NaNo Ridiculousness Chapter 11
Hey there,
Here's Chapter 11 of "I Prefer the Mind Control." I'm trying to make actual chapters now. Enjoy the probably-NSFW ridiculousness!
Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5(ish), Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10
---------
“So, anything I gotta do beforehand?” I asked. Hey, I didn't know, well, anything about this.
“Nothing specifically,” Xan said, about to make his next call. “You might want to take a shower and wash up though.”
He kissed me quickly, and I got out of the bed. I went to shower and wash up, trying to ignore the nervousness twisting my stomach. Such nervousness was normal, right?
After I showered and everything, I realized I had no idea what to wear. Sure, I had clothes now, but was this considered, like, a super-formal occasion? I didn't fucking know.
I said, “Xan, um, what should I wear? One of the more formal outfits?”
“You can wear whatever you like. You'll just be taking it off when we get to the actual ceremony room,” he answered. “Now, I should probably wash up myself.” He got off the bed and headed to the bathroom before I could saying anything in response.
I took a deep breath and went to go select an outfit. My heart wanted to race, and you could probably have said I was nearly panicking. It wasn't “oh shit I don't want to do this” panicking, though. It was more “oh shit, will this even work?” style panicking. That was a whole different kind of fucking panic. And, come on, anybody anywhere ever would be fucking likely to panic just a little if they were about to make a huge life-changing kind of decision. Lack of panicking, would, I thought, indicate lack of understanding of what they were about to do. I hope you're not questioning my decision, as you're the one who put me here in the first place, dear author. Oh, don't look at me like that. Talking back is part of my charm.
Damn, which outfit should I pick? I thought to myself. Damn, I didn't fucking know which outfit would be most appropriate. Xan said I could wear “whatever I like” which was close enough to those wedding invites and shit where it was like “semi-formal” or “black-tie optional” or “dress festive” or whatever, where I didn't fucking know what they meant. Fucking hell, clothing confused me.
Eventually, I settled on something: the tight black pants and “so translucent it was almost invisble” silver shirt. I pulled them on and went to check myself out in the mirror. Yep, these clothes definitely made me look more naked with them on. How the fuck did that work? I still hadn't figured it out. I took another deep breath.
“Stop racing so much, you asshole,” I hissed at my heartbeat.
Did you know that calling your internal organs names does not, in fact, make them stop being annoying? Heartbeats didn't fucking listen to you. I think that's a good thing to remember in case you ever decide to yell at your own heartbeat.
Inconveniently, I burst into giggles at the absurdity of it all. Luckily, I got myself under control before my sides completely split in two, not that “side-splitting” was a literal expression or anything. Somehow, though, the random giggles of randomness made my heart slow down. Huh, wondered how that worked. Instead of a racing heart and nervous expression, I wore a goofy as fuck grin as I checked myself out in the mirror. I was fucking giddy, giddy enough to bounce on my feet like Dr. Merrico did. I didn't fucking bounce normally, not like that, anyway. But I was bouncing now. I was fucking excited. Way more excited than nervous, though I retained enough nervousness because, like I said, you didn't go into something like this without nervousness unless you were a complete and utter dumbass with fewer than two neurons to rub together. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Even the stupidest human on the planet had more neurons than that. I knew that much biology.
After a few more minutes of bouncing, Xan exited the shower wearing nothing but a towel. Of course, I stared because, damn, was he hot. He smirked, noticing just how much I liked looking at him.
He said, “Like what you see, don't you? They'll be time for looking later, and, anyway, today isn't about looking at me; it's about looking at you.”
"Huh?" I wondered. "What do you mean by that?"
Xan just smiled. "You'll see."
"That doesn't exactly tell me anything, you know."
He kept smiling. "Well, no, but a little mystery might be fun, yes?"
"Not if it means I might screw something up. I want to get this right, okay?" I really didn't want to fuck this up, so I wasn't exactly loving this whole "mysterious" thing Xan suddenly had going on.
"Don't worry. You won't screw things up. Everything should be fine," he assured me.
"If you say so," I muttered.
Even random mysteriousness couldn't prevent me from bouncing again. Xan noticed that, smiling even more. “You're excited, aren't you?”
