The Outlands

Tess sat in the library, idly looking over her homework. While she would have preferred to be in P.E. where she could move about, it was fine to have some time to do her homework. She was always pretty tired after dungeon runs, and that wasn’t really a great state to be in for homework.

Tess was snapped out of focus by someone slamming a hand down on her table and talking to her in a low, angry voice. “Hey, what’s the big idea?”

Tess looked up to see who it was. It took her a second to realize that the person talking to her was Aaron, one of her classmates that she had never really gotten along with. They had never seen eye to eye on…well, anything. He had always been disrespectful, condescending, and generally acted as if he was entitled everything. She vaguely recalled that he was the heir to some…real estate empire or something, but that didn’t really matter to her. He was rude, and that was enough.

“What do you need, Aaron?” She said, holding back an exasperated sigh.

“You know good and well what I need.” He growled, giving her a glare. “You’ve been leading me on for months, you’re not allowed to suddenly get a girlfriend and pretend you weren’t.”

She blinked in shock, nearly dropping her pencil as she stared at him. “What?” She asked, the word coming out of her mouth unbidden.

“Don’t play dumb.” Aaron continued. “You and I know full well you’ve been making eyes at me when nobody else is looking.”

Tess shook her head. “No, I haven’t. I have no clue what you think I’ve been doing, but it certainly wasn’t ‘making eyes’ or whatever. If you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of a full-blown lesbian. Frankly, even the thought of trying to get together with you kind of makes my stomach turn.”

Aaron didn’t take that well, lips curling back into a snarl as he looked at her. “Please. You’re just saying that to keep away people who aren’t persistent enough. What does someone like her have that I don’t?”

Tess arched a brow, cupping her chest. “I’ll give you two guesses. Like, seriously, have you seen girls? I’ve openly come out as a lesbian and am currently dating a girl. What makes you think I have even a remote romantic interest in you or any other guy?”

Aaron sputtered a little, face growing red with anger. “Please, you don’t have to be romantically interested to make passes at me. You just want my money and status and were using your looks to get me to treat you nice, then threw me away when you were done. It’s disgusting, and you should be ashamed of yourself. Take responsibility like an adult, at the least make a public apology, or you’ll find your school life substantially harder.”

Tess felt Isabella stirring inside her, a clear sense of resentment and indignation growing inside of the spirit as Aaron continued to talk. She shook her head, sending Isabella “it’s fine” vibes as best she could, though she wasn’t sure how much of that got through.

“No, I don’t think I will. I’m not afraid of what you could do to my ‘school life’.” Tess replied, glaring defiantly back at Aaron. “And I don’t think you want to be on my bad side, so lay off it or I’m going to be forced to take…drastic measures.”

“Oh no, I’m shaking in my boots.” Aaron sneered. “Little miss pretty here is going to take drastic measures. What are you going to do? Whine to your ‘girlfriend’, and, when that fails, seduce some boys into beating me up? Please, I’ve been given the best martial arts training in this podunk town, I’d beat the crap out of whoever fights me.”

“No, I’ll deal with you myself.” Tess was completely out of patience. Aaron had been annoying her for years, and she wasn’t going to sit around and take it now that she could actually do something about it. “I’ll give you one chance to leave me alone. If you don’t, I’ll make you regret it.”

He snorted derisively. “Not happening. I’ll give you to the end of the week to make your apology, and then I’m going to get to work.” He straightened up, turning around and walking away with a triumphant smirk on his face.

“Alright, I warned him.” Tess mumbled. “Isabella, while we’re at school, I need you to follow him around and make his life hard. Push his stuff off of his desk, hide things when he’s looking away, that sort of thing. Don’t do enough that other people would notice, but make it hard for him to work, got it? After school ends come meet us at Ellie’s car, we’ll wait for you before leaving.”

“Yes.” Isabella whispered, a sense of glee coming from her as she floated out of Tess and then into Aaron. For his part, Aaron shivered slightly, but didn’t seem to notice anything terribly wrong, leaving the library with only one or two glances back at Tess.

Fortunately for Tess, the rest of the day passed without incident. She met back up with Ellie, and, the couple made their way to Ellie’s car, where Tess stopped her. “Wait a minute, we have to…”

She was interrupted by Isabella floating up from the ground beneath the car and back into her usual place within Tess. “Right, we’re good to leave now. Isabella’s back.”

Ellie gave Tess a curious look. “Back? Where’d she go?”

Tess smirked. “I’ll tell you once we’re driving.”

Ellie shrugged, turning the car on and pulling out of the parking lot. “So, what’s up with Isabella?”

“So, I was minding my own business, studying in the library, right? All of a sudden, Aaron walks up and slams his hand down on the table. Any guesses as to what he wanted?”

 “I’m guessing it wasn’t to wish your recovery well.”

