Bootstrapping Book 1

by Tersin22

An insert wakes up on the first day of her new life in a world of magic, with none of her own. No advantages, no starting place, knowing nothing but that she's out gunned at every turn and power is out there to grab. One way or another she'll drag her way to safety and arcane power, over the bodies of everybody in her way if she must.

37. A Pause for Breath

"I am victorious!" I crow, throwing wide the door of Pua's designated teleportation arrival room, before dissolving into a bout of rough coughing. I lean against the wall opposite the door I just came through, still clutching the corrupted Excalibur in my left hand, my hood thrown back and my mask down.

From downstairs I can hear the sound of several people running for the stairs and moments later Pua and Ku appear at the top of the stairs, Thea hovering a little ways behind them. I smile and wave at them with my free hand, then cough again, which earns me a frown from Pua.

"What have you done to yourself? I thought you were following a paper..." Pua's eyes give me a once over as she heads in my direction. Probably looking for anything bleeding that she'll have to heal immediately. When her gaze catches on the Excalibur though, she recoils like she just caught a whiff of an open septic tank in the middle of summer, "Oh, by all the honored ancestors, what the hell is that."

That's enough to set Ku off laughing, which earns him a glare from his sister. A glare that he ignores with the ease of long practice. Thea just shakes her head at the two of them and heads downstairs, "I'll go make sure we have enough food for Ericka once you're done with her."

That jerks Pua's attention back to me, "Well?" She demands and starts towards me again.

"This?" I raise the hand with the sword in it, "This is Excalibur Blessing. Though I'm not sure how accurate the title is at this point. As it turns out, Roanoke is a Genius Loci roused by a curse from pissed off Native American shamans. A Genius Loci that's been using this," I wave the sword in my left hand around a bit again, "as a filter to turn wholesome natural mana into corrupted holy energy, and then using that energy to raise the dead to kill visitors." I finish up by coughing again.

Ku is grinning like a mad man, "Wow sis, that sounds like one of our adventures, doesn't it?"

Pua womanfully ignores him, "And the coughing?"

"Um... Smoke inhalation from when I set the island on fire," I tell Pua a little sheepishly. Ku starts laughing again harder. Pua just stares at me flatly, "It was a really open environment! I thought that an open field would have plenty of ventilation." The stare doesn't abate, Ku's laughing even harder though, "It seemed like a good idea at the time?"

Ku actually manages to fall down the stairs he's laughing so hard.

Pua just looks like she wants to throw her hands up in the air and give up on the world.

She certainly wants to give up on Ku and me at least.

###

Once Pua gets Ku to stop laughing and start helping, something accomplished by beating him about the head and shoulders with a pillow, it still takes almost half an hour to get my armor off. It really hasn't been designed to come off, or be put on, any way but directly to or from my soul.

While Ku helps me to get out of the armor, Pua wraps the corrupted Excalibur in a piece of coconut fiber cloth. Cloth that has, apparently, been enchanted to keep malicious energies from leaking out of things wrapped in it. With both of those tasks done Pua forces me down onto the examination table in her work room and gives me a more thorough going over.

While she pokes and prods me I give a much more detailed and complete retelling of my adventures with the island. Aside from asking for the occasional point of clarification, the two of them just let me talk, and cough, but mostly talk.

When we're both done, me talking and Pua poking, she drops something on my solar plexus about the size of a half dollar coin. Covering whatever it is with a hand she recites what sounds like a prayer in Latin. A prayer with a remarkable amount about God and Jesus in it for the decidedly pagan Kahuna. I know better than to interrupt her though, so I just let her do her thing. From beneath her hand a pure golden light seeps like liquid between her fingers, and a soothing gentle warmth sinks into my bones.

After only a few minutes, the prayer ends and the light and warmth fade. I blink a few times and take in a breath, and keep breathing in. Even with the constant coughing I hadn't realized how little air I had been getting until I could take full breaths again. I actually get dizzy from the sudden increase in oxygen.

"What was that?" I manage to gasp out as I cling to the examination table so that I don't fall off while the room is spinning.

"Modified angelic spell." Pua explains watching me carefully, "They do 'purity' very well, and it only takes a few small adjustments to turn that from spiritual purity to physical. How do you feel?"

