“Alright Karen, try this one on for size.” Calvin said, touching the Puppet component behind his back.

The goop exploded around the blonde-haired Legend, the catalysts evaporating instantly as it sank into her skin.

Karen glanced down at the sheen of residue on her arm, and raised a brow.

“Was that it?” She put her sword casually over her shoulder as she approached. “I’ve taken more damage from a fart.”

Calvin put his hand over the shrunken Husker brain and started sending delicate strands of Bent looping through it. Now that the Husker extract had permeated her flesh, he could use the brain to control her with Bent, like a puppet. Hence the component name.

Karen stiffened as Calvin ran Bent through the shrunken brain.

Yes, it’s working!

Caster was unable to penetrate Ability: Strength of Will.

Shit!

Something had to be happening, though, because Karen opened her mouth and began shaking like she’d been-

“Achoo!” She sneezed violently.

“Whoo, boy, whatever you did bugged the hell out of my nose,” She said, violently wiping her nose and squeezing her eyes shut.

“What in the Abyss is Strength of Will?” Calvin demanded.

“It’s Ability from Toughness that lets me use Endurance in place of Stability to resist hostile spells.” Karen said, itching her nose. “You like it?”

“No. No I do not.” Calvin said, moments before she cut him in half.

Calvin opened his eyes in the real world, and glanced at the Puppet component in his hands. It was a clear glass vial with two distinct parts.

Compressed Husker extract mixed with the crystalline catalyst and a few blood extracts that allowed the liquid to permeate organic materials incredibly fast on one side, and then there was the much smaller side, the knobbly, textured end to tell Calvin’s fingers where the brain was.

Shoot the extract with dupdomancy, then puppet whatever it hit with the brain. Simple…

“Except I haven’t been able to get a good test.” Calvin mused.

“Maybe you shouldn’t try it on someone who obviously wields godlike power. Seriously, is Karen tenth Break, or what?

“Eighth, I think, with a lot more practical experience than us. Besides, she’s a good benchmark.”

If the benchmark was ‘resistance is futile’.

True. Let’s try it on some people who aren’t quite so resistant. I do want to see how this works. If it can work at all.

Calvin closed his eyes.

Someone partway between Karen and an average person.

Nadia sound good?

I’m game.

Calvin appeared standing in the forest, Nadia before she’d been killed backing away from him as her disguise was broken.

“How do you even know where I am?” The girl demanded, sliding into view, light lapping against her skin like the water’s edge.

“It’s the smell,” Calvin said, mimicking his original response to the girl’s question.

Calvin waited placidly for that to sink in. The princess’s eyes widened, just like they had the first time, and she let out a growl before charging toward him, slipping into the edges of the light lapping at her sides and vanishing from sight.

Calvin followed her movement easily with his Tarka skin and the ability to feel her gaze, then, as she rushed him invisibly from the left, he thumbed the Puppet component.

Shaping.

The Husker cocktail exploded around Nadia, and she tumbled onto the ground, sprawling in a pile of undergrowth, spitting out Husker juice and leaves.

“What in the Abyss did you just do?” she demanded, then frowned. “My tan fees nam.”

Calvin put his fingers on the pebbled side of the vial, sending strands of Bent from the tips of his fingers to exert control over her body via the connection between the husker brain and the gunk she’d been sprayed with.

“Ah! AAAH!” Nadia shouted as her limbs began twitching on the ground, flopping out from under her.

That’s the same problem I seem to have every time I do this. I have to relearn to control the object or person in question.

In this case, it wasn’t quite long enough, as Nadia started to break free from the control in a matter of seconds, her limbs jerking as she put them underneath herself.

“Kneel!”

Calvin sank to his knees as the Skill overwrote his Stability, but this time, his Will ate through the control in under five seconds.

Shaping.

Another splash of Puppet washed over Nadia, forcing her back to the ground, and there the two of them stared at each other as they ever so slowly climbed back to their feet.

