Even her wounds were practically gone, only the deepest stabs holes in her back still felt when she stretched. In perhaps a day more, even the faint scars would fade, and her skin would be spotless as the day she climbed out of that bunker.

“Should probably take a bath myself,” she pondered as she returned to lounging on the bed, once more reaching for the Tablet and once more tapping its wellspring of knowledge. Each time she picked it up after having undergone a substantial change her hand thrummed whilst the device actualized itself, and this time was no different.

A new trait? No.

A new technique.

REBOUND PULSE

Type: Reactive Defense (Special) Trigger: At-Will - Mnemonic Sequence Effects: Kinetic Redirection A+ to C- (Timing-dependent) Advancement: “Return to Sender” a Lethal Blow

Mnemonic sequence? Strange. It lit up yellow, as if it were a button. At a prolonged touch, her mind flashed with the exact sequence of actions she had done to trigger the technique. “Too complex to show with a projection, huh?” Zel chuckled to herself, idly swiping through the device’s projections in the absence of anything better to do. Something gnawed at the back of her mind, so perhaps using the memory-refreshing RECORDS function could be of use.

RECORDS Beast-slayer Contract No. 1 - Briefing Record Beast-slayer Contract No. 2 - Briefing Record

Though she remembered that number one was Quincy and number two was the Governor, Zel thought that if this default naming scheme remained it would quickly become confusing. Near instantly the Tablet made a small adjustment, keywords flickering into being next to the record titles.

RECORDS Beast-slayer Contract No. 1 - Briefing Record - “Barkeep” Beast-slayer Contract No. 2 - Briefing Record - “Governor”

A tap on the second record refreshed her memory of the briefing. “So that’s what I forgot,” she thought as she reached into a pocket, retrieving the small piece of paper that the Governor gave her. It read:

Unforeseen Consequences

Into Fog Storage for safekeeping it went, and for the next couple minutes, Zelsys idly lounged about. She tested Fogskin by channelling it into her palm and punching it, feeling out the timing more and more. She didn’t actually intend to just wait for Zef to get out of the bath, but she couldn’t follow after the markswoman right away either. No, she waited - waited for just long enough that, by the time she stood at the bathroom door, the bath had filled at least a third of the way and the room had begun to fill with steam.

She would’ve knocked, but something told her she didn’t need to. Indeed, the door was unlocked, and Zefaris sat with her lower half barely submerged in the off-green tinted water, leaning back in the tub. One of the cabinets was ajar, and there were glass phials with green and pink bath salts on the tiles next to the bath, the former empty while the latter was three-quarters full. Zef turned her head to look at Zel with a smug, blushing smile, wordlessly affirming her correct prediction of what would happen.

Zelsys shed her clothes, and without saying a word either, stepped into the bath, facing Zefaris. For a little while, they earnestly did no more than help one another wash off the grime of the day, but… The steam that rose from the bath did not help either of their restraint. To both of them, the steam smelled of herbs and of one another, but it also smelled lightly of the iron in blood and of raw primal instinct, of lust.

Gently scrubbing away at Zef’s chest, Zelsys found herself captivated by the glistening of her counterpart’s marble-like skin, instinctively leaning in for a kiss as she let go of the sponge and allowed her hand to wander downward whilst with her other she took hold of Zef’s free hand, fingers intertwining. In the moment before their lips met, she took a breath and felt the lustful Fog-intoxication of Lover’s Breath flooding her being, even without her conscious input.

Zelsys felt the sponge fall from her back and splash into the water when Zef let go and, in turn, traced her own hand down Zel’s chest, stroking and prodding to an almost fetishistic degree all the way to its inevitable destination between her legs. Utterly consumed by the lustful trance of their own creation, they quickly devolved to a breathy, moaning tangle of limbs, and by the time they once more came to their senses, the water had gone completely cold.

That night, just as the night before, they slept in each other’s embrace.

Zel and Zef were woken up all too early in the morning to a banging on the door.

“Nrrrgh... “ Zelsys grumbled in annoyance as she dragged herself out of the unconscious abyss of sleep, slowly sitting up. Zef clung to her, still mostly asleep. “What is it?”

“The brat you beat the snot outta wants to talk to you!” Makhus responded from beyond the door, audibly annoyed at having had to interact with Halxian at all.

“And don’t forget the samples!” he added.

With a sigh Zelsys sat up, got dressed to a functional minimum of trousers, boots, and chest-wrappings, then walked out of the bedroom.

Bleary-eyed, hair hanging down in a rust-colored cloak, and just about ready to tell the youngster to piss off, Zelsys walked down the stairs and into the main room of the store, where she saw the governor’s son standing in the door, alone. He… Didn’t look all that arrogant. He didn’t act the part, either.

There was very much a tangible sense of egoism radiating from him, but when he cast his gaze her way, he did so with a grudging sense of respect, in part likely fueled by the presence of very visible wounds that peered through her at the moment loose and haphazard chest wrappings.

“You better have a good reason to wake me up this early,” Zelsys grumbled at him, making no effort to hide her animosity. The young noble let out an apologetic chuckle.

“I’m afraid it wasn’t my choice, at the moment I am no more than my father’s messenger,” he explained with audible spite towards the man he spoke of. “He says your contract has been moved up due to unforeseen consequences. Don’t go getting yourself killed, I’ll get my rematch when next we meet.”

“If it’s another beating you want, I’ll be happy to oblige you someday soon,” Zel chuckled menacingly, then immediately dropped her grin for a moment of seriousness. “Now scram. If it comes to it, let your father know I’ll be there soon.”

Without so much as batting an eye, the youngster gave a single sharp nod, turned on a boot-heel, and walked away, leaving only the ringing of the doorbell in his stead. Zelsys took a deep breath and let out another deep sigh in an attempt to dispose of the murk of sleepiness, making her way up the stairs. At the top, Makhus met her just as he emerged from the kitchen, his eyes instinctively wandering downward before he caught himself and blurted out, “Samples, right. Y’mind comin’ with me to the lab real quick? And uh, tighten your wrappings.”

He stepped past her not waiting for a response, and indeed, she followed, reaching behind her back to tighten the strips of fabric. Alas, she’d wrapped it carelessly, and even with an ironclad knot they held on for dear life throughout the ordeal of going to the basement and having her blood taken again. She ducked into her bedroom to grab the Tablet, then retrieved the Necrobeast’s Azoth from Fog Storage on the way down in lieu of waiting for the Fog vortex then and there, simply handing it over when she caught up to the alchemist.

“What of the tests you wanted the samples for?” she questioned whilst Makhus cautiously pulled on the plunger to let her blood fill the syringe.

He was obviously reluctant to say so, but her offhandedly asking “What, am I a fucking homunculus or something?” was enough to make him spill it.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out ‘ere, now stay still so I don’t scrape the inside of the vein,” he responded, frankly. He said it seriously, matter of factly. Zelsys could feel in her gut that he was telling it as it was, and to her own surprise… She didn’t really care. It only made sense - she woke up in a tank at the bottom of a huge bunker lab complex, crawling with the failed contents of tanks just like the one she came out of.

What was the alternative, really? Some sort of alchemically-induced stasis that also involved amnesia?