Slowly the room stops spinning while Pua talks, so I carefully sit up, pausing to see if the dizziness would come back when I start moving. After a moment I smile at my Kahuna, "Great actually." I take another deep breath, "Air is really one of those things you never really appreciate until it's gone."

Pua nods solemnly, then smacks me upside the head without changing her expression, "What the fuck is wrong with you?" She yells, "If you were anybody else you'd be dead! Your lungs were barely functioning! Somehow your regeneration was keeping just ahead of the brain damage you should have from too little oxygen for a prolonged period of time. If it hadn't been you would have keeled over before you ever got the chance to jump down that well!" Pua throws her hands up in the air, "And what the hell was that about? What were you thinking, 'there's a sentient terrain feature that wants to kill me, but can't right now because sunlight suppresses it. I know I'll just jump into a place where there is no sunlight, and get myself surrounded by it! That's a great Idea'!" And now she's pacing, "I could almost forgive that piece of epic stupidity, brain damage excuses a lot of failures in thinking after all. What it doesn't excuse is why you didn't just call me in the first place! I could have..."

At this point I've had enough, so I reach out with both hands and grab Pua's head. One hand covering her mouth, the other in a plum hold to keep her from just backing up and escaping. The two of us stare at each other for a long moment, her glaring and me kind of reveling in the warm fuzzy feeling of how much she's concerned about me. After a few moments I raised an eyebrow at her, "Are you done?" Pua frowns harder at me and starts to lick my hand, "Really? What are you, six?" I do let her go though.

The tiny Kahuna aggressively crossed her arms under her chest, "Well?"

"Well, what?"

"Are you going to answer my questions or do I have to get creative?" Those weren't rhetorical?

I sigh, "I didn't call you when I found out that there was likely something supernaturally off about the island because that seems to be the first step anytime I get into some new trouble, or run into a roadblock in my current projects. Eventually I'm going to leave, and then I'm not going to have you right there to answer all my questions. I want, I need, to get used to doing these things myself while I still have the safety net of you actually still being there. As to the rest of it?" I pause for a moment thinking of how to explain this before I decide that there really isn't much to explain, "I took calculated risks that I thought I could handle. Seeing as I'm here being yelled at by you, and I got my first Excalibit I'd say I was right." I glance at the cloth wrapped bundle, "Speaking of which, can we do something with that? I plan on being here for at least a few days, you can yell at me more then. Right now though that thing makes me really uncomfortable."

Pua glares at me for another few moments, then slumps where she stands, "Fine. Vivain still has her forge setup and is spending most of her time there."

"Really?" I hop to my feet, grabbing the cloth wrapped sword and Sclamhaire in her sheath, "I figured she'd have gone back to Faery by now." Though this is more convenient.

Pua just shrugs, "I may negotiate with them, but I doubt a human can ever really understand what supernaturals like fae are thinking."

Well... that's probably true enough.

###

Sun light crashes down on me, filling me with heat. Warming me up in a way that I hadn't known I needed, but have since Roanoke's snow storm landed on me. It's a clear day in the village, the sunlight reaching us unimpeded by anything. The sounds of the village are also comforting after the silence of the island that had only been broken by the cries of the bone golems.

The village is filled with the sounds of life. People talking, working, and children running everywhere shrieking and laughing. A herd of them, the eldest maybe nine, scurries past us. Following along behind them is their teenage minder. The poor boy looks like he'd rather be doing anything else than following the pack of knee biters around, but one of them is probably his sibling, and thus has no real choice in the matter.

The rampaging horde blows past us waving and calling greetings, to both myself and Pua before they're off again. The sound of waves reaches me, bringing a small pang of some feeling from the reminder of Lei, but before I can wallow in that, or even really figure out what that feeling is, I'm distracted again. We pass the field where I'd taught the kids of the village gymnastics, and I'm surprised to find it occupied by a bunch of kids of all ages going through the exercises that I taught them. The older kids keeping an eye on the younger ones, spotting each other as I taught them to. We're spotted by the kids, and end up waylaid as they insist on showing me how much they've improved since I saw them last.