Nadia opened her mouth to speak.

Shaping.

Calvin created a ball of the gunk inside her mouth, causing her to retch and spit violently before looking back up at him with a furious glare.

She opened her mouth to speak again, and Calvin took control of her mouth in the few moments he had before she shrugged off control again.

Nadia tried to say something, but Calvin flopped her tongue up and down, forcing her to say ‘lalala’ over and over again.

“Heh,” Calvin chuckled as her eyes became bloodshot, glaring at him with a strange mixture of enjoyment and total fury.

Calvin was entertaining the idea of animating her leather clothes separately and peeling them away one at a time, when an enormous proboscis slammed into the back of Nadia’s skull, causing the Shadowboxing created princess to twitch violently.

Calvin followed the dark, slimy red tube up to the light blue, shuddering, wormlike creature emerging halfway out of the huge tree. There was a crack, and Nadia’s shuddering stilled as a lump began traveling up the disgusting tube, her cheeks hollowing as her insides were literally sucked out.

The Brain Leech.

How the hell is it here?

Doesn’t matter! EJECT!

HOW THE HELL IS IT HERE!?

Calvin felt a pain in the back of his neck as a weight drove him to the ground.

STOP SHADOWBOXING.

***

Calvin’s eyes flew open and he surged forward, the Puppet component flying off to the side with a clatter as he scrambled to his feet, heart trying to burst through his chest. Every single hair stood up at once as Calvin slid his fingers over the back of his neck.

Nothing there but a little sweat and a twinge of phantom pain.

What the hell was that? Calvin thought, panting as he looked around the Unqua tent.

There was nothing in Shadowboxing that wasn’t under his control. It was the perfect safe place to practice his skills, abilities, and alchemy experiments…

Or it was.

Calvin’s breath slowly calmed. Where had the leeches come from, and how had they gotten into Shadowboxing?

It was well known the leeches were capable of phasing.

Did they…phase into Shadowboxing? That would imply that shadowboxing created a concrete place for them to phase into, didn’t it? Or were they simply shifting from reality to idea?

Calvin had no idea, but the whole thing set the hairs on his arms and neck up.

“What the Abyss.” He muttered, grasping his forehead, before running a hand over the back of his neck again.

Still nothing.

Calvin decided to go outside, make sure the cavern was still warm and dry, his confidence in the strategy of being unpleasant for the creature to enter beginning to wear thin. All it took was one lapse and people would get eaten.

I think living down here is starting to affect me…Elliot?

Yeah?

No snarky comments?

Sorry, I was just changing my pants. I’m back now.

There was a series of clicks and scratches in the back of Calvin’s mind.

I um…can’t figure out why that happened, and it spooks the shit out of me. Shadowboxing is a simulation run by the user’s Mind. To get into shadowboxing, the creature would have to access your Mind directly.

Elliot. Answer me honestly. Are we inside a Brain-Leech right now?

No. No, definitely not, as I would have moved on to the next body, but something is really, really screwy here.

Calvin stepped out of the unqua yurt, into the cramped cave filled with the sounds of laughter and industrious Knick-knacks. He looked around for any sign of the corpulent creature phasing through the walls.

I need a solution to this.

As far as I can tell, nobody should be able to access shadowboxing without your permission by default. Inherently.

Calvin snapped his fingers, having come to a solution.

I’ll just kill every last one of the fucking things. Problem solved.

Really? When there’s every possibility this is a glitch from your last encounter with one and not an actual brain-leech?

I don’t know what a glitch is, but there’s no better solution than killing the problem.

Come on, man, we talked about this.

You work the ‘glitch’ angle and tell me if you find anything. If you don’t find anything, then we have to assume actual Brain Leeches are roosting in ShadowBoxing, and we need to exterminate them.

This is crazy.

Those things interrupted me making Nadia’s leathers peel away on their own! Calvin thought with a clenched fist. Their suffering will be legendary!

And they scared the crap out of you.

