Bad News. I didn’t get a good dream last night. Even more bad news. I still felt groggy because I didn’t get to sleep as much as I usually do. Stupid thug guys disrupting my sleep cycle. Maybe I should disturb some of their sleep cycles. Oh wait, I can’t do that since they're dead. Damn it. I needed more sleep. I was not ready for today.

Even more badder news, SpookyErind was still hugging me. Her body was still asleep. I couldn’t really sense anything from it.

“Hey, I need to get up to get ready for school,” I told her. Wait if she was asleep, then I could just easily get out of her vile grasp. I pried her arms off of me and quickly rolled out of bed. Huh, so I do lose her senses if SpookyErind goes to sleep. I hope that doesn’t become an issue later on. Suddenly, more sensations appeared, as if I just got a new set of limbs. She had just woken up.

Good morning myself, SpookyErind said while yawning. It was kind of weird since her voice was just appearing in my head, along with the yawn.

“I’m going to go eat breakfast now,” I said. “I need to get ready for classes.”

I’ll have breakfast too! She cheered.

“Wait, can’t you just unsummon yourself?” I asked. “And then I could resummon you when I’m full?”

But what’s the fun in that? SpookyErind countered. Besides, wouldn’t it be cool to show off my cool time powers to Deen?

“I think that would be very weird and not within my face,” I said.

But we and Deen already showed each other some of our powers already. Besides, were best friends!

“Actually, why didn’t you show yourself like this to Deen originally?” I asked.

Because it was funny to mess with Deen, she told me. She thought she was convulsing out for hours, but then you said she was only convulsing out for a minute. When she checked the time, it would only turn out to be a minute as well. So isn’t it funny?

“I guess so,” I said. Maybe SpookyErind just did things to mess with people? How could I get her to not mess with me as much. I’d appreciate that a lot.

I’m not messing with you silly, she said. I’m just giving myself an appropriate amount of self-love.

“My self-love involves self-distancing,” I said. “Also stop reading my mind.” She just giggled instead.

How can you distance yourself? she asked. To be fair, it just sounded cool. I really needed more sleep. At least breakfast would make things better.

As I and SpookyErind walked into the dining room, Deen was already eating breakfast. Wait that wasn’t breakfast. That was a salad! She had that for dinner yesterday as well. What kind of breakfast is that?

“Are you having a salad for breakfast?” I asked her.

Deen jerked up in response. “Uh no! I also had a boiled egg.” It was as if you caught a child eating a cookie from the cookie jar. Except for the exact opposite since Deen was eating healthy food.

“Wait, who’s that?!” she panicked, pointing at SpookyErind. Actually, that was pretty funny.

Oh, this is just my clone, SpookyErind said.

“Wait, you can change your clone’s appearance?” Deen asked. “And the voice? It’s as if it’s in my head somehow, but I can clearly see your clone’s mouth move.”

“Umm, not really change appearance,” I said. “It’s more of a transformation.”

“That’s pretty cool,” Deen said. “Can she do anything else, or is it just a transformation?”

SpookyErind focused on her left hand and a golden bubble appeared above it. I tested it out earlier, and apparently, I can summon bubbles that control the speed of time inside of them. Well, that was true, since she did test it on Deen two days ago.

“Your power is so versatile,” Deen said. At least that was one point in the Erind category. I may not have had as good of looks as her, but I had better powers than her. I was also stronger than her as well. If only my body reflected that.

“Your power is useful too,” I said. As part of my best friend face, I had to pay Deen compliments. I wasn’t just going to make fun of her, even though I would be totally justified in doing so. “Being able to know the future sounds pretty useful, and your summon seems to have given you advice based off of that.”

“Yeah, I just wish I could see it for myself,” Deen lamented. Oh come on, I was trying to cheer you up. What the fuck? Maybe Deen wasn’t normal. Well, that much was obvious because she was crazy for trying to take an Artificial Core. Now one might say I might also be crazy, but I had to do it to keep my best friend face up.

“Umm, could you get both of us breakfast?” I asked. I didn’t want to deal with SpookyErind being hungry.

“Oh dangit!” she said. “Sorry Erind, I forgot to make you breakfast. I’ll do it right now for both of you.”

“And no salad please,” I said with a grin.

“It wasn’t just a salad!” Deen said.

I took a seat in one of Deen’s fancy dining chairs. SpookyErind took the seat on my left. Around ten minutes later, Deen managed to get both of a breakfast.

It was a real breakfast, compared to whatever nonsense Deen was eating earlier. A set of scrambled eggs, along with two strips of bacon and a glorious pancake with syrup. Usually, I wasn’t a patriotic person, but if there was one thing I could agree on, is that the American breakfast is amazing.

