***The One Who Looks Back***

Kala’s hands trembled with exhaustion as she held her palm over the wound, using her training to try and keep the bleeding to a minimum while Calvin’s thumb-sized knick-knacks swarmed over the puncture, looking for all the world like sailors cutting on the corpse of a leviathan.

She looked up and saw it again. The cold, inhuman thing that watched them. Kala didn’t know exactly what it looked like. She didn’t even technically see it, she saw it’s essence, glowing against the pitch black of the platform.

She wasn’t like Calvin: she couldn’t see in the dark, she didn’t have eyes in the back of her head, and she couldn’t tell when someone was watching her.

For all these shortcomings, she saw things better than he did, sometimes: She saw things and people as they were.

Far in the distance was a strange, black-skinned beast, blank pages slowly leafing off of its back, filling in front of her eyes with a script that no human had ever read before, and folding back into it. The words were constantly filling in, constantly being revised, and constantly changing.

The first time she’d seen them, the script had been sharp, flat edges, almost mechanical in nature, and that was still mostly true, but the format was changing, ever so slowly adapting softer lines even as the words became more and more complex to her eyes. Even the shape of the creature had shifted, becoming more mammalian to her eyes.

It was growing. Changing.

The creature gave her an odd sensation of being in a precarious balance. Its tone shifted between that of a hungry animal, and that of a curious scholar. One, she knew, would bring the creature into direct, bloody conflict with them, while the other looked as though it would lead to many years of fruitful cooperation.

And Kala could see that sooner or later, this balance would tip in one direction or the other. Kala hoped it would be the latter, because as brilliant as Calvin was at killing things, he needed friends more than more enemies.

That was why she didn’t tell him about it. She wanted it to have time for the writing to grow even softer, without Calvin trying to kill it.

When it makes its dots with little hearts, I’ll know it’s safe, Kala thought with a wry smile.

A page flickered out of the creature’s skin with a picture of Kala looking back at it, with a tightly controlled script beneath it, and lines pointing to her eyes, lips, nose and neck, also labelled.

Well, that’s flattering.

A second later, another picture of her without her skin flipped through the creature’s pages, then simply her skeleton, staring back. Each page was lousy with notes about her inner organs and their weaknesses.

Less so.

Kala forced back a shiver and turned her eyes back to Calvin, who was staring into space, presumably choosing his Abilities.

When she looked at him, she saw the edge of a planet, lit by the light of the sun, Calvin’s fingers placed gently on its surface. The definition of arrogance and ambition.

Better than when Elliot was speaking, anyway. When Elliot inevitably spoke up again, She saw a hellscape of infinite, recursive death beyond death and her fight or flight response kicked in at full power.

She shivered again.

The Knick-Knack tapped her hand, drawing her attention back to what she was doing. she lifted her palm up, marvelling at the perfect stitch-work. He really doesn’t know how valuable he is, she thought, eyeing calvin.

Don’t listen to what your father says, he’s never been a princess. You gotta find a good man before he’s a good man, then lock that shit down before the competition gets fierce, understood? Her mother’s words echoed through her mind.

Five year old kala hadn’t really understood, but she was starting to.

Kala washed her hands with some of Calvin’s summoned soap and water, and sat beside him, feeling the warmth of his shoulder as she unlocked her space, pulling out her pipe and a bit of Wet Dream.

Gods, I love this pipe. The long, slender thing had taken a hit from a legend, and there wasn’t a scratch on it. Once she was on her way back home, she would scout Jinsei to work for her kingdom.

“You mind?” she asked as a formality.

“Go for it.” He murmured, still staring at the options ahead of him, his lips moving as he muttered under his breath.

Concentrating Calvin was cute, too.

Smoking has reached level 5! 25% Correction.

+1 Endurance

Please Choose an Ability.

Smoke Signals: You may form exhaled smoke into complex shapes at no Bent cost. Does not have any tangibility beyond that of smoke.

Homegrown: Correction applies to growing the user’s own smokables.

Hardened lungs: 1 bent: Greatly improve resistance to inhaled poisons for (level) minutes.

Hmm…I choose Smoke Signals.

It was one of Kala’s free Skills, she didn’t have to tell her family about it, and she abhorred the idea of spending every possible Ability on making herself harder to kill.

What was the point of living like that? life was for living, too. She wanted to have fun.

