[REND] B3. 2.1 - Poking Pino

We moved to the small space in front of the couch. I sat down, unwrapping the bandage around my right hand; I had told my law classmates that I had an accident in the kitchen. It raised people’s impression of me, while making a nifty and literal cover story for my growths. Now, people thought that I was a capable cook, handling big knives and such, while also being quite badass, not minding a gash across my palm.

That story will have to do for now. I’d need to come up with something when my ‘wound’ should have healed. Hopefully, we could get more pills because the changes had spread all over my palm and even to the back of my hand. Makeup and pimple patches weren’t doing it. In fact, they’d draw more attention to my hand than away. If I started to wear gloves, I should have an excuse for it.

“It’s so beautiful…” Deen whispered, watching ribbons of golden liquid spiral out of the crystals on my hand. She reached out, stopping when her fingers were half an inch from touching the liquid. “Is it alright to touch it?”

“I’d seriously advise against that,” I said, remembering when Deen wanted to touch her Guardian Angel even if the latter repeatedly told her not to do it. “Is your Guardian Angel not warning you?”

Deen sheepishly grinned. “Actually, yes.”

“It might cause your seeding,” Myra said. “Some other shit. It may sound weird coming from me, but don’t risk it even if this liquid looks cool. Ah, it’s changing colors.”

The floating blob turned to silver as it formed into a full-face mask, in contrast to the Blanchette mask that covered only the lower half of my face. The mask was shiny chrome that reflected the faces of the three other Bs leaning down to examine it. Deen tried to touch it again, only to pull herself back. This girl was a danger to herself when near shiny things.

“Whose face is that modeled after?” Kelsey asked. “Beautiful, like an ancient Greek sculpture.”

“Or a mannequin at a department store,” I said. “Can’t recall seeing anyone who looked like this, though I’m not good with faces. I know powers are supposed to be influenced by my personality, past, or whatever, but I really don’t know.”

“Your mask has no eyeholes,” Myra said. “What’s that supposed to mean? You don’t need to see because you connect with people’s minds?”

“Oh, I can see.” I pointed at the symbol in the middle of the mask’s forehead, crudely drawn in red paint.

“A third eye…” Deen said.

“Why was it drawn that way?” Kelsey asked. “Isn’t this supposed to be—? Oh, there is it.”

A line of glowing gold bisected the eye. The two sides of the drawn eye parted to reveal an actual eye with a golden iris. The eye looked at Deen, Myra, and Kelsey in turn, stopping for several seconds for each of them. It then erratically darted around as if having a seizure.

“Oh my gosh!” Deen turned away. “That looks extra creepy.”

“What does a third eye mean?” Myra wondered.

“Erind sees the world in a different light compared to the rest of us,” Kelsey said. “Perhaps her introverted nature—”

“You don’t need to analyze every bit of my power,” I said. “I can see with this weird eye, plus some other things. Let’s focus on figuring out how my powers work, not what they mean.” I was being put into the limelight again, and I also hated citrus! I didn’t eat lemon bars and so on, unless they were covered with sugar.

“I don’t know much about you to interpret your powers,” Myra said. “How about the linking thing, then? What’s the explanation for it?” They were just going to ignore what I said and continue psychoanalyzing me. This was both annoying and dangerous.

“It makes perfect sense that it’s Erind’s ability,” Deen said.

“It does?” I readied myself for Deen’s crazy theory about me.

“You’re an introvert, Erind,” Deen began. “But it doesn’t mean that you don’t want to be sociable. To connect with others, to share your thoughts, and to be understood by people. It’s a normal human desire, but yours is amplified because you’re very quiet and subdued. This is the manifestation of your yearning.”

Don’t make up stories about me, you bitch, I thought, irritated by the slander. I wasn’t fucking yearning for a connection. I was perfectly happy in my own head, talking to the most entertaining person in the world—me.

Well, Spooky Erind was present, too.

My theory was that I had this linking ability because I wanted to influence other people, and the best way to do that was to be literally inside their minds. I could even feel their emotions if they weren’t guarded enough. Not to mention that I could impose my will and control their bodies to some extent. Yep, they could resist me, which Deen did before she realized it was me, but that was part of the fun.

Having automatic mind and body control would be more convenient. And boring. A little bit of resistance spiced up domination. That sounded wrong.  

“Makes sense,” Myra said. “But what is the meaning of—?”

