Good Talk

“Let me get this straight,” Liam said, “you spent three nights with Moira and you didn’t even get to see her butt?”

John closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, and let out a prolonged sigh.

“No,” he said, which wasn’t a lie. For all the things he saw and touched, her butt was not one of them. “After hearing everything, that is what hits you the hardest?”

“No, it’s just the easiest part to process and I’ve gotta start somewhere,” Liam explained. “Plus, I would be remiss in my duties as your friend if I passed up the opportunity to annoy you.”

“Thank Gaia you’re so dedicated to your job,” John said, dry as a bone. “What would I ever do without you?”

John had spent a little over half the time they had before classes started explaining everything that happened, top to bottom. The only things he omitted were related to Moira’s unique struggle, which was a pity, because their night together was the best part of the whole damn trip. Besides that, his story was generally unedited, starting with his lesson at the manor and ending with his ride home with Erica.

“Gaia?” Liam quirked a brow.

“Huh? Oh, right. She’s God,” John answered. “No, more like Supergod. There are gods, and then there’s Gaia. Oh!” He snapped his fingers. “Yeah, there are gods. Like, real gods, the kind that actually show up and do stuff and give people powers. Probably something I should’ve mentioned earlier.”

“Yeah, maybe something I should know about!” Liam spat in a heated whisper. “What kind of gods are we talking about? Vengeful, smitey gods, or fuck around on Mt. Olympus gods? I don’t want to accidentally get on some deity’s bad side because I ate tuna at dawn on a thursday.”

“I can’t really answer that,” John said, tucking in with contrition. “It’s in the book, but I kinda skimmed that part. As far as I can tell, the gods don’t bother people who don’t worship anyone. Anyone real, that is. I think they have rules or something.”

“Why am I not surprised that you skimmed the tutorial?” Liam groaned.

“Shut up,” John said. “I’ve been busy.”

“Just give me the book and I’ll read it for the both of us,” Liam said, rolling his eyes. “More importantly, I’ve got to figure out how to make one of these Barrier things.”

John thought a moment about lending Liam the book on Barriers as well, until he remembered that its contents had been drained directly into his head. The book itself was now blank.

“I can tell you how it works, but I can’t teach you how to make one,” he said.

“Why not?” Liam asked.

“Because apparently my mana works weird,” John said. “People always talk about feeling it and moving it around in your body, but I don’t. I can’t mess around with it, I either just do what I know how to do or I don’t.”

“Interesting,” Liam said, raising a hand to his chin in thought. “If you can only do what you know, how do you learn new things?”

John furrowed his brow and considered how much of the truth he should divulge. He’d grown so accustomed to keeping things from the Order that he had to remind himself that he could trust Liam.

“They just… show up,” he said, shrugging. “Sometimes just because I did something related, and sometimes because something, usually a book, teaches me. And I don’t mean by reading it. I mean, like, my brain kind of, uh, eats the book. It’s weird.”

“You eat the book?” Liam asked. His expression suggested he was beginning to doubt John’s sanity.

“Not literally, jackass,” John said with a frown. “It’s like I memorize everything in the book. The whole thing goes blank, and my brain gets it instead.” John sighed. “But, inside? It’s just words and pictures. I know it all, but I don’t automatically understand it. It’s basically the same with my magic.”

“It figures.” Liam tossed up his hands in annoyed resignation. “My one connection to the Abyss can’t teach me shit about learning more magic.”

John frowned at the implied insult, but he couldn’t argue against something that was true.

“If you want, I can probably introduce you to someone who can,” he offered.

“No thanks,” Liam said, waving his hands dismissively. “From everything you’ve told me about the Order, and how they, you know, **** me, I’m not going anywhere near them. You’re free to put your neck on the line, but I intend to keep mine attached to my body.”

“That’s fair.” John shrugged. He was already more wrapped up in their business than he’d like. “So then what? You’re just gonna try stuff until you see what works?”

“Hey, I never said you couldn’t ask around for me,” Liam said. “I fully intend to use you as a proxy for an assuredly endless stream of questions. But, before you complain, I’ve been wondering something. Do that scan thingy to me again. I want to know if it says anything different about me.”

