[REND] B2. 2.2 - Poking Pino

“What do you mean?” Deen asked. “Are you thinking of connecting to me and cutting off my hand?”

“No, no!” Actually, yes.

Since Deen was being annoying lately, with her closeness and stuff. I had the license to bother her back, as per Rule #4: I could bother someone only if they bothered me. I didn’t have an easy way of doing it because we were best friends, and I needed it to remain that way. But an opportunity presented itself. With a bit of pressing, I could get her to hurt herself. That’d give me some satisfaction.

“I was just concerned,” I continued, excited with the challenge, “that during fighting, maybe the arm I’m connected to gets cut off. Like, what would happen? I linked with your arm last time, didn’t I?” I asked Deen.

“I think so,” she replied. “That’s why it ballooned when you shared your energy with me.”

“A good question,” Myra said. “Erind needs to hit bare skin, right? If she links up during a fight, she’ll probably aim for her target’s arm. I guess the head works, too?”

“What would happen if I pumped my power straight into the head?” I mimed a huge circle around my head. “Will it, uh, explode or something?”

“The prudent choice is to avoid connecting with people’s heads,” Deen said. “It might lead to unintended, even fatal effects. What about aiming for the torso? Our clothes would be torn when we fight; it won’t be difficult for you to aim for exposed skin.”

“What will happen if I pump your torso with energy?” I giggled with a robotic tinge. “Will your boobs balloon even bigger?”

“You should try that with yourself,” Deen patted the chest of my Erind body. “Maybe it’ll help you grow your non-existent assets.” She stuck her tongue out to show that she was just joking while murdering me.

“Don’t harass my body,” I said. “I’m going to sue you. How do you think it’ll look if a scion of the Leska family is charged with sexual acts with a corpse? I guess I sort of count as dead.” Deen and I laughed.

“I didn’t know that you two have a weird sense of humor,” Myra commented, hesitantly chuckling along. “But Erind’s got a point that the safest target to hit and energize is the arm. Maybe the leg, too. Energize? That’s sort of what’s happening, right?”

“Supercharge?” Kelsey suggested.

“If Erind supercharges the torso,” Myra said, “She might enlarge the heart. We have superhuman regeneration, but we’d probably drop dead if our heart bursts.”

Deen’s smile dropped. “I forgot that a lot of vital organs are in the torso.”

“Lots of organs that shouldn’t change sizes,” I said. “Target limbs only. That brings us back to my concern. Just be careful not to let the arm I’m connected to get chopped off, I guess? We really can’t test this. I-I don’t want any of you to cut off your hand.”

Myra snorted. “That’ll be crazy.”  

“I can’t ask any of you to handle such pain,” I said, setting up a bait for Deen. “None of you has experienced what I—”

“A finger will do.” Deen raised her right index finger. I didn’t even need to finish my sentence. I knew that she had an inherent need to one-up me, especially in the sacrifice department. “Link with me. For science.”

“Are you sure? It’ll hurt a lot.”

Deen smiled. “It’s nothing compared to our hysterical strength training. We should know more about your power.”

I nodded and shot a connection to her finger, targeting its tip. “Thanks for volunteering.”

“Hang on! You’re going to cut off your finger?” Myra gave an incredulous look. “Are you crazy?”

“It’s for testing purposes, Myra,” Deen said. “We’ve seen how Pino can provide a significant boost to our fighting capabilities. We should know its weaknesses.”

“Better now than during a fight,” I chimed in. Now, it looked like it was Deen’s idea. To be fair, this really was crazy. Better to use Blanchette in a fight, except for very specific situations, like deception about my identities. And cutting off the body part will definitely disconnect me.

But Deen wouldn’t miss this opportunity to show that she was ‘sacrificing’ something to match or surpass me. Was this some hero complex? Probably a rich person mentality to make themselves feel better about taking a very large part of the economic pie? I was proud that I could predict how Deen thought. Other times, her mind was a rightful mess from my point of view.

“I can handle it,” Deen said. “My finger will grow back.”

“Just like our training,” I said. “The question is how we’ll cut your finger. A knife might—Deen!”

“Holy shit!” Myra exclaimed.

Kelsey gasped, covering her mouth with wicked, clawed hands.

Deen suddenly bit down on her index finger like a complete psycho. Wait, I also did the same thing when I first met Overdrive. Not sure if I was okay with having the same train of thought as Deen, but this showed that we really were best friends.

She caught the dripping blood with her left hand and rushed to the sink.

