Interlude: Of Possible Mistakes

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Where did she go wrong? That question consumed Brenda as she lay tossing and turning in her bed. The most obvious answer would be “today”. It had hit her like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky as they were dancing, the awareness that she wasn’t just demonstrating the subtleties of slow dance and of recognizing the signs when your dance partner wanted a kiss. She wanted the kiss herself. Badly.

With that realization came the terrible awareness that through most of the dance lesson, she had been actively, though subconsciously, seducing her own son. All of the little details of posture, tone, and expression that subtly elevated allure and signaled interest. And even while she remained consciously oblivious, her subconscious had noticed that John was responding, also subconsciously of course, and reacted in turn. The sordid heat that still burned in her nethers was lingering proof of that.

Yes, “today” was a very obvious answer to when she went wrong, but it was also incorrect. Something like this didn’t just pop up fully formed, and in the merciless clarity of retrospection, it was clear that she had been sliding in this direction at least through the weekend and quite possibly a lot longer than that.

When John came home Saturday morning and told her that he had been rejected by Kira, a part of her that she had shoved down and away into the recesses of her mind had been relieved. She had thought it merely the stereotypical selfish maternal impulse to wish that her child would never fly the nest. But hindsight presented an even worse possibility; that part of her could have seen the very same girl who brought back her son’s smile as a competitor for his affections. Brenda would like to think herself better than that, but after tonight she was not sure she could.

Completely undeniable was essentially all of Sunday. The only thing besides breakfast she had gotten done around the house was collect John’s laundry and put it in the wash, then her concentration had completely faltered in the face of a burst of inspiration. By mid afternoon, she had hammered out nearly ten thousand words’ worth of incestuous romance between a woman who had been kidnapped for ten years and her son who had grown up in that decade, set in the time following him rescuing her. That had left her just enough time to masturbate to a bit of erotica running on the same kink before she had to get started on dinner.

That, in turn, hadn’t seemed all that out of the ordinary because it wasn’t. She had been more fervently focused on a single taboo kink than usual, and the word count in a day was through the roof, but it was hardly her first time writing incestuous romantic erotica, nor masturbating to it. Which was also the core of the possibility that she might have gone wrong years ago.

Brenda had always been drawn to the sexually taboo in general. Not all things taboo, of course, there were some that were so **** or so assuredly harmful as to dissuade her, despite her fondness of forbidden fruit. But she had explored a great many things with Ben, before she lost him and much of what they had shared.

When, following his ****, she had managed to pick up enough of the pieces of her life to build some sort of stability from them, she had looked at her future as a widow and single mother and made a decision: she couldn’t start dating again.

With that came the risk of relationships failing, and if that happened after it had seemed safe enough to introduce her boyfriend to her son… no, she couldn’t put John through that. But she couldn’t engage in discrete one night stands either. The risk that the secret would slip out despite her efforts and become ammunition for her son’s bullies was unacceptable.

Which left her with only one option: restrain herself to masturbation, and live vicariously through the erotic fiction that she had already been dabbling in for years beforehand. And when you were working with fiction, you could partake in a great many usually dubious forbidden fruits in a way that was entirely harmless.

Or so she had thought. But now, she saw the risk that shackling her powerful sex drive to release through fiction and then using that fiction to indulge in depravity could have warped her until this desire to… to be ravished by her own son, her precious, priceless John, became possible.

It could also be that she had all of that backwards. That her interest in taboos was, from the start, an early symptom of being warped from the very beginning. Perhaps this sinful wish had been inevitable from the moment she gave birth. She was not sure if that option was worse than the other, but she was certain of one thing. Whatever the cause of her warped desires, there was no way that keeping John, back when she discovered the pregnancy, had been a mistake.

’Fuck.’ Despite downing a healing potion, Marisa’s wounds weren’t closing. Apparently this scumbag had come loaded with wound-cursing bullets. According to intel, they shouldn’t have that grade of enchanted munitions in an outpost of mostly flunkies. Which meant either the shitheel she just iced had an innate that let him make temporary ones or someone else did and they’d been made on approach.

