No shade against demons. He was a pretty cool guy. And demons — as large and vague a term as fae — were called that as a holdover from when they visited earth in ancient times. As conquerors. They hadn’t stuck around for long; the air was basically a magic vacuum back then, meaning they couldn’t breathe for long periods of time.
Predictably, that hadn’t gone over too well on the human side. A difference in culture was at fault, no doubt. Also the fact that human magic on earth was still in its infancy during that time. Heck, this was so long ago that the supreme god king of the universe owned exactly three cities along the Euphrates, and was writing his letters in freaking cuneiform on clay tablets.
Like on any planet, the magic practiced on Hellworld had developed into its very own system. Where the Fae had power in words, The Fun Place had power in written language. Their powers were similar because in the way beyond ancient times, the denizens of Hellworld had been Fae who were ousted from their lands for a minor slight during a royal ball. The new planet was hostile and its magic foreign, changing the immigrating Fae. While there was a split on how to treat this power which the planet's magic enforced on them, those who embraced it quickly found that the power of their words faded more and more. And with that power so too faded the connections towards home, until Hell declared itself independent from the Fae world. Fast forward a few millennia, and boom, demons looked nothing like Fae, except for one or two defining features, like pointy ears, or eyes without whites.
<
“From what I’m learning, ‘contract’ is a bit of a misnomer. There is no magic involved.”
<
“Because friends don’t betray each other, ever?” I asked. “Well, outside of movies.”
<
“Those are the ones! Basically, friendship is a promise for a future in which both sides help or get helped, and enjoy each other's company.”
He screeched beyond the audible spectrum, which I’d come to learn was his equivalent of humming thoughtfully.
<>
“I mean, you basically covered everything, yeah.” Outside, I was happy. Inside, I was bursting with joy. My first friend at magical university was a bat demon! Or rather, a Chiroptera Daemonii. Or something. Not the best at latin over here. But how cool was that?
I snapped a selfie with him, both of us baring our fangs at the camera. Lily was going to be so jealous.
<>
“I said friendship doesn’t need a contract! But if you need it in writing, then sure. We can do it your way.”
He bowed deeply, swinging his arm-wings out. <
Now, time to take a quick shower at the dorm, redo some makeup, and then it’s time for… the big event.
Date! Date! Date date date! WOOOH!
With a happy spring to my step, I traveled back to our dorm, only getting lost twice along the way. Becca was in her room contemplating robot-arm fluid-dynamics like Newton contemplated apples. Orianna’s room was… closed, locked, and completely dark, judging by the lack of any light inching under the door. Maybe she was already asleep, ready to wake up and do vampire stuff in the middle of the night. Maybe she was drafting an apology letter. She could be; she was a bit inconsiderate, but not because she couldn’t be asked to care. Arguably, she was going out of her way to act in what she thought were my best interests.
I could dig that. Just… the whole vampire versus werewolf thing was a bit of a hindrance to anything but a surface-level acquaintanceship.
Step one to figuring out this debacle is finding out what exactly each side is even about. I’ll probably have to convince the werefolk that I’m more spider than vampire, while at the same time I’ll have to visit vampire parties and meetups all sneaky-like. Neither side can give an honest impression of each other, let alone themselves, so finding out in person is an absolute must—
The bathroom door opened, and Addy stepped out, wrapped in nothing but a towel from chest to waist. She froze in place when she saw me. I, too, froze.
“Uhh, heyyy,” I said, ever suave.
“Hey.”
“Looks like we both had the same idea.”
“Looks like it.”
“You done in there or?”
“Hm? Where? Oh, uh, yes.” Addy readjusted her towel. “I’ll finish in my room. There’s a mirror in there and, uh, yeah.”
“Really?” A sly grin grew on my lips as I grabbed a towel for myself. “And here I thought you were going to join me?”
“Um, I, uhh…” It was fun how readily her face grew crimson. Seeing the strong Addy I knew from out on the battlefield melt away at the sound of a few titillating words filled my stomach with butterflies in a way nothing else did.
“I wonder if I’m the top in this relationship?” I muttered to myself.
Oh god, that’s a lot of responsibility.
Addy spluttered and, after a moment spent composing herself, stalked right back into her room.
The shower went by quickly with six arms. There were more nooks to be thorough about, but [Proprioception Sensors] once again came in clutch. Since I always knew exactly where my arm was, my short-term memory was filled with exact data on how much I’d brushed down which arm or leg in the past minute. Like mapping my own body in space and time.
Maybe that was where all the confidence was coming from. Certainty, something I’d been thoroughly lacking in Creektin.
After the shower, I had the unenviable task of choosing which outfit to go with. Some were crinkled from quickly stuffing them into my backpack, others were already worn, or didn’t fit all that well together. The longer I took trying to pick an outfit, the less time I had for makeup, because while I was certain Addy would wait on me until the heat death of the universe, making her spend even a minute more than necessary was unacceptable.
