“Holy shit I’m not dead!” I raised my arms in celebration of this fact, and then noticed that I had both of my arms. I looked to Madeline, hoping to share the good news, only to then notice she was crying.

“Oh fuck, are you ok!?” I asked, going from elated to panicked in the space of about four seconds.

“No I’m not ok! What the fuck!?” Madeline wiped at her eyes, coughing. “You fucking died on me you jackass!”

“Well clearly not. Unless I’m actually a ghost. Am I a ghost? Did you turn me into a zombie?”

“Fuck I don’t know!” She shrieked.

I’d never heard her voice go that high before.

I didn’t even know she could make a noise like that.

Clearly the situation was dire.

I must have turned into a zombie. Only explanation.

“I promise not to eat you if you did turn me into a zombie.” I said, comfortingly.

“Leonardo, what the fuck man!?”

***

After we both managed to collect ourselves a bit, we established that I probably wasn’t a zombie. My eyes didn’t glow blue, I didn’t breath fire, and I had no obvious external wounds. My shirt was torn pretty badly though. And covered in blood. I was going to have to go clothes shopping soon, at the rate I was going through outfits.

We also decided to finish off you know who. The thing was still alive, probably on account of not being capable of bleeding to death. It didn’t appear to have blood at all, in fact.

I had no Idea how that worked for it, but whatever.

“Hey, what's your CR at, Madeline?”

“Uhh. . .” She opened her display to check. “Eighteen. Why?”

“Mines at twenty-five.”

“Ok, cool I guess?” She didn’t seem to be getting what I was saying.

“CR goes up when we murder monsters. CR going up also seems to increase our stats, among other things.” I explained.

“Oh, yeah that makes sense. Didn’t we talk about that this morning?” Madeline seemed a little out of it.

“Yeah, and you got less than me at the moment so I was thinking that I’d let you take this guy.” I said.

“So. . . you're offering me the kill?” She asked wearily.

“You know, it does sound a little macabre when you put it like that.”

“You think? And how am I even supposed to kill it anyway?”

I picked up the little techno-blade thingy that I used earlier and showed it to her in response.

“This thing will cut through him like a hot knife through butter, but you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.” I said.

“Huh. Where’d that thing come from anyway?”

“You don’t recognize it? It's Four-arms’s.” She squinted at the knife.

“Wasn’t it smaller?”

“I got a thing that makes their weapons bigger.” I showed Madeline my display, pointing to my new abilities.

“Scale weapon? Oh, and you got another one too.” The second ability I got was ‘Animate weapon’. The two abilities were obviously a pair, and my head was already spinning with the possibilities.

Or I was just lightheaded.

I had lost a lot of blood.

“Anyway, I was thinking you should finish him off because then you might get another ability too. I won’t force you, but if you could make your decision quickly, I’d appreciate it.”

The way the mushroom man kept writhing on the ground was starting to take a toll on my mental health.

“Yeah, ok. Hand it over.” She took the blade, and dispassionately started hacking away. The knife cut through just as easily as it had previously, though I noticed that white tendrils still attempted to tangle themselves around the flat and back of the knife. That was probably why Four-arms had trouble earlier.

Eventually it sustained enough damage and dissolved. While resilient, it couldn’t reassemble itself like a blobtopus could.

It left my mechas and the broken parts of Madeline’s sword behind.

“Oh, I got two CR from that. No new abilities though.”

“Huh. I wonder why?” I leaned over to pick up Four-arms. He was still shut down, so I put him in my inventory. Fry and Mick-chicken were fine, and I placed them on my shoulders.

“Don’t know. I’m pretty ready to be done for today though.” She said.

I agreed, but we had to at least shut the front door, and check the floors below us. We hadn’t made it that far up the stairs, so at least that wouldn’t take long. Madeline grumbled, but consented.

The third floor was clear. The second had a couple pookas and a zombie. Madeline cut them up pretty handily, using Accelerate in combination with Strike to take out the whole group in a single pass.

Or at least that’s what I think happened. From my perspective of course, it just seemed like Madeline disappeared from my side and then everything was dead.

As we descended the stairs I picked up any little pieces of Tommy I could find. I was hoping I could use Repair to get him back in shape.

The second floor was clear.

The lobby was a bit messier. There was something like a bear there, but it got bisected before it could try anything. Madeline’s Strike ability could apparently increase the effective length of the blade, black particles extending past the meager length of the knife to temporarily form the length of a broadsword.

