Mark watched from the forecastle as Andria practiced with her mithril and her new seer capabilities. She sat on a pillow on the deck, and though it looked like she was right there, Mark felt most of her vector far, far away from her body, tracing the railings of the ship, feeling out the grain of the wood and trying not to poke too far into the wood. She had as much feeling in her mithril as Mark had in his adamantium, and like him, once the mithril was out of his sight, they both had no real understanding of what it was doing all the way out there, except through feel.
… Though Mark could pluck his eyes out and send them zooming around if he wanted.
He did not want that.
The sky was brilliant green and the air was green and the lakes of water floating in the sky like zero-gravity pools were also green. All various shades and densities of green. No toxins at all. No real danger in this layer, except for the smell. It was salty and mildew-y at the same time. It was all algae, according to Eliot and Tartu.
Tartu had contacted Verdago yesterday and after several hours of inner questioning and soul searching, he came out of his trance. He didn’t really speak of what he had bargained for, at least not to Mark. The next thing anyone knew Tartu was down in the hydroponics of the ship growing things alongside Derek and Lola. He seemed to talk to Derek and Lola a lot, based on their vectors down there, all jumbled up and interested and prodding. Eliot eventually joined those conversations, but Mark did not.
A few hours later, and a whole bunch of produce that simply was not available in the prior weeks, suddenly was available, as Tartu’s Domains now created various foods from nothing at all but mana.
Everyone got to eat a meal of truly different things, which improved the overall mood on the ship quite a lot, which just went to show everyone how bad this trip truly was, mentally. No one wanted to complain but it was stressful as fuck being out here, so some new foods went a long way toward making the overall journey better.
Sally’s mood was perhaps the most improved. Mark was feeding everyone with a Union of Sustenance now and then, but Sally was always hungry to some extent. Mark even felt hungry a bit, but not physically. The emotion spilled over into Mark as a hunger for more, because Isoko was experimenting up there in the sky and Sally was doing deep work with her Binding and Drakarok and now Andria and Tartu were doing a lot more. Everyone’s experiments with their new powers and cycling around sustenance Unions and the new food had awoken something in Mark, and in everyone.
The food was mush in Mark’s mouth no matter what Tartu, Eliot, and Andria did to try and make it stronger. It was still good.
Hunger truly was the best spice.
And then the meal was over and Sally went back into closed door consultation with Drakarok, to commune with the God of War and Murder further about size changing magics of all kinds. Everyone went back to self study.
And so, Mark sat on the forecastle again, watching Andria run her mithril hands across the ship, and occasionally push them into the ship and then curse with an ‘aw, danggit’ when she realized she had done that. Mark thought it was kinda cute.
Mark also thought that Isoko, way up there in the green sky, slashing apart giant green globules of algae and water like she had invisible claws the size of sky scrapers, was also pretty… pretty.
When Sally was a giant woman with two giant swords, able to cleave mountains apart, would Mark find her cute, too?
It was clear to Mark that Addavein was influencing him with some overflow of dragon-like emotions. But… Mark found he did not hate that influence. It was really nice to actually like someone how Mark imagined other people liked each other all the time. But aside from that mess of emotions, thanks to Addavein, the talzarki connection had awakened something else inside of Mark.
The realization that he had been doing nothing for weeks, now.
Everyone was training around him, but Mark had been literally sitting on his ass for a few weeks now, practically unmoving. The fuck was wrong with him! Well… probably a lot. But whatever! It was unbecoming of a warrior to not train. Mark hadn’t even done pushups, or run laps! Disgraceful.
… But pushups and running and all of that shit wouldn’t do anything for him… would it?
Well. With that thought, and a few more afterward… Mark realized that he knew how to train, but he kinda didn’t want to train in that way.
Mark’s mind meandered as he thought about the training he needed to do.