I can't bring myself to mind that much.

Eventually we extract ourselves with a promise that I'll come back and do another lesson before I leave, and keep moving.

The sheer amount of green on the islands never fails to take me aback. Never mind the intensity of the color. For some reason no place ever seems to be as intensely green as Hawaii is. The smell of the air is different too, though that's something that I think Pua does deliberately, because it's less Hawaii that smells different, and more the air of the village that seems changed.

As we approach the fishpond, and the river through the middle of the village, that smell is slowly overtaken by the scent of fire and steel. The small looking shack that's so much larger on the inside that serves as the Lady's forge comes in sight, and is exactly how I remember it. The village hasn't changed much, I haven't been gone that long after all, but the forge hasn't changed at all.

I think it might be a Fae thing.

The Lady of the Lake is there waiting for us though. Sitting in a chair in her smithy, the forge itself is currently unlit, her feet kicked up on her anvil a well worn paperback book in her hands. Pua pauses at the tree line of the clearing around the fish pond letting me approach the ancient fae on my own.

Vivain notices me, or at least acknowledges me, as I reach the threshold of her forge. She glances over the top of her book, and seems a little surprised to see me. Even more so when I place the thoroughly wrapped Excalibur on her anvil.

Vivain pulls her feet off the anvil and sits forward eyes intent on the cloth bundle, "Already? That's rather quick."

I shrug, "I got lucky. I ended up getting a good lead on the missing piece." I wave a hand at the bundle that Vivain is already eagerly unwrapping, "It's not in the greatest shape." I tell her with a grimace, "It was being used in a way I'm pretty sure would void its warranty..."

I trail off as Vivain finishes eagerly freeing the sword from the cloth. She leans backwards grimacing slightly at the condition of the blade, and grabs a hammer from where it's been resting on the edge of the forge proper. Then without even the slightest bit of hesitation, she brings the hammer down on the sword with what has to be a not small measure of her rather significant strength.

The Excalibur shatters.

I flinch backwards covering my eyes with an arm, for a moment really wishing that I still had my armor on. Nothing strikes me though. I half expected to be pelted by shards of corrupted magic sword. After a few moments I lower my arm and see the former Excalibur still entirely contained on the anvil. Vivain is sorting through the pieces, nudging them this way and that with the head of her hammer.

After a few minutes of looking she gives a soft happy cry, and reaches her hand into the mess of shattered metal and picks up a piece of it. Even I can tell at a glance that it's not the same as the rest of the sword, the metal isn't colored the same. Just seeing it produces a visceral response. Which would be enough to tell it's not the same as the rest of the sword even if it wasn't an almost foot long piece of one edge of a sword that had apparently been entirely contained within the blade of Excalibur Blessing.

Vivain holds it up triumphantly and I lean in for a closer look, "Is that...?"

The Lady of the Lake nods, "One of the seven pieces of the True Excalibur, the Sword of Promised Victory." Vivain takes the piece and carefully sets it aside. Then carelessly sweeps the rest of what had once been Excalibur Blessing off the anvil and into a conveniently placed box of scrap metal, "That's the one you weren't sure if you would be able to get, right?" She doesn't wait for me to respond before turning back into her forge and disappearing into the back. A moment later she's back though carrying a beautifully crafted wooden box. The interior of the box, when she opens it, is lined in deep blue velvet. There are seven recessed indentations in the fabric that when taken together make the shape of a sword. The Excalibur fragment fits perfectly into one of those indentations.

Vivain closes the box which flares with mana when it's latched. That done she turns back to me, "Have you decided what you want your extra trinket to be?"

I hesitate, then shake my head, "I have a few ideas, but I'd rather get the rest of the pieces before we talk about it. At the moment I've got a... buffer if you will, just in case something goes wrong with one of the others. It's a bit of insurance that I'd like to hang onto. Things tend to go wrong in the most unexpected ways rather frequently, I've found."

The Lady of the Lake studies me for a moment then glances back to the box, "Very true." She murmurs, "Very true."

