Current Energy: 2
Thursday, April 14th, 2011
Winslow Highschool, Brockton Bay
Point of View: Multiversal Emulator "Pemmy"
"...Okay, fool me once, shame on me and all that," Michael says as he emerges from his portal with Jun in tow, no longer surprised or concerned in any way shape or form by your presence.
But, only your presence.
"Good morning, Michael, Jun," you say politely to them with what you hope is a demure smile on your face.
Michael instantly disabuses you of that notion with a swiftly pointed finger that comes entirely—rudely—too close to your face.
"Don't do that! You sound like you're going to dissect us!" He complains.
"Why would you say that? Even if it was true, it only increases the chances she does it," Jun grumbles under his breath at his more energetic friend tugging him backwards by yanking on his hoodie.
"My apologies, I just…" you trail off, trying to find a good way to word this that doesn't sound either pathetic, or domineering.
"I need your help. You seem like clever young men, so, help me and I will owe you a favor," you say finally, nodding at your own statement. Surely this will be good enough for them, right? There are probably people in charge of entire nations who wish you owed them a favor right now.
Michael and Jun look at each other, then at you, then retreat a few steps to huddle with each other, as though that action makes it somehow harder for you to hear them.
You choose to turn your head away from them and pretend not to hear them, anyway.
"What do you think?"
"I mean, she was Po, right? We loved Po."
"Yeah but right now she's not a talking panda."
"Does it matter? She's still a hero, right? It can't be anything bad. I bet it's just another weird argument with her sister."
"If this ends with a crime of any kind, I'm going to tell Taylor it was your fault."
"Our powers don't even work if we aren't together! You can't just dump that all on me!"
"Oh, I totally can. I mean, you're holding my powers hostage, even."
"You fuck!"
"Is what your mom—"
"Bro, if you make one more 'your mom' joke, I'm being so real right now, I'm gonna kick you in the balls."
"...Fine."
As one the boys turn back towards you.
"So uh, what's the sitch?" Michael asks somewhat nervously.
You smile at that.
Now, you have the advantage. You're sorry to Demmy for it, but you suppose you can repay her by giving her a better life after this.
"I need to help someone get over a fear of singing in public,"
""...""
Thursday, April 14th, 2011
Winslow Highschool, Brockton Bay
Point of View: Multiversal Emulator "Demmy"
You watch with amusement as Zhang Haoran—whom your Master has done her absolute best to ignore since he arrived—gently closes his locker and then turns to eyeball you, having stood behind it.
"Emmy," he greets you cautiously, not seeming surprised to see you.
"Kung Fu guy," you respond to him in kind, ignoring the sea of students passing around the two of you while leaving a wide berth around the extremely fit boy.
"That—please don't—you have to understand how disrespectful it is to call me that, yes?" He says with a defeated, tired, and exasperated tone to his voice you weren't expecting from the boy who declared to Taylor's entire class how much he valued her upon his first meeting with her.
Taking a closer look at him, he seems… somewhat haggard. Not so much physically, just… emotionally. You can almost smell defeat wafting off of him.
"Sorry?" You blink at him in confusion.
"You might as well walk up and call me 'Mister Chinaman'," he expands, not moving from his spot by his locker.
You blink at that, and, thinking about it, you suppose that… would be pretty offensive. Kind of like back when everyone just took the fact that you are the product of a power as an excuse to ignore you in conversation. You didn't—don't—personally mind it much, but you can see how, for a human, it would be extremely vexing.
"Uh… sorry. Look, I need a favor. You said you've never failed at anything you set your mind to—" you start, trying to regain your footing in the conversation.
You kind of figured given the way Haoran more or less worshiped the ground your Master walked on that he'd be… more interested in talking to you, to be honest.
As though reading your mind, he barks a sharp laugh at your statement, cutting you off.
"Yes. Before this, I was considered one of the greatest members of my generation. I once defeated a parahuman in direct combat, do you know that? In my home country, some even called me Hero Hao! It seems your Master has broken this streak of mine, though," he finishes bitterly.
"That's uh, that's rough… bud, but uh, I just need—" You try again, anxious enough for some kind of advantage that you're willing to stomach way more backtalk from the wunderkid than you would usually in order to secure his help.
"And now! You stand before me, probably to ask me to do something foolish and self destructive, just like all the other vultures, here to tempt me to a mistake that you can capitalize on to—"
"Hey!" You interrupt him as he begins to rant at you, clearly having cracked under the pressure of… whatever expectations he had coming here, you suppose. You slap your hands onto the sides of his head, or uh, you try to, but he slides them up and around himself in a single sinuous motion that leaves him in a prepared combat stance and you standing with your hands held out in the air in front of you like an idiot.
It's impressive. Only possible because you weren't trying to hurt him and were, in fact, moving at entirely human speeds the entire time—but still, impressive. You don't even think he did it on purpose. He just responded to your sudden movement on pure instinct.
"...Hey. Calm the hell down. Listen, you help me out and I'll help you, okay? You wanna come to the castle? I can do that. Who knows, maybe I'll wake up a kung fu master in a few days or—wait is saying kung fu at all shitty, or can I still use it to refer to myself?" You sidetrack yourself thoughtfully.
Haoran stares blankly at you for several seconds, before loosening his stance and stepping closer to you.
"...It is offensive in that you are assuming all eastern martial arts are called 'kung fu', because you are a belligerent uncultured neophyte. I doubt anyone here would dare to call you out on it, though," he says dryly, with a hint of interest in his gaze.
"...Yeah, that's… fair…" you muse aloud.
"This task you require of me, is it dangerous?" He finally asks.
You smile at the question.
He's definitely interested.
'Sorry sis, but I'll apologize by giving you the best life possible,' you think to yourself, before getting close enough to huddle with the Asian boy, who is clearly uncomfortable with the close physical contact.
"Alright, so… here's my problem. I need to get Taylor to sing," you say in a conspiratorial whisper.
"...What?" Haoran asks you with a suddenly pinched expression on his face.
Thursday, April 14th, 2011
The Heap, Brockton Bay
Point of View: Multiversal Emulator "Pemmy"
"What's the plan today, then? You know, I was working on a new spell that takes two people to cast," Demmy says nonchalantly as you alight in the Heap for the evening, ready to do… whatever it is your Master decides to do with the rest of the day.
Honestly, unless you go out of your way to steer her, she can be a bit… manic… about her problem-solving methods.
Case and point.
"I wanna give Fred a laser. What kinda spell?" She says blithely, causing both you and your sister to pause for a second before following after her, as she continues to stride through the building towards the tinkering lab on the second floor.