“The connection disappeared,” I said as we followed Deen. Like, duh, I added in my head. That was the most obvious result. But the important thing was that I got Deen to cut her finger. “Deen, are you alright?” I patted her back as she gurgled water from the faucet to clean her mouth.

“It’s… It’s just an ant bite,” Deen said, surfacing. “A giant ant. Being serious, I’m surprised it’s not as painful as I expected.” She showed us her right index finger—the half that remained of it, to be accurate—as it regenerated. Bones extended, covered by creeping flesh and skin.

“You bit right at the interphalangeal joint,” Myra said, tapping the growing end of Deen’s finger. “Your teeth might've cracked if you had bitten bone. But you’re still crazy for doing this… Crazily crazy…” Myra added, shaking her head. She seemed to have forgotten that she had murdered several innocent people while looking for Kelsey. She was officially the craziest of the 4Bs.  

“Deen, when you bit your finger,” said Kelsey, “did you notice Erind’s thread?”

“I did,” replied Deen. “It’s solid yet invisible, unlike my Guardian Angel, which is both intangible and invisible.”

“Good to know.” I’d find a way to use that string to choke someone someday; this assassin thing was going to happen one way or another, despite my Pino form lacking the strength to strangle people. “Uh, where’s your finger that you bit off?” 

Deen opened her left hand to show it to us. Amusing that the severed finger had an immaculate nail. “I’m going to bury this with your remains.”

“My remains?” My eyeball jittered. “What are you—? Oh! My fingers!” To the Fletcher sisters, I explained, “Some of my fingers got mashed away while punching concrete as training. Deen buried them in her backyard.”

“Training?” Myra raised a brow. “I see, you two continued training on your own. Good. Shows initiative.”

“We really should’ve thrown away my fingers,” I muttered. I didn’t like the thought of my body parts being buried with Deen’s.

“Link with me again, Erind.” Deen took off her clothes as we returned to what could be considered the living room of the Fletcher apartment. Deen stood in her sports bra, raising her right hand. “I don’t want my clothes to rip when my arm grows large.”

I connected to Deen’s right arm. Then I closed my eye and recalled what happened when we fought the Adumbrae in the PCM lab. Focus. In the darkness, I searched for the power within me. It was inside my chest. A tsunami of energy balled up into a tight core waiting to be unleashed.

“You’re glowing green, Erind,” said Myra.

“Something inside you is giving off light,” Kelsey said. “The light is shining through the gaps between the plates forming your torso.”

I opened my eye and looked down. I had successfully activated whatever this was inside me. The green light grew stronger, pulsing brighter as it bathed the entire apartment. “This really paints me as a huge target,” I said. “I’m going to supercharge you now, Deen.”

“I’m ready,” she replied with conviction.

Supercharge Deen, I thought.

Slowly. Practice controlling the flow. I should train to gradually give power so as not to overwhelm Deen. We had previously learned that the body of my target was pushed to the limit and far beyond in return for the immense strength that could turn an Adumbrae into minced meat with one punch. But the target’s body would be horribly disfigured.

It wasn’t that I cared about Deen’s well-being per se. She could regenerate the damage to her body. But if there were numerous enemies or a long battle, I shouldn’t destroy Deen’s body so that she could continue protecting me. Her stupid Guardian Angel might tell her to cut our connection if it became too much.

“I can see our connection,” Deen said as the thread glowed green.

“Oh? This might be a problem,” I said. “If the disco ball body isn’t enough, this thread will definitely give away my position.”

Tiny light orbs passed through our connection and headed to Deen, entering her body through her finger. These beads were smaller than the globules I had given her the previous time we connected. Instead of instantly ballooning, Deen’s arm slowly grew, reddening as it did. It didn’t reach three times as large as last time.

“I’m controlling the power I give you,” I explained. “I’m stopping now. How does it feel, Deen?”

“Amazing…” Deen whispered, swinging her arm. It became a blur, making a whistling sound. That one swing generated a gust that blew back the couch and shook the apartment.

“Careful!” Myra said, waving her arms. “I have to get our security deposit back after our rent’s over! We’re not loaded like you guys.”

“It doesn’t seem to be only super strength,” Kelsey said as she threw a punch. Purple flashed in the air. Kelsey swung her arms some more, as fast or faster than Deen’s punch. Kelsey was able to make whooshing sounds, but there were no strong gusts or shockwaves. “There’s a supernatural element to it.”

“It’s like a cartoon depiction of superstrength,” I said. “Doesn’t follow physics.”