If they’d been made on approach, Mr. Bleeding-out-into-his-lungs might have known who Marisa was before she recognized him when she breached the lobby with the rest of the contractors. Which in turn would make him running away in surprised fear when singled out an act, probably done to bait her into a- Her line of thought was interrupted by running footsteps down the hallway.

’Damnit, Marisa, you dumbass. How are you gonna get strong enough to gut the gem eyed bastard and avenge your family if you get yourself killed stabbing one of his goons?!?’ No time to berate herself right now though, she had to figure out how to get out of this mess. At least they’d either fucked up at springing the ambush or underestimated how soon Marisa would catch up and set it too deep in the building.

Judging by the sound, there were 4 or 5 of them. Even without injuries, that wasn’t a fight Marisa could bet on winning. Shock and awe might’ve busted through well enough to regroup with the other GRO forces if both her legs were fit for fight. Not so when she had unhealable bullet holes through her left thigh and right shoulder. Much as she preferred to stay mobile in a fight, her only real play right now was to entrench, hunker down, and hope for backup. At least none of the wounds were bleeding enough to be immediately worrisome.

Judging that there wasn’t much chance that the ambush crew wouldn’t know which room to find her in, she gave it away completely by closing the door. Putting her good hand on the door as she slid to the ground to make for a smaller target, she got to working her magic.

Magically hardened ice flowed forth, filling out the gap between door and frame, anchoring it in place and forcing the Emerald Order goon squad to actually break it apart instead of just kicking it in. She also created a sheet of ice covering the part of the wall she was sitting behind. Between it, the wall itself, and her enchanted bodysuit, anything short of a high powered rifle or expensive alchemical rounds should be reduced to just leaving bruises.

She had barely finished when the first kick rattled the door but failed to meaningfully damage the reinforcing ice. While they gave that a few more tries, Marisa grit her teeth and used her bad arm to reach into her pocket space. Both radio and magical comms were jammed, with the latter likely selectively, meaning these fucks could call for backup while she had to get creative.

They gave up on the kicking and started on bursts of gunfire at the same time as she had found what she needed. Through the door and walls simultaneously, at standing chest height. Unpleasantly well coordinated; if she were standing, she’d have been all but guaranteed to get hit. Urgently, she clicked the phone into the slot on the speakers, maxed the volume and hit play. With the speakers having some magitech juice, this was going to put the whole barrier on blast, gunfire be damned. It took a few moments of nothing before the playlist hit a song with a local file.

Halestorm - I Am The Fire

’Heh, guess that ain’t a bad fit.’ The chuckle was tinged with a grimace as the goons switched to a ground level burst of fire. She was right about her suit holding up, but getting bullet bruises still stung like a bitch. Emerald assholes didn’t concentrate fire on her though, so there was that. Couldn’t tell where she was, it seemed.

She braced herself for another low volley, but it never came. Instead, an absolute hail of gunfire shredded at the door. In a few moments, a large chunk of it had been so thoroughly shredded by gunfire that it simply fell off. Gritting her teeth through a defiant grin, she replaced it with a sheet of conjured ice. The real test of endurance was about to begin.

They opened with giving the ice sheet the same treatment as the door. Unfortunately, they wisened up quick. Unlike the sheet protecting her, this one wasn’t as hardened. Enough to block a person walking through, not enough to sap much energy from a bullet or cost too much mana to reform.

Instead, they hit it with some sort of blunt impact. She didn’t have an angle to see what, but probably a Shattering Blow tech or an enchanted hammer. Repairing that damage put a dent in her mana reserves. Not a big one, but shit was gonna start adding up fast.

Shifting a bit, Marisa got a view of the second impact: a palm. Shattering Palm Technique. Time to teach an overconfident asshat a painful lesson then. She endured another hit to make sure she had the timing down. Then, a fraction of a second in advance of the fourth impact, she formed a finger-length spike of the hardest ice she could make, sprouting right where he had been striking.

