The night comes and goes. So does the morning. We debrief Ursula through the entirety of the night, which only takes about an hour, and then we’re done. Ursula and Noland are three days from going back to the other world, I’m about a week away, and I’ve got a pretty… big chunk of stuff I still need to do before I go back. Number one of which is to make a list of things I need to double-check before the other world calls me back.
And, of course, if all I’m doing is making a list then I can do it from a lounge chair on the beach while I sip on a half dozen margaritas. So I do exactly that. Bake under the midday sun, put all the shit that happened yesterday out of my mind for a few hours, and try to ignore the Fortress coin in my pocket that’s trying to break through some shields Noland put up to stop it.
“Don’t forget that thing. What was it again…” Pearl points at my notepad and frowns. “The thing you wanted to ask Ursula and Noland a while ago. Wasn’t there something you wanted to ask about your body stat?”
I raise an eyebrow behind my sunglasses and tap one of my headphones to make it look like I’m taking a call. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I don’t really… OH! That’s right!” Pearl’s eyes light up and she claps her hands. “It’a about how Worth classes only get potential from stat points, not the actual gains. You wanted to ask them how your body can do that without turning into a muscle-bound freak.”
“Oh, right. That. Honestly, it kind of slipped my mind.” I chuckle to myself and quickly scratch down what Pearl said. “Good call. I have their contacts, so I could ask them when I got back to the other world, but it's better to get that done now. Should probably do that before anything else, actually, just in case Ursula’s calculations were a little off.”
The lounge chair next to me creaks as someone sits down. I glance over for a split second, and Ursula’s staring at me.
“Why do you care if my calculations were off?” She asks, then takes a long sip of something that looks like lemonade. “There something we have to do before Noland and I go back?”
I narrow my eyes at her. “Did I tell you where I was going to be today?”
Ursula shakes her head. “Nope. Just felt like going to the beach for a little bit of relaxation before going back to the other world for who knows how long. Depending on how our searches go, the three of us might be there for over a year this time.”
She takes another sip, frowns down at the straw, and pulls it out of the glass. Then she tips it up, drains the entire thing, and lets out a sigh of frosty relief as she puts the straw in the empty glass.
“You were thirsty.”
A snort of a laugh slips out of her lips. “You don’t know the half of it, sister. Yesterday was… not great. We weren’t completely ready to jump into the race for Earth’s magic, but Gisela forced our hand. And sure, I know it was the strategically sound thing to do to let Ernest get away, but it leaves a horrible taste in my mouth to know he’s still out there.”
“Plus, we didn’t get the extra bonus from Gisela for killing him.” I add humorlessly. “That would’ve been something nice to end the night with.”
Ursula nods in agreement and pulls the straw out of a glass that got refilled when I wasn’t looking. She takes a much smaller sip this time, licks her lips, and sighs contentedly as she stares out over the water. Fleur’s platform looms in the distance, black salt structures already sort of visible even from this far out.
“When you did the coin thing back at the meeting… you said you wanted the outcome to be ‘best for the resort’.” Ursula swirls ice around her glass without taking a sip. “Somehow, is this outcome what’s actually best for us? Or is it the best for our organization, not the people in it?”
Honestly, that’s a question I’ve been asking myself for a few hours now. I haven’t been able to come up with any answers, though, so all I can do is shrug and offer a comparison.
“When I was on the krarig, I used the skill and said ‘best for me’. Somehow, that turned into accidentally pulling the krarig to our waters and almost killing Fleur. The scariest thing to think of is that what happened was the best outcome; that anything else would’ve been so much worse.” I stare down at my drink and the salt on the rim. The only place it’s missing is where my lips have touched. “I’m terrified that I did something shitty to us completely by accident. But it’s even worse to think about what might’ve happened if I didn’t use my skill.”
Ursula nods sagely, her glass now half empty. “I get it, I really do. But you obviously don’t have any new info to share, so let’s move onto something a little more pleasant; whatever you were talking to your earpiece about before I sat down.”
“Oh, right, yeah.” I nod as Pearl cutely pouts at being called an ‘earpiece’. “I was wondering why you and the other Worth classes don’t look like muscle bound freaks.”
She coughs mid-sip and raises a hand to catch the liquid trickling from her lips and nose. “I… you… lord, Shelby, you could’ve phrased that a little better. Do you know how much lemon stings when it gets in your nose? Especially alcoholic lemonade?”
“Sorry.” I say flatly. “How do you deal with the Body limitation?”
“Drugs and surgery.” Ursula says as she wipes her face with her shirt. “Lots and lots of drugs, actually. I synthesized a bunch of crap through trial and error that does shit to your muscles that lets them get stronger withotu actually getting any bigger. Only problem with them is that you need to work out a shit ton while they’re working, or else you end up looking like a crack addicted skeleton.”
I scrunch up my nose in distaste. “That’s it? Drugs? That’s your big, problem solving answer to the system screwing us over? How long would it take, anyway, to build up enough muscle mass for one point of Body?”
“Two weeks of daily four hour workouts. And you’ll have to be extra sure that you work out every single muscle in your body–or else you end up lopsided. Which is a whole other can of worms I’m not ready to open yet.” Ursula shudders and raises a hand to her neck. “As for the surgeries; we’d have to replace a bunch of connective tissue when the time came, but since you already did that, you’ll be fine. Hell, for you specifcally, just working out might be fine. We don’t know how your muscles will react to being trained, after all.”
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“The problem is that I don’t have weeks to work out for one point of Body. If I hit twenty of the stat, which seems pretty damn doable, that’s nearly a year of workouts to get the gains.”