The scavenging bear beast taken out, we shut the front doors and duct taped them shut. A couple of the windows were somewhat melted by blaster fire, but we covered the gaps up as best we could with furniture and whatever else we could find.

We’d also had to extinguish a couple of small fires, though that caused me to realize something.

“Madeline?”

“Yes Leo?”

“Why haven’t the fire alarms gone off?” The question seemed to catch her off guard. Her brow furrowing slightly as she pondered for a moment, going so far as to cup her chin with her hand.

“I have no Idea.” She finally admitted. “All I can think is that someone disabled them, though I didn’t think they could even do that.”

“Well they’d have to have the ability to, at least. How would they service them otherwise?” I pointed out.

“True, but doesn’t the fire department usually handle that? I seem to remember that the people who manage the building aren’t supposed to touch them without outside approval.” she said.

I think she was right too, I remembered that a guy from the fire station had to come over every time the alarm was activated in order to turn it off.

It had clearly not been his favorite part of the job. Being forced to show up whenever stoned college students toked a little too aggressively for the carbon monoxide detectors' taste must have gotten old pretty fast.

“Well I don’t have any answers,” I said, “Let's head back. I’m exhausted.”

“Likewise. I’m starving.” She complained.

We made it back without incident, and I managed to pick up a couple more pieces of robot on our way, as well as all the shit I’d thrown earlier.

For our early dinner/late lunch I shoved a couple of frozen pizzas in the oven. Originally I’d been intending to whip up something a little fancier now that I had access to proper ingredients and cookware, but I just didn’t have the energy.

My frozen pizza brand of choice was of the self rising crust variety. The sometimes excessive leaveners they used could impart it with an odd flavor, but I found the texture to be worth it. Both pizzas were the meat-lovers kind, and I additionally topped my slices with thinly sliced beefsteak tomato, salt, pepper, hot sauce, and powdered parmesan.

Madeline ate her pizza unadorned except for the toppings it came with. We collectively managed to demolish both pizzas. Madeline was usually a big eater, but my increased appetite was unusual. I supposed monster slaying was hungry work. The fact that we’d both sustained life threatening injuries and equivalent amounts of blood loss probably also had something to do with it.

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

Madeline had showered while the pizzas were in the oven, and I cleaned myself up after we ate. The amount of dried blood on my skin had been incredible, and not all of it came off easily. The stuff in my hair, in particular, had been a bitch to deal with.

I hadn’t had much trouble the day before because apparently my bleeding had been minor in comparison. Which was shocking considering how much being stabbed had sucked. It probably helped that I’d changed clothes and wiped myself down pretty quickly after it had happened yesterday, whereas today I’d allowed things to dry and cake on.

I hadn’t looked at myself in the mirror before washing, but I must have looked like a real ghoul.

Once I exited the shower, I found Madeline conked out entirely on her recliner, much like she had yesterday. This made two days in a row that she’d managed to avoid sleeping in her own bed.

In fairness, I don’t think she’d really intended it either time, the exhaustion had just gotten to her.

I covered her up again, and called it a night myself. Fry and his buddy took watch. They decided their positions the same way as they had yesterday. Fry was the loser this time, and he got my mp3 player. Mick-Chicken put the next episode of that nature doc on at low volume on the television.

I took my meds and passed out on the couch. It had been a hell of a day.

***

I had another nightmare of course. I got chopped to pieces and put back together again over and over, all while Madeline bled out in front of me. I awoke flushed and terrified. It was still night, so I needed to get back to sleep or else I’d be having a hell of a day tomorrow. Though it occurred to me then I didn’t have work or classes to be getting to in the morning. That thought managed to get me to relax a little.

I turned over to look at the television. The nature doc was still running, and the current episode was on ants.

I watched it for a little while before drifting off again.

When I opened my eyes again it was morning. I felt pretty well rested, all things considered. Madeline had apparently woken up before me again. She was playing a game, and my mechs were watching.

Mick-chicken turned up the volume once he realized I was awake.

“Morning.” Madeline said, focussed on the television. She was playing a soulslike, by the looks of it. It took me a second to recognise which one it was, but after I saw a tentacled eldritch abomination suck the brains out of Madeline’s character, I figured it out.

“Good morning. Any opinions on breakfast?” I asked.

“Not in particular. You?” she responded.

“Eh. I’m trying to decide whether I want hashbrowns enough to cook ‘em.”

“I certainly wouldn’t complain if you did.” Madeline put down her controller after her character finally died. That first bout of brain-sucking hadn’t been enough to kill her, but a follow up attack from an enemy that came out of left field took her out.

