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You all think that you know everything there is to know about me. About my sister, our family. Your types always do. But you know what else is always true? The fact that you don't know anything about anything. Way before Taylor's girls fell in love with her, before she even met most of them, she had me, and I had her, and that's all either of us needed. All your articles, your books, your little documentaries and dramas, you all like to crow about soulmates, fated love, destined partners. You all think you understand what that means.
You don't.
But I'm about to tell you.
Excerpt from an Interview with 'The Bloodstained Rose', Rosalie Hebert.
Rosalie Niamh Hebert, named after her two grandmothers and proud of it, was a mess. She was a hot mess, certainly, tall and slender with a sizeable chest and full ass, especially for a girl her age, her long raven strands a matter of great appreciation for men and women alike. Indeed, she'd been getting asked out nigh-constantly since the moment she had arrived in Japan, and it -gratifyingly- had very little to do with the fact that she was an S-rank. Sure, it was kind of annoying to be seen as an exotic foreigner prime for the dating, but being appreciated for her looks rather than her power level was a nice experience.
Or it had been, until the thing that made her a hot mess had happened. A phone call, telling her that her barely-older-sister Taylor had died. Died staying behind to save the lives of the rest of her raid group from giant statue monsters that had lurked in the end of a Double Dungeon. Died impaled, dismembered, abandoned by the worthless scum that didn't deserve to breathe the same air that she did…!
She took a deep breath and centered herself, just the way her teachers and mentors had taught her to, pushing down the beast that writhed beneath her skin. The beast that so very few people knew existed, because she so rarely had let it out. The beast that had nothing at all to do with her Hunter powers, nothing at all to do with her Talent, nothing at all to do with any rune stone she had found or collected or purchased, and everything to do with her love for her twin.
She'd never been the best of them, she knew. Taylor had always been the kind one, the friendly one, the polite one. Not the most sociable, perhaps, neither of them had been, but where Taylor had simply preferred to restrict her company and her time to those she was comfortable with and trusted, Rose…didn't really consider most people worth the time to get to know them.
Oh, she wasn't a sociopath, technically. She'd been checked out, several times. She did value the lives, wellbeing, etc. of other people, truly she did. She wouldn't let someone be hurt or die in front of her, and she was always willing to help those in need. But there was a difference between being a good person, and being a sociable person. The only people Rose needed in her life was her mom, her dad, and most importantly of all, her Taylor. Everyone else was extra, and even her parents just weren't the same as her twin.
God, she wanted to cry, remembering the feeling that had hit her the moment Taylor had died in that fucking dungeon. She'd read…novels, definitely novels, that talked about soulmates and soul-bonds and how it felt to lose the other half, and she'd never really understood what 'felt like their heart had been ripped out of their chest' or 'could feel the hole, the yawning, aching void their loss had left behind' meant until she'd actually experienced it.
She'd been walking back from the training grounds, half-listening to Kagome nattering on about her boyfriend, girlfriend, 'the idiot healer who won't leave her girl alone', and the D-rank gate they'd helped clear when it had happened. The world had gone dim, then colorless, then something had pulled the inside of her chest into what felt like a fucking black hole. She'd dropped to her knees in the middle of the sidewalk, retching, clutching at her jacket with both hands, concerned voices echoing strangely in her ears and worried hands pawing at her numb skin as her body tried to pull itself inside out. For a full minute, maybe two, she hadn't been able to see, not really. Not with any sort of recognition or understanding, and all she had known was that something truly horrible had happened to the other half of her soul.
She still didn't know how she'd managed to claw her phone out of her pocket and call her parents, but she had. They'd promised her nothing was wrong, that Taylor was on a D-rank raid with a large party that had A- and B-rank Hunters in it, a team she'd raided with dozens of times before, but she'd known they were wrong. They didn't, couldn't, feel what she felt. She'd begged them to check, and they'd promised that they would, and she had known that they wouldn't lie. Not to her, not about Taylor. So she'd waited, ignoring everyone around her as if they didn't even exist, and she'd nearly collapsed with relief when she felt Taylor come back to her, burning brighter than ever in the deepest part of her heart.
