"She doesn't kiss me on the mouth anymore," Fionnuala crooned from where she sat, legs curled beneath her, in a chair in the lab's raised observation booth. "'Cause it's more intimate, than she thinks we should get." She peered out the window to where Morven had just demonstrated the speed and precision of her supposed power to the cluster of scientists and technicians observing her. She'd sculpted a stylized rosebush, all curling stems and razor-edged thorns and delicate flowers, over the course of about a minute from a hunk of scrap metal they'd provided.

I — or rather, the fragment of my consciousness that was controlling Tabitha-as-Fionnuala — wasn't really paying attention to what the part of me that was puppeting Acacia-as-Morven was up to. All of me would reconnect later, synchronize memories, return to being one and all that. For now, for whatever reason, everyone was really eager to work with Morven, leaving Fionnuala to lounge on an office chair out of the way, with a couple unlucky, and untalkative, techs for company. Her new ocular arrangement meant she could keep an eye or three on her sister at all times, even as she used a couple ribbon tentacles from her skirt to take advantage of how very spinny this chair was.

"She doesn't look me in the eyes anymore," she sang through the delightful sensations from her inner ears. "Too scared of what she'll see, somebody holding me." One of the techs had his eyes focused firmly on Morven and the gaggle of researchers, while the other one pretended she wasn't watching Fionnuala out of the corner of her eye.

Well, I didn't mind if she stared. I liked the way my bodies looked, now. They were very cute, in a way that warmed my heart.

That tech wasn't so bad, herself. In fact…

I slowed my spin to a stop and looked right at her as I let out the next few lines. "When I wake up all alone," she blinked, "and I'm thinking of your skin," her head turned fractionally my way, and her lips parted ever-so-slightly, "I remember, I remember what you told me."

I let my cheek rest on my fist, elbow on the armrest, while I looked at my other hand. Or rather, what I had changed it into. It was still recognizably a hand, nails and all, though the fingers had fused together, and the thumb had broadened to match their combined width. I opened it, and from behind slightly serrated, yets still recognizably human, teeth, spilled a long, wet, red tongue, tasting the air as if it was a snake's. I could feel, beneath the sleeve, the surprisingly simple system of air sacks and fleshy valves, as well as the vocal cords based on Fionnuala's, but slightly altered, that would allow my hand to join me in song. And with another fragment of my mind directing it, it did.

"Said that we're not lovers, we're just strangers," the one-person duet chorus rang out, making the techs jerk a little in surprise. "With the same damn hunger, to be touched, to be loved, to feel anything at all." The watchful tech had turned to outright stare, while the other had quickly torn his eyes away. "We're not lovers, we're just strangers," both parts of me sang as one, one voice the slightest bit smokier than the other, "with the same damn hunger, to be touched, to be loved, to feel anything at all."

I felt the fraction of me in Morven brush up against these mes for a moment, and I saw her tail start to sway to the tune I was singing from memory. And I could remember it near-perfectly, much better than I could remember any song before I'd improved my memory. Gosh, I'd bemoaned my faulty ability for recollection quite often before then, though, admittedly, a good portion of that was just excuses from before I knew what executive dysfunction was. I'd been dissatisfied with a lot, before I'd been dumped on Bet. Stuff like being told my voice would be good for singing had stung, after my egg had cracked but before I'd started transitioning, because it wasn't a very feminine voice. But being told the same by Paz, after I'd had the chance to change my voice (and so much more), had made me actually want to practice singing. And what better time than when I was enjoying a nice, relaxing moment of boredom, and when the first song to pop up in my mind was so wonderfully gay?

Fionnuala fell silent, allowing her hand to take over for the next verse. "She doesn't call me on the phone anymore," it crooned. "She's never listening, she says it's innocent." A curly lock of hair fell forward to brush against her face, and I had a thorn from her antlers reach out to tuck it back into place behind her ear. "She doesn't let me have control anymore," her hand sang, almost mournfully. "I must've crossed a line, I must've lost my mind."

"When I wake up all alone," Fionnuala took over, "and I'm thinking of your skin, I remember, I remember what you told me."

And then, both she and her hand got into the chorus again. I let another fragment of me take over for Fionnuala's parts of the song, while I let the bulk of my attention, the bulk of Fionnuala's eyes, turn towards her free hand, the one she'd been leaning on, which she now held in front of her. I left one eye that was facing the window free to observe the techs sidelong. The closer one, the woman, wasn't even putting up a pretense of not observing Fionnuala, while the guy was hunched over a little, busying himself with typing on the console before him.

"I miss the mornings with you laying in my bed," Fionnuala sang, voice full of sorrow and regret.

"I miss the memories replaying in my head," her hand responded in kind.

"I miss the thought of a forever, you and me," came Fionnuala's voice, and I had to blink back sudden tears at the emotions the loss in her tone elicited.

Then together, "But all you're missing is my body, oh!"

I couldn't help but let a few smiles come to the surface as I let the other parts of me in Fionnuala continue through the last couple of verses and towards the end of the song. Singing, on its own, had been surprisingly fun, but even as those two parts of me shared their enjoyment of the act with the rest of me, I couldn't help but feel the beginnings of a bit of melancholy.

I try to be introspective, honest about myself with myself, though admittedly I had mixed success on that front. I knew that one of the main ways I dealt with sufficiently stressful situations was to just not think about them, usually when there was little I could do about them in the moment. A higher form of procrastination, that. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, depending. The Scion situation, for example, was one I could do literally nothing about, and I had no idea how it might affect future events. Events like what might or might not happen in twenty days.