“Nope. See, apparently, he was taking issue with our relationship because he thought I had been ‘leading him on’ for the past few months. Went on this whole rant about how I should take responsibility like an adult, and either go out with him or make a public apology by Friday, or else he’d make my school life intolerable”

Ellie winced. “Yeah, that sounds about right.” She sighed. “So, what does that have to do with Isabella?”

Tess chuckled. “I told him that wasn’t going to happen and that he should be afraid of me. When he didn’t back off, I told Isabella to make his life miserable by haunting him and basically being a spiteful poltergeist.”

“Serves him right. What are you gonna do if he hasn’t given up by Friday, though?”

Tess shrugged. “I’m going to tell him I’ll make the hauntings worse. And then I will. And they’ll keep getting worse until he apologizes.”

Ellie chuckled. “It’ll be nice to see him put in his place. Anything else exciting happen?”

“No, just that. Everyone else seems pretty…well, unaware of things or cool with them, so that’s nice.”

Ellie gave Tess a smile. “See? I told you it’d be fine. No one’s even so much as considered that you weren’t always who you are now.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Um, how were things for you, though? I know you were stressing a bit too, so…”

 “You were there for most of it. I got a couple of dirty looks in the locker room, but other than that girl from lunch no one directly confronted me about it, so it went about as smoothly as I could have hoped.”

“How are you feeling now?” Tess asked, somewhat worried. “I know it’s a little late to say it now, but…do you wish you had waited until after graduation when you wouldn’t have had to deal with these people again?”

Ellie snorted. “You kidding? Being able to flirt with you in public is way better than not having to deal with a couple of bigots. I’d do it again in a heartbeat, even if it was as bad as I had worried it might be.”

“That’s good to hear. I’d hate to think I was making things hard for you.”

“As if. Don’t even think that for a second, I’m literally living out my wildest dreams right now, so, if anything, it should be me apologizing for making things harder on you.” The conversation died down after that, and the two ended up spending the rest of their trip just listening to music and enjoying themselves.

They were soon back home, and the moment Tess was through the door she was surprised by a weight gently falling onto her head, followed immediately by the sensation of a couple of small, smooth legs rubbing the top of her head as if they were trying to console her by stroking her hair.

Tess laughed, reaching up and scooping Silky off of her head. “I’m fine.” She told the obviously worried spider. “Everything was fine. There were a couple of mishaps, but I took care of them.”

Silky gave her master a conflicted look before scuttling onto Tess’s shoulder, firmly planting herself down and making it clear that she wasn’t going to leave Tess’s side for the rest of the day.

Tess smiled, walking over to her room, where she changed into her casual clothes and grabbed her magic bag. By the time she was out, Ellie was waiting in the hall, door to the Outlands already summoned. “That was fast.” Tess said. “You’re going out to train with your makeup on? I can’t imagine you had time to remove it.”

“I didn’t.” Ellie replied. “I’m going to remove it while I’m waiting for The Rumors to get ready. There’s usually a few minutes of waiting between getting there and The Rumors showing up, so there’s time.”

“If you say so.” Tess said. “Should we knock or what? I usually went through with Gramps in the mornings, so I’m not sure what’s gonna happen if he’s in a meeting or something.”

“Don’t worry about it. He has a way to redirect the exit point of this door if he’s going to be busy and we can’t go through the office.” Ellie yanked the door open, stepping through. Tess followed, and found herself in Gramps’s office.

Gramps himself was sitting at his desk behind a stack of paperwork, and looked up as Ellie and Tess came in. “Ah, you two.” Gramps said, looking up. “Ellie, you go on ahead, Ker and Jin are going to be ready for you in a minute. Tess, you stay here, we have to go talk to Fortune and Amy. They’ve finished their hotfix for Monster Breeder, but there are some…complications, so we’re going to have to talk with them in person about it.”

Ellie gave them a worried look. “Should I be concerned about this?”

Gramps shook his head. “No, not really. We just have to lay out some ground rules with how this is going to work for the time being. It’s nothing that’s going to hurt Tess or anything.”

“If you say so.” Ellie replied. She leaned over to Tess, giving her a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll see you later, alright? If you need someone to talk to about all this, just let me know, I’m willing to listen to whatever you have to say.”

Tess smiled, reaching over and giving her girlfriend’s hand a squeeze. “I’ll let you know how it goes.”

Ellie gave a somewhat weaker smile in return, squeezing Tess’s hand back before letting go and heading out of the room.

“Alright, ready?” Gramps asked. Once Tess nodded, he made a motion with his hand, and she was suddenly back in the increasingly familiar clean white area that was the gods’ workspace. Fortune and Amy were seated on a couple of chairs behind a coffee table, upon which was resting a large diamond-shaped crystal.