Kala exhaled a lungful of smoke, and manipulated it with Bent inside her mouth as she did. The smoke settled into the form of a pompous hat resting on his head, forcing a giggle out of her.

“What’s up?” he asked, glancing over, the motion of his head enough to scatter the smoke to the wind, leaving behind no evidence.

The perfect crime.

“Nothing,” Kala said, looking away and focusing her attention on anything else, the day spent with writing on her forehead high on her mind. She wouldn’t mind getting caught again, but she wouldn’t make it easy for him, either.

“Hmm…” Calvin’s eyes narrowed and he tested himself for ink before returning his attention to his thoughts.

Kala took one more look toward the creature in the distance. It had left a few minutes ago, not showing any signs of wanting to attack. She breathed a sigh of relief, then brought her attention back to the boy warming up her left side.

I wonder if I can make writing with this ability.

***Calvin***

Show me my options.

Dupdomancy has reached level 20!

+1 Will

Please Choose an ability or mutation.

Hypothetical Space Expansion: Warp the environment by an amount dictated by the skill’s mass load. Empty space is filled in with what would have been there if the space were that large.

Temperature control: Copied matter may be raised or lowered in temperature by an amount of degrees equal to Dupdomancy’s duration.

Gradual Split: Split mass is created at a rate determined by the user.

^Jet-engine, anyone?

Permanent split: Duplicate objects permanently, Mass limit divided by 100. (4.00Lb) Bent-reactive materials exempt.

*caution* While these objects are permanent, they are still Bent constructs and therefore not exempt from dispelling techniques, unlike normal objects. *Do Not Consume Duplicated Food, unless you want your body to be partially made of Bent Construct.*

Bulk Split: Mass Limit increased by (Int) %

Extended Split: Time limit is increased by (Sta)%

Mutations:

Continuity: duplicated creature’s experiences carry on from one to the next, as long as the template creature was the same one.

Bent: duplicated creatures gain a limited pool to draw from to fuel Abilities. The effects of the abilities are extentions of Dupdomancy and not actual Bent. Pool is 1/5th the level of Dupdomancy.

Copy Kit: 1 Bent, Consume an object to permanently store it’s data in the System. The objects may then be the subject of Dupdomancy spells in whole or in part, as normal. Store 1 Item/5 levels of Dupdomancy

^From Consume et al.

Shiva: Create semi-permanent extra body parts/limbs at will, decreasing maximum Stability by 3 for each one. This does not have a strict Bent cost, and can be used when Bent is 0. The cost is essentially applied to maximum Bent. The limbs are dismissible, and Stability will recover within 24 hours.

Damn, that’s a lot of choices. Calvin pondered as he looked over the options.

It seemed like Elliot had come through and moved Bent and Continuity over from Chained spirit all the way to dupdomancy.

If he chose Bent, each time he copied himself, his copy would be able to use 4 abilities.

That was a huge expansion in the amount of things he could do, but without Continuity, it left a bad taste in his mouth, ordering his copies around like pawns during the last few minutes of their lives.

Imagine you’ve got an hour and a half to live, and someone tells you to do the dishes and take out the trash.

Not only that, Continuity and Bent took two ability selections away from the core spell, focusing it more toward replicating himself.

Did he need to replicate himself when he had other people he could do that to? Ones who weren’t so concerned with the existential terror of suddenly finding yourself on a ticking clock.

Kala came over and sat down beside him, leaning against him as they rested. Her shoulder was warm.

Calvin was leaning toward Gradual Split. It wasn’t fancy but it allowed so much more versatility with his spell.

Flamethrowers. Check.

Flight. Check.

Even the recent component he’d created on the fly could benefit from Gradual split.

The organic nature of the component required a steady stream of material down the channels in the Spinner’s hands. So far he’d only been able to create short blasts of uncontrolled warped space.

Good as an explosion, but Calvin wanted to branch out from explosions.

With Gradual split he could feed a controlled amount of substance through, and even change the ratios to control the output.

A huge degree of versatility.

Of course choosing that Ability put off an army of Calvin copies swarming the land for another ten levels.

Could a copy use the Bent ability to make more copies, and so on?

In a word, no. The System doesn’t look kindly on infinite combos, and that’s a pretty obvious one right there. It’ll probably prevent any copy from making another copy, or destroy them altogether when they make a new one.

