Chapter 215: Christmas Party

Chapter 215: Christmas Party

XP to Next Level: 814

Perry was so close he could taste it. Gorm had netted him slightly more than twenty-thousand XP, and ONE completed quest could finish his ascension.

Or a couple dead folk.

Perry didn’t really care one way or another, but his ethics model didn’t allow for it.

Instead of paying his uncle a ‘visit’, he was forced to sit through every soul-healing activity Natalie could think of, even consulting with gramma for advice.

Gramma’s advice was basically ‘you can make an environment conducive to healing the soul but you can’t speed it up beyond a certain point.’

So the family dinners and smothering hugs continued. And now he didn’t even care enough to follow through with his uncle.

His kid’s name’s were Seraphine and Gareth.

Gareth was calm, sleepy and growing a tuft of tarnished gold hair. Seraphine ‘danger’ Zauberer was raven-haired, and seemed affronted at every aspect of living and determined to take it out on the people around her.

Perry was fairly sure she only cried because she didn’t know how to do war-cries yet.

Perry caught himself smirking at that, touching the corner of his mouth where a flicker of something had penetrated the vast ocean of ice inside him.

Huh. Maybe there is something to hugs, family dinners and sleeping together.

Perry pretended to sleep eight hours at a time because it would make Nat sad otherwise. He really only needed about half an hour.

Why am I even sticking to this ethics model?

Perry understood intellectually that it was the last anchor to keep him from going off the deep end. A rope tied around his waist while he swam with the sharks. A last, last, last line of defense for when everything had gone so far sideways that his only hope of regaining humanity was ‘fake it ‘til you make it’.

But what was the point? It was exhausting and it was delaying level fifteen.

He wasn’t getting any better, either. Aside from the occasional smile, he was, on average, declining in mental fitness as his severely unbalanced Attunement drew him on the path to insanity.

Perry winced as he thought back to The Tide, quickly cutting off that line of thought before he could dwell on it too much.

He’d charted his decline. Probably better than Nat had, actually. He saw the desperation lurking behind her gentle, encouraging smile, even though he didn’t care. He saw the way Heather was subtly afraid of him.

But his ethics model said he shouldn’t ditch it, and that was good enough for Perry. If he started modifying his rules now, in his altered state, all bets were off.

So he stayed and continued to get worse.

Because honestly, he didn’t have strong feelings one way or another.

Perry was sitting at the dinner table, staring at the fresh wildflowers that Nat had harvested this morning before she went to work to brighten the room.

I wonder if she knows I can feel them screaming in pain? Perry wondered. His attunement was hella high right now, and the barrier between Otherness and reality was a...razor thin membrane. Perry could even see where Sophie and Gna’kis’s thoughts touched upon him, pressing up against the dimensional membrane like a hand on a shower curtain. If he had a sharp enough knife, he was pretty sure he could pull them through and stabilize their physical forms without even using a ritual.

They couldn’t see each other, though, since they were approaching him from nearly diametrically opposed metaphysical directions.

Perry glanced over at the empty chair across from him and squinted as it pulsed with newfound importance.

Something’s coming.

“Paradox,” Solaris said as he snapped into existence in front of him, presumably waltzing through his grandmother’s security team.

It wasn’t that hard.

“Tom.” Perry said.

“I heard you got back to Earth from your mom a month ago. Feeling any better?”

“Not really. You here to kill me?” Getting killed by Solaris was too fast to feel anything. So that was good.

“Hmmm...” Solaris frowned, chewing his lip. “How likely would you say you are to go on a rampage that ends life on Earth?”

“Ehhh...fifty-fifty. I might try, but it’s against my ethics model and probably more effort than its worth. Should someone remove my ethics model and present sufficient motivation to level up quickly, I probably would make the attempt.”

Solaris’s eyebrows rose, and the fingers on his left hand shook momentarily before he clasped them together.

“What are your odds of recovery, would you say?”

“Ehhh...” Perry did some guesswork. “Not great. As it stands now I’ll probably be too far gone in a couple weeks.”

“And have you taken any steps to fix yourself?”

“No.”

“Do you care if you live or die?”

“Not really.”

“Well, I fuckin’ do.” Solaris said with a growl. “Your parents are some of the best friends I’ve had in sixty years. Some of the only friends that are still alive, and I’ll be damned if I have to put down their son like a rabid dog.”

“That’s not really my problem, is it?” Perry asked. Priorities are completely realigned after death, so concern for his family’s feeling after his death was a nonissue.

“Most people would have an issue with being killed,” Solaris said, leaning back in the chair.

“Eh.” Perry shrugged.

“Tell me about your ethics model that’s preventing you from committing genocide.”

“Anything that makes Nat sad, I don’t do.” Perry said.

“You realize that dying would make her sad right?”

“Yep.”The roots of this story extend from novell bìn origin.

“...could you fix yourself, if you wanted to?” Solaris asked.

“Pretty easily. I could level up and manipulate my stats in such a way that my imbalance is resolved, allowing the healing to take hold.”

“And why aren’t you doing that?”

“First: I don’t care. Second: Because for a brief moment after I level, my imbalance will go from five point seven nine to six point zero eight, an instantaneous increase in my current imbalance of about five percent, probably snapping my grasp on reality. I’m so close to the edge...five percent is a lot. And third: I’m terrified of the mental backlash I’ll experience should I succeed and raise my Stability, allowing me to feel again. It seems less painful to just gradually go insane, all other things being equal.”

“For your last concern, I can tell you right now that your women would much rather patch up a nervous wreck than bury a corpse. And let me tell you, Natalie would do a good job of it.”

“Bet.” Freddy Steel said.

Fwip.

The sticky hand shot out and grabbed a sandwich, and at the moment of impact, Perry exercised his Spendthrift perk to keep the thing held together.

