I leapt off the table, gently twirled some people blocking my path out of the way, and hopped up the stairs right after Addy. She was in her full tanuki form, which meant short legs, which meant she wasn’t fast at all. Within seconds I had caught up with her, scooping her up in a six armed hug.

  “Hey. What’s up?” I asked, leading us into an unoccupied room. It was rather big. Whoops, guess this was the master bedroom.

  “Squeak!”

  “The crowd was a bit much, wasn’t it?”

  “Yip…”

  “Yeah, for me too but… I kinda want to go again? Like a rollercoaster, it was… god, did you see the looks on their faces? We were idols there for a moment Addy, idols!”

  Addy transformed back into her human form. “Can’t say I’ll ever enjoy attention as much as you do.”

  “I’ll have a talk with Tanya. Call the whole ‘Badass Tanuki’ thing off. She’s evidently been doing something right, but if you don’t want that kind of online presence then—” I snapped my fingers, “— no more videos.”

  “No! No. This is good. People liking us, trusting us is… efficient.”

  “Because it smooths normal operations, or because we can channel their emotions too?”

  Addy paused. “A bit of both.”

  We stared at eachother for an awkward moment before Addy realized she was straddling my lap. She practically bounced off, face turning a deep crimson as she tried to look anywhere but my face.

  And, well, it wasn’t just embarrassing for her.

  “I, uh, um… So, I got a new notification from the system. Something about sensing collective emotions?”

  Addy looked up. “So, that was enough to open your external channels?”

  “I dunno. I got the option, but I didn’t want to mess with something I don’t understand. Especially since I’ve got an expert right here.” I patted the spot next to me on the generous king-sized bed that looked like it had never been used a single time in its life. Smelled like it too.

  After a pause, Addy hopped on next to me. “It happens to every Custodian that gets far enough at some point. Controlling the emotions you feel is already hard enough, but getting a room of people to feel the same way you do is a million times more challenging. And you need a room full of people at least; external channeling is roughly one percent as effective as internal channeling. Getting the prompt, resonating with a crowd of people… it’s an achievement. Some Custodians feel like you aren’t truly a Custodian if you haven’t managed it yet.”

  “An elitist initiation ritual? Pfff. Sounds just like my junior year in college.” With two hands I leaned back on the bedding and stared at the ceiling. “Did you know that I almost joined a fencing fraternity?”

  “What? How did that happen?”

  “Didn’t read the full description of a dorm I was thinking of moving to. Apparently it came with mandatory membership of the fraternity. I would’ve had to duel an existing member and land one clean blow to be allowed to enter.”

  I could feel Addy’s stare boring into my side, trying to determine if I was full of shit. “That sounds stupid.”

  “It was more a ritual than a match. They’d fix it so I would land the blow no matter what.”

  “That’s… somehow even stupider! More stupidish. Stupe… ugh.” Addy flopped backwards onto the bed next to me. “I think I drank too much.”

  I produced a bottle of water which I’d snagged on the way here. She took it gratefully.

  “I don’t have any stories like that,” she said after emptying it in a few big gulps. “I went to Society school. Took the Custodian program. Got accepted by the system and entered The Academy early. Then I left. My mentor was dead, my only friend crippled. Figured no one was going to help me get revenge. I was filled with obsession and now… I don’t know what I’m filled with. Unease? Disquiet? Anxiety? Like I’m full of energy, but without a release valve it just keeps on building and building.”

  Woah, where did this come from all of a sudden?

  “There’s plenty more to do in the future,” I said, bumping her hip with mine on the springy bed. “You’re my teacher, for one, and damn if you aren’t putting me through the wringer. But it’s working. Heck, I’ve already learned more in a couple weeks than I ever would have on my own in years.”

  Addy somehow took the compliment and used its weight to sink further into the bedding. “As the one with experience, it’s the least I should have done. Anyone in my position could have done it better.”

  “But you were there and you chose to help me anyway. You’re aware of your flaws, which is more than most people can say about themselves. I can appreciate that. I know you’re trying to pay attention, trying to do better. And I did notice what you did down there on the dancefloor.”

  “... eat five pulled pork sandwiches while you weren’t watching?”

  I booped her nose.

  “No, you dork. You transformed to make me feel less self-conscious about standing out.” The uncertainty about whether people liked my extra bits as much as I did was always going to eat away at me. But today, I barely had to think of it.