Of course I was excited. “Yeah, I'm excited,” I said.
After Xan changed into his own set of clothes, we sat down at what had to be a kind of dining room table. He munched on what appeared to be a nutrition bar, but I was too nervous and excited to eat anything.
Xan didn't seem to agree with my stomach full of fucking butterflies. “I know your cybernetic enhancements enable you to get energy and sustenance from a kind of photosynthesis, but you really should eat something.”
At that moment, a particular thought occurred to me. “Wait, is your food even compatible with my human biology? For all I know, Zimarans could consider cyanide an essential part of their diet.”
He laughed. “Cyanide will kill us as easily as it will kill you. Through some quirk of evolution, our biology is similar enough that you can eat one of these bars and not die.”
It was a “quirk of evolution,” huh? Damn, author, that just makes things fucking easy for you, doesn't it? Okay, fine, it makes things easy for, me, too, as I won't actually starve to death or anything unpleasant like that. I know, I know, I had the weird as fuck photosynthesis thing going on, but actual food would be nice too, you know? After all, I wasn't a plant.
“But that doctor was talking about how people were all worried the cybernetic stuff wouldn't work on me, yet the food is all okay? Seems a little strange, though I'm not complaining,” I said.
Xan looked thoughtful. “Hmm, it is a bit odd, but I suppose there are enough subtle differences that would make something as fine-tuned as cybernetics possibly difficult to implement on a human body.”
“I'm glad it worked then.” I looked up at the ceiling, trying not to bounce too much in my chair.
Even the dining room had that black-and-silver thing going on. I concentrated on the décor partly to keep my emotions in check. Bouncing might have been kind of okay, but full-on flailing probably wouldn't be such a good idea.
Xan handed me a nutrition bar whatsit. “I'm glad it worked, too. Very glad.”
I unwrapped the whatsit and took a bite. “Wow, these taste way more like food than the ones you get on Earth. Most of those resemble food as much as your average politician resembles a human being.”
That earned me a little chuckle. Xan's ridiculously gorgeous bronze eyes sparkled as he watched me. Damn fuck, he was beautiful.
“You're way too pretty, you know that?” I said.
“I could say the same about you.”
As I opened my mouth to speak, Xan continued, “And no arguing. How many times do I have to tell you not to try and argue with me whenever I say something nice about you?”
“A lot of times? My brain is, like, programmed not to get it, okay?” My brain was fucking stupid, I knew that much. Hey, how do you do when you try to deprogram yourself? It's not fucking easy.
Xan stared at me with extra intensity. “Well, we'll just have to work on deprogramming you, then. Because you should really be able to take a compliment.”
He was right; taking compliments was a skill everyone needed. I didn't even exactly know why I sucked at it so bad. It wasn't like my parents didn't believe in compliments. They were decent, yet my brain came out fucking borked anyway. Maybe my mom didn't eat enough fish when she was pregnant with me or maybe she ate too much fish and it was all filled with evil plastic molecules of doom or something. Yeah, I think I'm gonna blame plastic molecule fish of doom for my borked brain. Is that alright with you? I don't wanna talk about this anymore.
“From what I've heard, trying to deprogram people can have seriously bad results and lead to scary shit,” I said.
His eyes practically blazed. “Not when I'm doing it.”
Very quickly, mealtime was over. Also, it seemed like time itself decided to move faster and eat itself so that it was time to go when just before we had had a couple hours. We both brushed our teeth again in order not to have icky food breath, and we were ready to go. The butterflies in my stomach morphed from your average nervousness bugs to a highly evolved squadron of insects with their own fucking fighter jets. At the same fucking time, I bounced like someone had replaced the bottoms of my feet with pogo sticks.
Xan put an arm around my waist. “It's time to go. Are you ready?”
“Ready as anything,” I replied, while silently telling the militarized butterflies to fucking quit it.
We walked through the various hallways, with their weird sculptures and other alien oddities. This time, I couldn't pay too much attention because, you know, militarized butterflies and all that. Luckily, as we got closer and closer to wherever we were going, the butterflies seemed to lessen. The bouncing didn't, though.
Xan said, “If you keep bouncing like that, you might hit your head on the ceiling.”