She could have just gapped straight into the room, but, as a rule of thumb, introducing extradimensional nonsense portals into a room full of complicated and delicate technology that definitely needs solid physics to function, is a bad idea.
So unless it's an emergency, she generally strives to avoid doing so.
"Uh… I was thinking a… healing spell?" Demmy says slowly, turning to share a look with you.
'Does… she know?' She asks you frantically over your shared link, safely shielded from Taylor's view.
Instead of directly answering the question, though you are equally concerned given you only just recently asked Fred to take care of your sister's new body, you retain your cool and calm expression and speak. "Why the sudden desire to arm the little one?" You ask with faux nonchalance.
Now it's Taylor's turn to offer you a confused look.
"Uh, he likes weapons? It's like, his favourite topic besides complaining that I'm a little too 'zoomy' for his tastes?" She asks, confused by your confusion.
"I…" you flounder for a moment, looking for a way to cover your shared mistake before answering her, "... was just wondering why the sudden desire? You seemed very keen to work on school-relevant things yesterday, and I had thought that interest would carry across more than a single day," you explain.
"All work and no play, and all that. Besides, I feel bad. Fred's pretty much the only member of the family who can't destroy a building if he has to right now," Taylor replies, turning her attention back in the direction she is walking and away from you.
You release a silent sigh of relief at that but then frown at what she actually just said. Thankfully, Demmy voices what is on your mind for you.
"Uh, I don't think your Dad—no wait, that doesn't matter. You know, not everyone we know has to be elevated to an S-class threat or whatever system they use here, right?" She points out incredulously.
Taylor pauses in her steady march towards her laboratory to shoot you a quizzical look at that.
"I'm trying to find a way to explain that a monopoly on force has been nothing but good for me without sounding like a tyrannical dictator," She admits after a second of thought.
"Well, you didn't cackle maniacally when you said it, so that's a start!" Demmy chortles at her, walking past you to ruffle your Master's hair lightly. She offers a token attempt to swat the offending hand away but it's just that - token.
"Do you require our assistance?" You decide to interject fondly before either of them can get too off-topic. Taylor bobs her head from side to side as though weighing her options, before eventually shaking her head at you.
"Nah, I think I've got the hang of this tinkering thing anyway. It's kind of relaxing actually. Like, uh, those people who make the little plastic models of stuff?" She questions rhetorically.
"Oh, no. Free time. Whatever shall I do," Demmy drawls dryly in response to her dismissal.
"Laugh it up, when the first wave of refugees gets here we'll be up to our eyeballs in 'things to do'," Taylor taunts, before continuing out of the room with a snicker and a wave.
No sooner does she leave your line of sight than a raven descends from above to gently alight on top of your head.
"Good afternoon, Munin," you greet the girl warmly, resisting the urge to tilt your head upward to look at her, and thus, throw her off by mistake.
…Or cause her to dig in with her talons to maintain her balance.
"Heeeeey…" she says slowly, drawing the word out as though unsure of what to follow it up with.
You and Demmy glance at each other, and then frown, slightly.
Munin is a sweet girl, who—more often than not—puts up the appearance of being completely unaffected by what is going on around her. She possesses a feigned maturity that rarely cracks, and when it does, something is usually very, very, wrong.
Well. That, or she just really wants you to buy her something and doesn't know how to approach the topic.
"What's up?" Demmy asks casually, as the two of you turn as one to head toward the kitchen.
"Nothin'... is there anything you wanna talk about?" Munin counters awkwardly, shuffling around on your head for a second before hopping down to your shoulder and leaning slightly forward so that her pointed glistening beak is in your peripheral vision.
Your steps slow almost imperceptibly for a moment before you recover and continue into the kitchen, where you carefully lift Munin off your shoulder to deposit her on the table at the center of the room. Your sister swiftly moves to the other end of the table to pull two chairs out for the both of you, and when you are all seated and staring at the bird girl, you finally break the uncomfortable silence.
"Nothing I can think of," you dismiss, deflecting with a literal flick of your wrist, as though slapping away the younger girl's concerns.
Munin offers you a nonplussed look at that, or rather, as nonplussed as it's possible for a bird to really look, before sighing and hopping towards another chair, where she swiftly returns to her human form—with one notable addition.
She has a mask on. The kind you might expect to see at a high society masquerade. A beaked Venetian mask that appeared to be made entirely out of an ever-shifting number of intricately detailed deep black feathers. You recall Mem having made plans for such a thing—but you would have expected a lengthier time between giving her the materials and, well…
Her actually making it.
Then again, your… you suppose it will be 'niece' once you are done in this body—is nothing if not an industrious little workaholic.
If Mem could obviate the need to sleep, she probably would. She is as prone to seeking work to do as any other child is to procrastinate. She makes a good match for Munin in that regard, the laconic and perpetual belligerent young woman serving as a safe balance to her sister's tendencies.
"Are you sure…" Mun begins, fiddling with the corner of the mask on her face, before sighing nervously again and changing what she was likely about to say. "Wanna help me put this thing through its paces? I could use the practice but Mom probably won't take me off-planet on a school night."
"We promise Munin, we're fine. And I do suppose this would make for an excellent opportunity to test the new facilities," you ponder.
Munin offers you and Demmy a flat look, then pinches the bridge of her nose in irritation.
"Can't believe I'm using my TV time on this," she grumbles under her breath, before speaking again, this time at a normal volume.
"Sure! I'd love to…" she starts with a faux chipper attitude that doesn't even last until the end of her sentence. "…train during my 'me' time," she sighs again.
You exchange an amused look with your sister at the younger girl's antics.
If someone had told you months ago that an 'evil' clone of Dinah Alcott would end up one of your closest and most beloved family members, you—well you probably would have taken it at face value, you suppose, owing to your nature and all—
But that doesn't make the sentence any less ridiculous sounding.
The three of you quickly reach the new training facility located in the Heap's basement. If you recall right, this is actually the room Dante had his send off in. The same room your Master prefers to use for all of her 'beat someone to death without killing them' needs.
Not altogether too much has been added to the room, either.
You know, assuming you ignore the ominously glowing red pool situated at the center of the room. Is it blood? Magic? A portal? Who knows! You and Demmy have a fairly strong grasp of the particulars of Red Maso and its mechanics… but with regards to the truly mystical, you can only make educated guesses at best.
"...So, I don't wanna be all like 'hey, Emmy, is Mom evil now?' but that looks one hundred percent like an evil bad guy blood pool kind of thing, and I'm having second thoughts. And third ones. I'm saving the fourth thought for running away, but—"
"Did your sister explain how your new weapon works?" Demmy cuts her off before she can get a head of steam behind her and really start going. For your part, you spend the time making your way across the fairly sizable room to the red pool itself, finding a raised stone dais with a book on it at its edge.