“Get fucked, shitheads!” The spike had done nothing to stop the blow from cracking ice, leaving a convenient hole to trash talk them through for a moment before closing it. Judging by the angry cursing and yelling for a potion, someone got themselves a ‘holy’ hand for their trouble.

As the seconds stretched on, it was clear that that had made them wary of what other stunts she might pull. Which was a good thing, because that one had been costly, and a few seconds of breather to recoup some mana was just what she needed.

As those seconds stretched to a minute and the breathing exercise had refilled her mana pool, it became worrisome instead of a relief. No way in hell had the assholes given up, but there was nothing suggesting that she had gotten backup eith- Her train of thought was interrupted by intense heat hitting the ice barrier.

After a wait like that, they weren’t just gonna take the sucker’s bet with a pyromancer. Gritting her teeth, she poured in the mana to refresh the barrier against the melting and closed her eyes to focus on assensing in the hope of learning what was going on.

’Crap.’ Fire elemental, possibly demon. Either way, it turned the situation around to make her bet the sucker’s one instead of theirs. But she had no other options than to make it last as long as possible and hope. At least bringing it out had cost them, or they’d have been idiots not to lead with it.

She reached into her pocket space again and, unlike before, needed no rummaging before taking out two small mana batteries. Their capacity wasn’t stellar, but they were designed to discharge directly into a person’s aura.

Tapping the batteries didn’t quite cover the strain of maintaining the barrier against the elemental’s onslaught, but it did let her own mana last more than twice as long. And when it ran out, she didn’t have to fold immediately. Overstraining herself to continue channeling mana from the batteries to the spell, she bought more seconds in return for mana fatigue making her vision swim and her head throb painfully.

Her arms started trembling and she had to close one eye to avoid seeing doubles, and then the wall came down. She wasn’t sure if her concentration had broken too badly or if the batteries just ran dry, but regardless, a gout of flame burst into the room as the frozen barrier melted into nothing.

In came five guys in tactical gear over green robes and what looked like a four armed orangutan with a mohawk made of fire. In an unpleasantly professional display, they covered the room with lines of fire and surrounded her at as reasonably cautious a distance as the size of the barrier-copied four man office allowed. She did take some grim satisfaction in that the guy holding a pistol in his left hand was standing in the far corner.

Expecting **** by bullet or flame any moment, and with nothing left with which to delay it anymore, Marisa raised a slightly shaking hand and flipped them off. The apparent leader responded by starting a single nod that he never got to complete.

Instead, a fist sized hole was torn through the center of his chest, ballistic vest and all. Suddenly, a tailless, black-haired kitsune in torn, tight-fit denim and a canvas cloak was in the center of the room, twin long barrel pistols drawn. The merc heavy hitter that was supposed to take down the enemy VIP they were here to flush out. ’Did she just Flash Step with a fucking bullet?!?’

What followed looked like a strobe rave recording played at double time. Muzzle flashes followed each other at a staccato so tight the first had scarcely faded before the next shone. Each seared a still image into Marisa’s eyes of the ravenette mercenary shooting an Emerald Order henchman through the chest and head simultaneously.

Between Marisa’s mana fatigue delirium and the strobe-like flashes, the merc didn’t seem to move from firing position to firing position. She just seemed to exist in one, then in the other with nothing in between. By the time the Emerald squad leader’s corpse hit the floor, the only living squad member left was the demon ape.

It had time to conjure a ball of flame in each palm while the kitsune exhaled a single time and pointed one gun at it. A ray of clear, white light briefly preceded a massive beam of the same, obliterating both the demon and a man-sized chunk of the wall behind it.

“What the hell were you thinking?” The merc holstered the gun she had annihilated the ape with and fixed a stern look at Marisa. In the frost mage’s addled state, it reminded her of being caught sneaking out by Mama Joanna.

“Ah khinda wassn’t.” She kicked at the corpse of the man she had originally chased into the room with her good leg and slurred, “Dis bisch elped kill my famli…”

The woman, I-… Something Embers, Marisa was fairly certain. In any case, her expression softened for a moment before the sternness resurfaced in full **** and she barked, “On your feet, soldier! This is no place to be passing out!”