Andria’s ascension to an Arch Manipulator Power was a rather weird ‘Mindless Manipulation’-thing which she couldn’t use because there were no slimes here, and nothing else seemed to react toward her efforts to control them. But it was a Manipulation Power. One of the strongest in the Two Worlds. Just look at Eliot with Man-Made Manipulation. Sure, the requirements to use it were pretty damned severe, but Andria, right now, was just like Eliot would have been if he was outside of his element. Where was Andria’s element? In the sewers of all major cities, actually. Andria and Eliot had had long talks about the slimes in the sewers of the settlement, and even about possibly being able to control elementals outside of the cities, like Mark could with his kaiju summoning.
Andria getting a Manipulation Power was why Sally was really going after Size Manipulation, if she could. Sally was getting a lot of help from Drakarok in order to do that, as far as Mark knew, though she didn’t tell anyone what she was doing, ever. Mark trusted her, though.
So Sally wanted Manipulation because of Andria.
But Mark…
Mark kinda wanted to be a Seer.
And yet, if he remained Elemental Body’d like he was, then as a Seer, he would be putting out more bodies of himself, which would make him like Derek, with multiple bodies. And so, following that terrifying logic, Mark should probably just get over his mental hangups and train with multiple bodies right now. But it was terrifying. Multiple bodies? Which one would be ‘him’? Would he be all of them? Ugh. Maybe he should actually experiment with it, though. And probably talk to Derek, too—
Isoko’s vector pointed this way.
Mark looked up to see Isoko flying down.
Isoko came in for a landing, joyful and Full Platinum, saying, “I think I’m getting the hang of it!” And then she tried to ‘slap’ Mark on the shoulder with a hand made of wind, and she ended up slapping his entire body, silver wind breaking against his side, as she went, “Ah shit!”
The ‘playful slap’ crashed into the deck of the Dreadnought and ripped into the floor below. No big deal; the exterior decks of the ship were empty.
But Eliot called out on the comms, “What the fuck! Was that… Isoko?” His voice turned down several degrees of worry. “… Whhyyy?”
Isoko winced. “… Fuck— sorry! I meant to, uh… not do that.”
Mark smiled. He was perfectly fine, of course. But this brought up another reason that Mark wanted multiple bodies; he wanted to spar with someone who could handle him. Mark teased Isoko, “We’ll spar when you can actually injure me.”
Isoko scoffed and said, “I’m not going to hit you hard when collateral damage is possible.”
“I don’t think you could hit me hard anywhere!” Mark said, successfully distracted from his previous turmoil of emotions, which is exactly what Isoko had been trying to do.
Isoko knew Mark knew what Isoko was trying to do, and Isoko just grinned, and then she dropped the grin and adopted the Platinum Princess persona, standing tall and imperious. But this time she did something new. She twisted the air around her, platinuming the air in a cloud that she attempted to twist into something that might, if one was being extremely generous, look like a dress, sitting on top of Isoko’s real clothes that were not nearly as good as webweave, but they worked. Sort of.
The platinum air billowed at her butt, caressed off of her clavicles, tightened around her thighs, and bounced around her breasts. It was a tattered platinum wind, and it was not fully controlled. With a minor disturbance of control, Isoko ripped at a part of her tight shirt. A whole ribbon of fabric went splashing out into the air, further ripped apart, leaving Isoko with little more than her bra. Isoko and Mark watched the fabric fly away, and both of them knew it was a mistake.
Isoko didn’t let the mistake show on her face.
Mark smiled, and then he lifted into the sky, twisting his rotor around and achieving liftoff.
Isoko grinned, and then, with a lot better control, she slammed Mark into and through the deck of the Dreadnought like one would flick dust off of one’s shoulder.
All was dark, down in the third deck of the ship, where Mark now found himself. And then he pulled up out of the wreckage and looked up at the green light filtering down from above.
“Oh ho ho ho ho!” Isoko laughed, projecting her glee to the world. She floated up into the air above the hole, putting the back of her hand to her chin and spreading her fingers down and out, as she mocked, “Oh ho ho ho! Can’t handle a light breeze? Some supposed supervillain you are!”
Mark laughed and called out, “Okay! You made your point!”
