Where are you? Where have you gone without me? I thought you cared about me

“Amelia!”

Amelia turned around to see Sylvia coming down the hallway with a big, cheesy smile on her face. The older woman adjusted her glasses and straightened up.

“Sylvia. What?” Amelia asked brusquely. It was supposed to be a “How can I help you?” but as usual Amelia was light with words. Sylvia would probably get the meaning, though, right?

Well, either way…

“Do you know where Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin is?” Sylvia questioned. “I’ve been looking for her. Wanted to get dinner together, since I haven’t seen her all day. You two have spent a lot of time together recently, so I just figured…”

“As her teacher, that is my obligation,” Amelia pointed out bluntly. She shook her head. “Beyond that, I leave her alone.”

What Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin did with her time after Amelia’s tutoring sessions, that was none of her business. And all the better- they’d reached a plateau in their lessons where the assassin was no longer learning things at as fast of a pace. That was fine, though; to be expected. Amelia wasn’t at all surprised that her learning would fall off in that regard. Everyone reached a point where they would have to put considerable effort into improving, and Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin had very limited motivation in terms of her studies.

Sylvia looked disappointed. “Aww, oh well… I was hoping that you two would be off doing something together, that way we could all hang out! Maybe some other time.”

“…Maybe,” Amelia replied noncommittally. She adjusted her glasses. In the back of her mind, she wasn’t all that concerned; if anything, she enjoyed her privacy.

“I wonder where she is?” Sylvia wondered, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “It’s always so hard to figure out what that girl is thinking…”

Amelia nodded slowly. “Yes, it is,” she agreed.

Still, even though Amelia did not care that much herself, she found that Sylvia’s concerns were actually quite valid.

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin was not in a very good mood at the moment. Sylvia and Amelia were correct to be concerned. The trained killer paced back and forth down the street of the Shopping District, her eyes sharply focused on a single shop that she was circling like a shark hunting its prey.

The boutique Kim worked at was empty; where normally the short-haired shopgirl would be leaning over the cash register, bored and chagrined, it was just the faerie who owned the place working right now.

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin ground her teeth together in frustration and picked up the speed of her pacing, radiating an aura of irritation and impatience. The last dregs of her ice cream cone were dripping onto her glove, and she bit down hard into it, crushing the remains between her teeth and then licking off the drops.

She was already hungry again, so she went to get more ice cream. Wherever Kim was, it was clear she wasn’t here, and it was getting late; she probably wouldn’t be coming here at all today.

So where was she?

The assassin was determined to find out, sulking the whole time as she stomped down the street impatiently.

To answer the question of where Kim was…

“No, I’m not interested in a solid gold toilet bowl,” Kim said, rolling her eyes and making a distasteful grunt in the back of her throat. “Why the hell do you think I would care about something like that, Little Miss?”

“I don’t know! It’s not like it’s our best seller or anything,” Little Miss said, rolling her eyes. Whatever frustration she might have been feeling due to Kim’s pickiness was impossible to notice in her behavior; she seemed completely detached, taking everything the other woman had to say in stride.

She fluttered her eyelashes with a teasing smile on her lips, and shrugged. “I just thought that maybe you’d like something shiny?”

“I’m not all that into gold,” Kim said.

“Really?” Little Miss took out an envelope and showed Kim a picture. “Because that’s not what I saw here…”

Kim’s jaw dropped when she saw the photograph of herself in a swimsuit.

“Where… where did you get that?!” She sputtered, her eyes bulging out of her skull in shock.

Little Miss shrugged. “Your host gave me access to some of the cameras on her season,” she explained. “Told me that it might be helpful for making a sale! Seems to be working, too, hehehe,” she giggled, rolling back and forth on her heels.

Kim made a distasteful expression and shook her head. That was just what she DIDN’T want to hear from the strange pink-haired shopkeeper.

“And then there’s this one, that costume looks a little gold to me, don’t you think?” Little Miss showed Kim another photo, of her in a belly dancer outfit.