"Artifact. She was really particular that it's an artifact—not a weapon," Mun snorts back at her.
"The 'Artifact' then. Do you know what it does, or does it have training wheels on it like Aisha's sword?" Demmy asks curiously.
Meanwhile, you are fiddling with the book you just found on the dais, and are surprised to find yourself flicking through it to find a great number of creatures present within its pages. In fact, flipping through it, you realize that no matter how far in either direction you turn the pages, the book does not ever appear to be any closer to its beginning or end. Choosing to experiment with it for a bit, you quickly realize that the pages don't even stay in the same order. Every two pages contain what appears to be a naturalist's sketch of a dangerous animal, demon, or other monster, and a short blurb describing the creature's capabilities and danger level on the other page.
You recognize precisely none of the creatures of course, but you suppose that makes sense. If half of the things in this book were readily available on Earth Bet under normal circumstances, your Master probably would have long since slaughtered all of them out of sheer boredom.
"So far? It uh, it makes birds," Mun says sheepishly, gesturing with one hand and—for all intents and purposes—appearing to 'flick' an entire raven at the nearest wall. The entire creature gets dangerously close to the wall itself before banking sharply to one side and beginning a circuitous route around the room centered on Mun who just watches it travel with a nonplussed look on her face.
"Have you tried hitting something with the bird yet?" You ask curiously, glancing over your shoulder at the younger girl, who scoffs at you.
"Why the hell would I do that? I've got the internet if I wanna watch messed up crap like birds getting hit by cars, and I'm not gonna shoot a person with 'em! I don't know what they do!" She points out.
That's… a fair point, actually.
"And your sister didn't explain what the artifact actually does… at all?" You press.
"No! Well, yeah, I guess, but she used a lot of words I don't actually understand, so I didn't listen that well," she admits with a shrug.
Both you and your sister direct unimpressed looks at the girl at that, but she just shrugs it all off, refusing to take even a spec of responsibility for the situation.
"So? What're we doing in the creepy evil bad guy room?" She presses.
"Just a moment," you chide her, before turning back to the book in front of you and performing a few more cursory tests. You can't separate the book from the pedestal, and a swift kick at the pedestal's base seems to do next to nothing to the structure, even with your significantly above human physicality, so you aren't worried about the thing breaking in the middle of use…
You suppose there's really nothing for it but to test the thing, really.
So thinking, you flick to a page containing what looks suspiciously like an oversized dog monster. Honestly, it looks somewhat like a cross between a Beowulf from Remnant and a more mundane wolf, and the book describes it as being 'fairly weak'.
Then you tentatively tap the picture of the creature with a finger, which does… nothing.
You frown, then try again, this time concentrating on a number—just '1'—and are surprised when a glowing blue number '1' hovers into the air over the book. A few seconds later, a massive lupine claw pushes itself out of the pool of red liquid in front of you, and a perfect replica of the monster in question drags itself up onto the lip of the pool, immediately sighting on you and howling with unbridled rage.
"Munin," you call to your niece, jumping daintily away from a lazy swipe the creature levels at you and gesturing at it with one hand.
"Why!? Why would you make a room that does this?!" The girl in question screeches, completely forgetting her new piece of equipment in favor of falling into a well-practiced routine. Feathers sprout from her arms, turning her into something approximating a harpy, and she swings one arm at the wolf monster, instantly riddling it with sharpened feathers that tear it to shreds and leave it a rapidly disintegrating mess on the ground that swiftly turns back into the same red liquid that is in the pool.
The liquid then slithers back to the pool, leaving a clean spot on the ground, and the number '1' above the book becomes a '0' and fades away.
"Having a safe location to practice lethal techniques on against live enemies can only be beneficial to your growth," you point out, swiftly walking back up to the book and tapping on it again. This time, you turn and leap back to Munin before the creature can fully pull itself out of the pool, leaving it no one to focus on but the young girl.
"You made an infinite monster room! It's an infinite monster room! Does the UN know you made this?! You did a Nilbog! Why would you do a Nilbog?!" She screams at you, preparing to throw more of those knife-like feathers at the monster until Demmy lightly taps her on the head with one finger.
"The mask, Mun. Throw a bird at it," she reminds her.
"Why are you so calm!?" She shrieks back, but acquiesces, flicking a raven at the wolf monster and dodging to one side at the last second before its tremendous bulk can crush her beneath it. Surprisingly, the wings of the raven seem just as sharp as Mun's feathers themselves, because the winged creature makes a sharp turn at the last second before it can hit the wolf monster, and proceeds to fly a tight corkscrew pattern around it - functionally peeling the thing with its wing before joining the first raven your niece summoned overhead.
You blink at the rapidly disintegrating training dummy, then tilt your head upward to stare at the two flying implements of death overhead.
"...Can you control them?" You ask curiously.
"Uh…" Mun grunts in a daze, clearly not sure herself if that should be the case.
Hesitantly—as though unsure if she is doing this correctly—she points at a spot in the far corner of the room, and both birds immediately dive at it.
This time, neither creature attempts to dodge the floor where Mun is pointing, instead, slamming into it beak first and going stock still as though they are made out of solid steel.
"Well that was kind of—" Mun starts, only for both avians to promptly explode, sending sharpened feathers flying in every direction like living frag grenades.
"JESUS F—"
"Language!" You chide before Mun can finish her statement.
Mun's head snaps towards you and she points at the spot the birds just exploded in.
"Did you—I mean holy f—h—crap!" She blurts out.
"Did you think your sister gave you a useless priceless artifact of extreme magical power?" Demmy asks sarcastically.
"No! I just thought—I mean who would trust me with—" she stops mid-sentence, then eyeballs the pool again. "Hooooow many of those things can you make at once?" She asks shrewdly.
"Would you like to find out?" You ask dryly.
"Maybe just a few…" she says demurely, "hundred…" she adds under her breath.
"...Why don't we start with ten, then," you offer, resisting the urge to smirk at the obviously enamored girl. You don't bother pointing out the feral grin on her face as she eyeballs the pool of… the monster pool.
Some traits just appear to run in families on this world. Found or otherwise.
It takes hardly a moment for you to reach the book again, and you casually repeat the process you followed to summon the singular original monster, only this time, a much larger number '10' hovers into the air above the book.
Likewise, instead of ten identical wolf monsters emerging from the pool, nine normal ones emerge, and one drastically larger example of the breed swiftly start clawing their way to freedom.
