Having been a frequent flier when it came to making visits to Moonlight Bank just as much as Karrah was— as the two of them were both responsible for making their respective business deposits at the local bank— Bethany was used to simply waiting in line and then shortly leaving after doing her business with whatever teller prompted her to step up to their side of the counter. Still caffeinated from the combination of her morning coffee with Ren, and the large iced latte she had with him and Karrah, the red-headed farm girl was fidgeting in her seat as she impatiently skimmed through the pages of each magazine she was too hyper to properly read— letting out a series of throaty groans and sighs beside the black haired cashier, who sat beside her in the waiting room of the lobby as the speakers above quietly played various songs from the bank's in-house playlist.
Before she could focus back on the article she had been reading about within the pages of her newspaper that she had been occupying herself with, Karrah found herself caving in after having heard Bethany letting out what must have been her hundredth bored sigh within the ten minutes they had been waiting. Setting the black-and-whites pages down on top of her lap, Karrah found herself letting out a sigh as she mentally prepared herself to deal with her best friend's conundrum. "… It sure is boring here, isn't it?" Karrah asked with a knowing look on her face, as she began rolling up the newspaper as Bethany excitedly whipped around in her chair to face towards her.
"Oh my god, I was JUST thinking that Karrah! You noticed it too then, huh?!" Bethany asked out loud with her eyes widened and her face exasperated, as she raised one hand out to gesture at the mundane scene that was taking place just outside the carpeted boundaries of the waiting area. "Since when the hell has anyone EVER been excited about going to the bank?! Much less having to wait for god-knows how long…?!" Bethany complained, before lowering her head back as she over dramatically began sinking back in her leather seat.
Watching her sulk deeper and deeper into her boredom, Karrah gave Bethany a side-eyed stare as the red-haired woman began to slink onto the carpet. Rolling her eyes to herself, Karrah blew out an elongated huff of air through her lips before taking in a deep breath and sighing again. "… How about we go outside and, uh… I don't know, ummm… Go do something cool, I guess," Karrah offered unenthusiastically, as unlike Bethany, she had been content with the prospect of simply sitting down and reading while waiting for Ren to be done.
Immediately perking up, Bethany hopped up from the carpet and landed on her two feet as she spun toward the startled woman beside her— her enthrallment being visible through her pink irises, as she raised her clenched hands up beneath her ample breasts. "That's the spirit, Karrah! Now come on, let's go get ourselves into some trouble!" The fired up red-head proposed with an adventurous tone in her daring voice; pulling the reluctant cashier from her seat, who barely had enough time to grab her cane before stumbling behind her.
"T-Trouble…?!" Karrah stumbled out nervously with beads of sweat beginning to form on her face, before squinting her eyelids as the stark brightness of the sun surprised her the moment Bethany dragged her out from the shaded confines of the bank's entryway. "You're…! Y-You're just being playful, r-right…?! W-We're not actually going to do anything that'll get us in trouble, are we…?!" Karrah stammered out anxiously, as she lowered her hand from her eyes as her vision began to adjust to the sunlight.
Shrugging her shoulders as she finally released her hold from the nervous woman's free hand, Bethany spun around several times with her arms stretched out— soaking up the rays of sunbeams cascading on her strong body, as she came to a slow stop. Looking back at Karrah with a mischievous grin and a daring look in her eyes, the red-headed farm cocked her head to the side and placed her hands on top of each side of her curvy hips, before tapping into her inner tomb raider as she mused back sassily, "There's only one way to find that out, now isn't there," before gesturing with a curled finger for the anxious cashier to follow her as they took toward the direction of the sidewalk.
Spending almost an entire hour on the other side of May's very own executive desk, Ren had noticed from the very start of their appointment that there was something off about the usually confident and bombastic woman. Instead of passing the time with half-heartedly constructed metaphors and anecdotes that would serve as her way of passing on words of wisdom to him, May was verbally reserved— choosing to speak to herself under a mutter, as her focused eyes shifted back and forth as though she were having an internal conversation with herself.
Each time Ren had tried cautiously pointing out her unusual behavior, May would weakly smirk back at him before brushing off the young man's concerns with unconvincing reassurances. The amount of times alone that Ren had heard "It's nothing, really," and, "I'm good," come out of May's mouth had been enough to begin to make him grow concerned over whatever it was that was on the six foot tall woman's distracted mind.