Before I started eating, Deen commented on something I didn’t notice. “The glowing blue eyes are really cool!” Glowing blue? I was attempted to look at SpookyErind, but I didn’t want to give away something was up. Anyways, so SpookyErind could change her eye color. I guess that was also a good thing to do right here. Blue does not look as scary as red, at least I think. It’s kind of weird that colors can be scary. What is the scariest kind of color? I didn’t know the answer to that, but I did know I was hungry.

Thankfully, none of these foods had an “outside” so I was free to eat them as is. Well okay, the pancake had a light ring around the brown inside, so I had to eat that first to follow Rule #2. But, I was going to eat that last.

Both I and SpookyErind ate the bacon first. I could feel the fatty, salty taste of the bacon as SpookyErind also ate it. Then, there was also the taste of the bacon in my mouth.

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Deen took the seat opposite of me. I chose this seat because it was the farthest away from Deen’s salad. As Deen continued to eat the rest of her “breakfast”, she asked me a question after she swallowed. “Hey, Erind, so you probably are going to return to your condo after this right?”

“Mhm,” I grunted as I chewed up the other slice of bacon.

“I was thinking it would be better if you would stay at my house after school,” she said.

Woah! No way I was doing that.

“Why?” I asked after swallowing my bacon. I then started eating my scrambled egg. SpookyErind stopped eating after she swallowed her last piece of bacon.

“It’s for safety reasons,” she said. “I can keep you safe with my summon. I’m willing to fight now and won’t be cowardly anymore. That means I can help protect you.” Yeah, but I like my Condo. It may not be rich, but it has the most important quality. Devoid of any unwanted people in my room. And by unwanted I mean anybody other than me.

Before I could swallow my chewed egg, Spooky Erind said, But I would have to move my stuff from there to here.

“I could help you move,” Deen said.

Thanks Deen! SpookyErind cheered. I’d be glad to stay here. I nearly gagged. I didn’t agree with this! As I swallowed, SpookyErind continued talking. I just hope it isn’t too much of a problem that I’m living here for free.

“No, it’s perfectly fine,” Deen replied with a smile. “You don’t need to pay me we’re best friends.”

I can help clean stuff up around here, SpookyErind told her. Stop! This was the main problem with SpookyErind, other than the fact that she might take over my main body one day. She could agree with things I would disagree with. It is messing up the face I am cultivating for Deen. It’s not like I could go back and just reject Deen’s offer. That’d just make me look like a bitch, which would also be counter to my best friend face.

“It’s fine,” Deen said. “You don’t need to worry about cleaning up. I need to make things up to you since you saved me twice. Just enjoy your time here.”

Thanks, Deen, SpookyErind said.

“We could also work out some more to get stronger,” Deen suggested.

I looked at my noodle-like arms. I guess it wouldn’t be a bad idea to work out. Maybe I could get a more fit body than Deen? Damnit, Deen was convincing me to stay here out of my own jealousy of her. Was she manipulating me? Nah, there was no way Deen was that smart. She also didn’t seem like that type of person.

“Sure,” I said. “But we should finish breakfast first.” I continued eating my egg. SpookyErind started eating hers.

“Oh, before I forget,” Deen started. “Dario and the others are having a meeting at our secret hideout.”

“Secret hideout?” I asked.

“They want to meet there instead of here because the police are still doing their investigations here,” Deen replied. “We should be fine to go to school and back, but we shouldn’t bring too much attention to ourselves.”

“Do you have any idea what we’ll be doing there?” I questioned.

“Dario said that he plans to train us and also discuss what happened yesterday,” she told me.

Hmm… I was curious about yesterday. How come the Adumbrae tried to kidnap us? They didn’t know we weren’t human, otherwise, they probably would have brought a larger force. Still, wasn’t it weird as soon as we joined the group, we got attacked by them the next day? I couldn’t bring this up though, because Deen still thinks the spike person that attacked us was also an Adumbrae. Still, it’d be important to see what theories Dario and the others come up with.

The absence of cars made things seem a bit spooky as we approached our secret hideout. Thankfully, no one was following us, otherwise, I would have suspected the police or even the Adumbrae were trailing us. We were in the ghost part of town. Sadly there weren’t any ghosts. Or not sadly, because if they were, I would have suspected them of being Adumbrae.

I was in a much better mood because I had drank my chamomile tea right before classes. Even more so, SpookyErind was stuck in the guest room at Deen’s house playing Poly Knight. So two bad things ruining my day were not near me. Although, I might have to bring SpookyErind here to demonstrate my powers. Correction, Corebring powers. Wasn’t it weird that SpookyErind could interface with them? She was an Adumbrae. Perhaps there wasn’t as much of a difference between Corebrings and Adumbrae…

More and more abandoned buildings littered the landscape as we passed by. Construction here ceased a while back, leaving the empty frames of a bunch of buildings. Some were more finished than others, but the signs of rust and moss showed that no one cared to complete or maintain them. Some of them did look complete - those were most likely converted into homeless shelters for the homeless to live in.