"Oh! It's a boss! A boss monster!" Munin cackles, secure enough in her own safety that the novelty and entertainment value of the scenario has overtaken her usual desire to avoid complicated, annoying, and difficult situations.
"Careful, I'm fairly certain—" you begin to warn her to take the exercise seriously, only for the precocious girl to take the air like the harpy she looks like.
"Woo! Okay, they wouldn't let me have this for my name because they thought it was stupid, but—!" She screeches, pausing halfway to the ceiling while you and your sister casually avoid and slap away the few canine abominations that bother making swipes at you.
"—Birdpocalypse!" Mun shrieks, doing a corkscrew in the air and releasing a flurry of avian fury that practically obscures her tiny form from view as it shreds through everything else in the room beside you, your sister, and the enlarged 'boss' monster as your niece puts it.
When the obscuring unkindness of ravens finally ceases moving, it isn't because they are done. Rather, they surround the final monster in a ring of feathered death, before dive-bombing the creature without so much as a noise of warning to accompany them.
You actually have to draw your sword and deflect a sizeable portion of the wave of edged weaponry that expands from the explosive central point of the impact, and when the dust clears, Mun glides down to a halt in front of the two of you with a goofy grin on her face.
"That… hah… was… hah… awesome!" She calls out excitedly, but tiredly, before promptly falling on her behind and laying on the cold hard ground, chest heaving with exertion.
"I presume those things aren't completely without cost to create," you question the tired girl.
"Y-yeah, it's… feeeeels like I just ran a marathon," she pants, closing her eyes and seemingly doing her best to take in as much oxygen as possible.
"Your body and your magical power are effectively the same thing. It would make sense that this would tire you," you allow.
"L-lame," she wheezes back at you, before going silent again.
You give her a moment to get her breath back, and just as you are about to ask her if she feels better, she surprises you by asking you a question without actually getting up off the ground.
"You're leaving soon, aren't you?" She asks eventually.
You do your best to keep the look of surprise off your face in response to the question, but Demmy doesn't do nearly so well, her eyebrows raising up into her hairline in shock.
"What makes you say that?" You take the initiative to ask, neither accepting nor denying the statement.
"I can count," Mun says bluntly, "...also the internet kinda figured it out already," she allows.
"The… I'm sorry? What?" You ask, now genuinely surprised. You suppose it's inevitable that people close to you might recognize the obvious pattern in your comings and goings, but for complete strangers to have guessed at it…
"People started comparing your first and last appearances before changing to a new 'guy', and they noticed that you kind of average twentyish days. I see you a lot more frequently than Voidcowboy does, but it… sort of made sense once I thought about it," Mun explains sheepishly.
There is a relative silence after she speaks where you ponder the statement for what it is, before eventually giving up on hiding things. Carefully, you pick your way over to where Munin is still laying on the floor, and take a seat next to her, drawing your knees up to your chin and hugging them.
"Any day now, yes," you concede. Demmy takes a seat on Munin's other side, but instead of mimicking your posture, stretches a hand out to run through the young girl's hair, scratching gently at her scalp, like she is petting a cat.
"Don't tell your Mom, but this one, well… it's going to be something special," she says with a faint grin on her face.
"Special 'Godzilla is coming to town', or special 'this birthday cake was made by a five star chef'?" Mun asks, with utter seriousness to her tone.
"I'm not sure why you'd think one of those is a good thing we'd want to surprise everyone with," You ask in confusion, turning to shoot a quizzical look at Munin.
"Infinite. Monster. Room." She says bluntly.
"...Ah. That's… fair," you concede.
Yeah, you suppose your Master would be happier with a kaiju attack than a top-percentage pastry.
"So?" Munin presses, clearly expecting more information from you.
"So… what?" Demmy asks her teasingly.
"So… how… I mean… you're… like, okay, right?" She asks awkwardly, clearly shooting for 'comforting' but just ending up sounding unsure of herself instead.
"All of our partings are sad, Munin. But that doesn't mean they can't be joyful as well," you inform her gently, lifting your head to offer a wan smile to your sister who returns it in kind.
"Are you… gonna tell Mom?" She asks eventually.
You feel your mouth twitch into a frown for a moment, before sighing and answering that particular question.
"You said it yourself," you admit tiredly. "It's an obvious pattern. I'd… be terribly surprised if she hasn't noticed yet herself,"
"That—" Mun protests, but you cut her off.
"Now, up! You've barely practiced at all!" You say loudly, working with your sister to haul Munin to her feet.
"Wait, wait, wait! I lied! I don't wanna train! I just needed an excuse to talk to you! H-hey! Don't turn the thing on! Why are you locking the door?!"
"Finally dedicating yourself to training. Your Mother will be so proud of you," you deadpan as Demmy begins flipping through the pages of the book for something that can fly.
"N-no seriously! We're all girls, right?! Let's talk about our feelings! I wanna talk about my feelings!"
"You're right, you should get some practice in against flying opponents."
"This is abuse!"
"We prefer the term 'tough love'," you reply with a smile.
"Alright! Let's give this a shot!" Taylor cheers happily, having wandered into the room after a few hours of drills with Mun.
Naturally, the bird girl took the opening of the door into the room as her sign to flee, leaving a quizzical and amused-looking Taylor, along with a hyperactive Fred behind in her stead.
Now you, Taylor, and Demmy are standing idly by the bestiary, while Fred gets himself lined up along the eastern wall, furthest from the monster pool itself.
"Ready, Fred?" Taylor calls over to him, her finger hovering an inch above the bestiary with barely restrained excitement and anticipation.
"Locked & Loaded," the pod responds, bobbing up and down so rapidly he almost resembles a paint can shaker.
"Remember, we experimented with this earlier, so just keep the number down to—" you start to caution your Master as her index finger stabs into the picture of a wolf monster emblazoned on the page beneath it.
Then the number '999' appears above the book, and you pale slightly.
"Taylor!" Demmy shrieks at your Master who just shrugs back at you without a care in the world for the hell she has just unleashed on everyone in the room.
And you do mean 'everyone in the room', because no sooner has the pool begun to bubble with the fury of (almost) a thousand monsters, does the door to the room abruptly stop existing. Likewise, the walls, ceiling, and floor take on an ethereal red glow similar to the monster pool itself. You'd have to try to escape to prove it, but you suspect the Heap just trapped you in here.
You sigh, and draw your sword along with your sister, fully expecting to have to deal with what excess Fred cannot.
Your Master just acts so normal a lot of the time that sometimes you forget her sense of scale is so utterly skewed as to be useless.