Waiting for May to finish going over the final terms of conditions she needed to go over before handing Ren his first checkbook, he used her personal ink pen signed to along the last of the dotted spots and gave her back her writing utensil. "So uh… W-What is it that's really bothering you, Mrs. Yoriko?" Ren asked as nonchalantly as he could in his usual deep stoic voice, meanwhile feeling nervous deep down as he looked up past the middle of the table where he was still holding her pen out for her— her hand hovering mere inches away from his, as she stared back at him with a contemplative gaze.
Slowly, May let out a deep breath as her entire demeanor softened— her shoulders slouching back against her leather office chair, as she finally slid the ink pen out of Ren's outstretched hand softly. "You're persistent, aren't you?" May quipped in her sultry voice, as she retracted her hand away from his, before sliding her ink pen into her tightly-fitting emerald-green business jacket's breast pocket— the utensil laying at an angle against her melon-sized left breast, as she laid more against her chair's back cushion while crossing her arms over her chest. "Hmm… Photonic particles— how much do you know about them?" May asked with an expected tone in her voice, as she watched Ren's eyelids squint slightly upon hearing her suddenly out-of-the-blue question.
"… What? What was that?" Ren asked back with an uncertain look on his face— part of him wondering if he had misheard what May had asked entirely.
"Photonic particles; I asked what you knew about them," May repeated herself with a patient tone in her deep-feminine voice. "I'm gonna go out on a limb here, and assume you don't know jack-shit about them… Is that fair of me to assume?"
Scrounging around through his memories for anything that could have helped him in that moment, it didn't take long for Ren to accept defeat as he began nodding his head towards May. "Yeah, it's fair; I can't rightfully say that I'm familiar at all with what "photonic particles" are… Care to elaborate?" Ren asked with an intrigued look in his eyes, to which caused May to visibly perk up in her chair.
"Certainly, young man; try to keep up though, alright?" May quipped back with her playful nature slowly returning, as she leaned forward against the edge of her desk while proping both her elbows down on its surface. Lifting her opened palms towards the ceiling, May used her magic to create two ghostly balls of gentle light that hovered above each of her hands— the orb floating over her left hand being an oceanic blue color, while the orb over her right palm was crimson like the color of Ren's irises.
"Each glowing sphere I have represents a cluster of electromagnetic waves; massless particles that move at the speed of light when there's a vacuum created… Like so," May explained, before giving Ren a moment to watch carefully as the orb hovering over her left hand instantaneously became the color purple. "Notice anything different about the orbs now, kid?" May asked with an almost excited look behind her brown eyes, as she stared deeply into the concentrated narrowed eyes of the young man sitting across from her.
Rubbing his hairless chin slowly with the index finger and thumb of his right hand, after carefully examining the two orbs and mentally comparing them to how they looked prior to the sudden changes, Ren came to his conclusion before announcing it to May. "They both shrunk in size, and the blue one became purple… You spoke of how these particles can travel at the speed of light when there's a vacuum… As far as the example you're trying to visualize goes, you removed an undisclosed amount of particles from the blue orb, which caused some of the particles from the red one to transfer over immediately to fill in the gap— sort of like way water fills up whatever open space that it can," Ren hypothesized with a slight bit of uncertainty to his voice.
Although his answer was far from elegant, May was still visibly impressed with how quickly Ren was able to learn from her demonstration. "More or less, you're on the right track; the "particles" in question usually transfer from one point to the other in the form of electromagnetic waves… Pretty much think of how radio waves work, and you've got the basic concept of what "photonic particles" are, and how they sort of work," May simplified with a nod of approval, before snapping her fingers which dispersed both magical orbs into clouds of fading light that disappeared into thin air. "Speaking of radios… Let's use that concept for our next example," May said with her smile fading slightly.
Thinking that she was going to perform some other form of alteration or illusion magic to create another visible demonstration for Ren to follow, the young man's expectations soon went out the window as he saw May ducking down slightly to reach into the bottom left drawer of her desk. 'Was she…? Was she being literal? Is she really going to pull out an actual radio from her desk?' Ren wondered silently to himself, as he waited with baited breath to see what May was about to show him.