“Man, even with my cybernetic enhancements, I don't think I can do that.” The ceilings were pretty fucking high, in my opinion.
“Anyway, we're here.” He gestured to a fancy set of doors with a strange giant symbol on it. To my puny human mind, it resembled a dude doing magic on another dude. Swirls of wind or something covered the one guy while the other guy stood over him, seemingly directing the wind whatever. From what I could tell, both of them looked really ridiculously happy.
“Is that door gonna scan our retinas or anything? I don't see a keypad or anything.” I didn't, which was weird because other important areas had them.
“This is the entrance the people doing the actual Soulbreaking enter through. It's the first test. The door will admit you only if you're willing to do it.”
I raised an eyebrow. “It can tell that? What, is it fucking magic or something?”
He said, “Close enough to it, I suppose.”
“So, how's it work? Looks like a regular fancy set of doors to me,” I said.
Xan pointed to what looked like two stars on either side of the doors. “See those? How it works is we hold hands and put our free hands on either star. If the door deems us truly willing, it will open.”
I thought this was a science fiction story, not outright fantasy. Still, I would put up with the softer and squishier elements of your writing if it meant getting to Soulbond with Xan.
Smiling so very warmly, Xan let go of my waist and took my hand in his. I breathed deeply, telling those militarized butterflies to fucking go away. They had redoubled their attack efforts, but I told them to scram, and they did as I put my hand against the star on my side of the fancy doors. Xan placed his hand on the doors as well. For a evilly long moment, nothing fucking happened. My heart thudded; did the doors deem us unworthy to enter? Oh, fuck no.
A strange screech sounded and the doors started to open outwards. Xan and I jumped backwards as they moved.
“It worked!” I shouted. “It worked!”
Right now? I thought I might fucking float away.
Thankfully, I did not, in fact, float the fuck the away. That would have been a disaster, not to mention violating several laws of physics. Then again, that damn magic door violated physics and known science. If the door could laugh in the face of the universe as I knew who, who was to say I would float away?
Xan didn't let go of my hand; I noticed that, despite jumping backwards, we were still attached to one another. That seemed to me a good omen, if I were the type to believe in omens. I didn't like to think there was some mysterious force telling us things mysteriously because, honestly, that would have just been fucking annoying, you know?
And so, we entered the room. It was much smaller than I had expected. It rather resembled a bedroom of sorts, kind of. At least, there was a bed in the middle of it. Normally, you didn't just stick the bed in the middle of the room because that was a stupid way to use your space. I had learned that much from sharing a tiny as fuck dormitory where the center of the room barely even existed. The walls of the place were strange, with more pictures of those two dudes, or two people like them, on the walls. Reliefs or some such, I think they were called.
Those militarized butterflies tried to return with full force, but I told them to fuck off. Now was not the time for fucking butterflies, especially not those with a well-developed military-industrial complex. I thought those butterflies must have been building a whole damn civilization in my stomach, and I wasn't about to play universe to such creatures. Oh, hell no. Hell to the fuck no. Nervousness would not ruin this; I wouldn't fucking allow it.
Only then did I notice the people in the room. There were two others; I recognized them both. It was Firi Arco and Jirrin. I had expected Xan's friend to show up. After all, I was there when we had talked to him via vidscreen. Firi, now I didn't expect her to show up to this. As goofy as it may have been, I kind of gaped when I saw her.
She smirked. “Did you really think I was going to miss this? After all, the Kingdom's security is my responsibility, and this matter does pertain to such security, does it not? The goal is, I presume, to get Earth to stop harassing us, yes?”
“Yeah, that's the goal,” I said. Well, that and I just plain wanted to. That too. Mostly that, if I were being completely honest with myself.
Jirrin waved at us. “We almost thought you guys were going to be late.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Xan's own eyes widen ever so slightly. “Late? Why, I wouldn't be late for this.”
Then, both Jirrin and Firi gave me strange looks, like they couldn't believe I existed or something. Yeah, I was a stranger in a strange land or however you said it, but I fucking existed.
I raised an eyebrow, silently asking them to explain themselves.
“History, Dylan!” he exclaimed.
My eyebrow remained raised.
Jirrin said, “You do realize this is the first time in Zimara's entire history that an off-worlder has so much as attempted to Soulbond with a native Zimaran. That's a historical moment.”