###

Dinner that night is both awkward and something I wouldn't change for the world. Pua spends the entire meal grumbling at me for taking what she calls unnecessary risks. I spend it trying to defend myself, and only sort of succeeding. The only argument I have that really works is that it was my choice to make and it worked out fine, so clearly I made the right choice. Thea periodically scolds her wife for starting fights at the dinner table, and as the night goes on she seems to be getting increasingly annoyed about it. If Pua doesn't give it up soon she might end up sleeping on the couch. Ku just seems happy to have us all there and spends the meal quietly laughing at all of our antics.

The next morning it's back to Hawaiian usual, which means that Ku and I are in our training field hitting each other not long after the sun is up. Or rather I'm trying to hit him. Today we're working unarmed and Ku has thus far been purely on defense. I'm stronger than him by a fairly wide margin at this point, as long as he doesn't start using Mana Breathing to enhance himself, but that hardly seems to matter. He's brushing my punches aside so smoothly that I can't feel any impact when he moves my strikes off line. Hell, I barely feel pressure.

I throw a wheel kick at his head, just to change things up, and he catches my ankle on his forearm, lifting my leg over his head as he ducks without my kick slowing down at all. Then my other leg is swept out from underneath me and I hit the ground like a sack of bricks. For a moment I just lay there and groan.

At least that's what I'm doing externally. Internally, I'm reviewing the high definition movie quality memories I have of everything Ku did thanks to my Tengu talent. The physical motions themselves aren't complicated, it's the judgment of exactly how much pressure and where to press to render strength irrelevant that'll be tricky.

Even with an unknown number of helpings of inhuman physical talent this won't be easy. It'd require a lot of trial and error. Trial and error I'm not quite ready to get into just yet, my subconscious still breaking down the intricacies of the gross physical actions.

So to give myself some more time before the inevitable next step. The one where Ku manifests his Touki and I get to try and defend against him. I decide to ask a question I've been wanting to ask since Pua and Ku rescued me from the rampaging dragon.

"Hey Ku?" He looks at me curiously, "What did you do to kill that dragon? There weren't any visible wounds, you just pressed your hand against it's head and it fell over. At least that's what it looked like."

Ku studies me suspiciously for a moment. I try my best to look innocent. I'm not sure how well it works, as after a moment Ku just snorts a laugh at me. On the other hand he answers my question so... I must not have failed too badly?

"It's a technique originating in northern China called 'Ripple the Still Pond'." He finishes in a dialect, of what I assume is Chinese, that I'd never heard before. Which isn't hard as I've barely heard any dialect of Chinese before, "It uses the shock waves created by sharp impact to generate hydrostatic shock in soft tissue. The better you are at the technique the less impact is required to generate an appreciable result. So when I patted the dragon on the head..."

"It was more like you set off a small explosive in it's brain." I finish for him. That is one hell of a technique, "How long does it take to learn something like that?"

Ku smiles at me, "It took me two years to be able to perform the technique anything like reliably. Another five after that to get to what I'd call basically proficient. What you saw with the dragon is the result of an additional fifteen years of practice."

I grimace, "So not something I'm going to pick up quickly if at all."

Ku chuckles, "No. Really there are plenty of other things that you could spend your time on which would yield results much faster."

He's right really... but if I followed that philosophy, I wouldn't have bothered to learn Script. World Script is incredibly complicated, difficult, and finicky. And also the single greatest tool I've found. Literally every bit of power I've gathered can be traced to finding that book in Cait's shop. If difficult and time consuming but ultimately powerful has worked for me so far, why would I stop now?

"How hard would it be to teach me enough of it that I could keep practicing on my own?" I ask slowly.

"Well... not that hard I guess. The principles aren't that difficult to grasp, it's the execution that's difficult." He looks confused for a moment, then his eyes drift to my tattoos, and he smiles, "I don't know why I expected a different answer from you. Always the more difficult, but more rewarding path for you, huh?" I just smile at him, and he nods in reply to my unspoken answer, "All right, I'll show you what you're trying for and explain how to do it. After that I'll give you what advice I can, but it'll mostly be down to you."

I give him a huge smile, and follow him off to spend the rest of the day slapping the side of a wooden barrel filled with water.

