Rose tapped her forehead and a can of ice-cold coke appeared on the table. She grabbed it, cracked it open, then took a hearty sip.
Daz raised an eyebrow. "It seems that storage-type skills or items are the new trend. Well, were the new trend, what with Lesser Identification being the new one."
Rose gave him a funny look. "I've had this skill before you even had the original version of your Industrial Item Box. You can be really dumb while trying to sound smart sometimes."
"Oh? Maybe I'd have known that if my precious little sister actually let me look at her status and skills," Daz fired back.
"Yeah, maybe," Rose replied drily, clearly not intent on discussing herself or her system-related things. "You wanted to talk about something?"
"... I did." Daz knew when not to push his annoying sister's buttons. He loved her and her privacy, even if he wished he could see everything she was hiding from him. "Embers. Do you know where any of their wielders are? If not, can you find out?"
Rose wore an oddly troubled look. "Yes and no?"
"What the hell does that mean?" Daz asked.
Rose tapped her forehead again, resulting in her alien laptop appearing on the table. She booted it up and began moving its mouse. "The answer's complicated. Ever since Mu gained his first Ember I knew about it and I've been investigating them."
Daz frowned. "How did you find out?"
Without looking up for her laptop's 3 screens, she replied, "I don't trust that walking baggage. I don't trust a lot of people. Do you really think that the champion of the God of Information doesn't have certain ways to learn certain things even if she doesn't know beforehand that she needs to know them?"
"... I would like to say I don't approve, but honestly, that sounds incredibly useful. Keep the whole invasion of privacy thing to yourself, yeah? People don't like it, you, in particular, aren't fond of it hence why I've stopped identifying people without consent first," Daz requested.
"Unless they are hostile to you or seem like a potential threat," Rose corrected.
"... That's right. If the world didn't go to shit I wonder if you'd be working for the FBI by the time you turned 20?" Daz asked with a short chuckle.
"I wouldn't have turned 20. I'd have been a corpse." Her words froze Daz and killed his jovial mood.
"Right. No bloodline." Daz chastised himself mentally for saying something so blatantly stupid. "I guess all other things aside, I have the system to thank for you not being dead, huh?"
"And whatever the hell let you get Rimmy. And the fact that an insane former wrestler-turned-bodybuilder who was miraculously the champion of a higher god who turned her into a Titan happens to have no issues working for you," Rose added.
Daz shook his head. "Can you not be an annoying little shit for just one moment? You make it hard to love you."
"This is why you were better without emotions," Rose snapped back. "Also, don't swear at me, you hypocrite."
A silence befell the siblings with only the sound of Rose's light clicking filling the library. A few moments passed before she spun her laptop around, revealing a map of Earth with thousands of bubbles on it, all differing in size.
Daz raised an eyebrow. He was willing to move past the... argument just as Rose seemed to be, so he did. "Are those bubbles meant to be Ember-wielders? There is no way there are that many of them. Mu only got his Ember a little over a week ago and he was ranked 17th."
Rose nodded. "Yup. You're right. I have no clue how many are actually Ember-wielders - as you call them. These are all blips I've been able to uncover when using my guessing power. Each bubble represents a strange phenomenon not related directly to the system."
Rose sighed. "I honestly have no clue what any of these things are. Some could be Ember users, some espers, some mythical cities, hell, maybe even some special dungeons like that one I can't accurately find but know is in the Mariana Trench. They could also be completely different things. I have no idea, and that frustrates me to no end."
"I can imagine," Daz responded as he stroked his jaw and inspected the map. "I see... Well, it's better than nothing. Is that also what you wanted to talk to me about?"
Rose shook her head and pressed a button on the laptop's keyboard, changing the display. Now there were about 100 red dots, all of which were located in Northern America. A few were even in Canada and Greenland.
Another button press and the image zoomed in to show only Northern America since the rest of the world was irrelevant to those dots. "These are the locations of all of the champions still alive in the states. More than half of them died when I started tracking them so I diverted resources to include the whole continent. Well, political continent. South America can wait."
"And I'm to do what with this information, exactly?" Daz asked.
"Use it," Rose answered with a roll of the eyes. "I don't fucking know, okay? I get the information, I don't plan for it. I'm good at gathering intel, not strategizing."
She wasn't raising her voice but she was being more confrontational than usual and Daz could feel it. "Are you okay?"
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
"What the hell? Of course I'm okay," Rose answered, a bit flustered.
"No, you aren't, hence why I asked. What's up with you?" Daz pushed.
Respecting her privacy was one thing, but if something was bothering her enough for her to be so fighty with him during a serious meeting then he felt he had a right to know what, exactly, had worked her up so much as her brother and father-figure.
"What's up with me? What's up with you?" Rose asked back. "You didn't even yell at me for swearing. If anyone's acting weird it's you."
"You're a smart girl, Rose," Daz said. "You know better than anyone how sharp my instincts are."
Rose snorted. "Hah. Those instincts only apply to your survival, even if in weird ways. What would you know? Here I am giving you helpful information and you're trying to grill me on my feelings or something? Seriously, you plus emotions equals a bad joke."
Daz got out of his seat and walked around the table. In one swift motion, he grabbed the armrests of Rose's wheelchair then he leaned in and pressed his forehead against hers. "Rose. Tell me, what's wrong? You will get nothing from me but support."
Rose's face turned beat-red. "What do you think you're doing? This is creepy."
Daz stared into her eyes. "Stop deflecting. You are hiding something. Something that is eating away at you on the inside. Emotions or not, I have lived with you for your entire life and watched you grow into the intelligent young lady you are. Tell me. Even if it's something stupid or trivial, I will support you."