A moment later, Perry was eating a tiny sandwich, pleased at having fulfilled a childhood dream.

“Mmm, tastes like sticky-hand.” Perry said.

“Probably would be wiser to just use your hands.” Truthslayer said, looking displeased at her coworkers.

“Hey look, open bar!” Nocturne said, gravitating towards the row after row of fine Manitian champagne, tilting his Anubis mask back to reveal an unfortunate underbite as he began nursing a bottle wholesale.

“What are we doing here, exactly?” Guile asked, among what Perry would think of as ‘the professional three’

“We...are waiting for the host to make an appearance. What we do up until then is a non-issue. Enjoy yourselves.”

Fwip.

“Is it necessary to use your sticky hand to acquire everything?” Chemestro asked as Perry retrieved a glass of some kind of mixed juice from the bar, using Spendthrift to make the liquid too viscous to splash out in transit before rendering it normal again.

Perry locked eyes with the poster child for steroid abuse.

“...Yes.”

Perry felt a tug at his sleeve and spotted Nat looking up at him with pleading eyes.

She pointed at the dance floor.

She missed out last time we went to one of these things, Perry thought. Even if I die tonight, she should at least get her dance. Perry shoved the drink and toy in Chemestro’s hands before taking Nat’s.

The next hour was a magical time, slow dancing with Natalie and Heather to Christmas music poorly performed on traditional Manitian instruments.

The sound was bad, but the hallucinogenic musical effects of the enchanted instruments made up for it, as the other dancers turned into slowly twirling pine trees frosted with snow, lending the illusion of a perfect moment shared only with the other dancer.

Natalie blushed hard and stepped on Perry’s toes occasionally as they danced, but it wasn’t a problem. She only weighed ninety pounds, after all. What was important was how much she was enjoying herself, her racing heartbeat, and the trembling in her fingers and legs as they brushed against his own.

The pure emotion transferred into him through those trembling brushes against his skin, setting all his nerves alight.

After a few songs, Nat reached critical blush and swapped out with Heather to fan herself off and drink champagne.

Is she 21 yet? Perry thought as Heather clasped his hand and they began slowly traversing the dance floor.

Heather matched Perry better in all respects, save personality. Heather’s body slid around him like fine silk, subtly using her power to achieve a level of grace that an unaltered human couldn’t hope to match.

That look in her eyes, though. Pure competitiveness.

“Just ‘cause you’re the mother of my children doesn’t mean I’mma take it easy on you.” Perry said.

“It’s cute you think you can keep up,” Heather said, dropping his hands and heading over to the band, where she requested something a bit more challenging.

A short time later, they were whirling across the dance floor, glaring at each other and having the time of their lives as the other dancers slowly fled the floor to give them room.

Perry wasn’t naturally a talented dancer, nor a particularly experienced one, but with his Body and Nerve as high as they were, it came easily enough. He learned instantly, and his reflexes were fast enough to fix any mistakes mid-step.

“You’re gonna have to do more than get flaccid,” Perry said, accommodating his balance as Heather swooped around him unnaturally quick.

“Oh?”

Heather split in two as her soul exited her body.

Perry caught her wrist with his left hand, tugging her back towards him in a spin that brought her to his chest, facing away.

“Nice try,” Perry whispered into Heather’s ethereal ear.

Perry felt a shiver travel down Heather’s spine for a brief second before Anya pulled his other hand. She was animating Heather’s physical body, which still held his right hand.

He unrolled from Heather and allowed himself to be tugged into Anya’s arms, the ghost grinning up at him with Heather’s face.

“This hardly seems fair,” Perry muttered as Anya lowered him into a dip, taking the lead. She leaned forward, bringing Heathers face inches away from his own. Alarms were blaring in Perry’s mind as Anya’s lips brushed against his own, a mischievous glint in her eyes.

Perry was frozen until out of the corner of his eye, Perry saw Heather’s ethereal hand, and he took it. Anya let go of him, and Heather drew him back up into a twirl, leveraging his superhuman strength to recover from the awkward angle.

Perry danced to the best of his ability with the two, attempting to navigate the murky waters of dancing with two people at once.

Despite Perry’s best efforts, he only had one body, and eventually had to tap out, leaving Heather standing victoriously in the center of the ballroom, rejoining her body. The cheater.

Perry was somewhat surprised at the applause from the surrounding spectators as the two of them went back to the tables.

Perry collapsed into the chair beside Nat, borrowing her folding fan.

“You guys are fantastic!” Nat said with glittering enthusiasm. “You should dance more often. At home. While I watch.”

“Perv,” Heather said, tousling Nat’s hair.

“That was cheating,” Perry said. Anya kissing him wearing Heather’s body had wildly thrown him off his game.

“All’s fair in competitive ballroom dancing,” Heather said with an evil grin.

Perry liked Heather’s evil grin.

The soft sound of a microphone turning on filled the air, informing Perry that the time for fun was running short.

Perry grabbed another three tiny sandwiches and shoved them in his mouth while the audience turned to face the raised stage where the musicians had ceded the area for a well-dressed servant with a microphone.

“Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen, I’d like to introduce the host of the twenty-fifth annual Frepon Christmas party; Charles Frepon!”

Chuck emerged from the curtain with a bouncy step, seemingly reveling in the wave of applause cresting as he arrived at the mic.

“Good evening my fellow Manitians!” He said, launching into his prepared speech as he scanned the audience. “I believe Christmas holds a special place in all of our hearts. It doesn’t have to have the same meaning for us for it to mean something.It represents unity. A bonding between ourselves and the people of Earth, and the Frepon family is glad to...”

He met Perry’s gaze, freezing in place.

Perry winked.

“...fuck.”