Old friends, new pleasures

You walked back into your cottage, leaving Hala and Emilia to look out over the two nearby cities.

What were you going to do? You'd undertaken your project, which had so swiftly come to its culmination, in order to protect your own existence and autonomy from those who would seek to **** you, in order to protect your uniqueness against those who would look to copy you.

And you had it. You had absolute freedom to do as you wished. There was nothing and nobody who could deny your will. You could reshape all of existence to suit your every fleeting whim and leave nobody the wiser.

But really, all you wanted was to be left alone. It's why you'd made the cottage in a remote location, a place that people would be subtly influenced not to approach. You found that you preferred peace and solitude to activity, engaging with the world at large only as necessary and only on your terms despite being in perfect control of every aspect of it.

Of course, it was precisely that control which allowed you to live your desired life.

You looked up at the sound of soft footsteps, just in time to see the other two women sit down in the other armchairs. You said nothing.

"Mistress?" Hala asked, a bit of hesitancy in her voice.

You brought your head up to meet the genie's eyes. "You don't need to call me that any more, Hala."

"I know. But somehow it feels more right now than it did before, even if it might have been more pertinent then."

You looked at Emilia.

"I'm not about to say any of that, Juno. You can do what you please." Her look was almost challenging, as if she were daring you to **** her to say it.

"Hala, I don't ever want to hear you call me that again."

"Yes, Juno." There was no hesitation as the genie addressed you directly by name, no twist to the words as there had been upon her initial introduction so short a time ago.

"So what are you going to do?" Emilia asked. It was clear that she was tired, that she didn't really care what you did. You didn't blame her. As she'd said, by your actions you had destroyed everything she held dear. Her freedom, gone. Her life's work, irrelevant. Her intended fate, unattainable.

"Live my life," you said simply.

"And all of ours," Emilia said bitterly. But her anger was as much at herself as at you.

"Was the illusion of free will so comforting?"

Emilia's movement of her head was neither agreement nor denial.

"I am going to leave you with a gift," you told her.

"One which I can't refuse," the researcher said sardonically.

"One which you can refuse to use," you clarified. "It will be your decision."

"As much as anything is my decision."

You shrugged. Emilia wasn't wrong, but attempting to argue the point would just go in circles. "I am going to give you back what was taken from you." You took a deep breath. "What I was partly responsible for taking from you."

That made Emilia King's head snap up sharply.

"It's not for me to say fully what happened, Emilia, all that time ago, but I had some sort of hand in it. And I can't undo it; to do so would be my own undoing, and the broader consequences are unimaginably unpredictable. But in this timeline, it's gone now."

"You mean--"

"I can give you back what it took from you, Emilia. Your life, your vitality, your health."

You didn't give her any time to respond, to express excitement or to argue you out of it. You simply ordered that her ravaged body's aging reverse itself, her old injuries be as if they had never occurred, made her what she would have been had it not been for those events.

The woman who shortly sat before you was not a vision of beauty. But neither did she bear any signs of the constant injury and illness that had haunted Emilia King her entire life. Her mind was as sharp as ever. This was Emilia King as she should have been, in a universe that was fair and in which incomprehensible forces did not stalk her family line.

Hala looked at you. Her thoughts were, even more than those of other beings, completely open to you. She had not expected such actions. She had thought that you would use your nature to indulge selfish whims.

You might still, you admitted to yourself. After all, your whims were universal will. What you did was inherently right. You could not help but be self-centred because there was nothing in existence that was not you, so long as you stayed within the timeline that had led to your coming into being. Outside of that, you would still have vast, nearly-unchallengeable power, but you would not so fully encompass reality itself as you did here.

"I have a gift for you as well, Hala," you told her.

The genie merely nodded.

You produced her lamp, held it out, presented it to Emilia.

"You know this is entirely symbolic, Juno. It changes nothing," Hala said.

"Hala, you will be Emilia's genie," you told her. "She is the one who should have had you, even if only for one purpose; now you will satisfy her wishes."

"Within tightly prescribed limits, I imagine." Emilia's mouth twisted, but she took the lamp.

"Hala will know instinctively what limits she must obey. But she is the Empress of all djinni, Emilia, and while her full power will not be at your disposal, and you cannot make the wish we all three know you most deeply desire, perhaps you can consider this some small recompense for that possibility being forever foreclosed to you."

