Unstoppable

John pushed away from the wall as reality distorted in front of him, straightening up and stretching out his spine as Kim, Sophia, Maera, and Shishun all exited their Barrier. The last remnants of blood splatter vanished into dust as they reappeared, each searching for only a moment or two before their eyes locked onto him. Maera bounded over rapidly, while the others settled for a casual stroll behind the rambunctious catgirl.

“Myaster! Myaster! That was so fun! Sword lady was all ‘cha-cha’ and they exploded! Then she was like ‘sha-sha’ and they fell into pieces! Myaera tried to turn it into a race, but she wasn’t fast enough,” Maera said, giving her best cute eyes as she pouted at the end. “Why didn’t you ever bring Myaera to play with sword lady before? Myaera could’ve been going super fast!”

“She’s rather undisciplined, but… at least she’s enthusiastic,” Kim noted, shooting John a judgmental look.

“Cats will be cats,” John responded with a shrug, gently stroking between Maera’s ears. “And having Kim along means that we have less slots in the party, so it just makes it harder for her to meet everyone. Especially since Moira is usually with us too.”

“Nyaah, it’s fine, just pet me more,” Maera mewled, a deep rumble beginning as she furiously nuzzled into John’s hand.

“Forget the Warden – today is ours, and we have much training to do!” Kim declared. “You’ve been delayed long enough. What did my father need from you that was so important? I presume it had to do with the war.”

“Yeah… specifically, your participation in it,” John admitted.

“Ugh, he’s so unbelievably stubborn,” Kim growled, knuckles turning white as she gripped her blade tightly enough to bend lesser metals. Her eyes were sharp, and they narrowed as she continued, “Did he attempt to coerce you into asking me not to come with you? Or… to try to order me?”

The way that Kim said that word sent a chill down John’s spine, a little more of the Slayer in Kim coming out than he was entirely comfortable with being pointed in his direction.

“No. He knew it would be pointless,” John explained. Kim’s lips curved upward slightly, an almost prideful smile at the fact that her stubbornness had gotten through to her father.

“Oh? Expressing his disapproval in general, then? Or something else?”

“Suffice to say that if you get hurt out there, I think I’ll get twice whatever you do,” John said, forcing a laugh in spite of how unfunny it felt. “I think he’s frustrated that he can’t do what he sees as his job as your father, and needed someone to vent that onto.”

“Well, now that you’re done acting as his therapist, we can begin training in earnest!” Kim declared, seeming to put no further thought into the matter. “You’re in my dojang today, John. That means we train at my pace!”

“Okay, no arguments here.” John appreciated the Slayer’s presence and her push for speed this time. With her pushing them, they could well hit his level cap by the end of the day.

“That would make me a lot less nervous about tomorrow. I don’t really think Vallya is going to put any of us in danger, but the fewer things I have to worry about, the more clearly I’ll be able to think about the problem at hand.”

“Father, did you wish to send our spoils home before we enter another dungeon?” Sophia asked, lifting her arm up to show off a small pouch.

“Oh, I didn’t even notice. Must have been out of range when the Barrier was formed? I’m still not totally sure what the requirements are for stuff to get auto-deposited into my inventory. Remind me and we’ll experiment with that on a less busy day.”

John hadn’t noticed the lack of notifications when they arrived out of the Barrier, but it wasn’t much of a hassle either way. He simply took the bag from Sophia and deposited it into his inventory manually, double-checked to make sure none of it was marked as rare or valuable in any way, then Salvaged it all into base mana dust and other assorted enchanting items.

“Just gotta send this home. I’ll be doing this after each dungeon, but it only takes a few seconds,” John explained to Kim’s impatient glare.

“What exactly are you doing? Have you finally run out of space in that inventory of yours?” Kim asked, stepping a little bit closer to peer at his inventory.

“Nah. Just multitasking a little. I’ve also got to send someone back for just a moment now that I’ve Salvaged it.”

John pulled the freshly converted materials out of his inventory, thankfully able to keep them in the same pouch without spilling anything. He handed it back to Sophia, who nodded dutifully just before she vanished, warping back to John’s new world.

“You say ‘no arguments’ when I demand we move at my pace, yet you insist on many delays,” Kim noted dryly.

“Would… would it help my case if I said I only need to do this a few more times? Say… every time we finish a dungeon?” John asked, watching Kim’s face grow sterner with every word.

“I’ll make sure you pay for this later, you know.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“What precisely is so important that you need to get all of this material back to your world as quickly as possible?” Kim asked.