She'd been utterly incapable of focusing for the rest of the day, and her frantic energy hadn't ebbed even after the news from her parents that Taylor was in fact alive again and very probably okay. That part —the "probably"— grated and burned. Her family had been in the Hunter business for a long time, and "probably" was a word with consequences. But her mother had said it, and her mother didn't "probably" about life and death unless it was the only word available. Annette had described Taylor's "miraculous, inexplicable" recovery while Rose paced her tiny host-family bedroom, chewing her thumbnail to the quick, and further explained that she was in what seemed to be a deep-but-promising coma. She'd been checked out by the Protectorate and by an S-class healer -who could only be that Lavere/Dallon/whatever-her-name-was girl- and everyone had confirmed that she didn't seem to be in any immediate danger.
Her mother had also been fairly upfront about the fact that she was not to drop everything and fly home, reminding her what her Taylor would have to say about that when she woke up. And as unhappy as it made Rose, she wasn't going to hurt her relationship with her sister by rushing home to sit at her bedside clutching her hand, no matter how much she wanted to do exactly that.
Sit with Taylor and hold her hand until she woke up, that was, not hurting their relationship.
But God knew that Taylor was oh-so-very fragile, sometimes, protecting herself with a thin armor of pride and determination, and being treated like a broken piece of china that had to be protected and carefully put back together again would be guaranteed to infuriate her to a level rarely before seen.
So, she'd gritted her teeth, gotten through the next two days, and violently squashed anyone who tried to commiserate, or offer "helpful" advice, or otherwise get in the way of her plan. Which was to throw herself into training hard enough that, when she finally did get back to Taylor, she could keep her safe. As if that would ever be enough. As if there was a way to scrub away the memory of that void in her chest, or the guilt that she hadn't been there to protect her sister when it mattered most.
Then, just last night, her parents had surprised her during the second of her twice-daily phone calls to check in. They'd put her on speaker phone, and she'd heard Taylor's voice. Her twin, her precious sister, talking to her. She sounded exhausted but whole and hale, and it had taken Rose everything she could muster not to break down immediately, though her eyes had been more than a little damp and her voice thick.
She tried to ignore just how shaky her hands felt, how the sound of her sister's voice made her want to curl up and sob with relief like she was a kid again, instead of an S-rank Hunter famous for her stoic durability and imperturbable calm. Instead, she'd just…listened. Listened as Taylor rambled about waking up, how hungry she'd been, how much energy she'd had, how she'd walked and jogged mile after mile on a treadmill before she'd finally felt like she could go to bed again. How much she was looking forward to getting out of the hospital and eating real food again -everyone had shared a genuine laugh at that, all of them having experienced it more than once themselves- and how excited she had been to meet Huntress Washington and Hunter Wallis when they'd come to talk to her about the raid.
Rose had taken some notes, there. Taylor wasn't telling her anything about the raid, and her parents wouldn't either if Taylor asked them not to, but Rose had no qualms at all about going around her family to find out what had happened if she had to. She'd made a note of Taylor's doctor's name, too, and the nurse. If them letting Taylor go jogging ended up slowing her recovery down, there would be hell to pay, and she wasn't entirely sure that she cared that they had tried to stop Taylor from doing it to begin with.
She wouldn't hurt them or anything, wouldn't even try to get them fired.
Probably not. Well, definitely not for hurting them. Taylor would be mad at her if she hurt people for something like that, really mad, and anyway Rose wasn't in the habit of hurting stupid people who made stupid mistakes. And really, from what Taylor had told her, Angela -the nurse- hadn't taken any crap and had blocked her from leaving the room when she'd tried. And Doctor Kimura had made sure that Taylor was watched every moment by someone with permission to take her back to her room whether she liked it or not the minute anything looked like it was going wrong.
Ugh.
She wasn't going to be able to do anything with a clean conscience, would she?
Well, hopefully it would be a moot point and nothing (more) would happen to Taylor at all.
Anyway, they'd had to hang up eventually, because visiting hours were over and the stupid hospital was kicking her mom and dad out -didn't they know this was more important than whatever the stupid clock said?!- and Taylor's cell phone hadn't survived the dungeon.
So now, here she was, in her dorm room, being an absolute mess of a human being that was waffling wildly between guilt and glee over everything that had happened over the last three days, while her long-suffering and kind of cool roommate Lily Hikari tried to do her homework.
"Gods, Rose, could you be any more of a siscon?! I'm trying to work!" the admittedly beautiful -but not as beautiful as her Taylor!- huntress finally barked the fifth time Rose had started listening to the voice recording she'd made of the phone call.
"I am not a siscon! I just love my sister and I'm anxious to see her again!" Rose protested, jabbing a finger at the half-American girl, even as the other rewound her phone so that she could listen to her sister's voice say the words 'I love you, Rosie' yet again.
