Shoulder Devil 2

This is the last update before I start going back to Devil's consultancy. Hopefully I'll be able to update other stories between those updates in the coming months.

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As it turned out, this world possessed comic book superheroes as an actual thing. Supervillains, too. Apparently, she had landed in the local equivalent of Gotham City, a run down dying city that nevertheless had a few powerful corporations that kept the place from completely collapsing economically. In this case, the pharmaceutical and financial industries propped things up. 

‘Tinkertech’ was the product of a particular brand of ‘parahuman’, that being tinkers. They create impossible technologies that cannot be understood by anyone but other tinkers, and sometimes only the creator, and sometimes not even then. 

Learning all of this without betraying her ignorance was a bit challenging, but she was hardly a stranger to showing up in a new world, so she had put plenty of thought, when she was alone and trying to get to sleep, imagining scenarios just like this one. 

It helped a lot that she was able to honestly say that she died when she was sixteen, only slightly older than the girl she spoke to. It seemed to comfort Taylor to know this. 

Unfortunately, Taylor didn’t seem to know a whole lot about cooking, she had a few dishes she could create and had some command of the absolute basics, but could only follow recipes religiously. 

Not that Tanya could really speak on the matter, of course. She knew just enough to understand how little she knew, and Taylor seemed to know even less. “That seems like a lot of food for just two people.” Tanya observed, it was the first thing she had said in a while. 

“Lasagna reheats well.” Taylor murmured, a little embarrassed. “Dad brings it to work for lunch over the next few days.”

“I’m not much of a chef either, but I can share a few recipes.” Tanya offered. She learned enough to eat cheaply as a bachelor when she lived along in Japan, but never learned to cook Imperial cuisine. She idd help the nuns in the kitchen a few times, but not enough to learn a full recipe. She did know how to make bread dough from scratch, though. It was a side effect of living in the military; you had plenty of disposable income to buy food at restaurants even if you somehow couldn’t get food from the mess. “I only know Japanese food, though.” She did manage to confirm that Japan was called that when Taylor was explaining about the local supervillains, instead of Akitsushima. She never really decided how she felt about that name: on one hand, Nippon rolled off the tongue better. On the other hand, the international community actually used it, which was a clear improvement. 

“That sounds nice.” Taylor hummed, still a little uncomfortable with telepathic conversation. She had discovered that she could no longer make sound from the type 95 when Taylor was wearing it; it was odd but she assumed it had something to do with why she could piggyback off of Taylor’s senses. 

“...When did you say your father will be arriving?” Tanya inquired. 

“Unless he was working late, he should already be here.” Taylor said, clearly irritated but without heat; this was clearly a longstanding state of affairs. 

Hm. An opportunity. “How easy is it to hear him coming?” Tanya asked innocently. 

“Pretty easy, the car’s kind of a junker.” Taylor groused. She sat down on a stuffed chair, turning on the television to some cartoon about the aforementioned superheroes. Apparently, the protagonist was a hikikomori and interacted with the world purely through remote drones. She was in the middle of pining over a bearded man with power armor and a fancy polearm of some kind. 

“Then we can perhaps explore whether or not you can access the functions of the Type 95 Operations Orb.” Tanya said, genuinely a bit excited. “I know of several formulas that should be safe to utilize indoors.”

Taylor’s heartbeat accelerated at the statement. “What, exactly, does this thing do?” She asked, clearly nervous at the prospect that a humble necklace could be unsafe. 

“Before I was a ghost, any Operations Orb was capable of a great many things.” Tanya said sincerely, “Flight, barriers, reflex acceleration, physical reinforcement… It was as if every mage was an attack helicopter, mobile and with heavy firepower.”

Taylor seemed quite interested. But when she said mage… “What do you mean, ‘mage’?”

“Ah, that’s the trick.” Tanya said, “Only a fraction of the population have the innate ability to access mana, and the fraction that is capable of wielding enough of it to run an Operations Orb at full effectiveness is only one in a million.” This was a bit of an exaggeration, one in a million was the ratio for A class mages, there were ten times as many B class, and even that much was rounding down to a nice even number. It was more like two or three times that many. Small in the local scale, but on a national scale it meant a potential draft force of hundreds. 

That seemed to spike Taylor’s incredibility. “...Okay, tell me the real reason.” She insisted. 

That was the real reason, but okay. “It requires a level of mental flexibility and mathematical ability that is very rare.” She amended, “The mana thing was what I was told when I signed up, but while no one ever told me that it was all bullshit…” She trailed off, letting Taylor fill in her own conclusion. 

“How old were you?” Taylor asked, suddenly concerned. 

“I was seven.” Tanya said honestly, if deceptively. “Anyway, moving on from the whole child soldier thing, the Type 95 was, among other things, supposed to solve this problem. It instead exacerbated it; I was the only one who could use the cursed thing. Furthermore, the side-effects were monstrous.”

“W-why would I want to use it then?” Taylor asked, even more concerned. 