“Allright, it’ll take a half hour or so.” I got up and wiped the crud out of my eyes. I pulled a carton of dried hash browns out of my inventory and got to boiling the water required to rehydrate them.

I had to boil the water on the stove top because Jacob had busted my electric kettle. I’d left it out where he could get to it like a fool. If I was lucky he’d gotten murdered by some beastie.

If not, I’d put serious consideration to ending him myself. Though something occurred to me then.

Jacob should have had class when shit started to go down, so how did he make it back to the dorm?

The thought gave me chills, so I pushed it thoroughly to the side.

While the water boiled, I watched Madeline play. At some point it occurred to me to check the time, so I pulled my phone out. It claimed that it was 12:30 in the afternoon. That didn’t seem right. Then I remembered that it had spent a day in my inventory, rendering it useless as a time keeping device.

It didn’t have access to any form of internet, so it couldn’t automatically sync itself to the right time either. I checked the wall clock, but then remembered that it was off because of the experiments we had conducted upon it. The oven clock wasn’t set to the right time either, probably because Madeline never changed it after the last daylight savings time.

This was going to drive me insane, I needed an accurate grasp of the time so I could fix all the clocks.

“Madeline, what’s the time?” She pulled out her phone to check.

“Four thirty-wait. Inventories fuck up clocks! I have no Idea, then.”

“Doesn’t your console have a clock?”

“Oh right.” She hit the home button on the controller to pull up the clock. “9:38, sir.”

I fixed the oven clock first, then the wall clock, and then my phone. Madeline didn’t bother fixing her phone’s time, instead sliding it in her inventory. It didn’t take long after that for the water to come to a boil, so I poured it into the small carton of desiccated spuds. I pinched the pour spout shut, and set a timer for eighteen minutes.

I read a light novel on my phone while I waited for that to finish. Figuring I should read all my e-books while I had the chance. The next time it thought to make me login to my account I’d be locked out.

I didn’t technically own any of the books after all, I just was allowed to lease them indefinitely after paying the same as retail price, because corporations suck.

After the timer went off I pulled out my favorite pan, threw in some reserved bacon fat, and started heating it until it started to smoke lightly. In went the shredded taters, and I flattened them out with a spatula into an even layer, putting a dividing line in the center so they’d be easier to flip later. I seasoned liberally with salt and freshly cracked pepper, and waited. People disagree on whether black pepper should be used on hash, but my stance was definitely that black pepper is a must.

You ever have good black pepper french fries or kettle chips? Same thing.

A short while later, they were ready to flip. The quantity of hash browns that I got out of a small carton was not insignificant, so I had to use two spatulas just to flip one half of the hashbrowns. But flip I did, as I was a practiced hand at this.

I used to work at a diner, in fact.

Another round of seasoning and some more time and they were finished. I grabbed two plates and gently lifted the apportioned hash into each plate from the pan. Next were the eggs.

“How many eggs do you want, Madeline?”

“Four please!”

“How do you like them?”

“Soft scrambled if at all possible.” That was how I liked my eggs as well, so I cracked six eggs into a bowl before seasoning and beating well. I threw some more fat in the pan, and once melted I poured the eggs in.

I pulled my spatula across the bottom of the pan, dragging sheets of cooked scramble to the side, flipping once I had a sizable mound. I let that cook for barely a couple seconds, flipping again until I had an omelet with a gooey inside and medium curd. I pulled the pan off the heat and then broke the omelet up with my spatula, quickly plating it so that the residual heat from the pan didn’t over cook the eggs, then called Madeline over to the counter to eat.

Madeline got the plate with the larger portion of eggs, so that it roughly worked out two to four. She adorned her eggs with green pepper sauce, I had both my hash and eggs with ketchup.

The hash browns were pretty good. Crispy crust, fluffy insides. You could get the same results or better from scratch, but in my opinion it wasn’t really worth the effort. Takes too much time that way, at least when you're making shredded hash.

Eggs were perfectly cooked too. I was a bit worried about screwing it up, due to the fact that I was cooking on a range that wasn’t mine, but Madeline’s stove was the same model as the one in my old apartment, so it worked out.

“This is really good!” Madeline exclaimed, shoveling the last of her hashbrowns into her mouth.

I didn’t feel like it was all that special, but I appreciated the kind words.

After eating breakfast I decided it was an appropriate time to debrief on the events of yesterday. There was a lot to unpack there, and we decided the best place to start was by crying our eyes out.