"Wait for it," Taylor offers cheekily, stretching her hands out to pinch both your weapons between her thumb and forefinger and gently lowering them to point at the floor.
"Why would we—" you start to ask her with exasperation, only to be cut off when a massive lupine paw that has meter-long claws jutting out of it explodes out of the pool towards the three of you. At some point—you don't know when—the room, and subsequently, the monster pool have clearly expanded, because under normal circumstances nothing that size should have been able to even fit through the circular depression in the ground you are standing in front of.
Naturally, your Master doesn't even bother letting go of your weapons to stop the attack, simply lifting one leg into the air in a display of such insane flexibility, balance, and muscle control, that she is effectively performing the splits vertically, with her foot comfortably resting in the center of the claw attempting to crush you from above.
"Fred! Come on, I don't wanna break any of your toys!" She calls to the Pod, completely ignoring your statement with a cheeky grin in your direction.
Honestly. Not a day goes by that you don't regret your first emulation sometimes.
As if in answer to your Master's call, the monster pool practically erupts with tooth and claw, almost seeming to fire monsters from its depths across the room in a demented and haphazard fashion.
Then Fred springs into action.
A wire—seemingly conjured from nothing and attached to no particular part of the little robot—gets flung at the large claw above you, attached to a monster so large it still hasn't managed to fully escape the pool. Fred then retracts the wire, flinging himself at the limb. When he is only a few feet away, he… you would call it 'exploding' but no actual damage happens. Instead, a wave of magical energy extends from the Pod like the sweeping wave of a radar signal, stopping once it covers roughly half the room.
And all of the monsters within it stop with it.
"The greatest purveyor of violence in the world—" Fred begins, clearly directly playing back a quote from Martin Luther King. "—IS ME!" He finishes, playing an entirely different sound bite.
Then the carnage begins. Slicing beams of light emerge from Fred, along with barrages of tiny explosive missiles, streams of heavy ammunition as though flung from a gatling gun, magical explosions of energy, bolts of lightning—a veritable armageddon explodes from Fred in every direction.
All of it is accompanied by the high-pitched giggling of a deranged child. It takes you a second to realize the noise is coming from Fred himself, and for good reason. You don't think you've ever heard his real voice before. He typically plays audio clips in short snippets to get his point across, but here and now, in this moment, the unbridled joy he is clearly feeling seems to be bypassing his usually taciturn nature.
It takes barely more than a handful of minutes for the number '999' to drop down to '531', then '326', then '140', and eventually… '0'.
Fred continues to giggle for several seconds more once the onslaught ends, until the sound cuts out abruptly, like a song being paused, returning silence to the now empty room.
If the monsters the pool created could leave remains behind, the entire room would be one contiguous carpet of gore. Since they cannot, you are merely left with lingering dissonance between the current peaceful silence—and the all-consuming violence of a few moments ago.
"Fred!" Taylor cheers, letting go of your weapons, lowering her leg to the ground, and practically skipping cheerfully over to the little machine to wrap him in a tight hug.
"...I don't recall Pods being able to do all that at once?" Demmy whispers to you while the two of you watch the pair of lunatics hold each other's hands and spin in a happy circle a few feet away while giggling like pleased children.
"They… cannot…" you say slowly, trying to puzzle out the logistics there.
For one thing, every Pod 'program' or 'spell' takes up memory space on the Pod. The amount of computational power required to rewrite reality sufficiently to cast a spell isn't to be underestimated. For another thing, the amount of power that would have to be running through that little machine in order to run those programs would be… quite deleterious to the materials he is made of. Probably.
"Taylor…" You say slowly, approaching your Master suspiciously while eyeing the Pod that, by all rights, should have probably exploded or melted into slag by now. The pair of capering children turn to stare curiously at you as you approach, and you point one slender finger at Fred.
"How, exactly, did you affect your… upgrades?" You ask curiously.
You love your Master, but the kind of innovations you are talking about here would require years of trial and error, of testing, of, well, failures. Optimization like this on such a level would—
"Oh. I made a little gap inside him that connects to a really big machine in the lab that does everything for him, and I kind of vaguely remember rebuilding him with some of your shard skin stuff before we came home, so he's pretty tough," she says with a shrug.
...Ah. Of course. She didn't innovate a new way of formatting information or moving power around. She just cheated. How very… Taylor Hebert.
"And hey, since he's got your flesh that makes him, like, your son too!" She cheers happily, and Fred mimics her, putting his hands in the air and lazily waving them back and forth in mock excitement.
"That… huh," you concede.
Well. She's not wrong.
…Does that mean Fred is part shard? That is a much more direct biological connection than you've come to expect from your extended family. Suddenly the part of your current emulation that spent thousands of years doing heinous experiments on living humans desperately wants to poke and prod at the Pod.
But you don't.
Not much point given the amount of time you have left, and you don't want to hurt Fred either. You'll just make a note of it for the 'next' you.
Hopefully they're more of an intellectual than your usual fair.
Thursday, April 14th, 2011
Kurosaki Clinic, Karakura Town
Point of View: Multiversal Emulator "Demmy"
"I have returned!" Taylor calls out happily as she emerges from Ichigo's closet and into his room without so much as a 'by your leave'.
"Finally! Where the hell do you even go when you aren't here? You're like, impossible to find!" Ichigo barks at her, rising from his bed and growling at her like a wounded animal.
"I return to mine own stronghold, to tend to my learning," Taylor drawls back at him. You and Pemmy are, of course, invisible at the moment. It might be weird to say, but you are at your most comfortable when standing slightly behind and to one side of your Master— like an imperial attendant. You can't tell if that feeling comes as the culmination of your core personality, or if it is merely a function of your current emulation, but you suspect it is the former given your past tendency to do the same regardless of your current form.
"Wait, like, school? What, you decide to go back to school and get a degree, old hag?" Ichigo taunts her smugly.
"Thou art very feisty for one within melee range," Taylor replies pointedly.
"You just came out of my closet! I'm always in 'melee range' you crazy—" Ichigo argues back, pausing when your Master moves to appear before him with her hand already grasping at the neck of his t-shirt. If this were a simple highschool drama, and the pair weren't some of the most fearsome warriors you can easily remember, it might even look kind of cute to see them faux bullying each other.
Of course, they are both spiritual monsters, which is why instead of having the meet-cute you might expect from your Master's intentional attempt to menace the boy, a gap is instead opened on the floor, and Ichigo is flung through it at speeds you suspect might be genuinely dangerous for him.
"I'm not crazy, jeez… Emmy, I'm not that weird, right? I just figure his closet is a good place to stop to make sure no one else is in his room when I get here…" Taylor whines at you.