“Mmhm. It sucks ass.” Ursula agrees. “Luckily for you, I already suffered through the painstaking process of finding a solution to that problem. Unluckily for you, the solution is so goddamn terrible that I had to develop painkillers strong enough to knock March out so she could use it.”
Pearl coos in anticipation. I just groan.
“Just tell me how much I’m going to suffer.”
She grins wide, reaches down, and clicks open Uncertainty. From it she pulls two clear plastic bottles of pills–one marked with bright red lines, and the other cool blue. Before she hands them to me, she holds up the red bottle.
“These are the muscle stimulants. Take one when you want to work out, then eat a huge meal and go right to sleep afterwards. One pill lasts four hours, and upping the dose does nothing but put a strain on your kidneys. So don’t do that.” She presses it into my hand, then holds up the blue bottle. “Now these–Noland nicknamed them ‘punishment pills’. They make it so everything you do puts a massive strain on your body–walking, talking, lifting weights–whatever. So when you combine the two, you can get a four-hour workout in about thirty minutes.”
The blue pills find their way to my hand, and I stare down at them with more than a little reluctance. “That just sounds like I’m saving three and a half hours a day–not that I’m going to get my stat gains any sooner.”
Ursula holds up one finger, then pulls out one more bottle of green pills. “These are liquid sleep in pill form. Take one and your body recovers from eight hours of fatigue in thirty minutes–but it doesn’t recover your mind. If you use all three pills in unison, you can get in four days’ worth of workout sessions in four hours. Buuuuut you’ll be a walking husk for a while after. No pain, no gain, right?”
I accept the green pills with a grimace. Truth is, I like the idea–with these things, I can get one Body’s worth of progress in a little over three days. Problem is, I have to make a workout routine that’s perfectly balanced and do it all in half an hour. Which, I’m pretty damn sure, is impossible.
“This is going to suck ass, isn’t it?”
Ursula offers me a sympathetic smile and a pat on the shoulder. “Your body’s going to feel like human pulled pork. But it’s the only way you can do this quickly.”
“The other Classes have it good.” I sigh and hold each of the pill bottles up to a relocation coin. “Must be nice to just hit an arrow and be able to punch harder and sprint faster.”
“Must be.” She agrees. “But we’re not that lucky, so we make do with what we have. I’ll send you a personalized workout regime later that covers everything equally. Nothing’s changed since the physical you got a few days ago, right? No unexpected pregnancies?”
“Yeah, right. Because I’ve been sleeping around so much.” I roll my eyes and lean back in my chair as I scratch off the most recent addition to my list of preparations. “Thanks, Ursula. I probably would’ve been screwed if you and the others weren’t around.”
She shrugs. “Us Worth classes gotta stick together. Nothing else to it.”
I nod in agreement, then go in for a long sip of my drink. “Nothing else to it. In, like, an hour can you huck a relocation coin at Fleur’s platform for me?”
“Easily.”
----------------------------------------
Relocation flares, and the beach replaces itself with a small botanical garden’s worth of salt plants. Right now it’s just simple flowers and trees, but I can see the start of some more complex plants sprouting from patches of black salt strewn around seemingly at random. I cover my eyes with one hand to shield them from the sun as I scan the platform for Fleur.
I know she’s here, but I can’t see her for shit. “Fleur! I’m here!”
Something taps me on the shoulder, and I whirl around to Fleur’s face an inch from mine. She glows happily and pulls me into a many-armed hug, her salty form warm against my skin.
“This is nice.” She murmurs into my shoulder. “To think that I may have to go without you for months… it is not a thought that I cherish.”
“I don’t want to leave you behind, either.” I return the hug, then try to initiate a break. Her main body movies away, but her free roaming arms stay wrapped around me. “Mind… you know…”
Fleur tilts her head slightly. “Yes, I mind. You will simply have to bear with it for now.”
…Okay, not the answer I was expecting. But it’s not like they’re hurting or even inconveniencing me, so I guess this is just the price of visiting Fleur’s platform for now.
“How’re you settling in? No issues with the hearts?”
“No, none at all. They are utterly inert–apocalyptically, not magically–and I am attempting to harness their power. It is not going quite as smoothly as I had hoped.” She motions at the partially formed plants for emphasis. “I can maintain them while I consciously focus on them, but the environment itself cannot last without my constant intervention. Unlike the krarig, where the environment and I were truly one.”
I lean down and brush my fingers against a flower that looks like a salt-encrusted combination between a rose and a sunflower. The salt nearly shatters from my gentlest touch; a complete reversal from the bizarrely strong stuff we found in the krarig.
As I dust off my hands and turn back to Fleur and nod down at the flower. “Anything I can do to help?”
She shakes her head. “This is something only I can do. As I harness the magic of the krarig hearts, I will grow closer to creating a self-sustaining ecosystem. Once I have done that, I will be able to grow in strength by significant leaps.”
“Okay. Cool.” I trail off awkwardly and stick my hands in my pockets. “So… uh… is there any reason why you can’t go back into Pearl’s shell and come to the other world with me that way?”
“Yes.” Fleur focuses on Pearl’s shell. “I am no longer connected to Pearl–merely another living being inspired by her biology. When I left her shell, I lost the ability to ever enter it again. As I am no shellraiser: I am a Halsia. I am me. And I am truly alive.”
Her glow warms significantly and with such love that I wince and look away. Even if she doesn’t blame me for what happened to her, I’m still the reason it happened. And until she gets this platform up and running, I’m the reason she’s so much weaker than before. All potentially because my skill thought this was the best outcome for me
“Well, I’ve got a week-ish to kill before I go back to the other world and a checklist I need to complete.” I shoot Fleur a smile, but I know it looks forced. “Even if I can’t take you with me, I’ll think of some way we can keep in touch.”
“I would like that.”