Well, to be precise, I tried to start by talking about my new abilities and how that would affect our strategies going forward, but then Madeline started tearing up. I asked her what was wrong but I didn’t get a very coherent response, as she went into a full on meltdown.

I tried to comfort her, but after opening my mouth to say something, I found a frog in my throat. My voice cracked, and then I started crying too.

Now two fully grown adults were crying in the kitchen, unable to even get the words out to explain why.

In my case I’d started crying because Madeline did, and then that snowballed as I remembered how scared I was of her dying yesterday. Apparently I hadn’t had the time to fully process how awful seeing her hurt like that had been.

Madeline’s case had ended up being something similar. When she could eventually form words and broken sentences, she’d ended up telling me about how I’d died. Her descriptions of the event sounded pretty traumatic, even if I wasn’t fully sold on the Idea that I’d kicked the bucket.

I suspected that I’d just gone into shock on account of the blood loss. It was inarguable that I’d come fairly close to death, though, and I understood exactly how much seeing me like that must have hurt.

After All, I’d experienced much the same, watching Madeline bleed out.

***

Once we calmed down somewhat, I broke into my stash of snack cakes and other sweets, letting Madeline pick from my collection. Though we’d just eaten, I knew that nothing could boost your mood like some sugar. Madeline chose a piece of lemon pound cake, and I went for a chocolate roll cake.

We had our sweets with some bottled jasmine tea. As we snacked, we finally got to talking.

“Leonardo, I’m pretty sure your emotional fragility is contagious.” Madeline accused, sniffling slightly as she chomped on her glazed pound cake.

“Now, while that could be the case, I’m more inclined to believe that it's just been a hard couple of days.” I responded, sipping my tea.

“And fuck has it been. You know, given that we’ve obtained magical abilities, you’d think we’d have an easier time of it.” She complained.

“Yeah, well. Umm. . . Miss Madeline?”

“What?”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“A lot of things, but mostly using you as a shield.”

“I. . . don’t remember that happening?” Her lips pursed in that specific way that they did, with one end of her mouth not quite pulling together quite as much as the other.

“The way I remember it we were doing a pretty good job of switching off,” she continued “And you took your fair share of hits too, so what’s this about, Leo?”

I took a deep breath and thought for a moment. I wanted to just accept her forgiveness and say it was nothing, but I felt like that would be dishonest for multiple reasons. What I was about to say was dumb but not saying it would probably be worse.

“I’ve said some really dumbass shit in your presence about the whole disability thing, and while you’ve been exceedingly tolerant in correcting me in that regard I think l mentally overcorrected the other way. I sort of internally built you up as superhuman, which meant yesterday I just sort of let you take front and center and that that wasn’t fair. And I don’t want to devalue you in any way ‘cause I really like you, but at the same time I did too much of the other thing, and I just feel like I have to apologize.”

After a significant amount of blathering I finally took the time to breathe.

I had a bad habit of word vomiting whenever I felt nervous or overly emotional, and that last one was a doozy. I already felt another spiel trying to force its way out of my tensed stomach, but I forced it down. I’d already probably said too much. My gaze was locked on to my tea, clenched in my hands. I realized I was staring at my tea to avoid looking Madeline in the eyes. That was no good. I pulled my gaze upwards and made it my mission to maintain eye contact.

“Leo, man, has anyone told you you have a tendency to overthink things?”

“Yes. Multiple times.” She laughed, and then looked down at a twinkie wrapper. She stared at it for a while, her expression just south of neutral. I sipped at my tea and waited for her to get her thoughts in order whilst sorting through my own.

“I think we were both betting that my sole defensive ability would do more than it would, in part, but beyond that I tend to try and pretend that I’m a lot braver and tougher than I actually am. And that’s not because of the whole being disabled thing, I’m fine the way I am, but some shit happened when I was a kid that’s left me with my share of hangups and being vulnerable is one of them. So I think there’s room for us to be better, and you shouldn’t feel too bad, I guess is what I’m saying.” She finished.

“. . .”

“Sorry for rambling.” Madeline said quietly, after a moment.

“Miss Madeline, it would be highly hypocritical for me to judge you for any amount of rambling, and I’m pretty sure you know that.” I rejoined.

“Fair enough.” She chuckled, and then stopped suddenly, seemingly remembering something. “What did you say about liking me, by the way?”

Oh shit did I say that? My mouth had been running on autopilot earlier, and apparently that had come with consequences.

In response to her query I stared fixedly just past her left ear, took a diplomatic sip of my tea, and said: “I’m going to have to plead the fifth.”

She laughed, and mercifully let it go.