How to stun some people and make others angry

After convincing Amelia that they had to leave for school, John walked towards the front door with her in tow. Not only did he have to promise her he would tell her about the quest but he also had to carry her bag. The later he did by storing it in his inventory, annoying her to no end.

“Kiskadee!” was the first thing John heard the moment he stepped outside. A bird call that he was sure he never heard in his life, not that he was an expert in bird calls. Being curious, he walked towards the tree where he thought the call had come from; Amelia just watched him as she followed him.

He searched for the bird but, like most birds in trees so full of leaves, he had no luck in finding it. Being a tall tree also meant that the bird was out of range for his proximity sense to help.

“Kiskadee!” he heard the call once again, only this time it came from inside another tree on the other side of the road. He wished he had more time to discover what bird it was but he had to give up as Amelia caught up and started pressuring him for more information on the quest.

“Ok, we have time to talk here, spill it,” she demanded as soon as they reached the bus stop.

“Wait a sec,” he told her. He wanted to find out if he could surprise her; party systems were a big part of most of the games they played together, bringing them closer even though he didn’t know it was her. But first, he had to find out how to activate it; pulling up the quest message, he read it once again so that he could find any detail he might have missed. Unfortunately, the words on the window were not selectable for query. “Damn, how can I access this party system and invite you to be part of my party?” he gave up frustrated with the missed opportunity to impress her.

“Oh wow,” he heard Amelia exclaim as soon as he finished asking the question. “This is quite awesome. Is this really what I think it is?” As he looked over to her, he saw that she had a message window in front of her, and apparently she could see it too. As he read it, all he could do was smile, even though he had made a mistake.

John Newman is inviting you to be a member of his party called “No name”. Do you accept the invitation?
Yes|No

Not waiting for his reply, Amelia quickly brought her right hand forward with her palm facing outwards and then rotated it. To John’s surprise, her action produced a barely visible transparent blue circle in the air with a series of unrecognizable symbols on it. Once again, he smiled as it didn’t take her long to stun him right back; for the first time, he was witnessing her use her powers without the aid of a device.

Amelia moved her fingers as if she was pressing a series of the symbols just like a keyboard. John was curious to know what she was doing, but noticing that she was quite concentrated on her actions and whatever information her glasses showed her, he decided not to disturb her. A few seconds later, seemingly satisfied with the information she got, Amelia pressed at the same time both the yes button on the party invitation window and a middle symbol in her circle. The circle disappeared soon after.

Achievement Unlocked - Putting the Cart Before the Ox.
You invited someone to a party without properly creating and naming it. At least she accepted the invite.
+1 Agi
+1 Cha
Now think of a good name or forfeit the reward.

He didn’t have to think much about the name; as soon as he read the warning, one popped up in his head, a name he had used for quite some time.

The GamingDuo party was successfully created.

Warning! A party member has hacked into your system interface, all safety protocols have been activated. If said member tries to change any Gamer data or protocol, defensive countermeasures will be activated by permanent termination of the connection and loss of the party system.

Amelia frowned as she read the warning message; even though she was someone who loved challenges, she knew that this wasn’t one that she should try to beat.

“What the hell did you do?” John asked her quite worried. “What were you doing before you accepted my invite?”

“I just opened up a connection to your system’s interface,” Amelia answered as if it wasn’t much of a deal.

“Wait, what?” he asked back, stunned once again.

“Don’t worry, I will only access data and not change any of it,” she tried to reassure him. “Besides, the warning clearly says that change is forbidden, it didn’t say anything about reading the data.”

“You could have warned me,” he told her. “And that’s quite a bit of an invasion of privacy,” he continued, not used to having her butt into his affairs.

“John, if you’re against this, just tell me,” she said, not showing any sign of being hurt. “I won’t mind,” she continued while smiling. “I am just trying to understand what’s happened to you.

“You don’t know how much and for how long I’ve tried to get this to happen.” She turned from him while continuing, “I’ve been a member of the Abyss since I was born. My parents used to warn me not to become too attached to you because you were mundane; don’t get them wrong, please, they loved you like a son. They were just worried for your safety.

“I was supposed to get back to my clan after their ****; I fought them every step of the way until they allowed me to stay under my aunt’s supervision.” She paused and then continued her story, “Almost since we met, I tried and tried to find a way to allow me to tell you, to have you join us, for you to develop powers, for anything that would help me not to lose you. And now you do and we are together once again.” She then turned back to him and smiled with a tear running down her cheek.

“Sorry,” he apologized sheepishly, bringing a hand up to clean the tear. “I didn’t know it was like that for you.”

“It’s ok,” she smiled at him, “I’ve got you now.” She then kissed him on the cheek. “Fuck, the bus is coming, let’s continue this inside.”