  I let myself flop back on the bed and turned to look at her. “I wanted to say that I appreciate you. Even if you’re sometimes a big dork.”

  She snorted. “I’m not as dorky as dorkorella over here. You made yourself a literal target. And you looked happy while doing it.”

  “Still not as dorky as the girl who can name every quote from Rambo to Predator vs Alien.”

  “That’s not dorky. That’s just being good at trivia and having a bit of Mind scaling.”

  “Dork dork dork! Dorky tanuki girl! Tadorki!”

  Her left eye twitched. She flipped her body over to the side and suddenly, she was straddling my chest.

  “I haven’t thanked you for taking the heat off of me either,” she half mumbled, half whispered.

  I, er… what?

  For an electric moment we stared into each other’s eyes.

  “But I… didn’t think I’d actually get this far.” Her head fell until it was nestled in my chest. “I don’t think I can do it if you don’t kiss me first.”

  Oh. Oh!

  She likes me.

  Becca was right.

  Do I like her back?

  … would I have done everything I have if I didn’t?

  I cupped her hips, her armpits, and her cheeks. “Then as the one with experience, let me show you how it’s done.”

  +++

  Rebecca

  I didn’t expect the chat with Clementine to go so well when she opened with “I know how you made Sam’s life hell.” Maybe it was the pity at seeing me reduced to a blob. It was an awfully karmic punishment, in my humble opinion. If there was a real god out there beyond the code of atoms, he was a prick, if one with a sense of humor.

  And apparently he dictated that I was stuck in a room with a person who just couldn’t stop injecting romance into every aspect of life. If only her purported telepathy worked on me I could have told her to stop. But apparently, she was out of potions.

  “I think they’re so cute together!” she said as she, me, and her unfairly hot boyfriend watched in a crystal ball as Sam and her weretanuki friend bumbled through the party. It wasn’t a real magical crystal ball. It was plugged into an electric socket, and there were cameras strewn across the entire house.

  Using her home security devices to spy on and ship her friends was not exactly a morally neutral behavior, but what did I know? Maybe people wouldn’t complain about big brother if big brother was benign. Or alternatively, subtle enough that they didn’t notice.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “Do you think they’re gonna kiss? Gasp! What if they kiss today?”

  Wobble.

  “Glad we agree on that.”

  Wobble.

  Her forehead eye didn’t let me out of her sight for one second. Fair do’s. I’d probably get bored and accidentally absorb her family’s irreplaceable ming vase or something if it did. I was getting the itch to change again, and swapping through familiar forms was just not enough. All these static objects were fine, but I needed something with more moving parts.

  A human body would be nice. Or barring that, a skeleton I can stick my goop body to. I don’t think I can ever bring myself to eat a dead human though, so not a lot of options there.

  “... and that’s that. Rebecca, you think so too, don’t you?”

  I tuned back into the conversation just a moment too late. No context clues for what I’d missed. Whoop-de-doo or, as the cultured people say: Fuck my life.

  Wobble-to-human communication was flawed, which meant communicating my confusion was difficult. But not impossible.

  Slowly, I forced my body into a useful shape. C’mon, question mark shape, question mark shape…

  “... You want her to repeat that?” Akira asked, bless his empathetic little heart.

  Yesss!

  “I bet Sam and Addy are gonna kiss by the time morning arrives,” Clementine stated imperially.

  “And I am of the opinion that placing bets on your best friend’s love life is not exactly conducive to fostering a healthy relationship.” Akira paused. “But I bet it’s going to take another week at least, tops.”

  Wobble wobble.

  “See? She agrees with me.”

  Wobble wobble.

  “Clearly, she disagrees with us both,” Akira said. “You think it’s going to take longer than a week?”

  Wobble wobble.

  “Shorter?”

  Wobble.

  “She’s saying it’s going to be before the end of the day, which is in… fifteen minutes.” Clementine giggled. “You clearly overestimate Sam’s ability to take the initiative. And the tanuki girl doesn’t seem inclined to either. They’re peas in a pod.”

  I sighed, which manifested as a bunch of air bubbles hitting my surface. They made a sound like blowing a raspberry.

  “I think this is a fine bet. And the winner gets to ask one thing of the losers.”

  “Within reason,” Akira added and woah, yeah, Clementine definitely was the type to take this sort of stuff overboard. Good catch.

  I wobbled once, then slimed my way off the bed with a wet splat.

  “Where are you going?” Clementine asked.