Wait, what? Historical moment? Like “put in a fucking textbook” kind of historical?
I stammered, “Like you would teach your children about kind of historical moment?”
Firi gave me another look. “Well, of course. It's a monumental occasion.” She focused her gaze on Xan. “Too bad your fathers can't be here to see this. You did try to tell them, didn't you?”
Xan shifted on his feet. “I - I couldn't exactly get a hold of them.”
She said, “As I expected. To avoid unnecessary surprises, I did tell them you had important news.” Firi looked back at me. “You really are unusual, aren't you?”
I didn't honestly think I was that unusual. “I'm really not that unusual,” I told her.
Firi snorted. “False modesty isn't flattering, you realize. To act like you're just an average human is an insult to all the people who actually are average humans.”
Damn, defeated by logic. I supposed it was an insult to regular types, though I still felt regular, in terms of, like, personality and stuff.
I said, “I suppose you're right.”
She smiled. “Of course I'm right. You see, from what I know, humans are so very, very attached to their freedom. Especially those from your homeland.”
Confusedly, I asked, “And so?”
“And so it's highly unusual that one of your people would so willingly give up his freedom,” she answered. “And it's highly unusual that you would be the one to suggest this. That's all.”
“I - I guess it would be,” I said.
Xan spoke up. “I think it's time we get started. Everyone's here, and since Master Arco is qualified to officially oversee Soulbreaking ceremonies as well as be a Witness, we have everything we need.”
He let go of my hand and turned to me. His eyes shone with a kind of intensity I hadn't seen before. More than ever, it felt like he were staring into my soul. The sensation now was almost physical, as if Xan were pushing his very essence into me. It warmed my entire fucking being.
“Take off your clothes,” Xan ordered.
I did as I was told. Right then, I could feel everyone's eyes on me, though neither of the others stared at me the way Xan did. I thought he must be doing something special with his mind control powers, because, more and more, I could feel a presence of some kind making its way through my body. It felt almost like my body weren't my own anymore, like I was being possessed by some kind of spirit. I welcomed the strange presence into my being as I wondered what would happen next.
Here's Chapter 11 of "I Prefer the Mind Control." I'm trying to make actual chapters now. Enjoy the probably-NSFW ridiculousness!
Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5(ish), Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10
---------
“So, anything I gotta do beforehand?” I asked. Hey, I didn't know, well, anything about this.
“Nothing specifically,” Xan said, about to make his next call. “You might want to take a shower and wash up though.”
He kissed me quickly, and I got out of the bed. I went to shower and wash up, trying to ignore the nervousness twisting my stomach. Such nervousness was normal, right?
After I showered and everything, I realized I had no idea what to wear. Sure, I had clothes now, but was this considered, like, a super-formal occasion? I didn't fucking know.
I said, “Xan, um, what should I wear? One of the more formal outfits?”
“You can wear whatever you like. You'll just be taking it off when we get to the actual ceremony room,” he answered. “Now, I should probably wash up myself.” He got off the bed and headed to the bathroom before I could saying anything in response.
I took a deep breath and went to go select an outfit. My heart wanted to race, and you could probably have said I was nearly panicking. It wasn't “oh shit I don't want to do this” panicking, though. It was more “oh shit, will this even work?” style panicking. That was a whole different kind of fucking panic. And, come on, anybody anywhere ever would be fucking likely to panic just a little if they were about to make a huge life-changing kind of decision. Lack of panicking, would, I thought, indicate lack of understanding of what they were about to do. I hope you're not questioning my decision, as you're the one who put me here in the first place, dear author. Oh, don't look at me like that. Talking back is part of my charm.
Damn, which outfit should I pick? I thought to myself. Damn, I didn't fucking know which outfit would be most appropriate. Xan said I could wear “whatever I like” which was close enough to those wedding invites and shit where it was like “semi-formal” or “black-tie optional” or “dress festive” or whatever, where I didn't fucking know what they meant. Fucking hell, clothing confused me.
Eventually, I settled on something: the tight black pants and “so translucent it was almost invisble” silver shirt. I pulled them on and went to check myself out in the mirror. Yep, these clothes definitely made me look more naked with them on. How the fuck did that work? I still hadn't figured it out. I took another deep breath.