“Ah, good, you’re here.” Amy said, motioning to a couple of empty chairs across from them. “Sit down, we have to talk.”

Tess nervously sat down, rubbing her hands together on her lap. “So, Gramps said you guys had finished your fix but there was a problem?”

Amy shrugged. “You could say that, yeah. Look, I’m just going to level with you. This isn’t something I think is ideal, and I would rather continue looking for a better solution, but Fortune has convinced me that you can handle this responsibility. I’m not omniscient, and she knows you much better than I do, so I’m going to defer to her judgement, but you do not want to make me regret this, am I clear?”

Tess gulped, nodding nervously. “U-understood. I’ll do my best, ma’am. Um…what am I doing?”

“So, we needed a way to let Fortune get out of Descent without going through that whole ejection process we had to last time. And part of the issue is that my Worship was keeping her trapped inside you, since it anchors other souls to your own.

“So…she proposed we don’t separate her soul and yours. At least, not the clean separation that is normally done when a Descent ends. Instead, she’s going to make a sort of…permanent residence, within you. In this case, she’s going to take up one of your pet slots, and one of your User Fundamental Attribute slots is going to be used to house an ability that lets her essentially sever her connection with you temporarily.

“This has one extremely important side effect, though. While she is in Descent, she is, for all intents and purposes, one of your pets. And that makes her subject to a mind-altering affect that makes her unswervingly loyal to you. Normally, gods are immune to mind-altering affects, but this one is originating directly from my Worship, so it bypasses that immunity.

“Fortunately, she’s still got some resistance to it, since it’s a passive effect, not something I’m actively pushing with. We’re estimating that she has roughly five minutes a week that she can safely be in Descent without being affected, though in really important situations we can stretch that time limit out a bit so long as she spends a longer time recovering.

“So. Absorb this crystal, it’s going to cement Fortune and that ability into their slots. Those slots aren’t even going to show up on your interface, since those things wouldn’t display properly anyway, so don’t be confused when they don’t.

“I’m trusting you and Fortune both to not push that five minutes a week limit, but if I find that you two are, I’m going to have to cut you off and we’re going back to the drawing board. Seriously, don’t test me on this. In the meantime, Fortune’s going to be working both on a more permanent solution and a way to optimize the one we currently have so we have more breathing room. Got it?”

Fortune nodded. “We won’t, I promise.”

Tess nodded fervently. “Really, I don’t even want to use Descent unless it’s a super big emergency. I won’t push it, promise. Uh…is there a…timer or something we can use to know how much safe time we have?”

Amy nodded. “Fortune and I built that into the ability you’re getting that lets her escape. Fortune, if you start feeling weird and that time limit isn’t up yet, I expect you to disengage at the earliest possible time that won’t directly endanger Tess. Tess, if she’s staying in and she really shouldn’t be, you should be able to use that ability to forcefully push her out, and I expect you to do so. Understood?”

After both Tess and Fortune signaled their agreement, Amy continued. “Do you have both a free User Fundamental slot and a pet slot?”

“I have two pet slots and I…” She paused, briefly checking her slots. “Oh, I got another User Fundamental slot at level thirty, I forgot. Yeah, they’re free.”

Amy motioned at the crystal, and Tess went ahead and absorbed it, prompting another one of those glitchy windows similar to the one she got when absorbing the ‘empty’ core.

Amy stood up, walking over to Tess and inspecting her. “Everything looks good so far.” She said after a moment. “Descend, I need to see what it looks like.”

Fortune nodded at Tess, and after a moment there was the odd sensation of Fortune’s mind sliding into place beside her own, and she could see Fortune’s body go limp in the chair it was sitting in. Sorry about the trouble. Fortune told her. I wanted to get this fix out sooner rather than later, and I know I can trust you with this solution until we get something real working.

Amy groaned. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” She said, grabbing some of her slimy hair and squeezing it in frustration. “Alright, separate.”

There was a slight wrenching sensation, and then Fortune was back in her own body.

Amy raised a brow. “Seriously? Well, whatever, I’m not going to worry about it, we haven’t used proper avatars in millennia, so it doesn’t really matter. Descend again, I need to check the automatic warning functions.”

And then Fortune was right back inside Tess, the two of them once again sharing the headspace. The window about gaining Omnilingual and Mortal Divinity popped up, but Fortune just dismissed it.

“So…what’s this about avatars?” Tess asked.

Amy waved a hand. “Gods have this system where they can have a mortal body that works autonomously when they’re not in it. We used it when we didn’t have as much leeway to make Appointed and work with the mortal world that way, and those Titles were part of it. They gave the ability to understand all human language and gave the physical body immunity to mind-altering affects while the god wasn’t in it. You have that anyway during Descent, so don’t worry about it.”

“Sure. Are those other Titles fine?” Fortune asked.

