taking slightly strained breaths and rubbing her sides.

"Let us be standing upon the closest bridge to Thirsty-Valley-Keeps hidden entrance."

"This water!" Eleanor exclaimed. We were upon the stable floating bridge, rafts twenty feet wide with their tops shaved flat enough to walk easy on, and just as Eleanor stepped alone onto the edge of one of these heavy rafts it was enough to unsettle her balance and drop her right in.

"Pbbbbttkkhahahah, I thought I was a klutz." Nobody could hold it in when Catherine followed her mistake and went right in, not after saying that, Skulde tried for her own sake and it only seemed she was tickled all the more at her own misfortune here. As she grabbed at me looking desperate, I gave her a hint, and slapped myself pretty good once.

She looked dubious, but after an ouch face, she nodded. "That worked too good, I'll have to remember that one." "You were mocking me! I'm tired of this already, so now I should slap myself? Why are you so stuck on belittling me?" Skulde started again and she pushed Eleanor back into the water, but that didn't help.

She literally had to slap herself again, then harder, and it just wasn't helping. "I-I knew-I should have- I should have just slapped her." "I'm glad you didn't Skulde, 'cause I think that would have put us all overboard, and I don't know if falling in the water like that would have been safe." Paige admitted, finally finding Eleanor being pushed in funny enough.

"There's a- phoo- an entrance in just below the waters surface. It's twenty feet down, and a few feet of water upwards, before you come up to the entrance. We should all do it once to get familiar with it, but if we have to leave we won't go out that way." "Wait. Can't you teleport out stuff in dry? I don't want my clothes to get wet."

"Do you have another set of them?" "No I don't, that's why I don't want these to get wet." Eleanor claimed in earnest, and looked at me pleadingly. "Sure, sure, just hand them here." I said impatiently, and waited. She showed no sign of stopping, so I turned my head, wrong in thinking that she would surely realize she'd be naked in front of me on the other side. What was she thinking?

Pshhhh. When she dove in, I did a nudity check. 'She's the only fool who stripped right?' 'Right. You're blameless, don't worry, I'm sure she has been seen naked many times and still doesn't understand why. If not, I'd be amazed, I don't know if it's safe to let her dive alone.'

"Someone check on her, please. I'm not exactly keen on seeing her in her.. condition. Neither one of her conditions."

Paige sighed sharp, then inhaled even more deeply, and exhaled the larger half of the second breath before diving in. "Paige is awesome. Alyssa, you might be cooler but I think Paige is still pretty cool." Catherine remarked.

"Why, because she worked a troubled sigh into stretching her breath?" Alyssa asked. "Yeah, 'course. The world still annoys her 'cause she's chu-." "None of that mess, Catherine. You go next." A few moments later, Alyssa kicked off her dress for a wetsuit made from otters fur outside, and stitched guts inside to slip easier into and not absorb much moisture like the fur still.

"Thanks, for them, I'll see the benefits too. I don't know how we can repay you, but we'll find a way as friends after this. We'll want to move somewhere farther away, tough. Far from the west coast, maybe north where it is colder."

"What about east? We live on the opposite shore near exactly." Marguete smiled and jumped into the water, after her sisters, kicking off her shoes only as everyone did. "Quit flirting with her!" Kate joked playfully, pushing me as if towards the water too, before pulling me back and kissing me once. She jumped in close behind Marguete, her shoes already off.

"Ahem, I can't swim, but I'm about to learn. This water, if it's salty and twenty feet down, it'll be a little harder than normal water to swim down in right?" "A little. It'll take ten or twelve seconds if you can swim okay, so how about we go together and you hold my waist, then you can kick your feet just a little while we go down. Don't try to hold a lot of air in, twenty feet down will put pressure on you, but if it gets uncomfortable push some air out.

"Whatever you do, don't let water in, if a little does you can sneeze underwater if you have to and at worst only a little water will come into your mouth. Just don't panic and stay moving, you hold on and kick, when we get there I'll push you right up. If it helps, just close your eyes and focus on your breath after you get my waist in grip, keep a little air coming out of your nose if you can to avoid water coming in."

"I have to hold my nose. No exceptions there, water literally floods it. I can't push just a little air out of them." "You can breathe slowly out of your nose, just stay calm." She nodded, and I put their belongings all in materialization space, the inventory I'd only reached the potential limit of because of reaching the mastermind state.