“Stop racing so much, you asshole,” I hissed at my heartbeat.
Did you know that calling your internal organs names does not, in fact, make them stop being annoying? Heartbeats didn't fucking listen to you. I think that's a good thing to remember in case you ever decide to yell at your own heartbeat.
Inconveniently, I burst into giggles at the absurdity of it all. Luckily, I got myself under control before my sides completely split in two, not that “side-splitting” was a literal expression or anything. Somehow, though, the random giggles of randomness made my heart slow down. Huh, wondered how that worked. Instead of a racing heart and nervous expression, I wore a goofy as fuck grin as I checked myself out in the mirror. I was fucking giddy, giddy enough to bounce on my feet like Dr. Merrico did. I didn't fucking bounce normally, not like that, anyway. But I was bouncing now. I was fucking excited. Way more excited than nervous, though I retained enough nervousness because, like I said, you didn't go into something like this without nervousness unless you were a complete and utter dumbass with fewer than two neurons to rub together. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Even the stupidest human on the planet had more neurons than that. I knew that much biology.
After a few more minutes of bouncing, Xan exited the shower wearing nothing but a towel. Of course, I stared because, damn, was he hot. He smirked, noticing just how much I liked looking at him.
He said, “Like what you see, don't you? They'll be time for looking later, and, anyway, today isn't about looking at me; it's about looking at you.”
"Huh?" I wondered. "What do you mean by that?"
Xan just smiled. "You'll see."
"That doesn't exactly tell me anything, you know."
He kept smiling. "Well, no, but a little mystery might be fun, yes?"
"Not if it means I might screw something up. I want to get this right, okay?" I really didn't want to fuck this up, so I wasn't exactly loving this whole "mysterious" thing Xan suddenly had going on.
"Don't worry. You won't screw things up. Everything should be fine," he assured me.
"If you say so," I muttered.
Even random mysteriousness couldn't prevent me from bouncing again. Xan noticed that, smiling even more. “You're excited, aren't you?”
Of course I was excited. “Yeah, I'm excited,” I said.
After Xan changed into his own set of clothes, we sat down at what had to be a kind of dining room table. He munched on what appeared to be a nutrition bar, but I was too nervous and excited to eat anything.
Xan didn't seem to agree with my stomach full of fucking butterflies. “I know your cybernetic enhancements enable you to get energy and sustenance from a kind of photosynthesis, but you really should eat something.”
At that moment, a particular thought occurred to me. “Wait, is your food even compatible with my human biology? For all I know, Zimarans could consider cyanide an essential part of their diet.”
He laughed. “Cyanide will kill us as easily as it will kill you. Through some quirk of evolution, our biology is similar enough that you can eat one of these bars and not die.”
It was a “quirk of evolution,” huh? Damn, author, that just makes things fucking easy for you, doesn't it? Okay, fine, it makes things easy for, me, too, as I won't actually starve to death or anything unpleasant like that. I know, I know, I had the weird as fuck photosynthesis thing going on, but actual food would be nice too, you know? After all, I wasn't a plant.
“But that doctor was talking about how people were all worried the cybernetic stuff wouldn't work on me, yet the food is all okay? Seems a little strange, though I'm not complaining,” I said.
Xan looked thoughtful. “Hmm, it is a bit odd, but I suppose there are enough subtle differences that would make something as fine-tuned as cybernetics possibly difficult to implement on a human body.”
“I'm glad it worked then.” I looked up at the ceiling, trying not to bounce too much in my chair.
Even the dining room had that black-and-silver thing going on. I concentrated on the décor partly to keep my emotions in check. Bouncing might have been kind of okay, but full-on flailing probably wouldn't be such a good idea.
Xan handed me a nutrition bar whatsit. “I'm glad it worked, too. Very glad.”
I unwrapped the whatsit and took a bite. “Wow, these taste way more like food than the ones you get on Earth. Most of those resemble food as much as your average politician resembles a human being.”
That earned me a little chuckle. Xan's ridiculously gorgeous bronze eyes sparkled as he watched me. Damn fuck, he was beautiful.
“You're way too pretty, you know that?” I said.
“I could say the same about you.”
