Tea Time

“I expected some kind of conference room,” Aeolia commented as Vivian led her and John into a small, square kitchen. A simple stove sat next to a small refrigerator, both appliances bracketed by tiled countertops. On one side sat a bulky cube of dark grey metal, several wires flowing from it, two into the appliances.

Vivian chuckled nervously, brushing a strand of hair behind an ear. “Well, I have one, but I figured we could be a bit more comfortable here. Er, can I get you two anything to eat? Drink?”

“I wouldn’t say no to some fresh tea, if you got it,” Aeolia remarked, head cocking to the kettle atop the stove before floating down from John’s shoulder, growing to full height and taking a seat at the small table squeezed into the room’s far corner.

Vivian smiled as she reached into the cupboard, pulling out a gallon of water, a few mugs and a box of teabags, “I hope basic mundane store brand is acceptable. Have to conserve funds.”

“That’s fine,” Aeolia responded. “I’m not some tea critic. As long as it's steaming with a bit of honey I’m good.”

“Honey, honey,” Vivian muttered, hands digging through the cupboard. “Ah, there we go.”

“Looks like we’re going to get along fine,” Aeolia said with a smile as Vivian placed the sweet golden syrup on the counter. “Er, sorry about getting in your face before.”

Vivian smiled back at Aeolia after she set the kettle on. “It’s no big deal. John, did you want anything?”

“Tea’s fine,” John said absentmindedly as he sat down, eyes locked on the mystery box. Unable to help himself, he cast Observe upon the device.

John was about to tap the ‘Charging Array’ attribute when he noticed Vivian gesture at the device. The light around the converter dimmed dramatically while a series of symbols bound within a circle were suddenly illuminated against the black surface.

“It’ll be a few minutes for the tea,” Vivian calmly stated as she took a seat, only just noticing her guests’ staring at her power generator. “Is something the matter with the converter? I just gave it a once over, so it should be fine.”

“Um,” John said. “No, it looks fine. Just what’s with the light stuff?”

“Hmm,” Vivian hummed. “Oh, that’s just my ability. Photokinesis.”

She lifted a hand in demonstration, her appendage slowly dimming as light failed to reach it. At the same time, a spot on the table looked like a flashlight had been turned on above it: a perfect circle of illuminated light brown wood.

“Nothing fancy,” she remarked, ending her display, light returning to normal. “Much better at writing arrays. That’s how I made the cards and set up the converter to take in a stream of ambient mana.”

Her eyes widened and her face grew pale. “You don’t think whoever’s been, you know, have one of my cards?”

“I doubt it,” Aeolia answered, her voice low. “If they knew about you, they would have come after you. They aren’t the type to leave loose ends.”

“Right,” Vivian said, before quickly adding, “So, anyway, what sort of abilities do you two have? Beyond the shrinking thing. Or it should be a growing thing, right?”

“It’s a growing thing,” Aeolia answered. “And I fight with a glaive. John, weapon me.”

“One dispensed weapon, coming up,” John piped up, withdrawing her glaive from his Inventory. The miniature polearm manifested in his open palm. “Well, yeah, should have expected that.”

He passed the tiny weapon over to its owner who quickly shifted it to fit her current size. Then Aeolia ran a current of mana through it, a green-tinted wind briefly blazing to life as she pointed the blade towards the ceiling.

“Oh!” Vivian exclaimed, leaning closer to the hefted weapon. “Wind-treated steel of some kind, right? I don’t see any arrays.”

Vivian’s wide-eyed geeking over Aeolia’s weapon reminded John that he had yet to use Observe on it. Figuring that now was as good a time as any, John used his skill on it as Aeolia explained how it worked.

“And what about you, John?”

Vivian’s question jolted John from his examination of Aeolia’s weapon, blinking owlishly.

“What?” John responded, finger reflexively dismissing the screen.

“She’s asking about what you can do,” Aeolia said in an amused tone.

“Oh,” John said, ears heating up in embarrassment, “well, it’s probably easier to show than tell. Invite Vivian to Gamer Test Party.”

Vivian flinched back slightly at the appearance of the invite screen, before she honed in on it.