“I just wore that for Nick’s sake,” Kim said, her face getting red as she grabbed the picture out of Little Miss’s hand and quickly tore it up into a bunch of tiny little shreds. “You’re completely misreading the situation!”

Little Miss blinked, then rolled her eyes. A second later a copy of the photo reappeared in her hand and she slipped it back into the envelope. “Whatever you say,” she scoffed, shaking her head. “Anyway, moving on… your feathers are pretty gold in this photo, don’t you think?”

The next picture she showed Kim was of the short-haired girl transformed into a rooster during Gina’s first party.

“OH COME ON!” Kim groaned, rolling her eyes and slapping her face in agitation. “That’s not gold at all, those are feathers! Like I could freaking control that!”

Little Miss shrugged and put away the picture. “Look, I’m just saying-”

“Yeah, well, don’t,” Kim interrupted her, shaking her head. That was the last thing she wanted to be hearing right now. She made a leering expression at the smirking woman.

“Didn’t you dress up as a pirate that one time?” Little Miss asked. “Because pirates really love gold, so I mean-”

Kim crossed her arms over her chest and fumed. This was really starting to not be funny.

Sensing the change in the girl’s demeanor, Little Miss held up her hands in surrender. “Okay, one last pic, then that’ll be all,” she said, choosing not to leave well enough alone. This woman had very poor survival instincts it seemed… or maybe it didn’t matter because Kim couldn’t exactly do anything to her anyway, now that she thought about it.

Impotent to stop the shopkeeper, Kim could only leer at her as Little Miss pulled out another photograph of Kim dressed up as… a bunny girl!?

Kim’s jaw dropped as she looked at the photograph. “What, that… what even IS this?!” She sputtered in confusion. For the life of her, Kim couldn’t remember ever taking a picture like this one before.

“Oh, I thought you might have that reaction,” Little Miss tittered. “This one, it’s not exactly canon, you see…”

“Canon?” Kim looked at her, ears twitching at the implication. She narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean by that?” She questioned.

Little Miss shrugged. “Well, it’s like this, see, you’ve got the canon stuff, that’s what happens on your show, right? But then there’s the non-canon stuff.”

“How is any part of my life ‘non-canon’?” Kim asked. That was the part that didn’t make any sense to her. “It’s MY life! Are you saying I dressed up as a bunny girl one time, and that… what, it didn’t even happen?”

Her head was starting to hurt. This was the kind of stuff an author like Nick should be handling, or someone with a lot of exposure to more fantastical media like Dani or Morgana. Even Dawn’s brainpower would be better suited for processing what Kim was currently dealing with, but as for Kim herself?

She didn’t even watch TV. She understood the vague idea that “canon” was what it meant when something actually happened in a show, and “non-canon” was the stuff that didn’t actually happen, like fanfiction (thank you Morgana for that twenty page thesis when Kim had just casually asked over dinner that one time about what the point of fanfiction even was) but that was for, like, fictional shit.

Kim was a human person, not some fictional character. What sort of sick, twisted human being would create a character who spent her whole life working meaningless, tedious jobs for no money and suffered day in and day out only to come to an island paradise and still have to work four hours a day in a dead-end job?

Anyone who would create a character like that was a twisted individual to say the least. No, Kim’s terrible circumstances were the result of Dakota, Sylvia, and those producers.

“Maybe this is all a bit too metaphysical for you…” Little Miss said, tapping her chin. “If you want, you can buy some extra intelligence…”

“No, no thank you, I’m fine,” Kim said, holding up her hand. That just sounded all sorts of levels of wrong and demented. She shook her head. “I just… am having a little bit of trouble processing the whole ‘non-canon’ part.”

Little Miss laughed. “Ahahaha, don’t worry about that!” She chirped. “It’s way more complicated than you think it is! Your brain would probably pop like a watermelon if you thought too hard about it!”

Well gee, that was a pleasant visual. Kim grimaced, and shivered a little, shaking her head.

“Right… whatever…”

“It’s like Mary’s wedding,” Little Miss tried to explain. “You know, how the hosts came over to have some fun with you guys and join in the celebration?”