###

I spend most of the third day I'm in the village, after I escape from Ku continuing the lesson I'd delayed the day before, fulfilling my promise to the village kids and watching them display how they've improved their gymnastic skills. I applaud and act impressed for the older kids, and get roped into giving introductory lessons to the younger kids who hadn't been old enough to join in last time. I break up the get together for lunch, and send them back to their parents for food while I wander off to find someplace to just relax for a bit. Something I'm very aware wouldn't have even occurred to me before I came here and got some pieces of my soul ripped out. As painful and uncomfortable as I found the experience, I can't deny that it was probably very good for me. Even beyond Sclamhaire, and the rest of my equipment.

The Ke'Kua'Okolani beach is pretty much exactly as I remember it. Which isn't surprising since it's only been a few months since I've been here. My last visit I avoided the beach just because I wasn't sure I was ready to see Lei again after our odd... relationship? We went on a few dates, but it never really got past that. Though they were enjoyable, and the end of our time together was amicable.

Now though, seeing her out on the water again, still teaching village kids how to surf is almost comforting. I've changed a lot since I left. It feels like it's been a lot longer than just the few months it has been, but seeing her out there makes me feel like not everything has...

"Weird tattoos, stupidly tall, and staring at my girlfriend. You must be Ericka." I turn to look at the hostile voice that's just interrupted my musing, and find somebody I've never seen before. Which means she's not a resident of the village. Even if I can't remember everybody's names, anybody who lives in the village is at least familiar, which this woman isn't. Which is unusual. Given how much magic is part of the daily life of the people here, and how badly some people take its existence. Most of the time strangers aren't let into the village for any real length of time. Pua and the ali'i generally don't think it's worth the risk. Her Caucasian complexion reinforces the idea that she's an outsider, and goes well with the light blue bikini she's wearing. She's in decent shape, certainly no extra fat, though not the kind of shape I'm in. Which to be fair, aside from Ku and people with a similar drive, nobody is. Her rich brown hair is done in a pixie cut which works for her. What doesn't work for her, is the expression of anger and narrow eyed resentment she's pointing at me.

"Yes I am." I'm smiling, I think I know what's going on here and if I'm right it's very amusing, "You are...?" I ask, and hold out a hand to shake.

Which she takes almost on autopilot, as it seems that my rather friendly response to her decidedly hostile greeting has thrown her, "Um... I'm Beth." After a moment she rallies, and goes back to being hostile, "Why are you staring at Lei? A little late to try and get her back isn't it?"

I sigh, "Beth, Lei and I stopped seeing each other because we wanted different things. When I met her I wasn't in the best place, and thought for a little while that what I wanted might change, but it didn't. So we went our separate ways. That isn't going to change now, but that also doesn't change that she was there for me at a very rough time in my life, and she's my friend."

Beth seems taken aback for a moment, but then growls, "Just stay away from her."

"Yeah, I'm not going to do that." I nod towards where Lei has surfed onto the beach, spotted us, and starts waving happily before heading over, "That being said, if Lei and I had wanted the same things I never would have let her go. I recommend you don't, and don't let your insecurities drive you from her either." I take a step towards Beth, lowering my sunglasses so that I can look at her over the top of them, and Beth can see my eyes, "It's really not your choice who Lei spends time with. I wouldn't recommend trying to take that choice from her. In the normal course of things, if I were somebody else, this would probably be where I would try to give you the shovel talk. I generally think threats are something that should be taken seriously though, so I'm not going to do that. Instead I'm just going to say again, she's precious and you're lucky to have her. Don't fuck it up." I step back and push my sunglasses back up, "Glad we had this talk."

That's as much as I get out before Lei pounces on me, hugging me tightly around the neck, and wrapping her legs around my waist so that she can stay there. Lei's affection probably isn't doing anything for her girlfriend's peace of mind, though I appreciate it. I'd never start dating her again, but she's still a friend and I enjoy her company.

Beth will just have to get used to it, Lei's an affectionate person by nature. It's part of why she was so good for me in the first place.

###

Pua finds me in the evening writing emails, and trying to organize my thoughts about that evening.

Lei had invited me to dinner with her and Beth, something that Beth agreed to with gritted teeth, and I accepted. The meal had started out spectacularly awkward, any sort of friendliness between myself and Lei set Beth on edge. Something she dealt with by drinking. A lot. It turns out that Beth is a very friendly drunk, so things got easier the more drunk she became.