As I opened my mouth to speak, Xan continued, “And no arguing. How many times do I have to tell you not to try and argue with me whenever I say something nice about you?”
“A lot of times? My brain is, like, programmed not to get it, okay?” My brain was fucking stupid, I knew that much. Hey, how do you do when you try to deprogram yourself? It's not fucking easy.
Xan stared at me with extra intensity. “Well, we'll just have to work on deprogramming you, then. Because you should really be able to take a compliment.”
He was right; taking compliments was a skill everyone needed. I didn't even exactly know why I sucked at it so bad. It wasn't like my parents didn't believe in compliments. They were decent, yet my brain came out fucking borked anyway. Maybe my mom didn't eat enough fish when she was pregnant with me or maybe she ate too much fish and it was all filled with evil plastic molecules of doom or something. Yeah, I think I'm gonna blame plastic molecule fish of doom for my borked brain. Is that alright with you? I don't wanna talk about this anymore.
“From what I've heard, trying to deprogram people can have seriously bad results and lead to scary shit,” I said.
His eyes practically blazed. “Not when I'm doing it.”
Very quickly, mealtime was over. Also, it seemed like time itself decided to move faster and eat itself so that it was time to go when just before we had had a couple hours. We both brushed our teeth again in order not to have icky food breath, and we were ready to go. The butterflies in my stomach morphed from your average nervousness bugs to a highly evolved squadron of insects with their own fucking fighter jets. At the same fucking time, I bounced like someone had replaced the bottoms of my feet with pogo sticks.
Xan put an arm around my waist. “It's time to go. Are you ready?”
“Ready as anything,” I replied, while silently telling the militarized butterflies to fucking quit it.
We walked through the various hallways, with their weird sculptures and other alien oddities. This time, I couldn't pay too much attention because, you know, militarized butterflies and all that. Luckily, as we got closer and closer to wherever we were going, the butterflies seemed to lessen. The bouncing didn't, though.
Xan said, “If you keep bouncing like that, you might hit your head on the ceiling.”
“Man, even with my cybernetic enhancements, I don't think I can do that.” The ceilings were pretty fucking high, in my opinion.
“Anyway, we're here.” He gestured to a fancy set of doors with a strange giant symbol on it. To my puny human mind, it resembled a dude doing magic on another dude. Swirls of wind or something covered the one guy while the other guy stood over him, seemingly directing the wind whatever. From what I could tell, both of them looked really ridiculously happy.
“Is that door gonna scan our retinas or anything? I don't see a keypad or anything.” I didn't, which was weird because other important areas had them.
“This is the entrance the people doing the actual Soulbreaking enter through. It's the first test. The door will admit you only if you're willing to do it.”
I raised an eyebrow. “It can tell that? What, is it fucking magic or something?”
He said, “Close enough to it, I suppose.”
“So, how's it work? Looks like a regular fancy set of doors to me,” I said.
Xan pointed to what looked like two stars on either side of the doors. “See those? How it works is we hold hands and put our free hands on either star. If the door deems us truly willing, it will open.”
I thought this was a science fiction story, not outright fantasy. Still, I would put up with the softer and squishier elements of your writing if it meant getting to Soulbond with Xan.
Smiling so very warmly, Xan let go of my waist and took my hand in his. I breathed deeply, telling those militarized butterflies to fucking go away. They had redoubled their attack efforts, but I told them to scram, and they did as I put my hand against the star on my side of the fancy doors. Xan placed his hand on the doors as well. For a evilly long moment, nothing fucking happened. My heart thudded; did the doors deem us unworthy to enter? Oh, fuck no.
A strange screech sounded and the doors started to open outwards. Xan and I jumped backwards as they moved.
“It worked!” I shouted. “It worked!”
Right now? I thought I might fucking float away.
Thankfully, I did not, in fact, float the fuck the away. That would have been a disaster, not to mention violating several laws of physics. Then again, that damn magic door violated physics and known science. If the door could laugh in the face of the universe as I knew who, who was to say I would float away?
Xan didn't let go of my hand; I noticed that, despite jumping backwards, we were still attached to one another. That seemed to me a good omen, if I were the type to believe in omens. I didn't like to think there was some mysterious force telling us things mysteriously because, honestly, that would have just been fucking annoying, you know?