"Uh-huh. Very believable." her friend(?) drawled, smirking faintly at her, starting to count of her fingers. "You think she's the most beautiful girl in the world…"
"Which she is."
"You think she's the only person really worth spending time with besides your parents."
"I hang out with you, don't I?"
"You're obsessed with making sure that she only has people you think are good enough for her in her life, and try to chase off everyone else."
"I never should have told you about that prank…"
"You would give up Hunting in a heartbeat if she asked you too."
"That's not true! I have to make a good living so I can make sure Taylor never wants for anything in life!"
"…you're not exactly doing a good job of convincing me, here. When you say stuff like that, you're just confessing." there was a long pause, and Lily stood up from her desk, padding over to Rose's bed on silent feet and sitting down, looking at her seriously. "Rosie, this is more than just loving your sister. You're my friend, and I want you to be happy, but I'm worried about you."
"She's not just my sister, Lily. She's the other half of my soul." Rose sighed, meaning every word. "I…I can't explain it to you, I really can't. Can't even explain it to myself, really…"
"…well, I'm not going to judge you, no matter what." Lily reassured her, before smirking slightly. "I'll make fun of you, though, you can count on that. And tell Taylor all about your sis-con attitude when I finally meet her. Maybe show her an anime or two to help her get the right idea, huh?"
"Oh, God, don't you dare, she'll think I'm such a weirdo~!" Rose groaned, dropping her phone to cover her blushing face, embarrassment edging out worries for the first time in days. Not because she wanted to date her sister or anything like that, that was totally ridiculous, but because of…something else. She wasn't sure why, just that it wasn't romantic desire for Taylor.
She was not a sis-con, damnit!
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Victoria Dallon, far more commonly known as Vicky, wasn't used to her sister (half-sister, but Vicky didn't give a shit about that. Amy was her sister, and that's all that mattered) hiding anything from her. Nothing important, anyway. They talked about everything together, from boys to raids, to the latest gossip around school. She even knew about the visits that Amy had with that asshole that had knocked their mom up and bailed, and she'd kept it a secret!
Sure, Mom had found out about it anyway, and there had been a bit of a fight about it a few days ago, but Vicky hadn't been the one who'd blown Amy's cover. Better still, Amy had come home that same night and had a real heart-to-heart with their mom, and it looked to Vicky like the two most important women in her life had patched things up pretty strongly this time around.
Which was fucking awesome, but that in and of itself was really weird, and Amy had been acting even weirder since. In fact, if Vicky didn't know better, she'd say that her sister had a crush on somebody. Which was cool and everything, she wanted nothing more than for Amy to have a happy relationship, like the one she had with Dean, but she had no idea when or how it could have happened. How many cute guys could you meet at the hospital, after all?
Well, cute single guys. There were a lot of cute guys working at the hospital, but most of them were either taken, or were old enough to be in the 'looks good, but too old' category.
Or were lesbians. There were a lot of lesbians at BBGH, as it turned out, at least from what Vicky had heard. Which was totally fine, she didn't judge. Hell, she'd checked out a girl or two in the past, she was just, you know, taken. And straight, obviously. Super straight.
Anyway, the point was, there was a mystery afoot, and what kind of sister would Vicky be if she let it go uninvestigated? It was her duty, her sacred charge, to find out just why her sister had been acting off for the last few days. To whit, she had 'randomly' decided to accompany Amy to work today, and had been following her from room to room ever since as she checked on her patients and spoke with various doctors.
Now here they were, standing at one of the nurse's stations, and she was bored out over her damn mind waiting for Amy to finish dealing with paperwork. It was agonizing, there wasn't anyone interesting to talk to, she couldn't talk to Amy without pissing her off for distracting her, and she still didn't have a clue who or what was behind Amy's mood shift!
"Amy?" The question snapped Vicky out of her boredom just in time to catch the approach of a young, vaguely familiar-looking asian doctor with messy black hair and tired, friendly eyes. He was dressed in scrubs but wore a stained white coat on top, and was quite clearly at the end of a shift and very much done with the day. Still, he was polite enough, and blinked at the sight of Vicky leaning against the desk beside her working sister. "Oh, sorry, am I interrupting something?"