Once again, Ren was hit with a figurative curveball upon seeing what looked to be a small glowing cube being placed in the center of the table. Furrowing his brows as he leaned in closer to get a better look at the glowing turquoise cube that looked to be the size of a rubix cube, Ren felt almost immediately mesmerized by the strange object— his eyes focusing specifically on the barely noticeable pale crimson lines that constantly transitioned from one formation to another within the frosted surface of the glass-like structure that reminded him vaguely of the way motherboards looked. "W… What is that…? Some sort of magic-computer module, or something…?" Ren asked with a sense of wonderment in his voice, as he slowly shifted his focus up to where May's brown eyes were staring back at him to meet his gaze.
"Remember how I said photonic particles are essentially radio waves? Well… Radio waves are invisible to the naked eye, right? And are pretty much unnoticeable without the right instrument to receive and process those electromagnetic waves," May explained with her forearms crossed over one another on her desk— her large ample bosoms smothering the top of her arms like a warm blanket, as she nodded her toward the cube. "This is what the "Arc Mage" herself would classify as a "quantum tesseract"; everyone else who's got skin in our local alchemist group would simply call it as it is: a "photonic crystal"," May said with a bemused look in her eyes, as she let out a soft sigh before further elaborating what the object was.
Reaching to the corner of her desk to pull out a single tissue, May telekinetically moved it out her fingertips— making it float out between her and Ren so that he was seeing one side of its entire surface presented vertically flat to him. "This tissue isn't dense enough to keep light from passing through the pieces of matter that make up its composited body— light can pass through its nanostructure, like so," May spoke, before causing Ren to flinch as created a mild beam of light from the tip of her pointed finger— chuckling softly to herself. "However, if we use a photonic crystal— in our case, a fourth dimensional object that can refract photon particles that enter through it— we'll get a different result."
Letting the tissue float softly onto the surface of the desk, May made sure Ren's eyes were locked on the photon crystal as she slowly levitated up to where the soft tissue had been moments ago. "If we use a physical source of light, it'll refract the photon particles in such a way that it'll create a fourth dimensional image— an image that the naked eye can't capture entirely on its own… It's… It's kind of uncanny what this particular crystal projects, really," May said with her smirk beginning to waver— a tone of hesitation in her voice, as she paused for a moment before finally pressing her illuminated fingertip up against one surface of the floating cube.
The geometrical crimson-connectors within the frosted surface of the turquoise colored crystal became brighter as they seemingly absorbed the light emanating from May's fingertip— becoming stark white, as it projected what looked to be a holographic image of a young boy with messy brown hair that was casted beside the desk. Now completely stone-faced, May stared back at the growing look of confusion and discomfort that was becoming more apparent on Ren's face the longer he stared at the translucent still image standing beside him.
Feeling his heart beginning to beat faster in his chest as he felt his mouth becoming instantly dry, Ren's breathing became more audible as he cautiously leaned closer in his chair toward the flicking projection of what looked to be a boy no older than ten— a soft-dim yellow glow emanating from its entire silhouette that made it more difficult than it needed to be for Ren to determine what color the holographic boy's eyes were beneath its thick bangs that went past its forehead. Noticing its lockets of light brown hair and pasty pale skin on its mildly scarred face, Ren felt his stomach churn with dread as an uncomfortable thought began to form within his head.
'Is this supposed to be…? N… No. No, that wouldn't make sense… I think I'm seeing something that's not there; "power of suggestion", or some other psychological term that's beyond my understanding,' Ren reasoned to himself, as he dismissed the notion that popped into his head. Pulling himself away from the glowing projection, Ren let out an uncomfortable sigh under his breath as he turned away from its direction to look back at May's serious expression that she had on her gorgeously-aged face. "You're right… It is uncanny… But I've yet to grasp how any of this relates to what's causing you to seem… Off," Ren said with a collected voice— becoming slightly more blunt, as he saw from the corner of his eye as the holographic boy flickered out of existence the moment the light from May's fingertip faded away.
Telekinetically lowering the photonic crystal down onto the table as its once brilliant glowing white geometric veins dimmed back into the dull crimson state they had been, May gestured toward it once more with a half-hearted flick of her hand before replying to Ren, "I'm feeling "off", as you've put it, because as strange as these little oddities are, they used to only be capable of receiving information through photon particles and creating a holographic image like the one I just showed you…"
"… They didn't always have those glowing connectors inside of them… They used to only created kaleidoscope-like projections of light and color— not whatever it is that they're doing now," May explained with her voice beginning to express more of the sense of worry she had been trying to hide from Ren; her eyes looking away from the cube-shaped object between them, as she began to lazily make a twirling motion with her raised right hand. "Like I said, these things are supposed to work like radios: they receive information, they process it through their system of folded nanostructures, and then they transmit said processed data by refracting light… But now? There's something… Something of unknown origin that's transmitting a constant signal— a signal that's masking itself as electromagnetic waves and has the same quantum properties of photon particles, yet that oddly isn't the case at all."