"Some would suggest that using your supernatural powers to ensure you are alone with a similarly aged boy is the epitome of normal for the average teenage girl, yes," you reply dryly to her complaint, appearing briefly behind her to snatch the suspiciously still lion plushie off of a nearby dresser.
"Gah! Come on!" It complains.
"Gah! Come on!" Taylor says at the same time.
"It is quite normal for you to start feeling—" Pemmy appears to politely tease, only for Taylor to cut her off.
"Nope! I'm not doing this right now! I'm gonna go beat up—help him train!" Taylor blurts, hopping into her own gap and vanishing.
You and Pemmy share a brief snicker together at her antics before following after her.
Thursday, April 14th, 2011
The Heap, Brockton Bay
"Well, go on and prepare then," Taylor says with somewhat of a sulky tone to her voice as you toss the plushie at the still nonplussed boy once you emerge into the room with the crimson monster pool at its center.
"I'm still not sold that this is even doing anything, and also, the hell is up with that?" Ichigo asks crassly, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at the pool while using his other hand to squeeze the plushie until it spits up a rather large white pill and ceases moving.
"'Tis a secret training tool that will assist at a later date," she says calmly.
"It makes monsters, doesn't it," he replies dryly.
"...Yes," Taylor concedes, narrowing her eyes at him.
"Why do you have a monster hole in your basement?" He asks with seemingly genuine curiosity, tossing the pill in his mouth and separating from his body in the garb of a standard Shinigami, while his body immediately begins to scramble towards a corner of the room in clear fear.
"...To do battle with beasts…" Taylor says slowly.
"...Why, though?" Ichigo insists.
"For… merriment?" Taylor offers back, now seemingly confused.
"Do you have any idea how insane—hurk!" He starts to crack, but stops to grunt in distaste as Taylor takes that opportunity to extract his monochrome duplicate from him once more.
"Damn it! Ichigo! We agreed she was freaking crazy!" It roars, immediately whirling on its host.
"Will ye cooperate today?" Taylor asks it ominously, flicking her hand to the side and holding her sword up to point at it.
"Over my dead body!" It growls back, turning to practically hiss at her. Ichigo, clearly having a better grasp of your Master's personality than his inner demon, pales at the comment.
"If thee insist," Taylor says with a shrug, lurching forward to slash at the unarmed apparition. It leaps forward and out of the way, before whirling around on her, a duplicate of Ichigo's oversized cleaver in its hands.
"Hah! Last time I couldn't do this, but now—!" It yells in triumph, clearly preparing to do battle with her, only to yelp and dodge to the side as your Master casually reaches back and hurls Ichigo at it.
"Oi!" He screams at her, reorienting in mid air and skidding to a halt not too far away from his duplicate.
"The hell!" His inner demon concurs.
Taylor just rolls her eyes at the pair, wiggling her hand in the air as thought to get the attention of a pair of particularly unruly children.
"The last time, I was too kind. Thou clearly did not believe I desired thy death, and so, thy cooperation was present, but lackluster. Thus, today, I shall kill one of ye," she says with a self assured nod of her head.
"One of us?!" Ichigo shrieks back at her. "You mean him, right?! Him!?" He insists.
Taylor shrugs.
"If thy demon dies, it dies, if it is thee who dies, thy demon dies, therefore, if thy demon wishes to live—" she begins, before flashing forward to swing her unreleased sword at Ichigo himself, a blow he deflects to one side one for her to spin around and swing her second sword—Ozma—at his head in a blow he clearly did not see coming.
It is at this moment that his inner demon blurs forward to throw her off, deflecting the second blow and kicking her away from its host.
Taylor's mouth quirks up at the edges in what is clearly the beginning of a smile at that.
"...Then it shall defend thee most zealously," she points out.
"Ichigo, she's not that god damn fast! Unless she takes our powers away—"
"—we can win!" The orange-haired boy growls, shooting the demon a suspicious look.
"Oh? Did ye think I would limit myself to mere melee today?" Taylor asks curiously, flicking her blades through the air like a calligrapher to form an oversized Fire Rune in the air in front of her.
You can actually see the moment that Ichigo 'gets serious' as it were. His expression hardens, and his demeanor shifts from that of a beleaguered and irate teenage boy to a hardened killer in the blink of an eye. It isn't the manic battle lust your Master so often displays, but rather, the grim determination of the career soldier.
It's… actually kind of sad to see, in someone so young.
As one, the boy and the doppelganger lift their blades skyward.
""Getsuga—!"" They scream, bringing their blades down and ejecting a mass of explosive power forward to match the wave of burning flame currently rolling towards them. The two forces meet at the central point between your Master and Ichigo, and the resulting detonation of power obscures the rest of words the two men were going to say, likely the name of the technique itself.
"Ohoh! Thou can cut magic!?" Taylor says excitedly, her face lighting up.
"The hell does—" "—focus up, idiot!" Ichigo and the demon comment, something your Master completely ignores in favor of drawing a string of runes in the air and then dashing away from the scrawled sentence at an oblique angle, circling around towards the boys while the runescript she left behind begins to spew a constantly stream of magical bolts towards them, forcing one of them to take point and deflect the blasts while the other pivots to keep your Master in their line of sight.
Ultimately, this culminates in the pair ending up practically back to back before your Master finally makes her move, lancing forward to bring both of her blades down towards Ichigo's shoulders, hacking downward like she is wielding two axes and not two katana.
Ichigo's sword rises to meet your Master's swing, and they are briefly locked together, sword to sword.
"Hey…! You're actually trying to kill me?!" He snaps at her, only seemingly slightly annoyed by this fact, rather than the reaction you would expect from a normal teenager in a similar situation.
Your Master responds by kicking forward, slamming her foot into his chest hard enough to crack a rib, and sending him flying backwards into his unwilling partner, both of whom crash to the ground as the last of the energy bolts from her previous spell slam liberally into them, scorching, freezing, and shocking them in equal measure.
Your master flicks her blades to either side with a silent menace, releasing her Shikai without a word, and eight limbs of spiritual power rip forward, four for Ichigo, and four for his Demon.
"Ye seem the trial by fire type, Ichigo," she says sweetly, before dashing back in and slamming one sword down exactly where his head lay on the ground a mere moment ago. Then her other sword slams down immediately afterwards, leaving the boy desperately scrambling backwards on the floor away from her as she does her level best to decapitate him.
"Gah!" Ichigo growls, finally managing to raise his blade high enough to deflect one of her blows to the side, then quickly completely letting go of his weapon so that he can grasp both of her wrists, straining to prevent her from stabbing down on him any further.