Because most people didn’t want to live near the homeless, the area beyond created a wasteland-like feeling. Which was funny because this area wasn’t involved at all with an Adumbrae attack in its history. This would be a great place to film a post-apocalyptic movie. I’m surprised no one has done it yet.

The specific building that housed our hideout was a building that failed to be completed. Which wasn’t saying much given how the other buildings were. But that meant it blended in. No one would suspect it would be a secret hideout.

As we approached the building, concrete columns and rubble surrounded the building where the walls were supposed to be. Deen drove inside and we saw three vehicles parked. I wasn’t familiar with which cars belonged to who. As I stepped out, I smelt the clean, fresh air. It was beautiful, especially given the rugged environment. But that was what happened when you lived in an area without humans.

We headed into the atrium of the building. There, the rest of the Artificial Corebrings stood around in a circle.

“Hey girls,” Reo said. “I hope the directions were pretty clear.”

“You give terrible instructions,” Myra quipped. “I should have been the ones to give them. You should be glad they’re smart, otherwise, they probably would have gone in circles.”

“Not fair!” Reo complained. “I thought they were pretty clear. Everett, back me up my man.”

“Don’t mind them,” Everett said. “They always bicker like this.”

I noticed he mainly focused on Deen when talking to us, unlike Myra and Reo. He couldn’t make things any more obvious.

“It was fine,” Deen said. “We made it here, so that’s what matters.”

I couldn’t really comment because I wasn’t the one driving. It’d been too long since I drove. No point in driving if I could just make it everywhere with my foldable bike.

“We’re still waiting on another member,” Dario said. He was wearing a tank top. Huh. The rest of us were dressed conservatively. What exactly does Dario do? And why was he dressed like he was about to go exercising?

“Another member?” I asked.

“His name is Johann,” Dario said. “He couldn’t make it to the meeting at Deen’s house on Monday. Had to stay overtime.”

“What’s his powers?” Deen asked.

“He doesn’t have any,” Everett replied. “Just a normal human.”

“Wait what?” I asked. “Isn’t that a risk?”

“Johann is trustworthy,” Myra said. “More trustworthy than Reo at least.”

“Hey!”

“Anyways,” Dario continued. “He works as a technician at the Adumbrae Intelligence Unit. His hacking skills have really helped us out in trying to fight the 2M’s, which is the name of the Adumbrae group we’re fighting.”

Hacking skills?

“Oh so that’s why he isn’t a Corebring,” I said.

“Wait, I don’t get it,” Deen said.

“It would be too risky for him to become a Corebring. He’s probably working close by to Adumbrae testing machines daily. It would be a pain to get him a suppressor so often if he needs to it.”

“Yeah, that’s one of the reasons,” Dario continued. “He also has some personal ones as well.”

“Personal ones?” Deen asked.

“He doesn’t like talking about it,” Myra said.

“Oh,” Deen said. What kind of personal reasons was keeping him from becoming a Corebring?

“Hey guys,” a raspy male voice said from the hallway behind us, distracting me from my thoughts. “I brought us some lunch from Puffer Wings.”

“Finally!” Reo said as he rushed towards him. “I’m starving.”

“Hey, let the girls eat first you pig,” Myra said, kicking him.

“Ouch!” Reo said. “Hey, I was doing a lot of important stuff earlier!”

“Like what?” Myra asked.

“The important task of giving out directions!” he replied. Reo and Myra continued arguing as Johann introduced himself.

“Nice to meet you both, I’m Johann,” the person in front of me said. He was a tall lanky man wearing a blue vest.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Deen said. “I’m Deen by the way.”

“Hello,” I said meekly. “I’m Erind.”

“Here are some packages of wings - just grab it from the bag,” Johann told us as he handed us one of the three plastic bags he was carrying.

“Umm, is it just wings?” Deen asked.

“Whoops, I should have asked what everyone wanted,” Johann replied. “I just bought wings.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “Deen isn’t allergic to chicken wings.”

“Hey!” Deen said. “I can eat chicken wings just fine.”

“Have you ever eaten at a fast food restaurant before?” I questioned her with a grin.

“Yes!” Deen stammered. “I just prefer to eat healthy foods.”

“Well, I’ll make a note of that for next time,” Johann said. He proceeded to give the rest of the bags to the other members of the group. One for Reo and Myra, and one for Dario and Everett.

“Alright, feel free to dig in,” Dario said. “We’ll also be discussing what happened to Erind and Deen yesterday.”