Certain sectors were hit harder than others because of Gerome’s ‘game’.

The service industry was fine, because most people without a superpower didn’t have any recollection of the month and a half long blip in their memory. They all still had their jobs, there hadn’t been any rent or consumption during the event. The internal supplies and infrastructure of Franklin City had returned just the way they’d been before.

Farmers on the other hand, were delayed from returning to their farms for six weeks longer than they would’ve otherwise been able to, absolutely devastating their produce, and forcing Franklin City to send another train out Washington way.

Thankfully, Perry was no longer on rotation and managed to dodge a second trip.

Once was enough for Perry.

All Perry wanted to do now was sit down in his office and get back to work on exploring his tech, The System, and its interaction with essences. Put his feet up and get back to reading his esoteric books on soul-magic. See if he could figure out a way to break the System’s chokehold on magic.

The safe under Perry’s desk whined open, revealing…a note.

Dear lord, please no, Perry thought, grabbing the paper and bringing it out into the light of his office. If it was another note from Chemestro, he’d probably throw a hissy fit.

It was on a fancy, watermarked paper, and had a faint aroma of expensive perfume.

Ah, it’s from gramma, Perry thought, flipping it over.

Paradox; Seeing as you are both absent the city and behind on your visits to my clinic, I have taken it upon myself to temporarily repossess Gadrevan’s Theses and the valuable reference documents and safeguard them until such a time as you return and catch up on your backlog.

P.S. you may bring the raven-locked paramour if you wish.

P.P.S. In light of the ‘Gerome’ incident, it would behoove you to visit the clinic for a check-up.

(This Post-Script has been magically added via the Omni-notary Department, if you believe this was in error, you are wrong. The Omni-notary Department: 100% accurate.)

Perry pursed his lips as he re-read the letter. Perhaps Natalie had a second superpower that made everyone like her? Or maybe it was just her size mixed with a healthy dose of cuteness aggression.

“That’s bullshit. I didn’t study while I was out, so I never got behind on clinic visits.” It was just a ploy to get Perry to visit.

Still, the books were probably safer at grandma’s than they would’ve been by themselves while he was on the train trip.

Perry tapped his fingers on the table, devising a devious scheme to get what he wanted and piss Gramma off a little bit at the same time. Well…less devious than juvenile and predictable.

But it would still turn out well for everyone involved…probably.

Perry pulled out his cell phone and entered the group chat, inviting Heather and Nat out for a visit to his grandmother’s clinic to get a magical check-up.

A couple hours later, Perry was standing in front of the receptionist’s desk, explaining that yes, he was expected, when gramma entered from the side. Her neutral expression cracked for a moment when she spotted Heather, clearly visible behind Natalie, being over a head taller.

Natalie was wearing a yellow patterned one piece, while Heather was wearing jeans and a dark tank top.

“Hey, Gramma, I got your note,” Perry said.

Gramma looked down her nose at the three of them, before airily motioning them to follow her.

“This way then, I’d like to make sure that god didn’t leave any malicious presents in your soul before he left.”

“Can you check them too?” Perry asked, pointing at Heather and Nat.

Perry especially wanted Gramma to give Heather a thorough exam, because the entity known as Gerome had changed her mind many times in rapid succession, and he was worried she might’ve sustained…spiritual whiplash…if that was a thing.

Gramma hesitated, prompting Perry to lean forward and lower his voice.

“You never know, one of them could make you a great-grandma. You want them to be…not crazy, right?”

“I’m not that easy to manipulate, Paradox,” Gramma snorted. “Besides, I don’t need your encouragement to do ‘charity work’,” She said, glancing at Heather.

Perry watched Heather put on a fake smile and choke back a retort.

“Fine, I’ll give all of you a checkup.” She guided them to an office with a bit of extra space and several chairs.

“You sit there,” She said, pointing Perry to the middle of the farthest wall.

“You sit there, you there,” She said, pointing to the opposite two corners.

“Alright, boy, you first.” She said, pulling out a needle and bottle with a rubber top made to be perforated.