Liam rose from his seat and spread his arms out to either side, perpendicular with his body.

“The T-pose isn’t necessary,” John grumbled, to which Liam replied only with a cheeky grin. John briefly considered not fulfilling his friend’s request, just to aggravate him. Despite his misgivings, he used Observe, as asked, and read it aloud.

-
Liam Suffield
[Novice Splicer]
Level 6 Human Demimage
John’s friend, and a purveyor of scientific journals and lewd artwork both. Liam has a timid demeanor in public, but, privately, he is bombastic and energetic, prone to impassioned tirades and bold claims. He is is still curious about his new mysterious ability, but recent events have tamped down his excitement.
RP: 103
-

“Ah! There it is!” Liam dropped his pose and snapped his fingers. In defiance of his haggard appearance, life seemed to return to him via a glint in his eyes. “That term: Demimage.”

John attempted to tap the word on the window floating in front of him, hoping for a tooltip. He got nothing.

“I don’t know what that is,” he said.

“The prefix, ‘demi-,’ meaning half or partial,” Liam said, pacing forward. “Last night, I remembered that my class wasn’t just Mage, but not what, exactly. Now things make sense!”

John hadn’t paid much attention to Liam’s class before. He’d always been more concerned with his title: Novice Splicer. Between the two, it seemed the most directly informative. Only now did John realize that it was limited to what Liam could do, not what he was. Liam himself was more concerned with the latter.

“So, we’re thinking you’re only sort of a mage?” John asked.

“Exactly,” Liam said. “Either that or something mage-like, but not exactly considered a mage. The evidence, however, supports my initial theory. It would explain my reaction to your cult’s damn memory tea.”

“It’s not a cult, and I’m not a member,” John mumbled.

“Whatever.” Liam waved him off as he reversed course in his contemplative pacing. “The important part is that I only partially resisted it. Given what we know, the statement ‘The tea does not work on mages,’ still maintains its integrity, while ‘Liam is a mage,’ is on shakier ground. I could suggest an experiment in which you acquire the aforementioned tea and observe its effects on known mages and non-mages in order to gain a stronger set of data, but-”

“I can just ask,” John cut in. He had to nip Liam’s rampant postulating in the bud. Liam himself spun around and shot John a disappointed glare.

“I was getting to that!” He frowned. “That’s the easy way, but the easy way is less fun. The easy way never involves double blind studies or investigative field work.”

“Sometimes,” John said, “and I know this is hard for you to wrap your head around, people prefer to just look things up.”

“Philistines!” Liam declared. He snatched his now lukewarm coffee off the desk and masked his discontent behind taking a sip. John rolled his eyes for the umpteenth time.

“Just tell me if you want me to ask,” he said.

“Yes, ask!” Liam shouted, as if he had not just been arguing against it. If John had been sitting at a desk, his forehead would have been on a crash course with its surface.

“Say ‘Please,’” he said.

Liam stared directly into John’s eyes for a long moment, lids heavy and expression subdued. John could all but see the gears clanking in Liam’s brain, debating internally how much he wanted to be a pest over the issue. His face softened as he arrived at a conclusion.

“Oh, pwease ask what a Demimage is for me, Mr. Newman,” he said, adopting a cloyingly sweet tone. “You’we the onwy wun who can hewp me.”

John closed his eyes and took a deep, centering breath.

“Yeah, I’ll take it.” He exhaled. It was a pyrrhic victory, but it was still a victory. He opened his eyes to see Liam digging through his bag. “What are you doing?”

“More science,” he said, producing a few strips of raw leather. “Take out your armor.”

“Okay?” John hopped down from his perch and retrieved the brigandine from his inventory. Even though he’d expected it, the sudden weight was surprising. He realized that he’d never once actually carried it, only worn it. It was much heavier than expected when not evenly distributed.

“Studded leather? Really?” Liam cocked his hands on his hips as he examined the pile of armor John had produced for him. “Don’t tell me your cult friends actually think slapping a few studs on armor makes it better.”

John dropped the armor on the nearest desk.

“Look at the inside, asshat,” he said, crossing his arms.