"No, of course not, Doctor. My sister decided to follow me around at work today for some 'bonding time', and is distinctly regretting it thanks to all the paperwork she's watched me do." Amy responded dryly, smirking faintly at the huff of offense that gusted through Victoria's lips, and the doctor laughed with a nod of sympathetic understanding, even as he shook Vicky's hand.
"The work we do here is important and a great force of good in this world, but the paperwork is surely the price we are forced to pay by the Devil in order to keep the balance." he tried to intone solemnly, but between how tired he was and the amusement he was feeling, he didn't quite pull it off. Still, both girls laughed -Amy wryly and Vicky loudly- in response, and he grinned, waving a small folder and a clipboard around demonstrably. "Anyway, Amy. Your special patient is getting discharged today. I thought you might like to be the one to check her out, rather than Angela."
If Vicky had been a dog or a cat, her ears would have pricked up at the way he said those two words, and the words themselves for that matter. As it was, she stood up straighter and arched her eyebrows, a grin starting to spread across her lips. She smelled gossip, and best of all she had the instinct that this 'special patient' of Amy's might be the answer she'd been looking for when she came to the hospital today.
"Taylor? Already? Why didn't I hear anything about this before?" Amy frowned, and Vicky's grin widened as her sister immediately got to her feet and stepped around the counter to take the folder and clipboard from her colleague, flipping through them quickly. "It's only been a week since…"
"Everything shows up as clear, including your own checks, so there really isn't a good reason for continued admission. If something hasn't been found, or happened, by now, it probably isn't going to, right?" Kimura pointed out, and Vicky's interest grew sharp indeed as Amy's frown deepened as she fiddled with that new ring she'd been wearing for the last week. The pretty, expensive looking one that she never seemed to take off.
"Alright, I'll head down there myself, then. Have a good rest of your day, Doctor." came the declaration a moment later, the folder and clipboard clutched to a chest and footsteps quickly clicking on the linoleum as Amy started hurrying away, leaving Victoria to scramble after her with a quick smile and wave to Kimura.
She barely caught up to Amy the next hallway down, almost colliding with a cart of bandages and alcohol wipes as she rounded the corner. "Whoa, slow down there, speed demon! You gonna tell me what's up with this patient, or am I supposed to guess?"
Amy didn't immediately answer; she kept her head down, navigating the pristine and -to Vicky's eyes- utterly maze-like halls quickly and smoothly. Vicky wasn't fooled by that silence, or the affected aloofness that her sister was trying to put on. Amy's ears were pink, the way they always got when she was trying really, really hard not to let on that something mattered. She was also speedwalking, which was another dead giveaway.
They hit the elevator corridor and stopped, Amy jamming the call button three times over, in spite of the fact that both elevators were within a floor of where they were already. Vicky took the opportunity to sidle up behind her shoulder and peer at the file. The top page, or what of it she could see, depicted a slender, almost thin, raven-haired young woman with glasses and a smile that could only be called shy, and Vicky's eyes widened as she read the name beside it.
"Holy shit! Ames, is this…are we going to see Taylor Hebert?! The Worst Hunter in America?! The Double Dungeon Girl?!" she blurted out, only to flinch back as Amy whirled on her, hands fisting white-knuckled on the clipboard as she clutched it to her chest, eyes narrowed into a fierce glare and a growl leaking through her teeth.
"Don't you dare call her that! She's not the worst, she's amazing!" she snapped, angrier than Vicky had seen her in a long time, and over someone who was basically a stranger at that. "She…she saves lives, she sacrificed herself to save the rest of her party, and she never gives up, no matter what she's up against." she turned around again as the, her head ducking, and Vicky barely caught her next words. "She's incredible…"
Vicky stared in outright shock, not just at the heat in Amy's voice, but at the nearly shaking hands she kept knotted around the wodge of paperwork. She'd never seen Amy so worked up over anybody who wasn't family. For anybody else, "incredible" was a word Amy reserved strictly for acts of scientific or medical genius, while 'amazing' was usually wielded with a surgeon's scalpel of sarcasm when Vicky brought home a quiz graded less than ideally, or got into trouble for goofing off yet again. The elevator let out a shrill ding, breaking the moment for a moment, and the baffled Vicky trailed after her sister as Amy stormed into it and stabbed the button for the fourth floor so hard it probably bruised her finger.