“Yeah, I do,” Kim said, shivering again as she recalled those strange people. Several of them still disturbed her. “Wait, you weren’t there, were you?” She squinted suspiciously at Little Miss, who just laughed and waved her hand dismissively.

“Oh, no, no way,” Little Miss said, shaking her head. “But who do you think catered the whole thing? Sylvia really paid top dollar for my services.”

She flashed a big, toothy smile and Kim didn’t really know how to answer that.

“…Of course, now Dakota’s back in charge. New boss, old boss, everyone’s a patron of course,” Little Miss hummed, not at all invested in the change of hosts or the power struggles of the season. It had nothing to do with her, after all.

“So you’re saying that stuff was ‘non-canon’ or whatever?” Kim asked.

“It was canon for YOU guys,” Little Miss explained. “But for the other shows? It’s sort of like a funny wink to the audience. Yeah, sure, it happened, but if it isn’t mentioned on those shows then it’s like it didn’t really happen, you know?”

Kim stared blankly at her.

Little Miss scrunched up her forehead and frowned. “On the other hand, maybe not… …Oh well, not important anyway. That was just a fun event, you know, a little wink to the audience, I wouldn’t worry about it.”

She put away the bunny girl photograph, leaving Kim with more questions than answers.

“…Can I go home yet?” Kim posed one of those questions.

Little Miss just giggled. “Nononono, we’ve got WAY more fun stuff to get to!” She chirped, causing Kim to sigh as the beginning of a headache crept up on her.

She hoped that everyone back on the island was having fun, at least, because she definitely wasn’t.

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin had gotten more ice cream. But still no Kim. She returned to take a quick peek into the boutique, and seeing that her friend still wasn’t there, set her sights on finding out what had happened to her.

She stomped down the street on her way back to the hotel, licking furiously at her ice cream cone as she did.

“So in summary,” Sylvia said, adjusting her glasses as she aimed a pointer at a whiteboard she’d rolled into the lounge for Amelia’s benefit, “that’s why I need to find Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin! I feel that if there are any other contestants still left who will let me upgrade one of their transformations, she would be one of them!”

She scrunched the retractable pointer together and posed for the teacher with a dazzling smile. “Are there any questions?”

Amelia just stared at her.

“…Where did you get those glasses?” She asked, finding the perfect question to indicate how little she cared about Sylvia’s little presentation.

Sylvia grinned. “Do you like them?” She struck a pose that reminded her of Dawn, all clever and shit with one hand holding her glasses and the other holding her chin like some great intellectual. “I’ve actually had them for quite a long time! All the way back to when I was pretending to be Daddy’s therapist. Of course, it’s not like I actually need them, but they sure are sexy, right?”

Amelia still didn’t respond. She just maintained that judgmental stare that led to Sylvia squirming, feeling a little uncomfortable.

“Umm… uh… any other thoughts?” She asked, still trying to maintain a pleasant smile.

“…You realize that forging a medical degree and pretending to be a therapist are crimes in the United States, correct?” Amelia pointed out.

Sylvia sagged like a deflated balloon while inflating her cheeks with air at the same time. “Yeah, well, so’s ****, but I still did that!” She complained like a petulant child, as if that somehow raised her estimation in Amelia’s eyes.

The older woman just sighed. She took off her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose, shaking her head.

Then she got up off the couch and walked over to the younger girl, and lightly flicked her on the nose.

“Ow!” Sylvia covered her face and stumbled back. “Hey, that hurt!”

Amelia looked somewhat embarrassed. “…I apologize,” she murmured, her cheeks getting a faint bit of color in them. “It was my transformation…”

“Oh?” Sylvia blinked, intrigued. “You mean Let’s Get Physical? Interesting…” She tapped her chin as she considered that proposition.

Amelia wasn’t quite certain that was the case, of course, but it was a theory that explained her behavior. The only one she could actually come up with, in fact. After all, Amelia seldom used physical chastisement, even at her worst; the one exception being when she’d purchased that riding crop, which now sat unused in whatever pocket dimension Dakota stored it in.