Emilia shook her head slightly. "I will think on it, Juno," she promised.

Hala stood, made as if to genuflect. But a slight shake of Emilia's head forestalled the djinn, and the woman stood, whispered in Hala's ear, and the pair vanished.

That done, you focused again, and, with your power firmly consolidated, released some part of what you'd taken in doing so. Its use was still tightly limited. It would not permit mass commercialisation of the supernatural on Earth until humanity was truly ready; it would not permit fleets of warships seeking to commit instant extermination on planets with no hope of resistance. Hideki and Yabusa both would find substantially more commercial success in their traditional lines of business than in anything to do with what had produced you.

There was one person you hadn't properly thanked, hadn't acknowledged at all, really. The last time you'd seen her, you lied about what Emily Lockard would be doing, but she deserved better than that. She had been Emily's oldest and closest friend, and some of her work had directly contributed to the final stages of Hideki's contributions to Project Inside Out. Without her, you wouldn't exist, and you owed it to her to let her know.

Reality reweaved itself around you, snapping back into form with you standing at the front entrance to Kazumi Ishida's apartment building, looking for all the world like the human at the centre of your infinite gestalt.

--

"Back so soon from Italy?" Kazumi asked as she opened the door for you. "Couldn't miss game night even being an ocean away, could you."

"Top-secret project," you said, not exactly lying. "Comes with a lot of perks." That was an understatement.

"I bet." Kazumi flopped down on her couch, tossing a Snap controller at you. "I've been playing some Hyperspace Galactic of late. Pick your track, I can beat you. Especially if you're shaking off a week's worth of rust. They probably keep you too busy to do anything but work and sleep."

"Takes more than a week to dull my reflexes," you retorted, but then put the controller down and looked at Kazumi.

"What's up, Emmy?" she asked. "Don't just give me your 'serious talk' face and not say anything."

"Zumi, I, uh," you said, hesitating. Inwardly you shook your head at yourself. You controlled all of existence but got tongue-tied admitting to having made a convenient lie to the best friend of a part of you who didn't even properly exist any more. You didn't want Kazumi to think poorly of you.

Better to just get it over with. "Zumi, I lied when I said I was going to Italy."

Kazumi was silent for a moment. You held yourself back from simply knowing what she was thinking, blocking the knowledge from your conscious mind.

"Ha!" she exclaimed. "I knew it!"

That wasn't a reaction you had been expecting.

"I knew it!" she repeated. "Word gets through the grapevine that Emily Lockard is suddenly working with Zoe Hildebrand and Chloe Walker. Those two vanish and Emily's going to Italy? Nah, there was something else going on there. Obviously."

"You knew I'd lied?"

"Course I did. Like I said, obvious." Kazumi had always been extremely intuitive and perceptive. "You didn't say anything at the time because you didn't know who, if anyone, you could tell the real truth to, but clearly not everyone at that party could know. But I figured you'd tell me sooner or later if you could."

"And what do you think happened?"

"Personally? I think it had something to do with that new Assistant Director. What was her name, Juno Terra? Terminate? Ternitz?"

"Ternion," you supplied.

"Right, that was it. Funny name. And getting promoted to Assistant Director right away? Nah, something stank to high heaven about that. I figured you were involved somehow, not entirely sure what."

Assistant Director. That title seemed so meaningless, so unimportant now. But it sparked a memory, an old debt you'd have to repay.

"If you wrong us, shall we not ****?" you said, very quietly.

"What, Emmy?" Kazumi asked.

"Nothing. Anyway, you're sort of right."

"What do you mean?"

A small demonstration was clearly in order. Using only your bodysuit and slime, you shifted your appearance from Emily Lockard to the form you'd chosen for Juno Ternion.

"What the hell?" Kazumi scooted backward on the couch. "Aren't you... Juno? What did you do with Emmy?"

"She's still in here," you said. "Look, Kazumi," you went on, knowing the woman wouldn't be comfortable hearing her diminutive come from your face, "let me explain. Yes, I'm Juno Ternion. But Emily Lockard is a part of me. I know everything she knows. I remember everything you and she shared, everything you did together." You shrugged. "It's something I'd like to do again, if you'd let me. But let me explain, and if you never want to see me again, I'll understand."