When the bus arrived, John noticed that she now looked a lot more cheerful, too cheerful after such a speech she made.

Amelia quickly climbed on, leaving John with his thoughts wondering what she was planning to do. When he put his first foot on the bus, he heard the bird call once again. Turning towards the tree, all that he saw was two yellow blurred shapes quickly flying away towards the forest nearby.

I wonder if I will ever have a normal day again, he thought, being quite sure that the bird that flew away was another member of the Abyss. Was this whole world happening around me and I only managed to notice it now that I have powers?

He entered the noisy bus; everyone inside seemed to ignore him, even though Amelia just got on at the same stop that he did. They were all too busy with their respective group topics. Half-way to his place, he noticed the lingering angry eyes of his much-hated nemesis. He was used to the hatred that came from them, but this time they seemed much more intense.

So, it seems the bitch did notice, he thought as he saw her whisper on Frank’s ear while the meathead talked to one of his buddies. Whatever she told him, Frank was not happy with it, but before he could get up, his girlfriend stopped him. “Not here,” John read her lips as she held the jock’s arm.

John was too distracted with the pair to notice that he was walking, as if automatically, to his usual lonely empty seat. Just before he sat on it, realization struck him. He looked at Amelia, who was staring back at him with a “don’t you dare look”. With a nervous smile, he walked back to her and apologized while he sat beside her.

If it wasn’t for the noise of the bus engine, John would have thought he went deaf, as an eerie silence took over the bus.

Looking around, all that he saw was the shocked faces of his fellow school students looking towards him and Amelia. There were three behavioral exceptions though, Frank and Vanessa’s furious stares and Amelia’s large smile stamped on her face; he finally discovered why the Scot was so cheerful.

After what seemed like forever, at least to John anyway, the bus finally got going.

“So, no one else can see your message windows, right?” Amelia asked him as the ambiance slowly got back to the usual chatting noise. She was clearly happy with the results of the big revelation but she had more important things to do.

“I believe so, you were the only one that said anything about them and that was after I invited you to the party,” John replied. “I am not sure about Mrs. Wentworth though.”

“Good,” she said and then proceeded to pull up the last message he received. “Let’s see.” Amelia flicked her finger to the side and started browsing through the messages in reverse order. She stopped at the first achievement he received in the morning.

“Oh, now this is interesting,” she said with a perverted smile. “Why didn’t you tell me about this one?” Not waiting for an answer, she then continued to read. “So, little John can still grow, huh? I wonder what you’ll get when we do it for real.”

She moved on to the next message and, after reading it, finally discovered what the quest John talked about would entail.

“That seems easy enough, you can definitely count me in,” she told him. “Bloody hell, you get experience points? These powers of yours get more interesting by the minute.”

Once again, before he could say anything, she flicked her fingers up, closing the message system in the process. Seeing that his powers had a game style experience system made her want to know more.

“Hmm, ok, let’s see.” She then pulled up his stat sheet. “You’ve seen mine, it’s only fair I see yours.”

“Huh, level five?” she asked. “That seems kind of low. I wonder what this system would rank me as.”

“Level fourteen,” he told her sheepishly.

“Oh, nice,” she exclaimed. “Don’t worry about it, John,” she tried to cheer him up after seeing his face. “If we train together, we’ll make up for that in no time. Only it most likely will be me who will tank for you at the beginning.

“I wonder if we can practice against Bauchans,” she thought out loud, thinking them easy enough for them to start with. “You have some experience with them right?”

“Oh no, not Bauchans,” he quickly dismissed the idea. “I’ve seen enough of them for a lifetime.”

“Yeah, they are quite annoying for such weak creatures,” she said not realizing that that last remark had stung John’s pride.

She kept reading John’s stat sheet and then started laughing loud enough for the other people on the bus to start to pay attention to them again.

“I know one skill you won’t need any time soon,” she whispered in his ear so the others couldn’t hear while also provoking Vanessa’s rage even further. “I’ll make sure of that.”

The bus finally arrived at the school and Amelia quickly rushed them out.

“Why are we in such a hurry?” he asked.

“John, I know you’ve gotten stronger, but you still can’t face Frank and his goons,” she told him. “And if I try to help, it could hurt the final outcome of what we want to achieve.”

“And what is that?”

“Kick that bitch off her throne!” Amelia exclaimed. “But, before we do that, we must try to avoid them.

“After school finishes, we’ll train together and complete your quest,” she continued talking. “Who knows, maybe we’ll get some allied help by tomorrow.”

“Wait, who will help us?” John asked her as they entered the school building.

“Never mind that, I have to do a lot of convincing for it to happen,” she said not wanting to ruin the surprise and then decided to change topics. “Let’s go find the witch before classes start. Speaking of which, please tell me you got something from her for that stunt in Scotland.”