They stood silent while the doors thumped shut and the elevator hummed upward, the only sound the rattle of its insides and the faint hiss of air conditioning. Amy flicked her fingers over that ring again, like she could rub the worry out of her hands and back into the jewelry. One of the muscles on Amy's jaw flexed as she stared at the numbers ticking past. Victoria couldn't help herself. She was dying to needle, to press, to get her sister to explain what was with this obsession over one very weird, very poorly-rated Hunter. But the look on Amy's face —a sort of desperate, taut defensive anger with an edge of uncertainty and guilt— gave her just enough pause to keep her mouth shut for once.
Or, at least, to focus on something else. Like trying to mend a bridge she hadn't meant to damage in the first place.
"She's amazing, huh?" she murmured softly, putting her arm around her sister's shoulder, ignoring the way Amy huffed and tensed. "Well, from what I saw, you're right. What she did in that Double Dungeon was amazing. I bet a good 70% of the people that like to talk shit about her online wouldn't have the courage to even think about it, never mind actually do it."
The whole world knew about the incident, now. It would have probably been restricted to just the United States if it wasn't for the family that had been involved, though she wouldn't count on it. Internet made gossip travel faster and farther than seemed believable at times, and this was a juicy bit of gossip. Double Dungeons were incredibly rare, and there had never -as far as anyone knew- been a single Double Dungeon that had resulted in presumed S-rank statues literally disintegrating people while making them solve weird riddles.
And on top of that, there was the "Miracle Recovery." Some blogs were already speculating that Taylor was a secret S-class, a False Ranker or a genetic experiment, or even the recipient of some black-budget government healing Talent so classified nobody was supposed to know it existed. The skepticism and conspiracy-mongering was so intense that the Protectorate had to organize a press conference just to say, "No, she just got lucky and we don't know what happened, we'll keep an eye on her." It wasn't a lie, but it sure wasn't the whole truth either. She was positive about that.
Not that she had any idea what the rest of 'it' could be.
"So, what's she like? I mean, sure, I get that she's brave and selfless and everything or whatever, but if you've met her personally, what's she actually like?" she asked, breaking out of her own self-imposed contemplative silence.
Amy kept her face turned away from her sister, pretending to focus on the elevator's ancient LED display as it ticked upward. Her jaw throbbed from the lingering pressure of clenching her teeth; she'd bitten down hard enough that a dull ache radiated up and into her left ear. Was Vicky trying to be supportive, or just poking for more? Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference. Usually because her sister tended to treat the two as the same thing.
Her thoughts paused for a moment, her attention caught the warped reflection of her face in the elevator's brushed steel wall. The eyes looking back at her were tired, dark circles underneath them, as there had been for the last week. Since she'd seen Taylor get torn apart over and over and over again to keep her safe, since she'd seen Taylor tear Taoquan apart in turn. And, much to her chagrin, it wasn't all nightmares and horrors that kept her awake. Far from it, at times, and Amy's fingers ran over her beautiful ring once again as she tried to think of something nice, something that would satisfy Victoria without oversharing. And it wasn't like she had much experience with her outside of the Instanced Dungeon.
She watched Vicky's reflection watching her, her sister's eyes narrowed as they watched her with an incredible focus. Amy thought about all the possible things she could say, all the ways to deflect or redirect, but in the end, it didn't make sense not to be honest. Or, at least, relatively honest. She wouldn't tell Vicky about The System, the Instanced Dungeon, or anything else involved in that facet of things, of course. Most certainly not -she tried to tamp down her blush, and managed to keep it to a light dusting on her cheeks that Vicky hopefully didn't notice- the spanking that Amy had earned.
Earned, and enjoyed far more than she would have expected, more even than she should have, given the circumstances it had been delivered in. But now wasn't the time to head down that particular well-worn mental path, especially not with Vicky watching her like a hawk.
"She's…" Amy stalled the very instant she started to respond, voice a bit rough and tight. A weird hot-cold sensation washed down her spine, not the skin-deep electric jitter of embarrassment but something else. Guilt and awe, maybe, as she played the images of that night with Taylor through her mind. "She's…like if they made a textbook on stubborn. On grit. She's got this filter where she just…'does' instead of thinking about how she'll get wrecked if she does, or what it'll look like, or whether it's supposed to be possible. Even when she knows that she'll get wrecked, she does it anyway. Just…pushes forward until she succeeds, no matter what she's faced with."
"That sounds..." Victoria trailed off, struggling for a word that landed somewhere between admiration and concern. "Kind of reckless?" She winced and glanced aside, expecting that to piss Amy off again, but her sister just gave a half-smile. Not a big one —Amy didn't do big smiles, not really and not unless she was overdoing it for the sake of sarcasm. Not even for her birthday— but she looked almost fond in a distant, thoughtful way.