“What about it?” Liam asked. He lifted the chestpiece without waiting for an answer, and his eyebrows lifted with realization as he spied the strips of metal riveted to the interior. “Oh. Oh! That makes so much more sense!”

“It’s called a brigandine,” John said. “Look it up.”

“I will!” Liam shouted, flipping the armor over to examine it. Contemplative concern fell over his face as he poked at a few of the plates that had been damaged in combat. “This changes a few things.”

“How so?” John asked. He still wasn’t sure what Liam’s game was, he was just happy to have gotten one over on him.

“I had a feeling your armor would be pretty roughed up after all the beatings you told me about last night,” Liam began, reorienting the armor and inspecting the exterior. “So I dug around the workshop a little and found some leather scraps from one of Dad’s projects. I wanna see if I can fix it.”

“Huh,” John said, impressed. “Somehow, I keep getting surprised by how far you think ahead.”

“I know,” Liam said. “You should try it sometime.”

Eye level with the armor, Liam spent some time looking for the particular area he wanted to experiment on, poking and prodding all the while. John wasn’t sure what made any spot of damage more or less suited to magical repair, but he left the job to the professional.

“This where you got shot?” Liam asked, thumbing over a puncture in the back.

“Mm-hmm.” John nodded.

“Cool.” Liam nodded back, apparently unaware of the implication that he enjoyed the idea of his friend taking an arrow in the back. “This’ll do. Now, stand back.”

“I won’t,” John said.

Undeterred, Liam adopted a serious expression as he flexed his fingers and cracked his knuckles. He picked up one of the leather scraps with the same meticulous precision he’d examined the armor’s broken surface with and placed it between his palms. Then, with a level of concentration John knew was wholly unnecessary, Liam rubbed his hands together with increasing velocity, as if he was trying to start a fire via friction alone. A few seconds passed before Liam abandoned his preparations, raised the hand with the leather in it high, and slapped it down onto the armor with enough **** to make the desk it sat on jump. Instantly, he was crouched in front of the armor, eyes wide and mere inches from where it had been punctured. Had once been punctured, more accurately, as the damage was no longer present.

“Success!” Liam exclaimed, leaping into the air with elation. “Beat THAT, Flex Tape!”

John ran his hands over the surface of his armor and found that he couldn’t tell the difference in texture. To confirm, he examined the spot on the interior, checking to see if Liam’s fix was simply a patch or a complete repair. While the metal plate once covering it was still warped and partially shorn, the leather itself looked pristine, as though it had never been damaged in the first place.

“Man, I know you griped about only having one spell,” John began, smiling. He clapped his friend on the shoulder. “But the one you do have is way cooler than anything I can do.”

“Damn straight it is,” Liam said with a toothy grin. His lips pressed tight soon after, however, as he bent down again to examine the metallic lining that remained unmended. “Shame about this part though. I wish I could fix it, but I didn’t think I’d need any metal. I’m not even sure what kind it is. Iron? Steel, maybe?”

John paused to consider what sort of material a magically generated set of armor was most likely to be. He got nowhere, but it did serve to remind him that the brigandine wasn’t his only armor in need of repair.

“We’re gonna need to hit up the fabric store anyway,” he said.

“Why’s that?” Liam asked, cocking his head towards John.

John had since taken out his gambeson, likewise slashed and punched through. Stuffing popped out of each cut, threatening to fall out entirely. He held it up in front of Liam sheepishly, wearing an apologetic smile.

“God damnit,” Liam groaned.

The pair spent the rest of the time before classes sitting across from each other, discussing the ways Liam might be able to better repair or augment John’s equipment. From materials needed to speculations on how to hybridize them, both were in their element. It was like theorycrafting how to make the best build possible in a game still in Beta; they lacked all of the necessary data, but they could still extrapolate off what they had and their shared understanding of the physical world. It came naturally to both of them, bouncing ideas back and forth while Liam used his remaining leather to make as many repairs as he could. Ultimately, they had filled a page in Liam’s notebook with scribbled concepts and questions to answer.

Engrossed as they were in the conversation, John was fortunate enough to notice the time before they were discovered alone in the locked room. Quickly and quietly, they emerged, sharing an enthusiastic fist bump before locking the door again and going their separate ways.