NOVEL NEXT Chapter 167: Compensation
After my sister reprimanding Gamma for a good ten minutes, Gamma really looks like those sad cat memes, sitting on her shins, while listening to the final straws of my sister’s argumentation.
When Élise is finally done, she sighs. “Well, now that you are here, you might as well help us with this issue.”
“Is it about the bracelet?” Gamma asks, not even making an effort to get up.
“Yes. How do you know?” Sam asks.
“V told me a bit about it. Said you can’t take it off but I don’t see it anymore.”
“It has kind of been integrated into me…” I reply.
“Oh.” Gamma tilt her head and crawls closer to me. “That’s interesting.”
“Come back here, you.” My sister takes Gamma by the collar of her hoodie and drags her back. “Let us explain to you the situation first.”
“O-okay.” Gamma looks slightly intimidated by my sister. It was actually quite funny to see how a Goddess is scared of her.
My sister starts explaining what had just transpired, with Gamma listening to her attentively. When she’s done explaining Gamma nods.
“I see. So after taking that skill it's safe to assume that was a requirement for you to attune to it. That attunement meant it being incorporated into you body, which results in you having a higher degree of control of your powers, but also meaning that sudden emotions can suddenly trigger your form as well.”
“Yes, that sounds about right. At least you know how to pay attention.” Lise nods.
“I don’t want to be karate-chopped on my head.” Gamma nods happily. So she paid attention out of self-preservation, huh?
“And Veanya still hasn’t found a way for Ami to remove the bracelet?” Sam asks.
“Not yet.” Gamma shakes her head. “And it might be even more complicated now as it’s a part of Ami. That said, it doesn't help we’ve been busy with the preparations for your friend. Although, that’s pretty much done now.”
“Oh well at least that’s good news.” I chuckle nervously.
“Yes, but back to the point. I might actually have something to help you. At least it might be easier for you to notice you are nearing your transformation limit. It’s however not really designed for that.”
“And what’s this thing you are talking about?” My sister asks, crossing her arms.
“Let me get it.” Gamma takes a cube out of her jacket, opens it by pressing a button on the bottom and then proceeds to stick her arm into the cube, almost up to her shoulder. It must be some kind of pocket dimension. “Ah, got it.” She takes her arm out again, leaving a trail of smoke from the cube as her arm withdraws. In her hand she’s holding some kind of smartwatch.
“I take it that’s not just a watch?” Nikki looks at it more closely.
“No, it’s a device that monitors emotions. I made a prototype of it for another friend of mine who has some anger issues. But I think, with some testing, I could make it so that it can tell what your emotional threshold is for your transformation. So it gives you alerts when you get close. Might take a couple of hours of testing to get it tuned correctly.” She takes out yet another thing out of the cube. This looks like a VR headset, much like the D3u5XMachina. “In that regard, I’d like to start as soon as possible.”
“Hold it right there, purple tornado. My sister needs to eat breakfast first, as we all do.”
“Purple tornado… I like that nickname.” Gamma decides. “I’ll wait till we’ve eaten breakfast to commence testing.”
My sister facepalms. “Okay, I should have anticipated you’d invite yourself.”
“I’ll make more food, babe.” Nikki replies. “It might be best you stay away from knives for the time being.”
“Maybe.” My sister nods, grateful of her partner’s proposal.
Gamma follows Nikki and Élise out of the room so Sam and I can finish getting ready. Although it is mostly Sam who needs to prepare as I will apparently stay home today yet again. In the meantime I ask Hailey and Carol if they’d mind recording the lessons of today so I can catch up later. While they do ask me what’s up, I quickly get a confirmation that they’ll gladly do so. It’s nice to have such trustworthy friends.
I quickly explain to them what the situation is, as they deserve an honest answer. Even though they really don’t have to, both of them promise to come and visit me after the classes of the day are done.
Sam and I then join our family at the dinner table, with Gamma already having claimed one of the seats.
“Ami.” My sister comes and sits down next to me. “I’ll be staying home with you and Gamma while Nikki goes off to work.”
“I’d like to stay home with you as well but I have a bit of a deadline on a side project.” Nikki explains while she stirs around in her pan. Whatever she is cooking, I don’t know, but I’m getting both the smell of egg and off pancakes. Which does smell pretty promising.
“I already called Hilda to stay home for the day. I really don’t want Gamma to be alone with you.”
Sam puts her hand on my lap. “And I’ll come home as soon as I possibly can.”
I smile at my girlfriend. “I know you will.”
Gamma is just pouting at my sister. “I promised I wouldn’t do it again, it’s okay for you to stop being distrustful of me, you know?”
My sister looks back at Gamma. “Look here, miss purple cat, it takes a little bit longer than thirty minutes to regain my trust, okay?”
“You humans are all so slow.” Gamma continues pouting. “But okay, I guess I understand where you are coming from. But I try my best, you know?” Her ears go flat against her head.
Apparently that does hit a somewhat sensitive snare in my sister as her facial expression softens quite considerably.
“Don’t go acting terribly sad now, it’s not like we hate you. You are still trying to help my sister after all.”
“And we also wouldn’t be offering our food to someone we don’t like.” Nikki ads, she’s clearly following the conversation too, even though she’s not really taking her eyes off the fire. Presumably so that she doesn’t accidentally hurt herself like my sister did.
“Yeah, exactly.” My sister nods.
Gamma’s ears flip back up and a sparkle appears in her eyes. “I’ll do the best I can to help my fellow cat goddess.” She nods excitedly. Her spirit reinvigorated. “But first I would not mind the food because I am really hungry.” A bit of drool runs down the corner of her mouth but she wipes it off with the sleeve of her sweater before it falls.
“Gamma, do you even eat if you don’t come to visit us? You are always so hungry.” Sam comments.
“Maybe she uses a lot of energy.” I reply. “I mean, you see how she is, right?”
“Well yes… but still.”
Gamma is nodding frantically. “I do use a lot of energy! But I also sometimes forget to eat when I’m working. Apparently humans eat a lot so often times, when I come over here you are eating, so it shuts down my inhibitions of eating.”
“That does not sound healthy.” My sister replies. “Can’t you invent something that reminds you to eat.”
“Oh, good idea. I’ll make a mental note to look into that.” Gamma nods.
My sister rolls her eyes and smiles. “And here I am just giving you more work.”
“At least the food is ready.” Nikki laughs and puts a pan and a plate down on their respective spots in front of us. On one pan are 6 eggs, sunny side up. On the other are a collection of freshly made hot pancakes. “I’m making some more pancakes so eat up, there’s plenty of batter.”
We all take an egg and a couple of pancakes and start eating, we do not want to food to go cold. That would be a terrible shame.
Gamma is clearly enjoying her meal, she put quite a lot of powdered sugar on her pancake but I’m pretty sure she was just mimicking my sister while doing so.
“I got to say, humans do still make the best food of all races out there.” She puts another piece of pancake in her mouth and almost without chewing, swallows it whole.
“What’s the worst food you’ve eaten?” Sam asks out of morbid curiosity as she pokes at the egg yolk of her egg.
“Hmmm… There’s this one race that I’ve visited that eats slimy bugs. The tast is not too bad, but it’s the texture that really makes it not work for me.”
“So, a bit like oysters then?” My sister asks.
“I don’t think I’ve eaten those yet…” Gamma tilts her head. “So humans like those slimy things too?”
“I don’t.” Lise waves her hands. “But a lot of people generally do.”
“Hmmm… well at least there’s plenty of other yummy food to compensate!”
-Very true, Gamma, very true…-