“Well, remember how you called me your dad’s therapist?”

---

“Thank you, Sophia. I’ll add these to the stockpile.”

“Of course. Now, I must-”

Sophia didn’t get a chance to finish her sentence, called back across the barrier between worlds in mid-nod. Lerianna blinked for a moment, not quite used to the sensation of actually staring directly at someone when they vanished.

“Right… well, goodbye to you too.”

Lerianna gently closed the door to her room and turned back to the matter at hand – the Artificial Spirit. Aclysia was sitting at a table Lerianna had moved into the center of her room, upon which a veritable array of materials had been placed. Most of them were bits and pieces of magical residue of one form or another, things that John had been Salvaging from their loot from the dungeons lately, but a few of them were mundane substances.

There were some that John had purchased back in Springfield and a few more he’d made himself by Salvaging and Refining until he got the material he was looking for. He’d explained something about learning which resource trees were tied together and how to transmute things the most efficient way, but by then Lerianna had started thinking about how cute he was when he was nerding out over his magic systems, and-

“Fresh delivery!” Lerianna blurted out a little too loudly, shaking herself out of the memory by striding over to the table and holding up the bag for the statuesque woman to inspect. Aclysia met Lerianna’s gaze with a questioning look, tilting her head slightly. Lerianna lightly jostled the bag in her hand and nodded, guessing what the woman was thinking.

“Yep, more snacks. Any luck on the vocal cords yet?”

Aclysia shook her head slightly, which made Lerianna give a soft sigh.

“Well, keep trying,” Lerianna said with a shrug. “We won’t start until we figure this talking thing out for you, or until we think it’s not gonna work.”

Aclysia nodded and returned to sampling the various substances one at a time, never taking more than a few bites of any of them before moving on. John thought it was a better choice to have Aclysia eat the materials that it would have taken to re-enchant the rings, but Lerianna wasn’t so sure. John seemed certain that she just needed the right combination of materials and levels to adjust her body. So far, she had actually managed to shift the color of her clothing slightly – though she had immediately reverted the change – so the theory seemed sound, at least on paper.

“But how much more complex are vocal cords? And how can she form them without studying biology? John wasn’t even sure if she’ll have to form lungs, too… I don’t see why she wouldn’t. Not like Yvara carved a pair of air pumps into her chest.”

Lerianna sat across from Aclysia and silently observed as she continued to devour the various substances. Seeing her eat was rather strange, but fascinating. Lerianna still wasn’t totally sure how a statue made of stone could eat metal like candy without so much as a crack forming, but her flawless lips remained impeccable.

“Any luck yet?” Lerianna asked after a few minutes. She got the answer she expected – a silent shake of the head, and another morsel plucked from the table. Lerianna glanced around at the variously sized mounds and picked a few pieces of material quickly, gathering them together and setting them in a small pile directly in front of Aclysia.

The woman merely stared at the pile, then up at Lerianna, her lips twitching slightly.

“Try having some more of these. I think you’ve already tried a couple, but you might need more of them, and the rest should help too.”

When Aclysia didn’t move, Lerianna let out a sigh and began to point out the pieces as she explained them.

“Rubber, neoprene, silicone, basic plastic, carbon fiber, these are cut up chunks of medical dummies, here are some high thread count fabrics – not sure if that matters once you eat it – and spider silk, which… I really hope we have enough, because I do not want to go back into those dungeons again,” Lerianna said with a visible shudder. “Anyway, these are decent substitutes for the cartilage and flesh that would be working and flexing in an actual throat. These are soft, stretchy, and more elastic than the other stuff here. Vocal cords need to be fairly thin, but also strong and flexible. Not to mention all the other stuff you might need to form around them. Even if you don’t have to form a full set of lungs, you’ll at least need space to move air around.”

Aclysia nodded and started to devour the materials one by one, a little hastier and a little less thoughtfully than when she had been picking them herself. Lerianna tapped one foot impatiently until the last of the morsels were gone.

“Down this stuff. They just got it, so it’s probably the most powerful of the magical supply.” Lerianna hefted the bag and moved it to Aclysia’s side of the table. Aclysia picked the bag up and began munching on the contents as if they were simply popcorn, tossing runestones, pinching powder, and crunchily gnawing on a few rods covered in whimsical rune marks.