“Umm…what is that?” Perry asked as Gramma wiped his arm down with an alchohol wipe.

“Distilled Brag-jor extract.”

“And…why are you injecting me with it?” Perry asked.

“You know how when you get an MRI, they put stuff in your system that increases the contrast of the picture so they can see things better?” Gramma asked. “Same concept.”

“How do you know about MRIs?” Perry asked.

“I’ve been on this planet for decades, Paradox,” Gramma said, jabbing him in the vein with the extract.

“Whoah,” Perry immediately felt lightheaded

“Hold that,” she said, prompting him to hold a cotton swab over the injection site.

“It makes your soul stand out in stark relief, so foreign agents or damage is much easier to detect,” Gramma muttered, grabbing a tool that looked something like a jeweler’s lens from the tool rack and swinging her swivel chair back over to him.

“It also has a side effect of making you…what are the kids calling it these days? ‘Trip balls’?” The giant lab coat around a tiny stick figure said.

“Oh, that’s a relief to hear,” Perry said as the walls melted into geodesic patterns.

The shrunken husk inside the coat wobbled a bit, fitting a massive black telescope to the pimple on top that kinda looked like his gramma. It then leaned forward and began looking at the air around him in a slow pattern.

“I can see the parts that were added to you, the false memories and knowledge already stood out quite a bit, but your ‘passengers’ are beginning to assimilate them.

“The passengers weren’t there to start with?” Perry asked, trying to stay upright.

“No, they’re growing into the new parts Gerome added.” The lab-coat-wearing barnacle said. “Those parts are big, obvious, and benign. I could take them out for you, but it might do more damage than it fixes. What I’m looking for now is anything that was buried deeper, designed to look natural, and could act as a kill switch or backdoor.”

“That gives me an idea,” Perry said, pulling out his phone and jotting down a note.

Foreign soul part visitbility/experimentation. How long till absorbed?

“How long until they’re a part of me?”

“Are you trying to use your phone?” The black-haired sponge carved in the shape of a fertility idol asked.

Perry looked down and saw his phone was upside down and he’d been mashing the back with his fingers.

He flipped it over to the other side and saw that it was his palm, and the phone was on the floor, swimming around by itself.

“Can you guys take notes for me?” Perry asked, glancing over between the idol and the nuclear mushroom cloud on legs. Perry squinted. The mushroom cloud was kinda gold-orange, and the legs were pretty.

“Sure, whaddya need?” the cloud asked.

“Umm..” Perry tried to consult his phone, but it was his hand.

“What were you telling me about?” he finally asked.

“Big, obvious parts of your soul in high-definition,” Gramma said, peering this way and that around him, using the presumably magical lens to peer at his soul.

“Right. Write down ‘foreign soul parts, high definition, experimentation, and time limit’.” Perry said, struggling to be as coherent as possible.

“Alright, dude, got it.”

“You’re not going to do experiments without me present, are you?” Gramma asked.

Perry shook his head. “Measurements. I want to take measurements.”

“That’s fine then, but if you actually interact with it, I want to be present.” Gramma said.

“Fiiiine,” Perry groaned.

Gramma scowled at Perry but didn’t give him trouble for his sass. “He was too high to get in trouble for being rude.”

“Said that part out loud, Perry,” The glowing mushroom cloud corrected him.

“Yeah, it’s strong stuff,” Lab Coat said, setting the lens aside before peering into his eyes with a separate one.

“Well, looks like aside from the benign additions, Gerome didn’t think to do anything malicious to your soul.”

“Cool,” Perry gave a thumb’s up

“Are there any troublesome personality traits or memories you would like me to remove? Or would you rather keep them all?”

“What if I don’t wanna get rid of em?” Perry asked.

“You might find you have a taste for certain peasant food that existed in Gerome’s reality, or a desire to habitually oil your boots and sword. Minor things like that.”

“I’m fine, then.” Perry re-iterated his thumb’s up.

“Alright,” The lab coat said, spinning to the two girls. “Who wants to go next?”