“I can probably still kill an Adumbrae with a single punch.” Deen winced as she massaged her super-muscular arm. “I can feel it… Simply amazing. Euphoric. My head is floating with a sense of invincibility.”

“Like you can do everything,” Kelsey said. “Don’t get too addicted to the power. That’s how Adumbrae entice people. It’s partly what happened to me.”

Spitting lies right there. I had to control my eye not to give away my reaction. The ‘conventional’ seeding method wasn’t how Keke took over Kelsey. The child Kelsey didn’t need power for power’s sake. She needed a friend and a savior from her cultist parents, which Keke was happy to provide.

“It’s Erind enticing me,” Deen said, glancing at me. I rolled my lone eye. “And the pain in the aftermath of the power up tempers my longing for the sensation,” she added.

“Your veins burst and regenerated,” Myra said, examining the dark red streaks on Deen’s deflating arm. “Over and over. Why did your arm grow big? Hmmm… I doubt that you grew new muscles that the human body doesn’t have. This isn’t a transformation, like what happened to Kelsey, or else you wouldn’t heal yourself back to normal.”

“Sometimes even I forget that Myra is a med student,” Kelsey whispered to me. Her words were loud enough for her sister to hear; her grin meant that she intended it so.

Not minding Kelsey, Myra pressed her fingers on Deen’s flesh, tracing the contours of the muscles. “The only possibility is that your current muscle fibers are destroyed and reformed, growing larger in rapid succession. This is… mindboggling. We can survive because of our superhuman bodies and regeneration. But a normal person…”

“They’ll probably explode, right?” Kelsey suggested. “Or will they become massive tumors?”

“I won’t allow testing that,” Deen firmly said.

“Nah, we’re not gonna blow up normal people,” Myra said. “Can Erind connect to them? Hey, Erind. Come here.” Myra headed to the window and pulled the curtain an inch aside, gesturing for me to look. “What color are the people down there? And no, it’s not a racist question.”

“Take care not to get seen,” Kelsey said.

I made sure that I was covered by the curtain and leaned sideways, exposing only the part of my head that was necessary. A street cleaner swept the dried leaves on the sidewalk. There was a food cart selling tacos with five people lined up. “They’re all colored blue.”

“Maybe core-wielders are green,” Deen said. “Normal people are blue. Adumbrae are gold.”

“And my original body is gray for some reason,” I said.

“A weird color scheme,” Myra said. “But this means that Erind can detect Adumbrae and maybe Corebrings with sight alone.”

“That’s another use of this form, I guess,” I said. “Though we still don’t know if I can connect to normal humans. It’s too dangerous to test.” I was definitely going to find someone to test this on.

“Stick to supercharging me,” Deen said. “You don’t need to think of ways to kill people.”

“You’re saying that Erind should leave all the killing to you, huh?” Myra asked with a snarky tone. She hadn’t forgotten Deen judging her kills.

“I’m saying,” Deen said, “that my brand of prescience is perfect to combine with a powerful body for combat. I believe that I can handle any opponent that we’ve faced so far. And I’ll protect both of Erind’s bodies. I don’t want Erind to become Blanchette and eat people.”

Helicopter mom, I thought, preferring to be Blanchette so that I get to be the main character. Now, Deen wanted to take the fun stuff away from me.

“Erind, you’ve told me that you can also connect with your original body,” Kelsey said. “I’ve never seen you do it. Can you test it now?”

I pointed my finger at the cutest person in the room and fired. (Stand up.) My Erind body got on its feet like a drunk person wearing a lead hat. The first few steps were wonky, but I eventually got the hang of it. The other Bs gave tips on how to fix my walking. Kelsey was insistent that I move realistically.

“I’m not moving like a zombie anymore,” I said. “What’s your plan, Kelsey? Share it with us.”

“We’ll pretend that this is you.” Kelsey patted the head of my Erind body. “It’s you, yep, but you know what I’m saying. Then, we’re going to pretend that you, as Pino, are a different person.”

“Okay… Why?”

“You’re going to ask for a Core from Dario.”

(Author’s Notes: Erind and Deen can now say that their remains are buried together. They really are best friends. Next chapter, we’ll wrap up the testing and move on to the arrival of Erind’s mom. We’ll then tackle the plot of Book 3, where Erind and the other Bs will be proactive instead of waiting for things to happen. They really want an artificial Core and pills from Dario, so they’ll work to get it. Thank you for your support!)