I chose something sporty and simple: white crop top, blue and shredded high-waisted shorts — Addy loved staring longingly at my legs —, airy shoes, and then some bangles for half of my arms.
Then some quick makeup, lip gloss, and voila, everyday Study-Sam was now Date-Sam.
Feeling mighty proud of myself, I stepped out of my room to a waiting Addy, and my jaw hit the floor.
“Addy, that’s… the dress we got you in Creektin.” With the pink belt and brassy buckle the same color as her eyes. But that wasn’t all. Addy was… different.
Her normally messy black hair was done in slight curls. The black circles around her eyes that were sometimes there, sometimes not — she’d probably been experimenting with porting tanuki colors onto her human body — were artfully elongated into sharp lines, giving them the impression of a hawk. An understated sheen of lipgloss completed her image like a statement: Tonight was date night, and nothing in the world was getting between us and that. Not even a convergence event.
She was a magical girl. My magical girl.
This was the first time I’d seen Addy with any serious makeup on, like, at all. And now that I did, I felt… small. Underdressed. Unworthy.
But judging by Addy’s stare, I was at least doing something right… right?
“So,” I said, swallowing saliva and offering an arm. “Shall we?”
She looked me in the eyes for the first time. Her nervous, blank face morphed into something akin to nervous anticipation.
We walked out of The Academy hand-in-hand, the evening sun tickling the horizon as we joked and talked about pretty nothings. I didn’t remember a word I said, not when we arrived at the teleporter array, not when we emerged on the other side in a seaside town with a beautiful view of waves lapping beneath a dreamy orange sunset.
A roadside sign read ‘Welcome to Mahajanga’. Mahajanga. I was never going to forget that name.
“Wow,” I said, because a view like this deserved at least some expression of wonder. And added to that, knowing Addy was right next to me, prettied up for me, feeling her hand in mine… “This was totally worth the nominal teleportation fee.”
“I’ll feel scammed if I don’t get some good food out of this,” Addy said.
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“Yeah, I suppose I’m a bit hungry too.”
“Busy first day?” she asked while we followed our minimap on a leisurely, scenic route to the small, Society-friendly cafe we’d settled on for the evening.
“It was exhausting.” I let my shoulders sag, leaning a comical amount of weight on Addy. “I need a battery recharge.”
She strained against my weight as I leaned my cheek on her head in one moment, in the next I was cheek-to-cheek with her hybrid form. A shiver ran through my body as I looked deep into her amber eyes.
Our lips are so close, I could just…
“Addy, this dress isn’t soulbound, is it?”
“Mhm. Didn’t think it’d be necessary since it’s not a combat uniform. How’d you know?” she asked in that husky growl. I pointed down at the dress that had very clearly not grown in size with her. “Shit! Shit!”
She quickly shrank back down, brushing herself down while I made sure no-one got a look at her. But we were on a somewhat busy seaside promenade, so… yeah.
“Is that Tanuki Terror?” Someone in the crowd said, and that was our cue to leave.
With a hand on her wrist, on her shoulder, and her hip, I scooped her up in a squeaking mass of dress and curls, bouncing into an alleyway, following the minimap’s helpful tips while making sure nobody could reasonably follow our tangled footsteps.
Caspers’s was an understated locale in an understated part of the town. Away from the bustle of street vendors and cameras of tourists, it sat snugly in a bending alleyway that offered a glimpse of the distantly lapping waves. Small, rustic, with old tools, knives, necklaces, and black-and-white pictures artfully hung on the walls, the inside was a homely, if somewhat cramped place. And we were eating inside, since I could practically feel the tension in Addy’s frame from being recognized out in the streets.
The blush had mostly left her face when what seemed like the only employee in the entire small establishment came to take our orders. She was not just an employee, but the waiter, cook, and owner. Also French, or had a French origin, which I could only tell by the way she pronounced ‘crouton’.
“The fish looks great,” I said, “but where are the price tags?”
“There is none,” she said, mixing a blood bag with wine in a fancy glass in front of me, “because you get to eat as much as you want for one soulcoin.”
“I, oh wow. God, let me check the menu again—”
“I’ll take the T-bone,” Addy said. “And the fish. And…”
In a couple minutes, we had drinks, a salad and a soup respectively. And some fried shrimp skewers on the side. And some pizza bread. All normal starters or, as the owner called it ‘whores d’over’.
I watched Addy gnaw on a skewer. I was staring, but if anything then a date was the exact time and place for staring. Occasionally, she met my stare, only to look down, or out the window nervously.
“Addy, can I be frank? Publicity bothers you, no? I can tell Tanya to feature you less in her videos,” I offered after a first bite.
Addy perked up, taking a moment to think and slurp soup. “A part of me wants to take you up on that offer. But it’s not what I need.”