Nobody’s admitting to that.

Calvin touched his neck.

…

Still nothing.

***

I’m not a huge fan of this idea. Elliot said as Calvin settled back into a crosslegged posture.

Oh, and you think I am? He thought, closing his eyes. Just be ready to pull me out instantly if we pick up right where we left off.

Don’t you worry, I’ve got my fingers on Control Alt Delete as we speak.

Shadowboxing.

Calvin opened his eyes and he was on the platform.

With a mental tug, Karen appeared on the platform in front of him.

Ah, nice choice. Bring out the big guns.

“What the?” she frowned, glancing around the platform before her gaze landed on him. In the blink of an eye she was looming over him, the tip of a blade pressed to his throat.

“Who are you and what are we doing here?” she asked.

“I’m Calvin, this is a spell, I’m hunting imaginary phasing monsters and could use your help.”

Calvin’s intention was to get practice killing them in Shadowboxing before he did it alone. Even though they posed a real danger in Shadowboxing, it was still safer than doing it in person.

“Calvin?” she asked, frowning and stepping away from him, looking him up and down. “Well, you got a little taller. It’s about time. I didn’t recognize you with the tan and the circles under your eyes.”

“It happens,” Calvin said, scanning the ceiling. “Listen, I’m not sure we’ll have a lot of time to catch-URK.”

Karen pushed him to the ground and batted away a proboscis that seemed to come out of the air.

Calvin rolled to the side and watched as Karen took a wild swing at the pale blue worm seemingly hovering in the air. Karen’s sword passed through it a fraction of a second before it flickered, and ceased to exist, like an ilethan light illusion.

“No blood. Damn.” Karen said, poking the floor with her toe. “Looks like you’ve got a mockingbird problem.”

“A what?”

“It’s my old team’s codeword for a creature or person that is flighty. Really hard to hit, and tends to vanish between attacks.”

“There’s enough of them that you made a codeword?” Calvin asked, holding out his hand.

Calvinian summoning.

Atom ant.

Several hundred fist-sized wasps burst out of the green smoke, searching for anything to kill that wasn’t him or Karen.

“There’s only so many basic ways you can fight, so we typify them into code words for quickl strategizing.” She said, glancing at him, pointing a thick finger at his smoke disgorging wasps. “For example, you’re a royal with cheese.”

Sounds like a burger.

Karen flickered, and Calvin felt something shove him aside.

An instant later she swung her blade through the space his neck had been, bisecting the proboscis. The worm reared away, but Calvin blinked when he noticed the red tube was still in one solid piece.

“That’s weird,” Karen said, looking at her sword. “I felt it land.”

Karen flickered again, and Calvin was violently knocked to the side.

This time he saw the red tube go through Karen’s blade on it’s own, the blonde fighter leaning out of the way at the last second before it attached to her face.

“This thing really likes you,” Karen said, glancing over her shoulder.

“I know,” Calvin said as he climbed to his feet. “I wanna get rid of it.”

“Lemme try some dimensional fuckery. These things don’t seem too smart. Don’t move. Seriously.”

The next time it came, Karen was ready. With a grunt, she unleashed a strike right over his head, her massive blade glowed for an instant with a radiance that dazzled Calvin’s eyes before it released a light-bending wave over his head.

There was a squelch, then a deafening explosion that Cal felt in his very bones.

Matter of fact, I feel that in my real body, too.

An identical screech echoed in Shadowboxing and the real world, overlapping each other perfectly.

Calvin’s eyes shot open, and he leapt out of his tent, scanning the ceiling.

Bluish, rubbery flesh was shifting in and out of the stone, riddling the entire cavern wall, until there was almost more blue flesh than there was stone. The leeches seemingly hesitated and pulled back as soon as they touched the warm glow emanating from Sal’s light fixture, but they were slowly beginning to press in.

One of the leeches was truncated, a bleeding stump where the proboscis had been.

Shit.

I think you pissed them off.