“Is this an illusion?” Vivian questioned, poking a finger through the center of the display. Before John could respond, she touched the disk hanging from her choker and withdrew a sheet of paper. She slipped the page behind the invite and began to trace symbols in the air with her free hand. Corresponding symbols bloomed into view, forming a circle around the screen, the edges of the paper growing darker as they did.

“No, not a visual one,” she muttered, studying the symbols, before rearranging them. “Did you implant this right into my mind? Looks like it, but you don’t have complete control over it anymore, since it looks like I can interact with it…”

“Um,” John interjected, “I could explain it. I mean, as best I can. Only had this for a day.”

Vivian flushed, her arcane symbols fading as she dropped her paper. “Sorry. Got all excited. Magic’s fascinating. Wait, only a day? You’re a Late Bloomer?”

John shrugged. “If that’s what you call it. Woke up yesterday with one of those screens floating in my face, giving me a quest to start my day.”

“Quest?” Vivian questioned. “Like from some story?”

“More like a video game,” John clarified. “You know, do things, get experience, level up, learn new skills, farm enemies for resources and loot, that sort of stuff.”

“I've never heard of an ability like that,” Vivian exclaimed, eyes gleaming with excitement. “It’s so layered. What sort of skills do you have? Are they utility types of things or are they combat oriented?”

The cry of the kettle interrupted their discussion and Vivian leapt up to prepare the tea. A minute later she sat back down at the table after delivering the three steaming mugs, a bottle of honey and a trio of spoons.

Letting her tea steep, Vivian returned to her questioning, “Anyway, back to your abilities.”

“Well,” John said, “it’d be easier if you accept the party invite. That way you can see the displays I get.”

Vivian was already tapping the ‘yes’ icon before John finished, dismissing the screen. She blinked when she saw the floating info above John and Aeolia’s heads.

“I assume those bars are representative of health and mana levels, yes? How are these levels calculated? What was mine anyway?”

John held up a hand to quiet her. “Don’t have any idea how levels are calculated. I started about halfway to level four, and got to level five. Each level up gives me points I can use to raise my stats. Here, I’ll show you.”

John stood up and walked to Vivian’s side, willing his character sheet into view as he did. As the redhead studied the display, John paled as his eyes drifted first to his Libido score, then to his more private skills. A second later, Vivian’s fair skin began to redden as she took in those points.

“Looks like she got to the juicy parts of your sheet,” Aeolia commented before taking a sip of her tea.

John shifted his attention to the amused AvenFae, mind flashing back to when he learned Bask. “You did see all of my sheet back then, back in the woad Barrier.”

“Yeah,” she said with a sly smile. “We had more important things to worry about then. But since we’re talking about it, can you see our stats? Would make things easier to see where we all stand.”

“Y-yes,” Vivian managed to stutter out, still red in the face, eyes locked to the very top corner of John’s Character Sheet, “get everything on the table, so to speak. Then we can discuss what to do next.”

John hesitated to Observe up the ladies’ sheets. While knowing where all of them stood in terms of combat was a good idea, and seeing it all laid out as opposed to him just rattling off the numbers was easier, he was afraid that Aeolia and Vivian would take offence at the private information being aired out.

“Before I do this,” John intoned cautiously, “just know that this might show stuff you would rather not have other people see. I can’t control that.”

Aeolia just shrugged her shoulders, letting her opinion be known, while Vivian adopted a pensive look.

“You’ve already used this ability on me, haven’t you? Back in the hallway?” she asked seriously, turning to look John in the eyes.

“Yeah,” John replied, “I…”

Vivian raised a hand to silence John. “I understand. Best way to defuse that situation without fighting was to gain more insight. But, you’ve seen my name, yes? I can see your’s and Aeolia’s.”

“We can see it, yeah,” John responded, a tad confused.

“Then surely you’ve seen how my last name and the name of my company are just slightly different.”

John thought back and realized the spelling discrepancy. Vivian took his expression as realization and continued, “I altered the spelling to sow some doubt. My family’s fairly, well... very wealthy and I wanted to put some distance between myself and them.”

“Could have named your business something else then,” Aeolia commented, drawing Vivian’s attention to her.