“I’m going to transform now!” I fixed the mask on my face.

I opened my eyes. I now stood in front of the couch. The other Bs stepped back to give me space. I was around the same height as Myra and slightly shorter than Deen. A greenish hue covered Deen and Myra, while gold covered the towering Kelsey. Looking down, I examined my slender mannequin body covered in chrome.

“Yo-you just popped out of freaking nowhere!” Myra exclaimed.

“It isn’t a transformation…” Kelsey said, leaning to the side to peer at my original body behind me. “Compared to your Blanchette one. And we still don’t know why there’s a difference.” I didn’t tell Kelsey that even my Blanchette form wasn’t a transformation.

My cute Erind self sat lifeless on the couch, a gray tinge highlighting her form in my vision. Deen sat beside my original body and checked its pulse. Then she listened for any breathing while placing her hand on its chest to feel any heartbeat.

“Deen, don’t worry,” I said in my metallic voice. “You’ve seen this before. You know that my body is fine. It’s just that, I dunno, my soul left it or something.” Funny that I seemed to actually have a soul.

“Aren’t you the least bit worried when you transfer bodies?” Deen asked, putting her hand on my Erind body’s forehead as if feeling for a fever.

“Like not being able to return? Not really,” I said. “I know I’ll be able to go back to my body once I take off my mask. It’s the in-between part—keeping my original body safe and taking off my mask—that’s the concern. I hope that all of you will help me with that.” This was another benefit of having the other Bs around.

“Right, right,” Myra said. “You couldn’t take off your mask last time when your body was broken apart. We helped you piece it back.” She knocked on my chest. It didn’t make any sound. “What are you made of?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Doesn’t seem to be metal or anything else. Almost indestructible. At least I haven’t found a way to destroy it. But my joints are horribly weak; you’ve seen how I could easily be disassembled.”

“You could put yourself back together, so there’s that,” Myra said.

“Use Blanchette in fights,” Deen said. “You don’t leave a body behind when turning into Blanchette, don’t you? It’s safer for you. Blanchette is also much stronger than… this form. We need to think about a name for it. Cumbersome to say your mannequin form or metal body.”

“I suppose so,” I said, trying to shrug. My solid torso didn’t allow such movement. “What are your ideas?”

“Perhaps something related to puppetry?” Deen suggested. “You link with people using strings, after all.” I had thought of this angle, but didn’t voice it to avoid drawing attention to the fact that I could really control people.

“Marionette sounds cool,” Myra said. “Puppeteer? Too villainy. Strings, uh, thread something…? Control. Controller? This is difficult.”

“We can combine words,” Kelsey said. “Manipulation plus marionette. Mani… nette? Manette? It goes well with Blanchette.”

“I’d rather not have names hinting at a connection between my forms,” I said. “We should keep their identities separate, not only for our safety, specifically, mine, but we can use them for trickery someday. Like how you didn’t know that I was also Red Hood.”

“That was a super shocker,” Myra said, nodding. “Never in a thousand years would I have expected that. And no one would think that Red Hood and this new Adumbrae—” she gestured at my mannequin body “—are the same. I bet we can trick Dario with it. There’s some plan to be made here.”

“Nonetheless, I think it’ll be great if you can maintain a theme for yourself,” Deen said. “Something that others wouldn’t pick up, but would be significant for you.”

My eye shivered for a moment, my view darting around the room. I was supposed to furrow my brows, but since I didn’t have any, that happened instead. “What kind of theme?”

I expected Deen to hit me with a joke codename because I insisted on calling her Fatalis. It meant ‘fated’ or ‘destined’ in Latin—that was according to the internet; I didn’t know any actual Latin other than the bullshit legal maxims that sounded like magic spells. I could also tease Deen being a femme fatale. She didn’t like that at all, and would get angry whenever I called her ‘Fatalis.’

“Red Hood and Blanchette are connected to the story of Little Red Riding Hood,” said Deen. “Maintain this theme of fairy tales. What’s one with puppets?”

“Pinocchio,” I said, focusing my eye on Deen. “But you already know that—we’ve talked about it when you bought me the Pinocchio key chain. You just want naming rights to my transformations, don’t you?”

Deen winked at me before turning to Myra and Kelsey. “Isn’t Pinocchio a fitting nickname for Erind’s transformation? We can shorten it to Pino.”