“I’ll go next,” The mushroom cloud said, while the sponge watched nervously, rubbing her arm.

“How long is he going to be like that?” Sponge asked, prompting Perry to wonder who she was talking about.

“A couple minutes at most. It’s a fleeting high.” Lab Coat said, opening shelves and pulling out an odd pendulum and setting it up in the middle of the room.

Humming to herself, she snagged the weird ball of white growing out of Perry’s arm, causing him to gasp in shock.

She wiped the red side of the white ball on the pendulum, then tapped it on top. Perry felt a pulse of something, then the pendulum swung forward, pointing directly between Heather and Natalie, shivering as it tugged on the end of its string.

“Huh.” Lab coat said, pulling out a box of iridescent dust and sprinkling it on both of them, then making a sign with her hands before tapping the pendulum again.

POW!

The pendulum snapped the string and embedded itself in the wall above Perry’s head. Perry was too slow to have a reaction to it, and by the time his brain caught up, it was already over.

“Interesting. May I have both your phone numbers for a follow-up?” Lab coat asked, fetching two new needles and the bottle of Brag-jor extract.

“Don’t do it,” Perry said, shaking his head. “The lab coat has an agenda. And whatever you do, don’t sign anything or take money or give her permission to enter your home. She’s like an evil entity.”

“Rude.” Lab coast said, handing Sponge and Mushroom cloud something that looked like a pamphlet. Perry couldn’t quite make out what it said and both the hallucinations put it away rather quickly.

“Eh,” Perry shrugged, squinting as Heather and Gramma came back into focus. “Whoah, that was weird,”

“See,” Gramma said, glancing at Natalie with a gentle smile as she wiped down Heather’s arm with an alchohol swab. “He’s better already.”

Perry blinked a couple times as the walls stopped moving and his head stabilized.

“Yeah, I’m fine now,” he said, glancing over at Natalie’s yellow coveralls. “I thought you were a sponge.”

Natalie giggled moments before Heather’s brows rose. “Whoah.”

Perry grabbed his phone from where it lay on the floor, snapped a photo of the pendulum and then began writing down ideas for his experiments, tuning out Heather’s trip while Gramma inspected her soul through the lens.

Okay, so if the foreign bit that were placed by Gerome are still separate from Abun’zaul, and The System, that means it’s possible for it to happen. No System, no restriction against magic.

Since the foreign parts are easy to identify, and stick out like sore thumbs, AND are completely non-integral to my core personality and sanity, that means I can run experiments on them without risking heavy damage to my soul and they are easy to locate, track and measure. It’s everything I could’ve asked for.

Who cares if I lose the ability to ride horses, or make tallow candles out of grass and beef fat?

I just need to jump on this opportunity before Abun’zaul and The System integrate these parts with the whole. I want natural, un-integrated soul to experiment on.

“How much time do I have until my passengers assimilate the foreign soul parts?” Perry asked.

“Couple months.” Gramma muttered, scribbling on a notepad while Heather was loopy, trying to pet the chair she was sitting in.

Huh, I thought it would be a shorter amount of time. But then again, I’ve had them in for about a decade.

120 months, give or take a month.

Yeah, two months wasn’t a lot by comparison.

When Heather sobered up, Gramma flipped her notepad to the next sheet and printed Nat’s name before repeating the procedure on the tiny Tinker.

Once she was done, Gramma filed everything for later.

“Alright, clean bill of health, Gerome didn’t leave any surprises. You’re free to go about your business.”

“Young lady, can we have a moment to speak alone?” She said, clutching Heather’s arm with her gnarled fingers.

Heather shared a glance with Perry and Natalie.

Perry was about to tell gramma off when Heather waved him down.

“I’ll be fine.” She said.

“It’ll just be a moment.” Gramma said.

“I’m watching you.” Perry said, motioning to his eyes, then pointing at Gramma, before heading out the door.

***Heather, A.K.A. Wraith***

“So, is this where you tell me I’m not good enough for your grandson, or something?” Heather asked, crossing her arms. She’d seen plenty of TV drama where something nearly identical went down. Natalie was the obvious favorite.