“Three reasons: One, it did save my life on multiple occasions, despite the curse.” Tanya said, which calmed Taylor down some. “Two, the side effects are both easy to spot and are cumulative; testing it out isn’t going to damage you permanently. Probably. I used the thing for hours a day for months and I’m not exactly a drooling vegetable. I don’t really remember most of those months but the long-term damage is minimal.” Taylor seemed to fully calm down. “Finally, I do have an understanding of why the side effects occur, and I think my presence within the type 95 will interfere or allow me to mitigate them.”

But Taylor was clearly a bright girl, anxiety spiking as she thought through the potential harm: “But what if it makes us switch places or something?” Taylor asked, rightly concerned about her sanctity of mind. 

Tanya hummed, thinking through her response. “...I suppose that is a possibility, yes.” She allowed, “The side effects primarily manifested in something of a split personality, one who was far less peace-loving than myself and completely devoted to destroying enemies, and if there were no enemies spending all of her energy praising… Well, let’s just say that the resemblance of the type 95 to the Imperial Regalia of the German Emperor is no coincidence.”

“So you think you’d gain control of my body instead?” Taylor asked, offended. 

“I’d give it back!” Tanya insisted, “I despised the type 95, mind control is one of the worst things anyone can do!”

Taylor took a moment to process, but seemed to decide that Tanya was being sincere and took a deep breath. “So you didn’t try to take over my body when I first put you on?”

“It didn’t even enter my mind.” Tanya confirmed. 

“Try it now. Get me up on my feet.” Taylor requested, firming herself to, presumably, resist. 

Very well. Tanya stood up from the soft chair, taking two steps forward. Wait a minute… It worked. Tanya turned around, and saw… Taylor, who was looking at her wide-eyes. She stood up, towering over Tanya and looking at her face. 

“So that’s what you look like…” Taylor said, half-awed as she waved her hand through Tanya. Eugh, that felt weird. 

Wait, what was she wearing? Tanya looked down at herself, and saw her flight suit. The type 95 was in its customary spot on her collar, and after a quick check, the type 97 was nowhere to be found. Odd, she wasn’t wearing this when she died… Could be worse; she could be like some of those stories of ghosts and still bear the scars of her death. Taylor would probably not appreciate seeing her half-destroyed by nuclear fire. 

Still, despite the fact that she could no longer feel any of Taylor’s senses, and she was once more limited to sight and hearing, this was a substantial step up! She grinned, and decided to test her boundaries. “I’m going to check if I can go through walls.” She said, and did so, walking out in front of the house. Wait a minute, she should have probably confirmed whether or not she could be seen by others first. 

Too late, as her thoughts were interrupted by her feeling something other than a vague sense of pressure beneath her feet or objects going through her. Specifically, an invisible wall that stopped her from, presumably, getting too far from the type 95. She was standing on the front porch, right on time for a car to pull into the driveway. Thinking quickly, Tanya waved hello to the tall, thin man who got out of the car, but he seemed completely blind to her. 

Lucky break. Tanya walked back inside the house and decided to give Taylor a heads up. “Your dad’s here, he can’t see me, and I couldn’t get past the porch.” She summarized, accidentally slipping into a clipped military tone. Whoops, she was Taylor’s friend, she should be more casual than this. “Look sharp!” She warned with a teasing lilt before stepping to the side and presenting the door, which opened on cue. 

From their previous conversation, Tanya knew that Taylor’s father’s name was Danny, and he seemed somewhat surprised to see Taylor apparently waiting for him. After a moment, he waved. “I’m home.” He said perfunctorily. 

“Dinner will be done soon.” Taylor promised, checking the time on a wall clock. “It’ll be out of the oven in less than ten minutes.”

“Good, good.” Danny said awkwardly, “I’ll just… go change.” He said, walking upstairs to what was presumably his bedroom. 

Tanya knew, intellectually, that her relationship with her parents when she was Taylor’s age was great. But she also knew that at the time, it felt a bit oppressive. She now knows what the opposite looks like, and she wondered if Taylor would be able to get her hands on some incense she can burn for them? Sure, she was the one who died; it was honestly quite possible that they were still alive, even. But it felt appropriate. 

“You can’t hear me thinking at you anymore.” Taylor whispered. 

“Ah. So there is a drawback to doing this.” Tanya said, vaguely disappointed. “I shouldn’t interfere with your family time anyway. Don’t mind me, I’ll figure something out.” She tried going up the stairs, but found the tether too short. In the end, she just sat down cross-legged right outside the dining room, dutifully ignoring the disastrously awkward silence of Danny and Taylor’s dinner. 

He didn’t even notice the bulky computation orb that Taylor was wearing under her shirt! Well, no, that wasn’t fair. He didn’t comment on it, which could be charitably interpreted as respecting his daughter’s privacy. When she was a proper teenager, she never could have gotten away with a ‘fine’ when asked about her day. 

Still, after the dinner was concluded, Taylor brought the type 95 back up to her room, where they could continue their discussion. “Can you go back inside?” Taylor whispered. 

Tanya focused on the fake type 95 at her collar, and by accessing it, she found herself once more contained. After a second, she once more connected with Taylor’s senses. “Back to piggybacking on your senses.” Tanya announced. 