“Isn’t he the puppet who turned into a real boy?” Myra wondered. “Yeah, it fits. We have the puppet body and Erind’s real body.”

“I also vote for Pino,” Kelsey said, raising her arm that almost reached the room’s ceiling.

“You can’t vote if there are no other choices,” I grumbled.

“George Washington ran uncontested,” Deen said, patting the head of my real body. “Don’t forget your American history, Erind. Unless you have a better suggestion? You already have a keychain of Pinocchio.”

I sighed. “Fine. Let’s move on to testing. Before linking with Kelsey, I want to try the power I used when we fought the Adumbrae, which trapped us in our minds.” I raised my finger. “Who will I—?”

“Me!” Deen jumped to stand. “I want to feel your power again. Erm, I’ve experienced it before, so you should test it with me. N-no ulterior motives,” she added as Myra and Kelsey stared at her.

“You shouldn’t have said that last line,” I said. Perhaps I could use Deen’s minor addiction to my power someday. Would others be addicted to it too? “Before I link with you, I want to explain about the colors I see with my weird eye. You and Myra are covered with green light. I’m not sure if it means that you have Cores or that you both are, like, regular targets or something. Kelsey is gold—this may signify an Adumbrae.”

“Pretty nifty if you can detect Adumbrae and Corebrings,” Myra said.

“You can try looking outside the window later to see what colors the people on the street have,” Kelsey said. “We’ll just be careful about it.”

“Lastly…” I gestured to my Erind body. “This has a gray color. Maybe because it doesn’t have my soul inside. But I could still shoot it with my thread. I’m not sure how to test—”

“We’ll think about it later,” Deen cut in. “Link with me.”

“Can you hide behind something first? Let’s confirm if I really need a line of sight for this.”

Deen hid behind the bedroom door. I couldn’t shoot. Hiding behind a book or a plate, anything that stopped a direct connection from my finger to Deen, worked the same way. Myra found a roll of food wrap in one of the cupboards. Stretching the plastic sheet in front of Deen, we found out that it could block the linking.

“This is quite the limitation,” I said. “Good thing that we know about it now instead of when we’re fighting.” I lowered my aim and shot at Deen’s hand. My fingertip opened with a subtle hiss. A glowing blue thread shot out and hit Deen’s skin.

(Erind?) Deen messaged me almost right after we connected. Accompanying her word-thought were snippets of emotions. Excitement. Happiness. A sense of closeness.

Weirdo.

(Yep, yep.) I was guarded in my thoughts, but not too much that Deen would think I was hiding something.

I allowed thoughts of curiousity. Some excitement as well; we were best friends connecting with our thoughts. I also added some worries about the side effects of using my powers. Just stuff that Deen would expect from me. I didn’t like this ‘openness’ one bit, but I had to learn more about my powers.

I spoke with my voice to include Myra and Kelsey. “Next, we’ll test the maximum length of the connection. Deen will go out. We’ll keep sending each other thoughts until our link breaks.” Kelsey and I hid out of sight as Myra opened the door for Deen to go to the hallway.

(I’m walking towards the stairs,) Deen said in my mind.

(Walk slowly,) I replied, observing the blue thread that only I could see.

It slotted under the door. From our previous testing, we couldn’t cut this thread. Perhaps even if the most airtight door closed on it, it’d remain intact. But this also meant that the thread was somehow solid in a sense.

“You can try strangling people with it,” Myra said.

“Maybe that can work,” I said, recalling movies with assassins wrapping piano wires around their victims’ throats. Not sure if that could actually work in real life.

Deen reached the stairs and continued going up. She was a third of the hallway of the upper floor when our connection was cut and the blue line disappeared. We waited for Deen to return before continuing our discussions.

“The range isn’t that long,” Deen said. “It affords some safety. You can find a place to hide while we attack.”

“Not too short,” I said. “Not too long.”

“I’m going to channel Reo’s spirit,” Myra said, chuckling. “That’s what she said.”

“Oh, come on, sis,” Kelsey said.

“We can now test pumping me with your power,” Deen said. “I don’t know how to phrase it without it sounding weird.”

“There’s something else I want to test first,” I said. “What would happen if the body part I was connecting to is cut off?”

(Author’s Notes: We continue our refresher and begin the testing of Pino. After this, we’ll have the visit of Erind’s mom. We’ll be pulling some scenes from the Prior Cycle, with changes. We’ll have an ExD chapter after this. Thanks for your support!)