“Oh, no, I already made that clear. This is about your soul,” Gramma Z. said, cleaning up her desk and putting everything away.

Heather’s skin went went cold.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, your mother is dead, your father just died, and shortly after, your memories and feelings for Paradox were overwritten multiple times in a short amount of time.” The crone said, pulling out a gilded silver pipe and lighting it.

“You know how when you expose glass to hot and then cold temperatures in rapid succession, it can crack?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, that’s where you’re at. Your soul is cracked and held together by shoestring and bubblegum.”

She pulled out a pad and started writing, smoke curling around her nose.

“I prescribe finding yourself some surrogate parents, Darryl and Claudette would be fine, although you can choose others if you prefer. You also will need some therapy from a mundane therapist. Six months to a couple years of both should do it.”

She squinted up at Heather. “And for god’s sakes, don’t break up with those two until you’re better. That’s a villainous mental breakdown waiting to happen.” She snorted, passing her the prescription note.

“You can’t just…fix me?” Heather asked.

“I could offer to remove pieces of Perry’s soul because otherwise, he’s healthy.” Gramma Z. said. “With you, I’m liable to pull out the last Jenga piece and watch it all collapse under it’s own weight.”

Gramma Z. poked the prescription note. “Don’t forget these three points. New parents, therapist, don’t break up yet.”

“Should I tell them about this?” Heather asked.

“That’s up to you. It’s why I brought you aside.” Gramma Z said. “Now get out of here, you bother me.”

“You really take your job seriously, don’t you?” Heather asked, glancing down at the note.

“A queen must always fulfill her duties with the utmost diligence,” Gramma Z. said, waving her out.

Once they were all in the reception lobby, Perry pestered his grandmother until she caved and gave him a stack of some eight large leather-bound tomes and a single journal, about the size of a spiral notebook, but seemingly more valuable than all the others put together.

“What’s all that?” Heather asked as Perry chuckled evilly, stroking the journal with a manic grin.

“This, is the journal containing the unfinished works of a master wizard, who quietly pioneered soul magic while most of his work was stolen and repackaged by a hack.” Perry said.

“These…” Perry hefted the large leather-bound tomes. “Are the reference documents I need to decipher it.”

“Anything in there about fixing souls?” Heather asked, glancing over the pile.

“Mostly it’s about artificially modifying and enhancing, not so much about fixing, that just takes clean living, and –“ Perry frowned, glancing up at her.

“What did she tell you?” Perry asked.

Heather glanced at Perry and Nat, watching her with curious eyes, and folded with a sigh, tugging the prescription out of her pocket and handing it to Perry.

“Oh, damn,” Perry muttered before passing it over to Nat and pulling out his phone.

“Oh, Heather,” Natalie said, reading the prescription before turning her eyes up to Heather, watering with sympathetic tears. “Are you going to be okay?”

“PFFT, I’m fine, she was just being old and dumb,” Heather said, feeling anything but okay. “I mean, my whole life has been a roller-coaster so far, so I’m used to it.”

She wasn’t. The prospect of going back ‘home’ by herself and being totally alone until she got to meet up with them again was awful.

“I mean, if you want, you can come over and hang out…” Heather hedged.

“My mom doesn’t let me stay over at other people’s houses.” Natalie said, cutting deep. A tiny piece of Heather felt like raging that Nat would still choose her parent’s stupid rules over her friend.

She bit it back.

“How did you convince her to let you go on the train?” Heather asked.

“Solaris showed up at my house.” Natalie said, wrenching a chuckle out of Heather.

Nat tapped her fingers together nervously in the cute way she did when she was about to take a plunge.

“Maybe you can stay at my place for a –“

“Hi, yeah,” Perry said, his phone up to his ears. “Can I get a rush job on three shirts? First two, Prescription strength mom and dad, in women’s XXS and men’s Large, respectively. The last one should be a women’s crop top, small, saying: ‘my doctor proscribed me a daddy -ACK!’.”

Perry’s words were cut off as Heather tackled him to the ground.