  Making sure nobody interferes with the natural turn of events.

  Finding Sam was difficult, that is until she made herself the center of attention and then made a brisk exit. Compressing my body and turning myself into a soccer ball, I rolled after her. It was a neat trick, focusing all of my mass into a point that was smaller than before. Tension eventually forced me to spread back out, but by that point I had already reached my target.

  I turned into a bath mat wide enough to touch both sides of the corridor that led right in front of a pair of large double doors. Judging by the voices behind it, Sam and Adelaide were definitely in there.

  They’re having a heart-to-heart. Good. You deserve it.

  I tuned them out, sitting idly for a while, until the little cloth nublets covering my topside were starting to fidget and move like a forest of seagrass under water. Satisfying the mimic half of me was difficult, since it yelled at me to go have a taste of all these lovely objects and biological vehicles all day every day, like some sort of alien attention disorder.

  I ignored it as best as I could. I was done having my life controlled at every step of the way by people I don’t respect. If I was going to experiment, then it was going to be because the part that was still me wanted to.

  The question then was: Am I happy being a bath mat?

  For one, being a small carpet didn’t feel great when I could feel every groove in the wood digging into me from below. A layer of tin helped with that, though now the corner that was bending upwards against the wall felt uncomfortable. Annoying. I would have to redistribute mass, stretch further down the hallway. People wouldn’t notice, probably.

  Or instead, I could practice shifting the short nublets back and forth, like a million little fingers.

  Eventually, I am going to learn to write, and then talk. And then, then…

  What then? Write a book? Go back to trade school? ‘Sorry boss, missed a month of classes, but I can catch up. Next time I turn into a slime I’ll let you know ahead of time and—’

  Movement, heavy. Footsteps echoed through the hall, picked up by my metallic underbody, causing it to vibrate at a frequency that let me instinctively pick up on the exact location of the source.

  Two bipeds. Twice times as heavy as a human. They were walking in lockstep, not even a hundredth of a second out of tune.

  No person walks like that.

  They walked around the corner and there… was nothing. No person standing there. No monster. Just the steady clack, clack, clack sound against the wooden floorboards. Every instinct in my body was telling me to hide, hide and wait until the threat was passed. Weight was a sign of power, and the powerless make way for the powerful…

  Thanks mimics instincts, good to know your society runs on ‘weight equals importance’.

  The clonking stopped right on top of me. Heavy somethings pressed into my fuzzy body at two locations. Suddenly, like soapy scum pearling off a car window, their outlines appeared above me. Metal. Vaguely humanoid. Joints and motors and gyroscopes. They were robots. The backpack fused to their backs were high-voltage power packs plus liquid cooling and radiators, immediately recognizable since I’d worked damn hard to get that apprenticeship as a mechatronics technician.

  The design was entirely alien. Tripod eyes, five knee joints, and a couple dreadlocks worth of high-voltage power cables running from their sensory suite on their head down one arm and towards the end. The arms were long enough to nearly reach the ground if they had been extended.

  At an unheard signal, their three-fingered hands folded back into their forearms, bones of metal and polycarbons extending to form the shape of a—

  That’s a gun.

  Mimic instincts took over. By the time I snapped upwards both of them were already firing.

  +++

  The soft, never used covers of a springy bed were torture when compared to the soft skin of someone who truly likes you. A sweat pearl on Addy’s sun-kissed skin both reflected and encompassed the extent of my entire world. At this moment, all I wanted to do was stare at it, following the grooves in her skin up and down her neck, find her eyes and discover that they were looking at me in much the same way.

  I felt like a queen and a king all in one. It was a good day to love and be loved. I could have had this sooner. All the hints I missed were obvious only in hindsight.

  I had dismissed all those errant thoughts as blatant horniness instead of a desire for comfort and closeness. Addy was willing to give both — to me! Gosh. How did I manage that?

  … ok, maybe, maaaybe I was subconsciously trying to flirt with the cute tanuki girl who could also turn into a badass tanuki girl at the drop of a hat all along. But you have no proof!

  She has such lovely firm hands…

  Armed with gentle touches and brushes, the back of her hand was mine to explore, mine to get lost in. Mine.

  Her breath grew a beat faster. I could feel her heartbeat through the sheets. We both knew she wanted to say something, but it still took her a while to gather her courage and open her mouth.

  “Are we…” A question hung in the air.

  “A thing?” Are we not, after all that… kissing? “Do you want to be?”

