I didn't end up signing away my life, that day, or what I'd managed to rebuild of it. Taisto just went over the paperwork with me, and he told me that it'd be wise to go over it again with a lawyer before either of me signed any of it. That actually teased a smile out of me, to be honest. The PRT had every opportunity to take advantage of my situation, and instead of doing so they assigned someone nice and helpful to my case. The cynical part of me, naturally, chose that moment to point out that the actually important people were probably all busy with the Bakuda situation and had thus left me to someone who was probably close to the bottom of the proverbial totem pole. Also, it happily continued, I still had no possessions that weren't borrowed or gifted, much less money with which to hire a lawyer. Which stung a little, but hey.

Honestly, I'd been obscenely lucky thus far. Part of me, a larger part than I cared to admit, was waiting anxiously for the other shoe to drop, as it were. But until it did, I was going to take full advantage of these opportunities. I certainly didn't feel guilty about it.

Taisto was rather thorough when going over the documents, to the point that almost an hour had passed before we'd finished. He gathered them up to put them in one of the folders he had and gave it to Acacia. "Well," he said, "that's that. We should be able to finish putting together the papers for getting your documentation made by… Thursday, I want to say? I don't want to make any promises, since I'm not exactly in charge around here, and it might be later, since, as I'm sure you've noticed, there's something of a crisis — crises, really — going on." He gave both of me an apologetic smile. He'd managed to relax over the course of explaining everything, which, well, I couldn't relate, but more power to him.

Actually… "Does Scion tearing open what looked like a portal through space count as a crisis?" Tabitha asked.

His smile froze on his face. "... Beg pardon?"

"It was on the news we saw in the break room. There was a news crew reporting on how he'd been hovering over a patch of forest north of the city, and then, out of nowhere, he just seemed to rip open the world with his bare hands."

The smile fell away, leaving only confusion and stress. "I… that sounds like, uh, like something I'm not in a position to comment on. Sorry."

Acacia sighed and decided to take pity on him. "Anyway, going back a bit, from what I know of bureaucracy even outside of crisis situations, Thursday seems pretty damn fast."

Taisto gave her a grateful half-smile. "Well, I'm not part of the legal department or anything, but I assume they'd just have to adapt the forms used for Case 53's, so they shouldn't have to put them together from scratch," he said as he absently ran a hand through his tousled hair, now a far cry from how neat it once when we met. "Now," he continued, moving the other folders in front of him, "for the sake of our records, and the fact that it'd make processing that," he nodded at the folder in Acacia's possession, "easier, would the two of you consent to being assigned temporary parahuman designation? And would you be willing to have your powers tested?"

Tabitha and Acacia glanced at each other. "Well, I don't think we'll need temporary names, since we've already come up with some on our own," the latter said, a pre-emptive fond smile tugging at her lips.

"Oh, and costumes!" Tabitha chimed in enthusiastically, practically bouncing in her seat. With a grunt of effort she hoisted the briefcase up onto the table, which made its protests about the mass it was suddenly forced to bear known quite insistently.

Taisto blinked. "You got costumes made in three… wait. Is this…" He reached out a hesitant hand to touch it, then tapped it with a nail. "… Where on Earth did you get a stone briefcase?"

"Don't worry about it!" Tabitha said cheerily. "Now, the two of us went through a few names before deciding. For a bit we were thinking of going with Knabbern," she pointed at herself, "and Knirschen," Acacia smiled and gave a little wave. "The alliteration would've been nice and all, but, well… Given that we will, in all likelihood, be making our debut in this city, and that we're pretty damn white, German names would... send the wrong message."

To Taisto's credit, he seemed to understand what she was getting at before she'd finished speaking. Acacia shook her head and scowled, muttering, "Fucking Nazis ruin everything."

"Quite. Thankfully, we came up with two new names." Tabitha placed her hand on her chest. "You can call me Fionnuala."

"And I'll be Morven."

Taisto blinked a few times in silence. "Did, uh, did the place you came from have parahumans, too?"

"I, uh," Tabitha stuttered, surprise breaking through both of my smiles. "No, no parahumans. Why?"

"It's just, you seem to have adapted remarkably quickly."

...Shit. Had I fucked up? I think I might've fucked up.

I just, I'd been so happy and excited, reveling in emotions that I hadn't had the mental energy to experience outside of brief, shallow spurts for literal years. I'd gone into this intending to hide my meta-knowledge, but not even half a week in and I'd already gotten reckless. I felt something where my guts had been twist with anxious tension. I should've planned out my responses better rather than letting myself be buoyed forward by reckless confidence, should've taken advantage of my now-bountiful mental energy to properly manage the personae I was cultivating for my bodies, should've, should've, should've…

"Not that that's a bad thing," he continued, seemingly oblivious to the turmoil within me. "And besides, it's not my job to analyze that sort of thing."

Whose job is it, then? I thought weakly as most of my mind relaxed, yanking me unevenly out of my anxious downward spiral and into relief swiftly enough to leave me reeling from the mental whiplash. Even with my much-enhanced self-control couldn't keep everything I was experiencing in that moment off my faces, but thankfully he wasn't looking at them.

"So, Finnula and Morven, then?" He jotted the names down on his notepad.

"Y-yes, yes, though Fionnuala has an O and a second A in it," Tabitha said, spelling it out in melanin on the palm of her hand and holding it out for him to see, and I felt a moment of pride over how I kept her hand from shaking. He went still for a few moments looking at it, then hurriedly scratched out the misspelling and wrote in the correct one. "It's Irish, y'know. You got Morven right, though!" she chirped as she pulled her hand back.