"I see… And how do you know that there's an external source?" Ren asked with a perplexed tone in his voice, as he was still trying to grasp whatever it was that May was trying to convey. "What if these crystals are producing these effects by themselves?"
Shaking her head with an understanding look on her face, May disproved Ren's proposed theory by telling him simply, "Cause and effect, kid; a catalyst can't react without having something to react to," before shrugging her shoulders as she gave him an approving glance. "Good on you for using critical thinking though… And for what's worth, our Arc Mage already spent the entire night dissecting the nano structures of her entire collection of photon crystals— there's nothing out of the ordinary to suggest that these things are acting up on their own."
'Who the hell is she talking about, and just how many of these cubes are they hoarding in their collection?' Ren thought to suddenly ask himself, before refining his question as he asked May, "Who's this "Arc Mage", and are these photon crystals abundant enough to have a collection of?"
Smirking softly to herself for just now realizing that Ren had no idea who she had mentioned, May let out a dry and quiet laugh before slouching back in her seat. "Heh, I take it you haven't had a chance to meet our town's historian at her museum yet?" May asked with an expecting look on her bemused face— it not coming as a shocker to her when Ren answered her assumption by softly shaking his head at her question.
"I don't blame you; you're a busy man, Ren— it would be asinine of anyone to assume you've already met everyone in Crescent Bay…" May muttered mostly to herself, before quickly switching focus back on the young man across from her desk. "Anyway… Her name's "Victoria Silva", but everyone who knows her just calls her "Tori" for short. She's eccentric as fuck, and doesn't really have social boundaries, but she's honestly the smartest person I've ever met; and believe me, I've met plenty of them…"
"… Anyway, to answer your other question… These things wash up on our shore as frequently as sand dollars do. So really, having a collection of these things isn't as uncommon as you might think," May explained with her lips curling into a seductive smile, as she leaned forward over her desk before scooting over the photonic Crystal over toward Ren's side of the table. "Here, why don't you keep this by your bedside? That way, you have something to remind yourself of me, whenever you're feeling a bit "quirky" at night~…!"
Understanding the indeno behind her words, Ren couldn't help but to smile sheepishly with his cheeks beginning to turn into a faint shade of pink as he looked down from the way the mature blond woman was biting down on her large bottom lip as she offered him her strange gift. Swallowing the nervous lump in his throat as he reached out to grab a hold of the palm-sized cube-shaped object, Ren felt his heart fluttering and his stomach beginning to twist into knots as he felt himself feeling tempted to push the envelope even further.
'Say something cool, say something cool, say something cool…!' Ren mentally repeated to himself in his head, as he looked up to lock eyes with the large breasted blond mother of three before him. "Is there… Anything else you can give me to remember you by, Mrs. Yoriko? Something that'll help me find that "release" when I'm thinking of you?" Ren asked in a deepened voice; his excitement of what his pick-up line could lead to hidden behind his usual stoic demeanor, as he silently prayed and hoped to be met with an equally or even more promiscuous response.
That's when May reached down into her desk to pull out a juice pouch that had a straw attached to it— snickering to herself with a wide grin, as she handed the wide-eyed and confused young man the single caprisun. "Pfffft!!! That was an admirable-as-FUCK attempt there you just made, kid! I'll sure as hell give you that much, haha!" May applauded while still laughing to herself— shaking her head to herself while beginning to collect all of the signed documents off of her table, all while Ren stared down at her pity offer with an embarrassed look hidden away behind his long bangs.
Collecting his caprisun and photonic crystal, Ren gathered what dignity he had left to compose himself before thanking May for not only personally being the one to open up a checking account for him, but for having given him his parting gifts. Dealing with the feeling of rejection from having his advances shut down by the attractive mature woman, Ren had entirely forgotten about the strange holographic image that the photonic crystal had projected. It wasn't until he stepped outside to search where Bethany and Karrah had ventured off that he was reminded of the image of the ten year-old from earlier.