“Okay, so how do I use the type 95?” Taylor asked via telepathy. 

“Unfortunately, this will be rather difficult.” Tanya admitted, “When I was tested for potential, there was a device that kind of… forced itself to work. It allowed me to feel what the interface was like, giving me an additional sense, or function…” Tanya huffed, it was rather difficult to describe for someone who raised their skepticism the instant magic terminology got used. “Try… mentally reaching out to it. Think ‘access Elenium Arms Type 95 Operations Orb’ while doing so. It should help.”

That was the first of many attempts to get Taylor to access the type 95. None worked. 

After what was around the hundredth attempt, Tanya gave up. “Well, it’s either impossible or I’m just a terrible teacher.” Tanya said, sure by now that it couldn’t possibly be the latter. “Either way, I’ll need to think on this before trying again would be fruitful.”

“I think I actually felt something when I tried praying.” Taylor offered. 

“Placebo.” Tanya insisted. “Now, get to bed. We’ll try again some other time.”

Taylor took off the type 95 and placed it on her mantle. Her ceiling was incredibly uninteresting, but Tanya has plenty of practice in zoning out. 

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Over the next few days, Tanya and Taylor experimented a bit more with the properties of the type 95. The tether range was about ten feet from the type 95, although precision was difficult given the irregular shapes involved. If Taylor fell asleep while wearing the type 95, Tanya could take over her body, and after discovering that, subsequent testing proved that being unconscious was not actually required, although Taylor could resist the possession with moderate amounts of mental effort, and it was tiring for Tanya to try, too. When she allowed it, though, she was completely unaware of the passage of time while Tanya used her body. 

Soon enough, the first day of the school year arrived. Winslow High school was supposedly one of the worst schools in the city, a sentiment that Tanya couldn’t help but believe after her first sight of the campus. Graffiti littered the walls, Taylor’s eyes naturally gravitated towards youths with clear gang affiliations before moving on, and the building’s climate control was inadequate for handling so many warm bodies. 

Then, of course, there were Taylor’s teenage tormentors. Her descriptions were fairly spot-on: Madison Clements was as short as Tanya was when she died, and much curvier. She had a cute and innocent face that absolutely had never been splashed with communist blood before. 

Sophia Hess, on the other hand,  was a dominant presence, her build both muscular and feminine. She kind of reminded Tanya of Visha, on those rare occasions where she had to administer discipline in Tanya’s stead. The difference, of course, is that while Tanya would not be surprised if Miss Hess thought of her actions as disciplinary, reinforcing what she saw as the unspoken rules of society, she had absolutely no doubt that those rules were anything but purely self-serving bullshit. She knows the type. 

There was a bit of a question on how an African American girl could gain such delusional arrogance, normally seen in those who have been born into privilege, in a city where a notable power bloc were white supremecist supervillains, but Taylor had never even considered that as odd, and thinking on the matter produced no answers. Tanya didn’t want to assume it was all merely a tough front to forestall the aforementioned white supremacists from bullying her, it seemed too easy, but that made more sense than any of the other possibilities. 

Nevertheless, her physical power and status as an athlete, which she understands is important in America, was certainly enough to overpower weakling outcast Taylor Hebert, so how much of her persona was a bluff isn’t particularly relevant unless Taylor was to align herself with said white supremacists, which was an absolutely unacceptable means of resolution. Nazis were communists with the pleasant lies stripped away, after all. 

Then there was the primary antagonist: Emma. How did she rate? Well, Taylor had said she was beautiful, described the girl’s physical appearance in downright glowing terms, really. Tanya was not impressed. She had met Visha’s friend Elya, and compared to that rather steep hill of beauty? Emma did not compare. Naturally, as someone who was once a red-blooded male, she was qualified to comment. 

That wasn’t to say that Tanya didn’t believe Taylor when she said that Emma had done some modeling; she was pretty enough for the petty pageantry that advertisers on a budget would attempt to turn into increased revenue. She just thought that Taylor oversold the difference between them. 

Really, by Japanese standards Taylor was kind of a knockout. Demure, good skin, pale and clear, long black hair, she had college classmates that would spend thousands of yen on getting their hair to curl like Taylor’s does naturally. The height might be a problem, and she’d need to update her wardrobe, and probably start using makeup, but she was otherwise a good match for the kind of girl that Tanya’s mother used to attempt to matchmake her with, luring them in with promises of Tanya’s high income and enough height to make even the tallest girls feel small. 

Not that Taylor believed her, mind you, but while Tanya did encourage Taylor to upgrade her skin care regimen, she was not really qualified as a fashion consultant. She did know how to apply makeup, learned it from Visha on leave once, but fashion is basically marketing, and she did know how to do that… 

Still, Tanya could feel Taylor’s stress as she attempted to walk past her enemies, forcing them to initiate the engagement. Smoothly, with practiced coordination, the three girls moved to where Taylor was going to be, and the girl’s pride refused to back down and re-route. 

“Welcome back, Taylor!” Emma said, smiling with a smile that compelled Tanya to remember seeing those old propaganda pictures: a cherubic guise concealing hatred and impending violence. 

Well, let’s see how this goes.