“The skies are mine, land-dweller!” Platinum Princess called out, before she glided away, doing that little ‘ho ho ho ho’ laugh.
Mark pried himself out of the ship and landed on the deck, asking, “Why are you laughing like that?”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“It’s a trope! You might not understand it but viewers would.”
“Okay sure?” But that topic caused Mark to ask, “How are you gonna play this when we get back? Latent power up? Meteorite from outer space?”
Isoko had stars in her eyes as she started with, “Okay first off Noah is probably gonna have a huge thing planned and we’re all going to talk with him before we really get going —honestly, it’s gonna be a big talk with all of the Crystal Tower, no doubt. Political stuff. Big public decisions— but after all that…” Isoko took a breath. “I’m gonna go with ‘Inheriting the Legacy of Wandering Sage’. I hope we can get a movie out of it. I really want to star in an actual movie. Grandma can’t legally be in a movie these days as her true persona, but she’s done a few roles in very small things over the years without using her supervillain likeness or name, and everyone knows who she is anyway.”
Mark grinned. “I can fund it if you wanna do that, but first you need to learn how to act better.”
Normally, that would have sent Isoko off on a tirade about how ‘she could act just fine, and fuck you!’ and she almost went that way, for sure, but then she paused, eyes going wide. Her voice was low and full of certainty, “I can do a Union of Understanding for acting.”
“You could probably get a whole HVP show out of that. You can be a magical girl who goes out and fights kaiju on the monthly and no one at acting school knows who you are.”
Isoko laughed brightly, happily, and then she tackled Mark, full body, slamming into him and hugging him. She made a soft thump against his body, and she held him. Mark held Isoko back, feeling pretty great right now…
But he also felt Andria over there, about a hundred meters away and also right beside them in a little mithril vector, feeling jealous. Fearful. Weirdly possessive, too.
Isoko felt it too, which caused her to grin and press her face against Mark’s chest, changing the subject completely, “Feeling better?”
“Ah… Was that your goal?”
“Pounding you into the ground was a good secondary objective. Maybe tertiary.”
“I am feeling better,” Mark said, holding Isoko. Then he let go, adding, “But I’m still nervous about…” He hummed.
Isoko stood there, floating about a foot off of the ground and eye level with Mark, saying, “Talk to me, Mark. About ‘either’ problem!” She slyly added, “But if you don’t want to talk about weird gut feelings when you look at pretty girls yet, I’ll understand.”
Mark eyed Isoko.
Isoko just grinned.
Andria suddenly emanated a deep embarrassment way over there, and also too close.
Mark moved on. “So I think I want seer, but that’ll be really, really fucking dangerous for everyone on board, but even if it goes perfectly well… If I get seer then I’ll suddenly have a whole lot of other problems, and I’ll need to test them out before I get there, to see if I actually want to do it, and… Well. I can already move my body into different… bodies, but it freaks me out, Isoko.”
Isoko let the relationship stuff go and set onto the ground, saying, “I saw some of the body thing from the captured footage out of the assassination attempt, but yeah… You haven’t done that at all again. Did you like being me?”
Now it was Mark’s turn to feel sudden embarrassment, and he was sure if he was not void-black that his face would have been a shade of sunset.
Isoko smirked and joked, “I get it. I’m awesome.” She mimed polishing her shoulder, which she had done a few times for the HVP shows, and said, “Completely understandable.”
“Oh my go— NO! I was just… testing…” Mark knew she was fucking with him, because his reaction caused her vector to turn absolutely joyful, and so Mark decided to match freak for freak, saying, “With the advent of this body, my sexual desires are completely absent, as normal, but some of the fixes for that include making multiple balls.”
“Kinky! I love it. You should try it.”
Mark’s brain felt like it short circuited for a moment there.
… Mark moved on, condensing a second body in a matter of moments and then stepping to the side of himself. A bit of shaping gave the second body some underwear that worked well enough. Both of Mark, looking down at Isoko from two angles, said, “I could do this more. Which freaks me out. Are they both me? Are one of them me and the other… another me? But we have the same mind… So it’s all me. But do I even have a mind anymore?” Mark knocked both of his heads with his fingers, making a solid thunking sound, before he said, “There’s nothing in here but adamantium.”
