Chapter Eighteen – Sisterportation

Emily had expected that getting home after heading out that afternoon might… just not happen. She’d been worried about ambushes and potentially running into heroes waiting to grab her and Teddy. Worse would have been running into villains. The common media portrayal of what villains were, of what they did, was… not pleasant.

She and Teddy were, of course, the exception.

A flick of her phone next to her dorm-room door unlocked it, and Teddy squeezed past her and into the room.

Emily followed, pausing for just a moment to take in the room proper. There were still some unpacked boxes stacked off to one side. They would have taken up a lot of room if she had any proper furniture other than her bed, her desk, her favourite chair, and a blow-up mattress sticking halfway out from under the bed.

Teddy was quick to slither out of her hoodie and crash onto the mattress the moment it was tugged out.

“Going to sleep already?” Emily asked.

It didn’t take a genius to see that Teddy, even in her human form, had some bear in her. Including a love for sleeping long hours.

“Nah,” Teddy said as she rooted around under Emily’s bed and pulled out some bear-paw-covered PJs and a little red book. “Gonna read a bit then I’m going to sleep.”

“Oh, okay,” Emily said.

She… didn’t have any homework to do or anything of the sort. She could have gone to sleep herself, but a glance at her phone showed that it was still only six. Far too early. And while she was mentally exhausted and her social batteries were utterly depleted, she was physically still full of energy.

Pacing didn’t feel right though, so she walked over to her bed, picked up a small blanket she’d bought at the thrift store, then curled up on her chair with the cover over her entire body, like a warm little depressed cocoon.

“What are we going to do?” Emily asked. She had two numbers on her phone now. Handshake’s and that Melanie woman’s. The former told her to call if she needed more information on… anything, really. The latter told her to give her a head’s up if she planned on doing anything about Homie.

“I don’t know,” Teddy said as she rolled onto her back with her book held above her. “We could beat that Homie guy up and take the drive things back.”

“… Do you think we could actually do that?” Emily asked.

She truly doubted they’d be able to pull it off.

“Can’t think of anything else,” Teddy said. “What will happen if they, uh, open the drive things?”

“Then our lives are ruined,” Emily said. Cement was supposed to be dangerous with blackmail and such. He could use what little information Handshake had gathered on her to make her work for him. Or maybe do worse things. Emily couldn’t imagine what kind of things,but she was certain they were horrid.

“Yeah, in that case I say we fight them.”

Emily buried herself deeper into her chair. Could she?

“I think…” she began at last. “That we could maybe, um, try to take the drive back instead? Without having to, uh, fight?”

“Okay,” Teddy said.

“You’re okay with that idea?” Emily asked.

Teddy nodded and turned a page in her book. “Yeah, of course, Boss, it’s your idea, yeah?”

Emily nodded slowly. It was that. “We’ll need to be a bit stronger, I think,” she said.

Teddy perked up. “Are we going to spend some points?” she asked. “I don’t have any traits to spend my points on though.”

“Ah,” Emily said. “You don’t?”

“Nope. Just my base skill. I’ve got two upgrade points but nothing to use them on,” Teddy said. “Can’t wait to do something so incredible that I get a new trait for my bear power. I bet it will be something incredible. Like a nose able to smell capitalism or something.”

“Uh,” Emily added. “That sounds… nice.” She cleared her throat. “Status.”

She had the one point she could spend to unlock a secondary power… trait thing. And seeing as how she might need it soon…

Do you wish to spend a Skill Slot Point on the Power: Sister Summoning?

“Yes,” Emily said.

New Skill Unlocked!

Sisterportation has been added to your Power’s Skills!

Emily didn’t feel any different when the notifications left. Then again, gaining the power at first hadn’t felt strange either. “Status.”

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That was a little different. Her Create Sister skill had ranked up and she now had a new skill… or maybe a skill trait beneath that. And, of course, the point she’d spent was now gone. “There’s a way to see what a skill does, right?” she asked Teddy. She vaguely recalled doing that for her own skills once.

“Yeah,” Teddy said. “Just say ‘status,’ then the name of the skill.”

“Status… Sisterportation.”

Her opened status screen shifted over to the side and a new box opened before her.

“Huh,” Emily said as she finished reading the description. “What does vocal command mean?”

“Means you need to say something to make it work,” Teddy said. She’d rolled back onto her belly to read, her head leaning on a pillow and her arms outstretched before her.

“Something like… Sisterportation, Teddy?”

Teddy disappeared from her spot on the mattress and reappeared right next to Emily… still in the same pose and three feet in the air.

The girl had time to go ‘huh?’ before crashing belly-first on the ground with a dull thump.

Emily scrambled off her seat, eyes wide and arms questing for something to do as she took in her summon’s sprawled out form. “Are you alright?” she asked.

“Boss, that hurt!” Teddy whined.

“I’m so sorry!” Emily said.

Teddy rolled around so that the full force of her pout could hit Emily dead-on. “My tummy squished,” she said.

Emily looked the girl up and down, but nothing past her pride looked hurt. “I’m really sorry. I won’t do that again.”

Teddy sighed and rolled again, then again until she was back over by her mattress. “At least tell me before you do that. What if I was in the middle of sleeping. Or pooping.”

Emily felt her cheeks warming at the thought and decided to save the new skill for emergencies. Not that it would come in handy all that often in other situations, she figured. “That was my only skill slot point,” she said, changing the subject. “The rest of my points are all normal skill upgrades, and I’m not sure if I want to make this one better. It seems… good enough.”

“Does it have restrictions on it?” Teddy asked as she resettled.

“Um. It has a twelve-hour cooldown and can only summon one sister at a time? Those don’t seem that bad.”

Teddy shrugged, a strange gesture when lying down. “The skill upgrades will probably just make that shorter or increase the number of sisters before doing anything fun.”

“Is there a limit to the number of levels?” Emily asked. She was curious as to how many times she could upgrade the new skill.

“Depends on the trait,” Teddy said. “Are we going to sleep tonight?”

“I guess,” Emily said. A glance at her phone for the time showed it at just past seven. Still a little early. “I still have a lot of thinking to do.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s a Boss’s job,” Teddy agreed. “You going to find a costume or something? If I get one, I want it to be red. And have bears on it.”

“A costume,” Emily repeated. She wasn’t keen on the idea. Then again, she was less keen on the idea of succeeding against someone like Homie only for her identity to be leaked because someone saw and identified her. “We’re going to need to find something,” she said. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“Doesn’t need to be complicated,” Teddy said. “Maybe you can ask your other minion? He’s supposed to be lucky, right?”

“Alea Iacta?” Emily asked. “Why would I try calling him? I don’t even have his number.”

“Doesn’t the internet have people’s numbers? And you could try calling him because he had a great costume. It was all fancy-like.”

Emily rolled the idea around. “I’ll think on it,” she said. She had other things to look forward to. Class in the morning and then… and then maybe starting to act in the afternoon. She didn’t have forever to wait before Homie started rooting around that drive.

She sighed. Her life had been simple, once.

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