"Thou… art… quite… persistent…" Taylor says, though the dull look in her eyes is more than enough to show that she is clearly getting bored of Ichigo's very pointed lack of any kind of offensive action.
"I prefer 'scrappy,'" he retorts, his eyes darting to something behind her. Taylor makes to spin around and respond to the threat, but Ichigo holds her in place long enough for his Inner Demon to draw its own blade sharply across her back.
"Hah! Cooperate with that, bi…!" It starts, clearly expecting the attack to have cleaved her in half.
And indeed… it technically did. Just… your Master's regenerative capabilities are such that her body actually healed around the sword blow that went most of the way through her spine, leaving her wounded but not incapacitated by the attack.
Something the demon swiftly learns when, in her delirious excitement that someone actually hit her back she puts just a little bit too much force into the mule kick she levies back at him, flatting him against the well on the opposite side of the room like a bullet fired at a brick wall.
"See? Thou must try harder if—" Taylor croons, turning disappointedly back to Ichigo, just in time for him to use both feet to kick her in the chest, launching her into the air.
He doesn't let go of her wrists though, instead using her own upward momentum to pull himself to his feet, then bracing himself and slamming her down on the ground where he was just laying.
Then he lets go of her, swiftly kicking his sword into the air and attempting to bring it down on her head himself—an attack that fails, but only because she twitches enough to the side for the blade to slash through her shoulder and clavicle.
The girlish, almost innocent sounding giggling that starts to emanate from your Master at that point brings a swift halt to the hostilities at that point.
It is at this point that your Master really stops holding back, skidding to a halt with her face inches from Ichigo's with a manic grin spreading across her face just as his Demon stumbles back into range to be part of the conversation.
"See?! You can totally do it if you try! Hey, you can do the Bankai thing, right?! There's more than this, right?!" She yells halfway into his face with glee, all in English, and thus, all completely beyond Ichigo's ability to even understand her.
Ichigo, for his part, jerks away from her with a distressed and confused look on his face, clearly doing his best not to look at the places where those two attacks have clearly shredded portions of your Master's outfit.
Not enough to be indecent, but, well…
Teenage boy and all.
Or maybe he's just having a hard time with all the bloodstains she's leaving behind when she moves. You suppose that would make a lot more sense.
"...She's just gonna keep doing this till I give up, ain't she?" The demon says somewhat bitterly.
"Wrong!" Taylor snaps at him, pointing her sword at it and smiling far too widely at him. "I shall continue long after thou concede!" She insists, her spiritual power rising around her enough that the room once again begins to engage the safety protocol it used early today—sealing the room against the outside world to prevent your Master's mere presence from killing people.
The black widow spider her aura takes on when at its peak twitches and spasms behind her, like a spider excited by the contents of its web.
Ichigo and his Demon gulp.
Thursday, April 14th, 2011
Urahara Shoten, Karakura Town
"I doth see no point to this venture," Taylor grouses as Ichigo leads her through the streets of his city to what looks like an innocuous looking corner store.
Actually, to call it a corner store would be a misnomer. The building itself is so small that the shopping area is effectively a single sales counter, and two small shelves of snacks that look like they haven't been perused, purchased from, or even acknowledged in quite some time.
You're pretty sure several of them are expired, actually.
"You tried to kill me!" Ichigo snaps at her.
"And this one fixed thou most satisfactorily afterward!" Your Master snaps back.
"That's not—listen, I've gotten this guy's help before, so I want him to see if anything is wrong with me before I try anything new!" Ichigo explains dourly.
"Who, pray tell, doth 'this guy' be?" Taylor asks pointedly and suspiciously, eyeing the man silently watching the pair from the counter—a man far too large, well muscled, and spiritually potent feeling to be merely 'a sales clerk at a failed candy store'.
"Ur—" Ichigo begins, only to have someone else answer the question for him.
"Kisuke Urahara, at your service little lady. How can I help you?" A disheveled-looking blond man says as he emerges from the curtained off backroom area of the store. He has a striped white and green hat on his head, visible scruff on his face, and a threadbare black yukata atop a green underlayer covering his body.
"...Ah. Doth thou be the wizard so sloppy as to enchant this place?" Taylor asks curiously, eyeing Urahara with suspicion.
"That's right, I—come again?" He pauses mid sentence to ask her incredulously. Your Master shrugs, and points downward.
"Thou defenses are sufficient, if the goal is merely to remain unnoticed, but only because one might fail to believe such paltry wards might guard such a large expanded space. Thou hast dug a hole and called it a castle," she points out.
"If the point is for no one to come snooping around, having giant, glowing protections on the place—"
"So invert thy protections that they be more difficult to detect! Also, why dost thou look like you predate upon children? Thy business is the sale of confectionery!" Taylor continues to snipe at the man.
Well. You don't think she's 'sniping' at him, so much as… trying to offer him advice, in a roundabout kind of way. At this point it's fairly obvious that she has internalized the belief that she is likely superior at her craft to the vast majority of the denizens of the multiverse, if only because of the breadth of her borrowed experience, but it's equally clear that her advice in this case is… somewhat unwanted.
"...Ichigo, who is this sassy lost child, and why did you bring her to my store," Urahara eventually demands, turning to eye the orange-haired boy with thinly veiled annoyance on his face.
Ichigo, for his part, merely grunts in response to the question.
"She's training me. I need the basement," he replies bluntly.
"Training you to do what? I'm wounded that you wouldn't come to me for—"
"To hear it described, this boy's inner demons are thine fault, actually. Small wonder he doth not trust a hedgewizard to see to his needs," Taylor chimes in, trailing behind Ichigo as he casually walks past a now stunned silent Urahara and into the back room.
"H-Hedgewizard?" He mumbles under his breath.
"Oh! The cat is also here! Thy familiar?" Taylor calls back towards him as she spots the black cat you'd previously spoken briefly to in soul society lounging in the small rear area of the store, directly next to a rather large ladder that appears to be descending into the basement of the building.
The cat makes an irked grunting noise with the voice of a tired old man, then opens one eye to stare at your Master, before bolting upright and leaping away from her.
"You!" It yowls.
"...Me?" Taylor offers politely.
"Yoruichi, Old Hag, Old Hag, Yoruichi, you can play bingo together later or whatever it is old women do in their free time," Ichigo introduces them instantly, already making his way down the ladder.
""Excuse me?"" Both your Master and the cat say at the same time, before turning to stare at each other.
"I shall punish him," Taylor says confidently.
"Knock yourself out. Kisuke! Why didn't you wake me up!?" The cat says blithely, before hurrying over to a still seemingly shellshocked Urahara.