Isoko’ levity and trash-talking took a back seat toward concern. Isoko asked, “Do you feel like either of them is you more than the other?”
“I’m me— No. I’m me… Wait,” Mark said, both bodies speaking at the same time, which alleviated some of Mark’s worries. He couldn’t separate his mind into two bodies. But then Mark recalled having two heartbeats, and though his heart wasn’t beating right now, Mark took a supreme amount of skill he didn’t know he had, keeping the first Mark’s mouth closed and talking with the second Mark’s mouth, saying, “I am me.”
The illusionary-clothes-wearing Mark said, “And I am also me.”
And then Mark stopped trying to concentrate so much and both of them spoke, “But I guess I’m just me. It’s hard to do it in two bodies.”
Isoko looked from one Mark to the other, and she asked, “Do you want to continue down this path? It will absolutely make you assassination-proof, if you end up at all like Derek. No one can hurt Derek in any physically meaningful way… But do you want to remain metal, Mark?”
“I want everything,” Mark said, “All of it that I’m seeing, all of it that I’m realizing is out there. I want immortality forever, unable to be killed, unable to be trapped. Like… Seer powers are basically just a person having their own religion-based plane of power, able to access the world from a vector that isn’t in the normal 3 dimensions we have right now. Like, earlier, when I said there’s no brain in my body, I think my ‘brain’ is in some 4th dimension. Other dimensions; whatever they’re called. Not sure about the numbering system. Andria’s astral body is still contiguous, but it’s contiguous in a different direction. That’s probably how Derek’s bodies work, too. So if I upgrade my Body to something like that… It’s probably the easiest way to be assassination proof. And it’s all right there…” Mark paused. Isoko’s face was calm but only because she was hiding a deep concern, her vector stuck somewhere between disbelief and ‘maybe?’, but from the way she was completely silent, Mark kinda just stopped there, and finished with, “But maybe it’s not that easy.”
Isoko simply said, “Sally is going after Size Manipulation and Titan’s Strength. Personally, I think that’s too much, but she says Drakarok is gonna help her through all of it, so… It’ll probably work. Is Freyala going to help you with yours? Have you… ever communed with her? Because as far as I know, you haven’t, Mark, so… Here’s what I want for you: I want you to be safe from the world and to be able to eat dinner with us like normal, and if that requires a bunch of weird magics and utensils to make the food feel like something, then we’ll do that. But the biggest thing right now is… I want you to get a Body like mine; something you can turn on and off at will. And that’s selfish of me, I know, and it’s not good enough for you, I know that too, but… I want you to be okay. Whatever that looks like, I just want you to be okay. I’ll support whatever decisions you make, but all I want is for you to be okay.”
A warmth echoed through Mark’s body, caused and bolstered by Isoko’s words. For a moment, he felt human again, and he felt his heart beat a few times in the body that was wearing illusionary clothes. In an ‘oh yeah’ sort of way, Mark realized that he was focusing on that body completely, and his secondary body was over there, kinda frozen and unresponsive.
Mark looked at himself as Isoko might see him, and he saw a strong guy who was absolutely who Mark needed to be.
But he also saw a statue.
Mark said, “I wanna be okay, too.”
“You gonna reach for the stars to get there?”
“Yeah. I am.”
“If you end up with Seer I don’t think we can stick around with you at all so we’re going to take the Dreadnought and run the fuck away as fast as possible. It was scary as shit to see Andria do what she did.”
Mark chuckled.
Isoko said, “I’m serious.”
Mark smiled. “I know.”
Isoko looked at Mark… and then she looked around, saying, “You gonna try sparring with yourself?”
Mark glanced over at the statue of himself, and then, suddenly, he was both of them again, the world looking weird through 4 eyes and two different perspectives about 2 meters apart from each other. He spoke from both mouths, “Yes.”