Near the end of the bag, as Aclysia was **** to jostle the bag around to reach what remained, something started to change in the woman’s expression. Something subtle, but definitely a change in the way she was observing the world around her. Once she’d finished off the bag, she even started blinking, something Aclysia had done so few times that… actually, had she ever blinked? Lerianna remained silent for a while as Aclysia’s head rotated around the room, until the quiet grew unbearable.

“Well, anything feel different?”

“It… all feels… very different.”

The words were spoken uncertainly, hesitantly, even with a certain anxiety behind them. But they were spoken all the same. For the first time, Aclysia’s lips moved with a proper purpose, and a decidedly sultry voice emerged from them.

“You’re not stuttering, mumbling, slurring, or making any unnecessary noises,” Lerianna noted. “Even when you were trying to speak earlier, you looked like you knew the shapes and forms to put them in to make the right enunciations, you just didn’t have the capability of producing sound. You seem to have the concept of speaking down almost completely, even though you’ve never done it before. Fascinating. You spoke with John in words through your connection to him, by how he described it, and you had no problems writing to communicate with the rest of us, so you obviously had a grasp on language already. Still, to immediately gain rudimentary control over muscles and tissue you’ve only just formed…”

Lerianna picked up the pen and paper she’d had resting on her lap, absently documenting a few thoughts on the matter. Meanwhile, Aclysia seemed quite taken with her new voice. She was gently massaging her own neck with two fingers while making soft cooing noises, feeling her stone skin vibrate slightly with the movement of the more delicate tissue underneath.

“This is a very unusual sensation. Does it feel like this when you talk?” Aclysia murmured, her eyebrows scrunched together in a way that made Lerianna wonder if she actually liked the sensation or not.

“Probably not exactly, but similar enough. You’ve just formed the bare minimum necessary for speech, I’d guess – there’s no way of telling exactly how expansive your new organs are without better medical equipment than I have access to, though.”

“This will make interacting with the rest of you much easier,” Aclysia said. Now that she was growing a little more confident, her voice had a certain ring to it that Lerianna found… alluring?

“Alright, hang on, not the time or place.”

Lerianna absently set her pen down and reached up to the device on her ear, gently cranking up the suppression until those edges of lust started to ebb away. Aclysia’s voice was neither intensely deep nor absurdly high, but there was a satin nature to it, a silkiness that seemed to glide against the ears as she spoke. It was a tone that gave it an almost whisper-like quality, even when she was speaking at full volume, as if she were sharing intimate secrets with every word.

“Well, feel free to test your voice out as much as you like,” Lerianna urged, picking her pen back up. “Once you’re comfortable with it, we can start to talk about your emotions and how they’ve been developing.”

“I think that I am ready,” Aclysia said, though she tilted her head slightly as if bemused by her own words. “I am unsure of what I would say as practice regardless. If I need a moment to adjust, I will inform you.”

“Alright… in that case, let’s start from the basics. John said he’s already told you about a few of the emotions he thinks you might be experiencing. Have those explanations matched up with how those feelings have continued to grow?”

“I believe so, yes, but it is difficult to be certain at times. Many of these emotions seem so very similar to each other,” Aclysia explained. “So often I simply feel a strange heat or cold in my body, and do not understand why until I realize what has made me feel that way.”

“As you get more familiar with them, you should have an easier time learning the nuances and telling the basic ones apart. Most of us don’t get anger confused with happiness, for instance. But emotions also get more complex as you start seeing things in more nuanced ways, so don’t be discouraged if you can’t always sort things out yourself.”

“I see,” Aclysia said with a pronounced frown. “So you sometimes have difficulties telling what you are feeling? Or identifying what made you feel that way?”

“Sure, sometimes I can be in a bad mood and not realize it right away, or…”

“Or I can be three knuckles deep and still not realize that I might actually like someone until I’m still thinking about them after creaming all over my own hand...”

Lerianna bit her lip, her pen jittering across the paper and leaving a jagged scratch mark across part of the page. Her long ears twitched in frustration and a small curse escaped her lips before she could catch it.

“Err… as I said, it can be difficult to identify and handle certain emotions,” Lerianna continued, hastily scribbling away at the scratch mark to cover that area of the paper rather than leave it with an errant streak. “Which is why John asked me to help you. Most of my knowledge is theoretical rather than practical, especially considering you’re a different species than the one I spent most of my years studying, but I’ll answer any questions to the best of my ability, and work with you to figure out the best way to handle them.”