“Not everyone enjoys popularity.”
“Better to be famous than infamous.” She shrugged, and stole one of my crunchy croutons. It was impossible for me to steal anything back, since eating soup with a salad fork was not the kind of supernatural skill I was gifted with. I stared at her in mock affront, to which she just grinned smugly.
“What am I to do with this incorrigible tanuki?” I asked, stuffing my face full of salad.
“I could think of a couple things.” She fixed me with an odd stare.
“Later, Addy.” I was about to add something that might have turned that stare into a blush when I noticed that I was already out of salad. “Huh. I swear, I wasn’t feeling that hungry.”
“Custodian metabolism,” Addy said, licking the last of her soup from her lips and attacking the complementary bread basket. “Part of what stats do is supercharge your biological features. ‘S easier on the magic that way. You’re gonna want a second main course.”
“But I don’t wanna gain weight.”
“Once gym starts, you’ll have no choice but to. Don’t worry, it’ll all be muscle mass.” That stare I recognized. She was imagining how I would look with a bit more definition to my arms, thighs, belly. It was a hungry stare. It took snapping my fingers in front of her face a few times to get her out of her daze.
“Hey. No charging spells while we’re on a date. Unless it’s joy, in which case, charge away.”
“You know I have no spells for that.” She nibbled away at her bread, offering me the rest of the bread basket. The hard crust, which I normally disliked, felt chewy and tender.
I suppose my jaw muscles are becoming stronger too. Every part of me is.
“When do you think we stopped being human?” I blurted out, to which Addy froze.
“I’ve never been human,” she said.
“You go to school. You put on makeup. You walk around in cute dresses.” A small blush. A small victory. “Heck, the only human thing you don’t do is pay taxes, and that’s because you and I are exempt as Custodians. Heck, we’re exempt from so much, it feels like at some point we’re going to lose our touch with real people.”
“We’re real people too,” Addy countered. “Humanity is just the majority, the average, the norm. In Custodian society, werefolk are the norm. Different walks of life—”
“Same problem?” I sighed. “Sorry to get all philosophical. I had a few encounters that left me thinking.”
The tenseness in Addy’s posture and tone suddenly felt like the opposite of nervousness and insecurity. “What did they do to you?”
She’s going to kill someone. She’ll do it, if someone gives her a reason.
I waved my hands in defense. “Nothing! Nothing big. Just… we get all this power, and I’m like, ok, what am I supposed to do with it?”
“Kill mimics. Murderbots. Whoever opposes earth.”
“Right. But we can change the literal essence of who we are; that doesn’t mean we only have to be weapons.”
“You’re just saying that because you’d make a bad weapon,” Addy pointed out.
“Me? A bad weapon?”
“You’re too honest. And nice. Especially to people who don’t deserve it. You see an edge and think of the person holding it. There’s a word for that.”
“Empathy.”
“That’s the one.” The waiter took away our dirty plates. Addy drummed her fingers on the table. “I’ve thought about it too. I’m spending more and more time as a human or weretanuki compared to my original form. They’re more effective and convenient in a world made for humans. If I had the choice to redo my build to make it less lethal… what’s the alternative, really? Become a pacifist, and the world ends. Become only slightly effective as a weapon, and you get stuck in a coin spiral, or death spiral, or whatever other implicit mechanism deters laziness in Custodians. The system rewards excellence.”
“Apparently, it doesn’t deter infighting,” I said.
“I bet it does. People just haven’t noticed it yet.”
“How can they not notice—” A heavenly smell wafted over as the kitchen doors swung open. It was the fish Addy ordered, baked over spinach, adorned with thyme and other herbs, and still steaming. Potatoes and a mix of smaller seafood in so much oil were the side. “I’d like to order some more as well.”
“I thought so ahead of time,” said the waiter, flourishing a second dish. “Voila! Moules Frites.”
Which was apparently french for mussels and french fries. An unorthodox combo. But incredibly tasty.
I rolled my eyes as I noticed Addy eying her spinach and baked potatoes with suspicion, and swapped her side dish with mine. If there was one way to get this tanuki to eat veggies, it was by frying them.
Silence fell over our table, punctuated by the sound of clinking cutlery and happy Addy noises.
Note to self: Try that fish next.
Eventually, there was not enough food left on the table to forestall any further conversation.
“I want to help people,” I said, wiping my mouth on a napkin. “I think that it’s the only right thing we can do with the power we have.”
“Hard to argue with that,” she said. “Some people still might.”
“Well, some people can go pound sand, for all I care. I’ll mail them the bags personally.” That elicited a snort. Despite my jokes, I was dead serious. “Addy, there’s something wrong with the Academy, and it involves the Lodges. Vampires too, however they organize themselves.”
“Cabals. They make cabals.”