Which is more likely, the first or the second?

Why does it matter?

Because if I were the copy, and Continuity were in place, I would copy myself to increase my time away from home. I would die, but the copy would share everything up until that point, and it’s time limit would be reset. I would use that extra time to conspire against myself.

…But why?

Habit, I guess, Calvin thought with a shrug. It’s like Calvin’s Law. Whatever Machiavellian scheming can happen, will happen.

How can you know what Machiavellian means but not know what a dog is?

What about Copy Kit? Calvin thought, an idea occurring to him. What defines a single object? Is it the vial, the contents of the vial, my perception of them, or what?

Lemme see…there was a series of soft clattering noises…huh. It just says a contiguous object. So as long as they’re touching each other, it seems like it’s no problem.

Size limits?

Same as Consume, sooo… three hundred and eighty pounds.

So I could take my entire bandolier and Consume the whole thing and it would count as one object? The ability says in whole or in part, as normal.

Seems like it.

“hmm…” Calvin’s brain started warming up as he considered the problem.

He could theoretically store every spell component he had, with three slots of extra space for just about anything after that. Then he wouldn’t have to carry around his bandolier and touch the spell components as he used them, which was a huge advantage.

On the other hand, there was the variety of new uses he could get out of Dupdomancy with Gradual Split.

Specializing in simply duplicating himself over and over by comparison felt…not fun.

Thanks for moving these, but I don’t think I’ll need them yet.

No prob, Bob.

I choose gradual Split. Calvin finally decided, trying to muscle his way past the decision paralysis. Even if he never got another Break. He could still get five more Ability choices for Dupdomancy before the end of his life.

You know, assuming you don’t bite the dust.

Yes, assuming that. What’s next?

Calvinian Summoning has reached level 20! 1 slot available.

Variety is the spice of Death : 2 extra slots, +1 extra slot every 5th level, rather than 10th (7 total @ level 20, vs 3)

Chimera: The user may rearrange parts from any slotted creature onto any other slotted creature in any combination.(New slot every 10th level)

Bulk Summoning: Mass Limit increased by (Int) %

^Oh, this must have been unlocked by Dupdomancy.

Extended Summoning: Time limit is increased by (Sta)%

^Ditto.

Diversified Portfolio of Death: User may now divide summon’s mass between any different combination of *options they have access to*.

^Not only size and slotted creature variations, but extras like Chimera and Atom Ant may be added to a fraction of the total summon. The summon will no longer be strictly homogenous.

Mutations:

Continuity: The Summon remembers time spent during each summon, is aware of what the user is aware of while it was unsummoned, and can learn or improve System and non-System Skills to the limit of Calvinian Summoning.

^Moved from Chained Spirit

Bent: Summoned creatures gain a limited pool to draw from to fuel Abilities, provided they have Bent-drawing abilities. The effects of the Abilities are extentions of Dupdomancy and not actual Bent. Pool is 1/5th the level of Dupdomancy.

^Moved from Chained Spirit

Voodoo U: Damage taken by caster is absorbed by Calvinian Summon instead.

^Moved from Chained Spirit

Survival of the Fittest: All Calvinian summons experience occasional random minor mutations of the template creature. A creature from the swarm may replace the old template creature.

Calvin carefully looked through his list of options and swallowed a sigh. There were so many things he wanted to take, and so little points to take them with.

The smart money was on taking Voodoo U. He’d be able to worry less about his personal defense while his summons were in place.

Seems like the thing to take if you wanna live through another fight with a Legend.

Survival of the fittest looked like a lot of fun, but really needed Variety to shine. Continuity and Bent weren’t important yet, Elliot had just moved them into Calvinian summoning to make them available to Dupdomancy.

None of his creatures really required a firm understanding of what was going on around them.

Not yet anyway.

Chimera required Variety as well.

Calvin was stuck there, his eyes flickering between Variety and Vodoo U.

Fuck it. I’m underground in a pit full of unique, powerful monsters. When am I gonna get another chance like this to stock up on things people have never seen before?

I choose Variety is the Spice of death.

You’re gonna be a glass cannon forever, ain’tcha?

Until I die or wise up, I guess.

Calvinian Summoning Updating….

5 slots available!

Well, I always did like pokemon too. Let’s go catch some monsters.