"Yeah. Reckless is right. But…" Amy fiddled with the ring again, thumb brushing one of the sapphires' hard, exquisitely cut edges. The feeling it sparked was weirdly comforting and weirdly…well, not arousing, necessarily. Just intense, in a very warming sort of way. "But I can admire that, I guess. It's stressful as hell, obviously, thinking about someone putting themself at risk like that, but at the same time, the idea that someone just…won't give up? That's…"
"Amazing." Victoria echoed Amy's earlier word deliberately, and Amy flashed her another small smile and a nod. Then they arrived on their floor, and the conversation came to a halt as the sister left and the healer returned, Vicky following Amy out into the hallway and padding along quietly behind her as she made her way -marched, really- to Taylor's room. A soft knock on a door, a call from inside, and Amy was pushing the panel open and stepping across the threshold. Then she froze, Vicky nearly running her over as she stopped without warning, and the blonde half of the pair would have been surprised if it wasn't for the fact that she could see quite clearly just what had caught Amy's eye…and what had caused Vicky's own stride to stutter as well.
The girl that was toweling herself off lightly, clearly having just finished some exercises, was nothing like the stick figure that the picture had depicted. That girl had been thin, lacked muscle, and even through the picture had radiated 'small' with every inch of her body. The girl in front of them now was everything but. She was still slender, but not in a stick-like way. More like a dancer, a dancer with actual tits -as big as Vicky's own, probably, mid-C at a glance, though the sports bra she was wearing made it hard to tell- and an ass to match. Which was an odd thing to notice for a straight girl like Vicky, but then most girls compared their 'assets' to those of their peers, so that was hardly unusual.
Anyway.
She had more than a bit of muscle too, elegant muscle that rippled beneath smooth skin, and Vicky was pretty sure she heard Amy -just Amy- gulp as a thin rivulet of sweat snaked its way down a toned arm before the towel wiped it out of existence.
And that didn't even count her hair! Honestly, Vicky was jealous of it. Shoulder length, richly black, falling in perfect waves…ugh, it wasn't fair! Sure, Vicky's hair was amazing, it was something she basically never had to touch because Amy had healed her one time a couple of years ago and her Talent had kicked in to tame Vicky's hair -something the much younger and less mature girl had hated about herself at the time- more-or-less permanently, but still!
"Amy…it's good to see you again." Taylor said softly, setting the towel aside and smiling slightly at the two of them, and why the fuck did she sound like she should be a singer or an actress? Seriously, what had happened to this girl? That contralto just wasn't fair, and from the looks of things Amy thought the same way. Then Taylor's eyes fell to Amy's hands, still holding the clipboard to her chest, and her smile broadened. "You're still wearing it."
"I couldn't…I can't take it off, after all that." Amy mumbled, and Vicky was shocked out of her mildly-envious admiration of the so-called 'Worst Hunter' at the implication that Taylor was the one that had given Amy her new, favorite, inseparable piece of jewelry. Was…were they dating? Ohmigod, that was so romantic! They'd gotten together, like that Florence Nightingale lady, while Amy was helping her recover! "And you…uh, you're looking good. Totally different from the last time I saw you!"
"Oh, they didn't tell you?" Taylor blinked, looking surprised, and her eyes -a pale green, ghostly almost, verging on silver-white- cut to Vicky briefly before returning to Amy. "Yeah, according to the Protectorate and the doctors, your healing and whatever saved my life had a weird interaction and combined with all the exercise I've been doing. Something like that, anyway. Is this your sister?"
"Huh? Oh, right, I, uhm, this is Victoria. She's my sister, yeah. A Hunter, like us, and one that goes on raids like you." Amy confirmed a bit distantly, waving vaguely in Vicky's direction as she thought with a furrowed brow. "I mean, I guess it's possible? This isn't exactly something with any precedent, right? But…they think that, and still want you to go home? Are you sure you're okay to leave?"
"I'm as okay as I'm going to be, and I don't have any reason to believe that anything bad is going to come from all this." Taylor shrugged, gesturing to herself demonstrably, and Vicky felt herself frown slightly at the words that Taylor had stressed the second and third times she'd spoken in this awkward little chat. Maybe she was imagining it, but it almost sounded like she was trying to say something without saying it. Which didn't make any sense to her, but maybe Amy had done something extra? Felt bad for Taylor and 'touched her up' a bit, physically? But then, why did Amy seem so genuinely confused?