And so, we entered the room. It was much smaller than I had expected. It rather resembled a bedroom of sorts, kind of. At least, there was a bed in the middle of it. Normally, you didn't just stick the bed in the middle of the room because that was a stupid way to use your space. I had learned that much from sharing a tiny as fuck dormitory where the center of the room barely even existed. The walls of the place were strange, with more pictures of those two dudes, or two people like them, on the walls. Reliefs or some such, I think they were called.
Those militarized butterflies tried to return with full force, but I told them to fuck off. Now was not the time for fucking butterflies, especially not those with a well-developed military-industrial complex. I thought those butterflies must have been building a whole damn civilization in my stomach, and I wasn't about to play universe to such creatures. Oh, hell no. Hell to the fuck no. Nervousness would not ruin this; I wouldn't fucking allow it.
Only then did I notice the people in the room. There were two others; I recognized them both. It was Firi Arco and Jirrin. I had expected Xan's friend to show up. After all, I was there when we had talked to him via vidscreen. Firi, now I didn't expect her to show up to this. As goofy as it may have been, I kind of gaped when I saw her.
She smirked. “Did you really think I was going to miss this? After all, the Kingdom's security is my responsibility, and this matter does pertain to such security, does it not? The goal is, I presume, to get Earth to stop harassing us, yes?”
“Yeah, that's the goal,” I said. Well, that and I just plain wanted to. That too. Mostly that, if I were being completely honest with myself.
Jirrin waved at us. “We almost thought you guys were going to be late.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Xan's own eyes widen ever so slightly. “Late? Why, I wouldn't be late for this.”
Then, both Jirrin and Firi gave me strange looks, like they couldn't believe I existed or something. Yeah, I was a stranger in a strange land or however you said it, but I fucking existed.
I raised an eyebrow, silently asking them to explain themselves.
“History, Dylan!” he exclaimed.
My eyebrow remained raised.
Jirrin said, “You do realize this is the first time in Zimara's entire history that an off-worlder has so much as attempted to Soulbond with a native Zimaran. That's a historical moment.”
Wait, what? Historical moment? Like “put in a fucking textbook” kind of historical?
I stammered, “Like you would teach your children about kind of historical moment?”
Firi gave me another look. “Well, of course. It's a monumental occasion.” She focused her gaze on Xan. “Too bad your fathers can't be here to see this. You did try to tell them, didn't you?”
Xan shifted on his feet. “I - I couldn't exactly get a hold of them.”
She said, “As I expected. To avoid unnecessary surprises, I did tell them you had important news.” Firi looked back at me. “You really are unusual, aren't you?”
I didn't honestly think I was that unusual. “I'm really not that unusual,” I told her.
Firi snorted. “False modesty isn't flattering, you realize. To act like you're just an average human is an insult to all the people who actually are average humans.”
Damn, defeated by logic. I supposed it was an insult to regular types, though I still felt regular, in terms of, like, personality and stuff.
I said, “I suppose you're right.”
She smiled. “Of course I'm right. You see, from what I know, humans are so very, very attached to their freedom. Especially those from your homeland.”
Confusedly, I asked, “And so?”
“And so it's highly unusual that one of your people would so willingly give up his freedom,” she answered. “And it's highly unusual that you would be the one to suggest this. That's all.”
“I - I guess it would be,” I said.
Xan spoke up. “I think it's time we get started. Everyone's here, and since Master Arco is qualified to officially oversee Soulbreaking ceremonies as well as be a Witness, we have everything we need.”
He let go of my hand and turned to me. His eyes shone with a kind of intensity I hadn't seen before. More than ever, it felt like he were staring into my soul. The sensation now was almost physical, as if Xan were pushing his very essence into me. It warmed my entire fucking being.
“Take off your clothes,” Xan ordered.
I did as I was told. Right then, I could feel everyone's eyes on me, though neither of the others stared at me the way Xan did. I thought he must be doing something special with his mind control powers, because, more and more, I could feel a presence of some kind making its way through my body. It felt almost like my body weren't my own anymore, like I was being possessed by some kind of spirit. I welcomed the strange presence into my being as I wondered what would happen next.