Amy paused, giving them a discerning look. “Yeah, should be fine, let me just…”

“It’s a name change and some slight effect downgrades, but it shouldn’t impact her at all, since I don’t think you’re planning on giving her any taming abilities.” Amy said. “Don’t want people getting weird ideas if they look at her Titles. Go ahead and look over their effects while we wait, we’re just killing time for fifty seconds here.”

Tess pulled up her Titles, giving the two a look.

Tess took a moment to look that over before trying something out. Silky? She asked, mentally sending out a message.

Mistress?! Can you hear me!? Silky’s “voice” was, unexpectedly, deep and smooth, much like the stereotypical “older sister”, though it didn’t sound quite old enough to be called motherly.

Yeah, I can hear you.

Silky began to scuttle about excitedly on Tess’s shoulder, occasionally stopping and waving about two of her front legs before resuming her scuttle. I’m so happy! I wanted to talk too!

Tess smiled. Well, now you can. Uh, what are you doing?

Dancing! Too happy, can’t be still!

“Perfect.” Amy said. “Alright, you two can stop Descent now, this should work. And, remember, I’m watching you. Don’t even think about staying out past that time limit unless it’s something serious.”

Tess blinked as Fortune once again withdrew from her and she was suddenly alone in her head.

“Right, that should do it.” Amy said. “You two can go now. Thanks for bringing her here, Evan. Hopefully she’ll be able to do it herself soon as we won’t have to rely on you all the time.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Gramps replied. “I’m more than happy to help my granddaughters out while they’re unable to do it themselves. I’ll let you know if I see them doing anything reckless.”

“Much appreciated.”

Gramps nodded. “Fortune, anything to say before we go?”

“No, um…thanks.” Fortune said. “I’ll talk to you soon, Tess.”

“Uh…later, I guess.” Tess replied.

And with that, Gramps waved his hands and the two were back in his office. “Well, that went pretty well, I’d say.” Gramps said. “Just don’t push that time limit and you’ll be fine. Anyway, Alice is waiting for you in your usual meeting spot, so you go have fun, alright?”

“OK. I’ll see you later, Gramps!” Tess took a moment to reactivate her ears and tail before opening the door and heading out to meet with Alice, ready to work out some stress and get some training done.

Fighterman481

My editor didn't know the word so I have to ask, how many of y'all have heard the word 'podunk' before? It's probably an American thing, and maybe even only western American (can't speak for the east since I haven't been there enough). Apparently it comes from Algonquian but no one has a definitive answer on what originally meant in Algonquian.

If you don't know, podunk is somewhat derogatory slang for 'the middle of nowhere', and it conveys this feeling to it that I don't know if you can really...get the same way without having been in a podunk town.

Those of you who have done road trips in the US know what I mean, and there are likely equivalents in other countries but I've only ever been to Panama and only ever really in the capitol (and a couple more tourist-y places) there so...yeah

Basically, take a bunch of farms or other large plots of land, roughly cluster them around a main group of buildings like a wal-mart (if you're lucky and the town is even that big), a couple fast food places, a gas-station, and a couple of schools and churches. Make one or two suburbs scattered about if you're feeling adventurous. Then, run everything down. Not necessarily to the point of being completely broken, but enough that you can tell. Random broken, maybe even rotting boards are hanging out near farm plots, there are broken down sheds on the side of the road, and even as you get into "town" the buildings don't look...nice.

Generally, the scenery can't be good either. Podunk towns are dreary places, not somewhere you want to be for longer than is absolutely necessary. There are quite a few of them in the US, and you'll pass through them if you're driving long distances somewhere.

Anywhere, large linguistic tangent aside, let's talk about the 'fix' to the Descent problem. It's a fun little reversal of the normal dynamic of Descents, because it's not Tess who's worrying about being harmed, it's Fortune. 

And it's not really a good fix either. Unlike with normal Descents, Fortune and Tess can't really get more 'used' to Descending and lengthen their time like that. Experienced Appointed like Gramps can spend hours in Descent if need be, and Tess and Fortune are capped at five minutes a week. That'll increase somewhat as time progresses and Fortune tinkers with things, but until they can properly figure out a way to fix the issue, Tess is going to be able to be in Descent for much shorter periods of time than other Appointed.

Though, a weird quirk of how it works is that it's also far less taxing for both to be in Descent. It's much easier for Fortune to move into Descent and it's got practically no adverse effects on Tess (well, at least for relatively short periods of time. If she was permanently in Descent things would eventually get messed up, but it would take a long time of 24/7 Descent).

Anyway, I'm rambling so I'm going to cut things off here, next time Tess will be...having some talks, so look forward to it!

And, as always, thanks for reading!

Oh, and I forgot originally, but...

You're not allowed to squish Amy's hair. If you do, she'll bonk you.

With a crowbar.

Don't do it.