"Oh. Good." He gave her a weak smile. His eyes returned to the briefcase. "So, uh, going back a bit, this has your costumes in it, yes?"

"No, actually," Acacia shook her head. "It is my costume. It can't actually hold anything since, you know, it's pretty much solid."

"It's— Jesus, how much does it weigh‽"

"Fifty kilos, I guess?"

"Jesus." His eyes went from the large case to Tabitha's slender arms, and he, almost imperceptibly, gulped. I couldn't be sure, but his cheeks might've gotten a slight dusting of red there. "O-okay, then. Um. It'll be helpful to be able to see your costumes so we can put descriptions in your files, yes. And, uh, going back a bit, power testing? Would you be willing to do a session of it? It'd also be helpful."

My bodies glanced at one another, before Tabitha said, "Sure. It'd be helpful for what Sis wants to do if we get official observation of how long the changes her power makes stick around. She's pretty much certain they're permanent, unless she makes new changes to what she'd changed before, but it wouldn't hurt to have that written down somewhere official." Acacia nodded.

Some tension seemed to leave Taisto at that. "Good. That's good, since, uh, I sort of already got the go-ahead to bring you two up to the lab. You'll, uh, have to sign some NDA's first, of course." He quickly pulled out another of the folders he had, this one much slimmer than the one Acacia had put in her bag, and took out a few papers which he divided between the two of me.

"Question," Tabitha said as she started to look over the papers, "should we sign with our real names, or our parahuman names?"

Taisto started to give her an odd look, but managed to get it under control. "Real names, please."

"Ah. Right."

.o.o.o.

The PRT building's women's bathroom was, surprisingly, nigh spotless. Of course, it was a private bathroom intended for employees, not the public one on the first floor, but still, it was rather nice to not have to worry about cleanliness as I had Tabitha methodically strip down in one of the stalls.

She neatly folded her clothes and tucked them away in Acacia's bag, along with her shoes. She stuck a bare foot out under the stall door, meeting the hand her sister had just leaned down to place down there. From the outside, it might just look like an odd, silent display of sisterly coordination, but for me, it was a chance to transfer just under a fifth of Acacia's mass to Tabitha. The entire process took just under a minute, after which each of my bodies turned their allotments of my attention to their respective tasks.

Tabitha practically bloomed as soon as both feet were on the ground. Petal-like strips of pure-white flesh extended from various parts of her and began melding together seamlessly, leaving her wearing what appeared to be a backless white leotard. From a few inches below her shoulders, long white strips poured forth, melding together to form long, roomy sleeves that ended a couple inches beyond the wrist, while simultaneously, ivory leather boots grew around her feet and legs up to mid-thigh. Palm-wide ribbons of varying lengths grew from her waist but didn't fuse, forming a skirt that ended a centimeter above the tops of her boots in the front, and mid-calf in back. Red lines tracing out complex, Celtic knot-esque designs appeared around the hems of the sleeves and the tops of the boots, and similar-looking sigils soon decorated the end of each ribbon of the skirt.

She took a moment to look herself over before nodding in satisfaction and closing her eyes. They remained closed for a moment, until the lids started bulging outward, as if fingers were pressing against them from within. Her eyes opened, then, lids dragging over what lay behind them, catching for a moment, then popping over to uncover not ocular tissue, but bones, which grew forth like questing saplings seeking the sun. The pair of osseous shoots curled up over her forehead, where they came together, then branched out to form a thorny circle above her head. Nine patches of pale flesh formed on the circle, then each tore itself open to reveal an eye, each a different, yet still human, color, and all glistening like the jewels of a crown.

It barely took me any time at all to get used to the three-sixty-degree field of view all those eyes gave me, something I chalked up to my power. I considered my work for a moment, then had Tabitha rise up on her toes so I could give her boots one-inch heels. With that done, she opened the door of the stall and stepped out, doing a little twirl as she did which made the ribbons of her skirt flare out. Skirt goes spinny, indeed.

Outside, I'd already finished Acacia's costume, and I took a moment to look it over with Tabitha's new eyes. The stone that'd formed the briefcase now covered her body, with shapes and angles that implied a suit of armor without fully committing. Designs akin to those on Fionnuala's costume were etched into the stone in tasteful places, as well. I'd also included a breastplate that made her femininity undeniable while not being fucking boobplate. But armor wasn't all I'd been going for, oh, no.

When I'd designed this costume, I hadn't been able to stifle certain aesthetic desires that'd felt rather put out over not being incorporated into Fionnuala's costume. Hence, the four-foot feline tail that swayed behind Morven, and the breathing vents on the helmet shaped to look like whiskers, and the cat ears atop it that twitched her sister's way before she turned to look at her over her shoulder, the stone flowing as she moved. Through clear lenses, the only visible parts of the costume not made of stone, emerald-green eyes met a few of her sister's.

Silently, Fionnuala handed Morven her bag, and the two went out into the hall, where Taisto had been chatting with a coworker while he waited for them. His coworker saw them first – she looked over her shoulder at us, and nearly went back to talking before doing a double-take, gasping and staring at them. Her hand went over her mouth as she met Fionnuala's eyes, or, rather, tried to, as she couldn't decide on any particular pair. Taisto paused what he was saying and turned to face them. "Oh, you're ready?" he asked, before he, too, started staring at Fionnuala.

She tilted her head. "Is there a problem?" she asked innocently, even as one corner of her mouth did its best to turn upwards.

He sighed and shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut as he pinched the bridge of his nose. "Let's… let's just go to the labs, okay?"