The evening ended when Beth confessed that she'd been acting like a bitch because she found it threatening that I'm, 'incredibly fucking hot', and that I'm still on such good terms with my ex.

Then she downed another glass, and proposed a threesome.

Lei looked like she didn't know whether to be intrigued at the idea, or scandalized that her girlfriend had just come out and said it.

I took the cowards way out, and after saying goodbye to Lei, fled.

When I got back to my room at Pua's place, I had to do something with myself after that, so I wrote to Sarah about the whole thing. Including everything to do with Roanoke and the proposed threesome.

After I got done with that email, I decided to just get all my correspondence out of the way, and wrote to Asia. I'd just started on the email to my mother, when Pua knocks on the door and lets herself in.

I sigh, and push away from the computer to turn towards her, eyeing her carefully, "Is this going to be another rant about everything I did wrong on Roanoke?" I ask her warily, "'Cause I'm really not in the mood for that."

Pua sighs, and sits down on my bed, "No, it's not. I wish you'd handled it differently, however Thea and my brother have pointed out to me that you are in fact an adult, and can make your own choices. And as you pointed out you got out with minimal injury, and with the sword so it's not like your judgement was wrong. You even had the good sense to come straight back here so I could heal you as soon as possible." She sighs again, "So no, I'm not going to yell at you anymore. About this at least."

I visibly relax at that, and let out a relieved breath. I don't like it when Pua is mad at me, "Oh good. So what can I do for you?"

"What happened with the kitten you were asking me about last time?"

"Well I'm pretty sure that she both has severe depression, and that it's the least of her problems." I tell her with a groan, "The girl needs professional help. I don't suppose you'd be willing to commute to Japan every week or so, and be the girls therapist?"

Pua opens her mouth then pauses. After a moment she closes it again and stands up and walks over to me. Leaning forward over me, her actually having a small height advantage while I'm still sitting, she cups both my cheeks holding my head still as she stares into my eyes.

Have I mentioned that Pua is really pretty?

Like really really pretty, the mix of Asian and Polynesian ancestry really works for her.

After a moment she steps back looking at me a little strangely, "This really matters to you doesn't it? Like not just a little bit, the way this girl has been treated legitimately pisses you off." I don't really know what to say to that, so I just nod. Pua examines me for another moment then sighs, "I'll see what I can do. I'm not making any promises, I've been really busy here recently as healer for the village. The village has to be my first priority, I may not have time."

That actually reminds me of something else I've been meaning to bring up...

"I may be able to pay you back for your help then and lessen your workload while I'm at it." I tell her with a smile. She looks back at me more than a little skeptically, "We're coming up on the point where my friend Asia is going to be kicked out of the church. I've been thinking that, when that happens, I could send her here. She's got Twilight Healing, and is a really sweet girl. A healer by nature, she'd jump at the opportunity to learn more from you, and could lighten your workload at the same time."

"So let me get this straight. Your plan to pay me for taking care of one of your friends, is to give me another one of your friends to take care of?"

Well, when she puts it like that...

No! I can still sell this.

"Well, you were just complaining that you were overworked as a healer, and Asia does have a lot of experience in that field." I point out, "And anything she doesn't already know how to do you could probably teach her quickly."

Pua glares at me, "Like I said, I'll see what I can do. And when she gets kicked out you can send your healer friend along, and I'll see how that works out. I make no promises."

"That's all I can ask." I tell her with a smile.

Pua leans forward, planting her hands on the armrests of my chair, effectively trapping me in place. The look on her face as she leans forward, has me pressing myself into the back of the chair in an effort to escape, "In thanks, you can answer a question for me."

"Uh... I can try." My eyes are flicking back and forth looking for a way to escape. I don't know what the trap is, but the fact I can tell it's there means it's probably already too late.

"Oh good." Pua purrs, "What's this I hear about a threesome?"

Oh shit, "How do you know about that? It happened like two hours ago!"

How the hell am I going to get out of this with my dignity intact?

"Kahuna~."

Pua's evil laughter tells me that I'm not.