“... ominous, but then again, Lodge comes from the word ‘lobby’, and that makes me think of lobbying.” I cleared my throat. “I want to understand why both are at each other's throats.”
“That’s pretty easy,” Addy said, before frowning. “Maybe it isn’t.”
“Whatever the reason is, can I count on your help to fix it when the time comes?” I asked.
“Sure.”
“And I’ll need an inside view. Preferable in person. Do you think any of the local lodges won’t laugh me out the door if I ask for a tour?”
“You’re more spider than vampire. I’m sure they’ll understand if I put it that way, and say you took the essence under duress.”
“Thank you. Your support is, as always, more than I deserve.” Starting tomorrow, detective Sam was on the case!
“Which brings me to the vampire essence we have lying around,” Addy said. “I assume this means you… don’t want to use it?”
“It’s yours.”
“I don’t need it. I also don’t want it.”
“That doesn’t mean I just get to… Addy, it’s a rare essence!”
“Would you feel better if I traded it for one that you just so happened to need?” She eyed me up and down. “I’m sure you wouldn’t say no to another spider essence.”
“Addy, please!” Her hand wrapped around mine, and this time it was hard for me to look in her eyes.
“You helped me when I needed it the most, Sam. Without you, the ur-mimic piece would still be out there, and I’d still be running after it. You saved me. I will never forget that.” Her look was one of utter trust and devotion. “If you need help, if you ever need anything at all, I’ll be there. If it means stabbing the lodges in the foot, I’ll be the one holding the sword. And when you give the go-ahead to light the whole damn Academy system on fire, I’ll be the one to light the fuse.”
I wish I could have claimed that it was my turn to splutter and blush into my glass of soda, I really do. But after a declaration like that, what could I be besides stare ahead in shocked silence?
She really would go that far. For me. All it takes is a word. She trusts me more than… anything, more than anyone.
The blood-wine glass shook imperceptibly in my hand.
Orianna was right, she is a loaded gun with the safety off at all times.
I have to take my next steps seriously. Slowly. If something goes wrong, everyone pays. Starting with Addy.
And yet, no matter what happened, I still loved her, and trusted her all the same.
The second main dish came and went. Addy was right about one thing: I only felt full once I’d annihilated the second main course.
“Dessert?” Addy asked.
“Always.”
She got some Crème Br?lée. I got vanilla and chocolate ice with berries and an earthy-sweet sauce. The entire bill came to two soulcoins. I added a third, because hey, it was good food in a quiet place away from any disturbances, and the service was impeccable.
The owner offered us something called a digestif, which was french for ‘woah, strong alcohol ahead!’ With that, a lemony shot rounded off the night.
It was dark by the time we arrived back at the teleportation box, giggling, laughing, poking each other and complimenting each other just because we could. The Academy was alive even at this late hour, the few strictly nocturnal werefolk crowding closer together while cliques of vampires strutted along the hallways like kings. It couldn’t have been any more different from daytime. But that was a problem for another day.
With a rush, we found our dorm after getting turned around twice. Addy had been getting oddly grabby in the hallway, so we were already deeply entwined when we slammed the door open, only to find Orianna sitting on the couch in the common room.
She looked up at us, hair done up in a bun, finger resting on some notes on her tablet. The staring contest between her and Addy was like two stray cats suddenly meeting eye-to-eye, neither of them certain whether they could just chill or whether things were about to come to blows.
I ignored them, slapping Addy’s butt and lifting her up with an indignant squawk until she was slumped over my shoulder like a raider’s booty.
“Heya Orianna. This mah girlfriend.” I thumbed at my door. “Knock if we get too loud.”
Apparently I had a talent for making women blush. Maybe it was a hidden passive skill. Like my eyes, except weirder.
Who knows. All I had eyes for in the moment was Addy, splayed out on my bed, panting with a flush going all the way down to her chest. The left loop of her dress had slid down, exposing just that one inch more of her beautifully smooth skin.
“Well?” I asked. “How’d you score our first date?”
“Pretty good,” she huffed. “Best I’ve had so far.”
“So far? That’s high praise. Or a low bar. Depends on how you put it.”
“Definitely low bar.” She was being cheeky again. Did she enjoy stringing me along? “I can think of one way to increase your score though.”
“Oh really?” I grinned as I pushed her chest down into the bed with my upper arms while my lower four arms grabbed for my box of many secrets?.
Her eyes widened as she heard more than saw my first secret weapon of the night.
“Don’t worry Addy, I came more than prepared to drag that perfect score right out of you.”
+++
No woman dead or alive,
May know what it’s like, to feel your hair,
To touch your skin,
To say your name,
As I let my heart go,
And let yours melt into cracks of mine, I wonder;
Is this who you truly are? Or just another face,
Put on to evade disgrace?
Wonder turns to butterflies,
when I look into those many eyes.
My heart is yours, to hold, play, break,
all for a slice of yours to call mine.