  She blinked, looking me straight in the eye. “Yes.” And because that was not enough, she quickly added “a lot.”

  A wave of blush filled her face as did mine. I stared back at her with a toothy grin, until she looked less embarrassed and more like she was holding in a lungful of hot steam.

  She averted her eyes again. “I don’t get why you even like me.”

  I blinked at her. “Are you fishing for compliments, or do you really don’t know?”

  “Both.”

  Straightforward as always. I stretched, reveling in the way that drew her look away from my face. “For one, you're predictable, in an honest, fun way.”

  “I’m not predictable—!” Her eyes grew wide.

  “Really now?” My grin was smug, my arms roaming, my fingers devious. Pinch, pinch, pinch. “Secondly, I like the way you look at me. And the way you look.”

  Addy did a double take, breath hitching as I kissed her neck. “How superficial — ack, that tickled!”

  “But it’s true! You’re hot, Addy.” I played with a lock of her hair, feigning ignorance. “But that’s not the least of it. I like the sound of your voice, raspy, squeaky, commanding at times. I like the look of joy on your face after a well-earned victory, the look of abject disgust at seeing a vegetable on your plate. Sometimes, you shut all that off, and then there is just a neutral Addy, who categorizes problems and deals with them one after the other. I… can’t say I like it when you have to be that way. But I can understand, and I want to accept you, all of you.”

  “H-how flattering you can be, when at the same time you’re—”

  “I’m what? All I’m doing is scratching and rubbing you under your chin. Or would you like me to use my free two hands for… other things?”

  “N-no! Please, I, i-it’s enough.” Fair. She was already putty in my hands. Any more and she would cease being a solid altogether.

  “Thirdly.”

  “There’s more!?”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” I said, taking in a deep breath before drawing her into a six-armed hug. “I think if I didn’t have someone I could lean against, a part of me would have… broken a while ago. I know life as a Custodian isn’t glamorous, or easy, even if I’d like it to be. So when I saw you, struggling, trying your best, bouncing back again and again, I thought that maybe you felt the same.”

  There was a pause, longer and more silent than I’d have liked. Addy spoke next in a hushed voice.

  “I, too, thought we had something of the same living within each other. The tenacity, the drive, the desire to never give up.” It tickled when she sighed into my armpit. “I like you. But I don’t have a neat list like you do. Give me some time to figure out why I… why you think I need this.”

  “Do you not?”

  “I want this. Want and need should be kept separate.”

  “I can see how having your head filled with mushy emotions like love and joy might make your fear-anger-anticipation casting more difficult. Though if you were a lovecaster, then maybe you would have to be in love constantly to efficiently charge spells.” A smile teased at the edge of my lips, laced with nervous worrying. “Are you worried this relationship is going to be inefficient?”

  “... I don’t care.” There was something in her eyes akin to worship. “I don’t think I ever want to leave this room without you.”

  [Your ECC efficiency for (Joy) has increased by 1%]

  We both stared at the system popup before laughing our butts off. After a few minutes spent giggling and rolling around in bed, Addy was finally starting to make moves of her own. And let’s just say, uh, she was as direct there as anywhere else.

  “We should continue, literally anywhere else,” I said, throwing my bra on.

  “Yes. Lets.” She eyed me hungrily as she did the same.

  What have I awakened in this girl?

  Halfway through wiggling into my hoodie, Addy jumped on the bed and tackled me to the floor.

  “Wh—”

  The wooden doors exploded inwards. Two blue streams of energy hit where I had just been sitting, igniting the bed and exploding down feathers everywhere. Wherever it hit the old brick wall, stone cracked and shattered. Within seconds, the room went from peaceful post-cuddle vibes to a sea of energy bolts and shrapnel.

  In one moment, I saw Addy’s wide eyed stare in profile. In the next, I was flying out through a window and over the balcony, propelled by a toss of her stat enhanced arms mid-transformation.

  The room exploded in a blue-flamed conflagration before I hit the ground in an instinctive roll. I rolled over grass and past shrieking party goers, my own scream lost among the crowd. There was a grim little tracker we’d both bought as an upgrade to our system interfaces. It came in handy right at the worst of times.

  [Custodian Addy has perished. Respawn timer ETA: 1min, 37sec]

  You… you motherfuckers!

  [Channeling emotion: Anger]

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  12 chapters ahead on where the tanukis are hot and the spiders are many.