Kazumi's eyes searched yours, and after a brief moment she nodded.

So you told her the story, how Zoe, Chloe and Emily had merged into a single being, how Tina and Lina had joined them. How Hideki had sought to use you, how the military had sought to use you. How you'd outdone all of them and become who you were now.

"That was you?" she asked once you were done, not having interrupted at all. "I felt something just a little while ago, as if everything I knew was suddenly different, but there wasn't anything that seemed to have changed."

"That was me," you confirmed.

Kazumi was silent for a long moment. "You're still Emmy, though, right?"

"Some part of me is. I can't just be her again, but I can look like her, act like her even, to an extent. But it's still me inside."

Kazumi stood up. "I need a stiff drink," she declared, walking toward her liquor cabinet. "We can still get drunk, right?"

You nodded. "How drunk do you want to get?"

"Three sheets to the wind."

Kazumi took out a glass, poured herself a shot of tequila, neat, and threw it back in one swallow. Another few shots later and the **** was clearly having an effect.

"Emmy, Juno, wh'ever," she said, making her way back to the couch with bottle in hand, flopping down, "there's shomethin' I ne'er told ya. Guesh it don't really matter now so what the hell." She took a drink straight from the bottle. "Emmy, I love ya. Don't matter if you're you or you're Juno or you're fuckin' God Almighty, I love ya."

Kazumi clearly did not have much experience getting drunk if she was professing her love for her old friend that quickly.

You shifted back to Emily. Kazumi smiled crookedly. "Zumi, I... I never really knew how to tell you, but, well, I love you, too. Always have." You took the bottle gently out of her hand, set it on a low table, picked up Kazumi's relaxed body. "If there's one person I want to spend eternity with, it's you."

You kissed her, and even through her drunken haze she returned it. The kiss was passionate, heartfelt, the kiss of long-denied love, the kiss of love thought lost forever. You had total control over everything, and yet you realized in that moment that the one thing you couldn't change was your unreserved love for Kazumi Ishida.

And you wouldn't have had it any other way.

After a while, you laid Kazumi down on the couch and restored her sobriety.

"Emmy!" she exclaimed, her memory of what she'd just done intact. "I... I..."

"It's all right, Zumi," you said, sitting down, lying her head in your lap. "I love you, too. Emily loves you, Zumi." You shifted to Juno. "Juno loves you." You started to alter Kazumi not merely at a subatomic level, but at a far deeper, more fundamental level, at the level of pure consciousness, pure existence, making her a companion truly fit for you. "God loves you, Zumi." You leaned down and kissed her forehead.

"Did you do something?" she asked, looking up at you.

"I am reality, Kazumi. I decide its rules, its laws." You stroked her hair. "And I decided that it's a law of reality that you exist, Kazumi. Nothing can take you from me, or me from you. No matter what happens, I want you with me."

"No matter what happens, there's no place I'd rather be than with you, Emmy. You don't mind if I call you Emmy, do you?"

You smiled with the new face you'd chosen for your new self. "You can call me whatever you want, Zumi." You shifted back to Emily.

"Good, because I'm gonna be coming up with a bunch of pet names for you, Junie. Just as soon as I think of them."

You picked up her left hand, mimed sliding a ring onto her fourth finger. When you withdrew your hand, a patch of her skin was golden.

"Emmy, what?" Kazumi said. You knew what she was feeling.

"A gift, Zumi."

"You would share this much?"

You smiled, a touch of sadness in it. "It's really not sharing anything at all," you admitted. "You still can't do anything that would go against my wishes. Having become what I am, I can't abrogate it without destroying all that is. So this is all I can do for you."

"It's more than I could ever have asked for, Zozo." You smacked her lightly. "Now put the powers down and let me kick your ass at racing. You haven't had the time to keep in practice."

After a few hours in which, racing fairly, Kazumi did in fact kick your ass roundly, she turned off the Snap. "I hope you didn't have plans for tonight," she said, cuddling up against you, running a finger down your thigh, knowing she was effectively touching your naked body.

"I have a thing or two in mind for tomorrow," you admitted.

"Let tomorrow come when you want it to come. Tonight I want to celebrate a new chapter in our lives."

"I'd like that too, Zumi," you said, picking her up and carrying her to her suddenly-enlarged bed.

--

Author's note: Well, looks like I figured out something to add after all.