“Then that means, you flicked my nose because you like me!” Sylvia giggled, her eyes sparkling with delight. “It only stung a little, don’t worry!”

Amelia raised her eyebrow quizzically, not sure if that actually was the case. But as she thought about the situation…

“Is that so?” She asked.

Sylvia nodded. “Remember the wording of your transformation?” She asked, pulling up a screen to display Amelia’s transformation text.

• Let’s Get Physical: Amelia has always had a difficult time expressing herself with her words. In order to prevent further misunderstandings with her loved ones, her counselor has encouraged her to be more physically affectionate. Now her natural impulse will be to express her affection for other people through physical contact, which will escalate depending on the level of affection. [NOTE: Can range from handshakes, headpats, hugs, kisses on the cheek, to anything shy of actual sexual intercourse.] (Ice Queen)

Amelia’s lips pinched into a tight frown. “…I see.”

“It’s all right there!” Sylvia crowed, not realizing that Amelia’s brusque response to reading the text of her transformation was actually an attempt to drop the topic entirely and not encouragement for her to continue discussing it. “See, it says right here, ‘encouraged you to be more physically affectionate’ and ‘express your affection for other people through physical contact’! See? Isn’t that just what happened, then?”

If flicking someone’s nose was a gesture of physical affection…

“…I cannot dispute your hypothesis,” Amelia conceded, shaking her head. Whether she liked it or not, Sylvia raised a very valid point about the transformation. If Amelia flicked her nose because of the transformation, then it would have to be a gesture of physical affection, no?

There wasn’t really any other way to explain it.

“…That does not make it correct,” Amelia said, shaking her head. “Expressing physical affection in that manner is not acceptable.”

Sylvia blinked. “Eh? Why not?”

“Physical **** is not permitted by an adult, let alone a parent.” That was as obvious as it could be, but not to Sylvia, apparently.

The former host frowned. “You’re being too strict,” she said with a sigh, rolling her eyes. She slumped her shoulders. “That wasn’t physical ****! It was just some light teasing, okay? Don’t worry about it!”

She flashed a cheery smile. “You’re too serious all the time, Amelia! You need to loosen up a little! It would really help your relationship with Daddy!”

Amelia blinked. “…Excuse me?”

“You want to get along better with Daddy, right?” Sylvia pressed. “Well, if you’re less stolid, stodgy Amelia, and you let your hair down and smile a little, be more lighthearted and fun, then you and Daddy will be all smiles! That’s what you want, right?”

Amelia relaxed slightly. So Sylvia wasn’t talking about that kind of relationship. That was a relief at least. She didn’t want to have that conversation with the other girl.

“Anyway, I would know better than anyone,” Sylvia said, posing proudly. “I was based on you, after all!”

Amelia blinked. “…Excuse me?”

Sylvia placed her hand over her chest and puffed herself up proudly. “When Dakota created me, she did so appealing to all of Daddy’s tastes! I was supposed to be the beautiful and seductive blonde with a European accent. Based on his feelings for you, of course! Even back then, Dakota realized the depth of the feelings Daddy had for you.”

Amelia wasn’t sure she wanted to hear that. But her eyes immediately flickered down to Sylvia’s chest, in spite of her best efforts.

“…Oh, yeah, back then, she gave me bigger breasts,” Sylvia clarified quickly. “Because Daddy likes buxom ladies. No offense.”

Amelia’s eye twitched. As if she would take offense to that.

“…I appreciate your candor,” she said slowly. “But I believe it would be best if we change the topic.”

This was the last thing she wanted to think about right now.

Sylvia could see that. She tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Hmmm… hm hm hm… well… I do care about you, Amelia, and that’s why… how about this?”

She pressed her hands together and tilted her head to the side cheerfully. “Let’s talk about how your relationship with Daddy can improve, shall we? Or maybe we could talk about upgrading one of your transformations?”

Neither proposal seemed all that appealing to the teacher.