Being honest, there was no way the PRT, even at its most helpful, would be able to certify Morven as being fine to let loose on damaged infrastructure before the ides of May, and I did my best to not begrudge them that. From what I could recall, materials "created from nothing" by parahumans ended up decaying into nothingness, making them supremely unsuitable for construction. It was, I assumed, why Kaiser, a strong contender for the "Most Punchable Nazi Asshole (But I Repeat Myself)" Award several times over, didn't use his ability to make blades and beams of metal from solid surfaces to simply go into the steel supply business. Well, that and NEPEA-5, whatever the particulars of that set of laws turned out to be. Now, my outer power, my solid matter manipulation ability, didn't "create" any matter, only sculpted what was already there, and when I prodded at it in my mind I got the impression that materials I used the power on wouldn't decay any faster than they already did, but the PRT couldn't just take my word for it. If it turned out that decay did, in fact, happen, they'd want to discover that under controlled conditions, rather than learning it when a public road or whatever that they'd let Morven loose on collapsed and people got hurt.

Point was, it'd be a while before I could start making money off fixing up infrastructure. Thing was, I needed to start making money soon, so I could stop being a drain on Paz and Jacob's goodwill.

Wait. Idea.

The song had just ended, and I intended to let there be a minute or so of silence before I floated my idea to the techs, who might know something about its viability. However, before I could, the cute tech started clapping. I turned Fionnuala's eyes to her and raised one of her eyebrows — still in its normal spot on her face and partially obscured by the antlers — but I couldn't stop the smile that graced her lips. Without rising from the chair, I had her sketch a quick bow.

"That was lovely!" the tech exclaimed. "You have a really nice singing voice."

"Thanks, I made it myself," I said before I could stop myself. I chose not to prevent Fionnuala from blushing a little.

The tech looked a tad confused. "The song?"

"No." She blinked a few times at that, and I took pity on her. "Powers."

Her eyes flicked from Fionnuala's face to her eye-bearing antlers. "Oh."

I paused for a moment, then opened this body's mouth to bring up the idea I'd had, only to find myself interrupted by a crash from the direction of Morven. I didn't turn to look, since with the way Fionnuala's many eyes were arranged I didn't need to in order to see, but the techs had to, and did. A large arm emerging from the floor, probably a good dozen feet long when its elbows weren't bent, had apparently driven a fist with over a score of knobbly knuckles into a block of concrete that must've been brought in when I wasn't looking. The block was cracked through in several places, and when the hand drew back concrete dust clung to it. I could only assume the block was to be a sample for determining what happened after my outer power was used to repair stuff. As I watched, the hand shook itself off, then receded into the floor to fill in a depression I hadn't noticed.

"So!" I had Fionnuala say, drawing out the word. The techs' attention returned to her. "I believe you two heard what my sister and I want from this testing, right?"

"More or less?" The guy said, as the woman nodded.

"She wants to use her power for repair work, right?" she asked.

"Yeah, that's the gist, and…" I let Fionnuala trail off as I realized something. Hand met face, fingers having to part around a filled eye socket. "I'm sorry, I just realized I completely forgot to ask your names." And wasn't that an unnecessary boost to my social anxiety.

The guy managed a chuckle. "Don't worry about it. I'm Omari Vincent."

"And I'm Trinh. Trinh Phan," the other tech said with a smile.

"Well, I'm Fionnuala, as y'all no doubt heard," my body said with a smile of her own to cover up the reluctantly receding anxiety. "But yes, Morven wants to use her powers to do stuff like fix infrastructure, especially what gets broken in the wake of parahuman fights. But naturally, people want to make sure that changes she makes with her power don't revert over time, or decay faster than the material they're made in otherwise would." I paused, pursing her lips. "Though I was under the impression that it was only materials 'created'," I had her do actual air quotes, which earned me a subtly arched eyebrow from Trinh, "by parahumans that experienced accelerated decay, and Sis, Morven, can only work with what's already there. But I guess I can't fault the caution." I shook her head. "Still, I expect actually testing that properly will take a while. Unless y'all have access to some device that can make controlled bubbles of accelerated time?"

"We don't have access, no," Trinh admitted, and I nodded to myself. Then I paused to reprocess her words.

"Wait, you mean there actually is a device like that? I was joking!"

Omari chuckled softly. "From what I heard, something similar was confiscated from a villainous tinker somewhere in Oregon. Salem, I think it was?" His expression sobered. "Of course, the villain's been in a coma for the past month, apparently, so I don't know how reliable the device would be, even if we were able to get the authorization necessary to bring it all the way over here in the first place." He smirked. "Looks like you and your sister will have to wait for what you want like the rest of us."

I scowled for a moment, but elected to let that slide. "Anyway, thing is, we need some sort of income while we wait for that, and, well, y'all kinda have a lunatic bombing your city."

Both of them frowned at that and looked to one another. "I really wouldn't recommend running off to try and bring Bakuda in," Trinh said carefully, concern writ large in her expression. "Her bounty isn't worth the risks involved, trust me."

"Oh, don't worry, I wasn't thinking anything like that!" I said, waving Fionnuala's hands as I did my best to reassure them. "Rather, what if the PRT, or the city, or whatever the relevant organization is, were to hire us for a bit to assist rescue workers with, well, you know. Both of us would be able to sense where trapped people are, and Sis would be able to shore up damaged buildings so they don't collapse on anyone. And since rescue workers get paid, it shouldn't be too much of a stretch to pay us to help them."

Trinh blinked, then turned to look at Omari. To sweeten the pot, I added, "Also, I've had some training as an EMT, though my Basic certification back home has been expired for a couple years now." In truth, it was more like four or five years, but whatever. Coincidentally, almost as long as I'd been on HRT.

The two were silent a few moments more, Trinh turning back to study me. Then, she said, "I can't guarantee anything, but I'll bring it up with my superiors."

Fionnuala smiled. "That's all I ask."