Vivian shyly smiled. “I tried to come up with something, but I settled on Renox to kind of stick it to my family. You know, so when I make it big, people will say, ‘Wait, which one, Renoux or Renox?’.”

Aeolia frowned. “Not a good relationship with them, huh?”

“Not really,” Vivian responded, “I was the family afterthought. No abusable ability, not some prodigy in anything. So they just sort of left me alone. I figured at some point they’d make me pitch in on one of their endeavors or just kick me out. So, I took the initiative and left on my own.”

A sour look crossed Aeolia’s face. “Yeah, good for you to step out there. Family shouldn’t behave like that.”

“Thanks,” Vivian said, a small smile gracing her lips before she turned back to face John. “Alright, that’s my dirty laundry aired. Fire up that skill.”

“Alright,” John said, casting Observe on her, followed by casting it on Aeolia to summon her sheet as well.

The winged woman reduced herself in size, along with her tea, and flew over to where the others stood, deftly landing on John’s shoulder.

“Don’t spill any of that on me,” John half-joked as she took another sip.

“What?” she teasingly questioned. “Think I’m clumsy?”

“Not with your Agility score,” John replied dryly. “Assuming that also covers dexterity.”

“How many stats points do you get when you level, John?” Vivian asked as she intently stared at the screens.

“Five per level,” he answered, a little confused by her inquiry. “Is something wrong?”

“It’s just,” Vivian replied, “our combined numbers don’t add up. You’d have a total of 139 at level 13 compared to my 107 and at level 16 you’d be at 154 to Aeolia’s 128.”

“Now that’s a little unfair,” Aeolia remarked, though her tone didn’t reflect any hurt feelings. “Wonder why? Higher potential than us?”

“Couldn’t say without more data points,” Vivian responded. “On a more on-topic point, can’t say I’m surprised with how my stats are laid out.”

“Yeah, you are a little on the weak side,” Aeolia commented. “Nothing some effort can’t fix. Get into a barrier and smack up some monsters.”

“I’m not sure I’d be all that good in a fight,” Vivian said reservedly. “Light manipulation isn’t all that useful and I can’t just weave up arrays at a snap of my fingers.”

“Maybe you could fight at range?” John suggested. “You’ve got good Agility to keep out of melee distance. And you could add effects to whatever weapon you choose with your magic symbols, right?”

“I suppose,” Vivian murmured. “Is that what we’re going to start with, getting ourselves stronger?”

“We don’t have anything else to work with at the moment,” John answered. “There is a possibility that someone from my bus route to school is connected to this, but school’s closed until Thursday so we can’t investigate that angle yet.”

“There is something else we could do before doing any combat stuff,” Aeolia said, her tone somber. “We never finished combing through HQ after you had the backlash. Couldn’t hurt to have another pair of eyes looking too.”

John frowned and twisted his head to look at Aeolia. “You sure?”

She nodded. “We need all we can find. You said the ringleader woman had been alerted to something, so hopefully we can get another useful bit of info. Let’s just make sure you don’t scan something that’ll knock you out again.”

“Not really looking to have a repeat of that,” John remarked. “Glad I kept the crystal on me, though Senka’s fully charged up too, so we’ve a good amount of dark mana to work with.”

“Senka?” Aeolia asked, tilting her head in confusion.

“Oh, yeah, I named my knife,” John answered unabashedly.

“Nerd,” she replied lightly.

“Um,” Vivian interjected. “What’s this about dark mana?”

“Oh, I can use dark mana with Observe to see something from an object’s past,” John explained, causing Vivian’s eyes to widen.

“You can do retrocognition?” she excitedly said.

“Er, yeah,” John said. “It’s more expensive than my default Observe but really useful.”

“And you need dark mana to use it,” she muttered, her expression thoughtful.

“Is that a problem?” John asked, worry creeping into his voice, an expression Aeolia mirrored.

“What? No,” Vivian denied with a shake of her head. “It’s just, dark mana has an inherent quality to draw in magic. I’m wondering just how your, you called it Observe, right? How that works and how it would work with other elemental mana.”

John wanted to further explore that but cooled his own curiosity. “We can talk about that later. No point in wasting time. Any idea when the bus comes around?”