When the sunlight hit the cube in his left hand, Ren's breath had vacated his lungs all at once as he came to a sudden halt just outside the shaded glass double doors of the bank. Not only had the same child who had a striking resemblance return to his side cladded in leather armor and a short sword holstered on its hip, but the uncanny holographic image of what looked like himself suddenly began to walk forward the moment Ren finally took his first step forward.
Not sure what to think at first, May's lesson of how photonic crystals refracting light through their nanostructures suddenly came to Ren's mind— the scientific explanation of the image only moving depending on movement and what angle the sunlight was hitting his photonic crystal somewhat easing his worries, yet that still didn't stop Ren from dispersing the very image of himself into thin-air by shoving the small rubix-cube shaped object into the pocket of his blue-leather blazer.
'I'll just… Keep out of sight for a bit. I've still got to go to the market to get some toiletries and stuff,' Ren mentally reminded himself; grounding himself to reality, so as to not allow for his imaginative thoughts to cause him to stray away from the life he had been given by his sister. Exhaling a long winded breath, Ren took a moment to collect his thoughts before looking out toward the cobblestone streets of the downtown area of Crescent Bay. 'Now… It's time for me to figure out just how much trouble a girl with the personality of a golden retriever and an anxious girl with a bad leg could get themselves into,' Ren thought somewhat humorously to himself— taking a long sip from the yellow plastic straw of his juice pouch, before beginning to search for where the two women had gone off to.
Ren wasn't able to shake off the discomfort he felt from seeing the uncanny image of what he knew to be himself, even after finally finding Bethany and Karrah perusing the aisles of a nearby thrift store— "getting into trouble", as Bethany jokingly called it, before shamelessly taking the caprisun from his hand to happily take a sip from its yellow straw. Reunited with the company of his new friends, Ren eventually was able to push the unpleasant feelings from earlier back into the recesses of his mind— forgetting it entirely, as he sat down on the bench of one particular changing booth that Bethany had snuck him and Karrah into all together when the teenage store employees weren't paying attention.
Locking the door behind them, Bethany leaned in real close to where Ren was looking up at her with a slightly flustered expression on his stoic face— his cheeks burning slightly with how close the large-chested woman was to him, as she softly pressed her finger up to her lips to quietly shush for him to stay silent. Enthralled with the excitement that their group escapade brought to them— with the promiscuous nature of their voyeurism causing her to feel something else in her loins— Bethany was blushing with a wide grin across her face as she stood up to begin unbuttoning the straps of her denim overalls.
Between the three of them however, it was Karrah who was the most visibly affected by the idea of her and Bethany changing in front of their shared crush. Completely flushed in her cheeks with sweat dripping down her tan skin, Karrah watched with a terrified and embarrassed look on her face as Bethany pulled her denim overalls down all the way around around her ankles— the farm girl's plant panties visible for her friends, along with the view of her curvaceous thighs.
"B-Bethany…! A-Are you sure we should be doing this…?! This is super illegal, probably— we'll definitely get banned from this place if one of the employees finds out we're doing this shit…!" Karrah whispered in an exasperated voice, as she watched the red-headed farm girl tuck her fingers beneath the bottom of her white blouse— stifling in a yelp, as she and Ren watched as Bethany's black-bra covered breasts bounce up-and-down, after she had pulled her top off of her body.
Playfully tossing her blouse on top of Ren's head to cover him up his face with the fabric of her shirt, Bethany proceeded to give Karrah a devious look as she raised her hands up— making the black-haired woman immediately wary of what intentions were brewing within the red-headed tom-girl's mind. Striking out like a snake, Bethany slid her agile fingers between the small folds of Karrah's black collared shirt— causing the nervous woman to freeze up with a wide-eyed look on her face, as she pried open every button on her shirt in one motion.
Smiling smugly at Karrah as the black-haired woman was staring down with shock written all over her jaw-agaped face to where her medium-sized breasts were out for their display, Bethany placed one hand on her own hip as she reached out with her other hand to pull her blouse off of Ren's head. "I did mention earlier that we were going to get into some trouble now, didn't I~…?" Bethany asked teasingly— soaking up the way Karrah was staring back at them with her hands attempting to cover up her own breasts, as the red-headed trouble maker grabbed Ren by the chin before turning his head toward the direction of the sweaty and tan-skinned woman.