I brought out nose plugs after putting away everything. She sighed, and gave me a short harsh look, before slapping her legs slightly and standing up. "I doubt you have goggles?" "Uhh..I can..in about another second." I handed her a slim but functioning pair. "Go ahead, before I ask for an oxygen tank and swimming lessons too." She said, mostly joking.

"The lessons are incoming, a tank woukd just slow you down for this, and I have never used one anyway."

When we were both in the water, I dove first, she came after and it took her a few seconds to get down to me. Not long after, she went back up, but the second time she was prepared and had to go only a little further to get to me in the same amount of time. With me already kicking as she grabbed on, and her doing the same after, it wasn't much later I was directing her up into the downwards elbowed pipe inlet.

Most of that was easy, when we were deep enough I could level us out beneath it a problem arose, one I handled swiftly and pushed her up trying to ignore. With her kicking her legs to go up, I could only really push her up by her bottom, and let go when I felt her breach above me. She tried to scramble to get out of the way, fell back in some, and between her efforts and others was pulled up.

I put my hand up and instantly materialized Marguetes clothes, hoping that they'd hand them to her, and not try to pull me up prematurely as well. It took some effort to resist them trying, and I figured only Alyssa or Marguete strong enough to try so fiercely, but a couple minutes after the clothes disappeared I felt pulled up by an unfamiliar grip.

A few things were in sight when I surfaced, mostly the person who'd been using my hand as a prop to balance leaning back on while she dressed falling forwards, pulling on her other sock with her dress the only other thing on. Of course she'd lost grip of my wet hand, she'd been pulling on it while leaning forwards in the cramped space, and realizing I'd surfaced set her to kicking and screaming like a madwoman.

Kate was screaming about me not being able to breathe and pulling her by the hair, except she'd already dragged Eleanors all of the foot of space towards the wall away from us, and was sort of keeping her head held down there by the hair hollering and preventing her from doing anything.

I didn't have to get kicked more than once to drop back down, but the sounds didn't die down for another minute, and unbelievably the woman was alone and had just finished pulling her dress back down on the right way when I came up. Still without panties on. "Twice. Twice, Eleanor. Have you no shame woman? If you want me to drown so bad, why not just come hold my head down?"

She humphed, next was between a roar and a groan at once, and she made her way down the ladder finally. I made my way up annoyed, truly sure that I'd made a mistake, nobody could do be this ditzy for real. At least, the ladder went down. I sighed and followed suit, thankful, because no way would she have thought to put them on even if the ladder had gone up.

'The rest of you watch this woman close. I'd ask her what's going on but I'm pretty sure neither of us want to look at the other, not as long as we still have flesh.'

'Ew. Catherine just dropped her body, and she was talking to me and Skulde before she disappeared inside the walls down here. These walls look like steel, it seems modern in the way they have the metal bumps everywhere, and the smeared scraggly looking marks. The edges and angles between them have thin braces outside them.'

'Those bumps are rivet-heads, the scraggles are welds, those last are pretty much braces though that make sure everything is lined up right. They also help reinforce more than the durability lost by drilling a hole for the rivets, but the thing is they had to do this, or they'd have weakened the rock too much hollowing it out. It's some metal alchemy wouldn't change.

'I wonder if I can't improve it, but I'll test that later.'

'Don't test it. Underwater buildings are a lot already, I'm already wondering about air, but I'm guessing there are plants or the caves you mentioned connecting to this place provide it?'

'Yeah. Don't worry, I'll find something to test that isn't connected to the structure, there'll be a wall that isn't load bearing or at worst a door it wouldn't hurt to mess with a small portion of, maybe an interior wall if not.'

'Uh. That all sounds oddly kinda structure connected, just to my unlearned ears, but you know what you're doing. I'm gonna sit here a minute and hope Catherines ghost doesn't drown. A ghost doesn't drown, right Jack?'

'Surely not, you drown and become a ghost. You don't become a ghost and drown, that'd be double jeopardy. Well, her body can drown still.'

'Her body still stinks. From her experience, like you called it. Did you really do that too?'

'Yep.'

"Gross." Kate said out loud as I neared the bottom, making Eleanor nearby humph.