You watch your Master shrug and follow Ichigo down the ladder—well, she really just walks over to the hole and falls into it—but remain upstairs, invisibly watching the proceedings between the cat and the man.
"Hedgewizard?!" Urahara whispers once more to himself in outrage.
"Kisuke. Focus. That's the creature I told you about before. The ancient one. It intervened when we were in Soul Society. I think it has some kind of weird obsession with Ichigo," the cat says urgently. That seems to get Urahara's attention, who eyes the feline with a narrowed gaze.
"It?"
"I can't feel it half the time. I'd call it a Demon, but as you can see, it clearly can look like a human when it wants to. I'm catching rumors that the Old Man adopted it or was hiding a secret child or something, but that doesn't make any sense. Something is wrong," she presses.
"Aizen?" Urahara questions the cat.
"It's possible," it concedes, before the pair make to follow Ichigo into the basement.
Well. You suppose that's at least one keyword you have to ask about at some point.
"Chad?! Inoue?! You're already out of the hospital?!" Ichigo yelps, running over to the boy and girl pair already present in the basement as he and your Master arrive at the bottom of the ladder, emerging into a sizeable empty room that appears to have been decorated and modified to give off the appearance of a sandy badland, with sparse grass, small rock outcroppings, and a blue sky hanging overhead.
It's fairly convincing, at least, to mundane eyes, which you suppose was the core point of it.
"Ichigo," the rather large hispanic boy greets your Master's erstwhile student, while the girl—
Well the girl practically body slams him she crashes into him so fast.
"Ichigo!" Orihime Inoue cheers as she greets him, quickly pulling back from her short hug and smiling happily at him.
"Why are you here? Shouldn't you be resting?" Ichigo presses, clearly doing his best to pretend the hug didn't happen.
"We got hurt because we were weak," Chad says as though that is all the explanation needed.
"Right! So once we got better, we decided to come back and ask Yoruichi-san for help getting stronger again! It totally worked the first time, and Yoruichi is really smart, so this time we'll totally get strong enough to beat the bad guys!" Inoue chirps, drawing her fists up in an incredibly pathetic approximation of a fighting pose and doing several cute but useless punching motions that you can already see are irritating your Master with every wobbly bounce the other, much more well-endowed, girl makes.
"If thee wish for strength—" Taylor chimes in,
"No!" Ichigo blurts out, putting himself between his friends and your Master as though he is afraid she is going to attack them.
Taylor pouts at that.
"I do possess painless and simple means to unlock greater power in man, thou must knoweth," Taylor grumbles.
"You've been trying to kill me for the last two hours!" Ichigo growls at her.
She waves him off.
"'Tis different. I cannot unlock thy aura for fear of trapping thy soul in thy body. These children, do they eject their own souls into combat like thy perform?" She asks pointedly.
"No, but," Ichigo sputters before pausing. "Wait, are you saying there's an easy way to do this and you just aren't using it on me?!" He demands.
"Yes. Ye, o large one—" Taylor begins to say, gesturing behind Ichigo at his friends. She clearly intends to single out Chad, but Inoue skips forward instead, smiling pleasantly at her.
"Inoue, you don't even know what-"
"Relaaax Ichigo. Don't you trust your… little friend here?" Urahara says as he emerges from the entrance to the room with the cat not too far behind him.
"This and that are different!" Ichigo snaps at him.
"Why? Because only you are allowed to risk your safety for your friends?" Urahara says pointedly, which earns him a flinch from Ichigo.
"Um… I just think that she looks trustworthy!" Inoue says easily, bringing a halt to the argument.
"Thou are truly hard to dislike," Taylor notes somewhat in awe at the easy trust and innocence clearly on display with the orange-haired girl.
"My brother always used to say I'm a really good judge of character!" She chirps.
"Honestly Ichigo, we're right here. Do you really believe she could get away with hurting anyone here?" Yoruichi chimes in smugly, before turning serious. "Now, show me what you think you've learned," she adds suspiciously.
With that, the group splits in two, with Urahara trailing behind your Master, Chad, and Inoue as she proceeds to carefully unlock both of their Auras, while Ichigo once more splits from his body and takes some distance with Yoruichi.
"Fascinating," Urahara murmurs once the process—simple and quick as it is—is completed. He rears back and slaps Chad on the chest, and marvels at the shimmering dull pink glow that deflects the blow for him.
"The… light of the soul, you called this?" He asks, so enamored with the novelty of what he is seeing that his previous enmity with your Master is completely absent.
"'Tis what I've been told," she admits with a shrug.
"So you didn't invent this yourself? Who—" he presses, but pauses when Ichigo's presence behind you heightens abruptly, sending a wave of power through the room.
"A quaint transformation. Truly, this one wishes her bankai were so ever straightforward," Taylor muses as everyone turns to watch Ichigo, who, now garbed all in black, with his sword once more a slim katana with a black blade, lifts his free hand to clutch at the air before his face.
For a moment, for as much as the spiritual power in the air is thick enough to cut with a knife—nothing happens.
Then Ichigo turns his head to make eye contact with your curious Master, and she smiles at him.
At that point, the white mask that appears in Ichigo's hand practically flies onto his face in fear.
"Hoh," Urahara hums curiously at him, before turning to eye your Master with a newfound wariness that wasn't present prior to this.
"And how'd you teach him to do that?" He asks nonchalantly.
"I threatened to kill it," she says with a shrug.
"That's… that's it?" Urahara asks incredulously.
"I also almost succeeded?" She offers back sheepishly.
Urahara just stares at her, but your Master swiftly dismisses his concerns in favor of clapping happily when Ichigo vanishes overhead, clearly flash stepping around the room to put his new power through its paces.
"Well, I guess it worked. Thanks for helping him with—"
"'Tis merely the beginning. Step one, as it were. I shall further help the boy with his quandary, and achieve the next, eftsoons," Taylor says confidently.
"…How exactly do you know there is a second step?" The cat asks as it sidles up to the group, eyeing Chad and Inoue who are doing very little, save for playing with the glowing aura that surrounds them as they move about and return to their practice.
Your Master just shrugs again.
"Mine has one," she explains, demonstrating by pulling her Devil Trigger, and dashing after Ichigo like a demented dog chasing a car.
"Ichigooooooo!" She calls after the horrified-looking teenager, vanishing after him not with the Flash Step… but with raw physical strength shredding the air around her as she moves.
"…Scary, scary," Urahara idly comments as he eyes your Master's rapidly moving form. He opens the paper fan in his hand, fanning himself languidly.
"Nothing good comes without risk," Yoruichi teases in kind, before pausing to add, "…but yes… quite."