Something inside of Rose snapped. At the top of her lungs, she yelled, "Even if I think I might be gay?!"
Daz's eyes opened wide at the outburst. 'Well, I never even considered that.'
"First I thought- To you- But that was disgusting- Now Vanessa... I-I-I just don't know! Look at how you're staring at me! You think I'm weird too! That I'm a freak!" Rose ripped herself from her brother's grip then controlled her wheelchair as fast as she could to flee the library, leaving her laptop where it was right next to her unfinished coke can.
Daz slowly straightened his back and rubbed his glabella. "One, that was maybe the most unexpected thing in the world that I thought you would be stressing over, two, I was just shocked, not disgusted. How can such an intelligent person be so stupid? Is this the effect of emotions?"
He stared up at the ceiling and shook his head as he chuckled. "Now, more importantly, how the fuck do I fix this? I just wanted some information about Ember-wielders, not to start a damned family drama. Who gives a flying fuck if you're gay and in love? Granted, you're only 11 but you've got a brain bigger than anyone else on the planet. You're a mature girl. Why are you being such a dumbass at the weirdest of moments?"
A big sigh escaped his lips as he thought over what to do.
Reika was laid atop his halo with her neck resting on the front part of the ring and her knees on the back part. She cocked her head and asked, 'What's 'gay'?'
"My sister, apparently," Daz replied in a deadpan manner.
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Madison felt something shaking her softly as she peacefully slept. With a short groan, she opened her eyes wearily to look at who was being so rude as to disturb her valuable evening nap time.
"Daz... Need? Don't, wake, usually," Madison mumbled as she yawned and curled up even further in their bed, squishing Mr Barrier closer to her chest as she cuddled him.
Her boyfriend wore a mildly troubled expression as he ran his fingers through her hair. As usual, it felt good. He really knew how to treat her gently despite his stats.
"Well, a few minutes ago I found out that Rose used to have a crush on me and now she's apparently in love with Vanessa and thinks she's disgusting for being homosexual and maybe because she used to have incestual thoughts about me. I'm honestly rather baffled by the whole situation since she should be smart enough to know that I don't care about sexual orientation just as much as I don't care about most things not related to what I want. I'm pretty sure I've stated before that even if you were a boy that I'd have accepted your love when we were children," Daz explained.
He looked at Madison who was now far more awake than a few seconds ago and he said, "You've always been better at empathising with others than I have even given your special speech habit. Think you could give me a hand letting Rose know that she's being an idiot right now?"
Madison stopped hugging Mr Barrier and used her hands to rub her eyes free of any crust that had built up during her nap. She nodded and said, "Will!"
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"Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! You're a fuckin idiot!" Rose cursed at herself as a big red 'YOU FAILED' sign flashed in front of her face.
She willed it away and restarted the song.
After her outburst, she had retreated to her room, specifically, to her VR capsule where she was trying to play one of those popular rhythm games that were almost archaic to the small portion of the system's internet she had access to as a test host.
Rose didn't really know why but for some reason she couldn't stop playing these simple rhythm games where the objective was to, essentially, dance to the beat of the song at various difficulties.
Maybe it was because it was impossible for her to dance in real life or perhaps she just liked to interact with the music, regardless, she wasn't very good.
That could be why she loved it. She was dreadful at it, unlike most other things she did in life. Her highest score on her favourite song was barely a passing grade at E-rank difficulty, regardless, it was fun and it helped her relieve her stress, of which, she had no shortage.
"You told someone?" a chubby floating dog asked, distracting her, resulting in yet another failure.
This dog was a barely functioning A.I which she'd created. It was able to think for itself, which was incredible, but it was no smarter than a 3-year-old even if it was rather articulate.
Rose glared at the dog and shouted, "Can't you tell already?! Of course I fucking did!"
"Why?" The dog tilted its head to the side in confusion. "You said you didn't want to tell anyone."
"It just came out, okay? My stupid brother realised I was more down than usual and he wouldn't drop it so I spilt the beans, okay? Stop talking. I didn't programme you to question me or to interrupt me when I'm trying to relax," Rose ordered.
The dog's ears flopped in front of its face sadly. "Sorry. I just don't like seeing you angry."
"Just let me dance in peace. My idiot brother will ignore this whole thing if I never talk about it again. He's smart enough to not talk to Vanessa about it, so I should have time to figure things out on my own..." Rose mumbled.
"Why are you pushing her away if you love her?" the dog asked curiously. "Isn't that the opposite of what love is?"
"I said I wanted peace! Just shut up, Scruffy. I'm already questioning if spending my spare time building you was worth anything at all," Rose spat out.
She immediately felt regretful of her words when she saw tears well up in the dog's eyes and when she heard it begin to whimper.
She brought a hand up to her face and said, "Look, I didn't mean that. I, uh, care about you a lot. Just, em, be a good boy and don't talk for a bit, okay?"
Scruffy sniffled and weakly nodded. "I'll tr- Master. Someone is pulling you out of the simulated reality forcefully."
"What?! But I told Vanessa specifically that I didn't need her help anymore!" Rose yelled as the game around her began to crumble.
"It isn't Vanessa," Scruffy said before he, too, dissipated.
Rose groggily opened her eyes as they adjusted to the light only to reveal Daz and Madison's faces.
Daz was holding her in a princess carry while Madison stood at his side with concern in her eyes.
"We clearly need to have a talk, Rose," Daz said plainly.