“That would be very appreciated,” Aclysia said, giving a curt nod. “Particularly with how to handle them. I have learned to deal with some of the more annoying emotions – boredom, anxiety, and anger seem the most common. John has also helped teach me about positive emotions, which has made my stay here much more enjoyable.”

“He does have a habit of doing that.” Lerianna smirked as one hand idly rubbed at the suppressor on her ear.

“But I am still learning new things every day. For instance, there is one emotion I have been feeling that I believe I learned how to express, but I haven’t been able to find an appropriate time to share it. I have also never done something like this before, so I am somewhat uncertain if I will be able to perform adequately.”

“Alright…” Lerianna’s eyebrow quirked up at the strange phrasing, but she chalked it up to Aclysia’s rather alien thought processes. “So you want to share your feelings with someone. That’s perfectly normal. Depending on how serious the matter is, usually those kind of conversations are best to have in private, but depending on exactly who it is, they may not mind if you just bring it up. Before we talk about expressing it, why don’t we start with the basic emotion itself. What’s the emotion, and who were you wanting to have this conversation with?"

“I’m not sure exactly which name is appropriate for this feeling – it feels like a form of happiness, but different from the kind I feel when I go on walks with Creator John, or when I assist Yvara with her work around the house. Creator John taught me many words for happiness, and I read many more in the books that Yvara shared with me. I was hoping to share this happiness with him, and learn more in how he returns it. He has been rather busy as of late, though, and I haven’t wanted to disturb him,” Aclysia explained, just a touch of a frown spreading across her cheeks. “I was going to speak to him at night when he is often alone, but I believe he has been occupied quite frequently as of late.”

“Yeah, that bastard, he’s kept himself occupied by filling every hole in this house but mine,” Lerianna grumbled mentally, angrily chewing on the end of her pen, nearly hard enough to dent the metal. “Never a moment’s peace. Can’t even have a damn shower around here anymore...”

“A… shower?”

“Ah- uh, just thinking out loud,” Lerianna blurted out, cursing herself for letting that slip out. She found her hand darting to her head again out of instinct; with another twist of the suppressor, she managed to straighten out her thoughts enough to continue before Aclysia could ask further questions.

“Well, John is pretty good about… making time for others… but I know it can be frustrating when you want to tell someone something but can’t find the right time and place. But happiness isn’t really something you have to keep private, especially from John. Are you sure you can’t just talk with John about it the next time you see him?”

Despite her reassurances, Aclysia quickly shook her head. “No, I believe this is a matter that I must resolve with John in private. It seems to make others uncomfortable. I attempted to speak with Yvara of these feelings and she became… unresponsive.”

“...Okay, that’s… a strange way of putting it,” Lerianna murmured. She leaned forward in the chair, something about the way that Aclysia had spoken making her feel almost on edge. Lerianna rested her elbow on the edge of the chair’s arm, and tucked her chin against her clenched fist. “Aclysia, this… ‘happiness’ that you’re feeling…”

“...No, don’t be ridiculous. She was a statue a few days ago. She couldn’t possibly...”

“...does it make you feel warm? Warmer than normal happiness?”

“Oh, yes, very!” Aclysia said, smiling. “So you do know which emotion I’m feeling?”

“Sweet Gaia, I hope not.”

“And… where is this warmth centered, usually? If you had to pick a spot on your body?”

Aclysia’s hand traveled uncertainly across her body, flickering up toward the bottom of her rib cage, then down toward her legs. Lerianna’s ears twitched in anticipation as Aclysia’s hand finally settled on her pelvic region, just a few centimeters above the gap between her legs.

“Somewhere around here? It is not somewhere these feelings often come from,” Aclysia murmured. “Yvara’s books had many names for it.”

“Yvara… what the hell have you been- maybe I should- no! Maybe it’s not that, maybe it’s… fuck, I don’t know, something else!”

“Aclysia, I think we may be having a misunderstanding here,” Lerianna said, a **** smile cracking across her face like a lightning bolt. “How were you planning on expressing this emotion to John, exactly?”

“Oh, well, the book outlined a common way to express one’s gratefulness and joy, and gave very clear instructions on how to perform the ritual.”

Lerianna wanted to burst out laughing at her own mistake. “Ah, ahah! I knew it, probably just some weird ritual of Yvara’s, or maybe something totally normal that got written down in an archaic way. She probably wants me to teach her something silly, like how to shake hands, or-”

“I’m going to place Creator John’s cock in my mouth and suckle upon it until I taste his heavenly delight.”