"Well, I'm glad you're doing better. I would hate for anything to happen to you. Anything more. Anything…I mean…here's your sign-out paperwork, please look it over, I'll be back in a few minutes!" Amy stumbled, fumbled, and blurted before rushing out of the room, leaving a bemused Vicky holding the files that her sister had shoved into her hands, and an equally bemused Taylor staring after the vanished healer.
"…she's not normally like this, I swear." was all Vicky could think to say in defense of her sister, not wanting to shoot her mouth off and ruin whatever the two had going on, but incapable of letting that strangeness lie lest it ruin whatever the two had going on. Taylor simply laughed softly in response, stepping up and taking the files, starting to look through them.
"I know, believe me. I didn't know Amy could do anything other than snark. It's kind of cute, actually." she murmured in response as her pen started to flick and dance across the pages, and Vicky grinned as she settled in to try and gently pry out what information she could from the other girl about everything.
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It had been a week since Taylor had woken up, a week since she had discovered The System, a week since she had delved into her first Instanced Dungeon…and a week since the last time she had seen or talked to Amy. Which, much as she might wish otherwise, wasn't entirely unreasonable. After all, the other girl had nearly died several times in said dungeon, and then Taylor had wrapped the whole thing up by giving her a -brief- spanking.
Frankly, Taylor was surprised, and thrilled, that she wasn't either dead or in a prison cell somewhere as a result, and as much as she wanted to talk to her companion-by-circumstance, she wasn't going to risk pissing her off by chasing her down and forcing a conversation. So, instead, she'd kept doing her dailies and kept collecting her Mystery Boxes.
Unfortunately for her, nothing remotely as interesting as that first day had happened again. Oh, she'd gotten some useful items here and there, potions and gold and the like, but nothing like her twin blades. And she didn't receive stat increases every day any more, either. Only experience towards leveling up, and even then it took two days worth of dailies to gain a single level. Dungeons were definitely the best way to gain EXP fast, which totally made sense, but getting her mom and dad not to cause her issues with raid sign-ups would probably be a huge pain now.
More fortunately, if she had to, she now had alternative means. Instanced Dungeon keys were on sale in the System Store -which was insane, that the System came with it's own goddamn store, but she wasn't going to complain- and she also…well, if she put on a disguise and signed up for a dungeon using a Hunter Alias, she looked far too different from the Taylor Hebert of a week ago for someone to recognize her at a glance. After all, as the System had promised, her body had changed as her stats increased. She was taller, bustier, more muscular…she was, dare she say it, moderately attractive now.
As for an Alias, well…she'd never been fond of the idea. Not for herself, anyway. Oh, she could understand it for some Hunters, especially high-ranking ones that wanted to be able to go out with their families without getting swarmed by obsessive fans, but it had never sat right with her personally. Then again, it was easy for her to have said that before, as the 'Weakest Hunter in America', wasn't it?
Well, she'd figure it out.
The important thing was, this was her last day in the hospital. The collected doctors, healers, and Protectorate representatives had finally come to agree that there was little point in continuing to keep her admitted at this point. As far as anyone could tell, she was in perfect health, and had been essentially since the moment that she woke up.
The events of the parking garage dungeon notwithstanding, of course.
Thank God she and Amy's clothes had been repaired the moment that they stepped out of the dungeon, and thank God that time hadn't passed as quickly outside the dungeon as it had inside, or they would have been in some real trouble trying to keep things a secret. Not that it wouldn't prevent her from having to go shopping in the end anyway, since her old clothes most definitely didn't fit her new body.
Of course, just moments ago Amy had swept in, acted totally different from what Taylor assumed -and now knew, thanks to Victoria- to be her 'normal', practically thrown the discharge paperwork at her sister, and immediately fled.
Old Taylor would have assumed that Amy hated her and was avoiding her.
New Taylor, System-Assisted Taylor, had high enough Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma to know that Amy was more shy, embarrassed, and attracted to her than anything else, and had fled out of said embarrassment. And from the looks of things, Vicky had the same opinion, given the glint in her lovely eyes, the grin on her rather nice lips, and the questions that she had been carefully asking ever since Amy had left.
Careful questions that Taylor had been just as carefully answering, usually with gaping holes in the details, which unfortunately kept her from being able to focus at all on the fact that Amy was attracted to her despite everything that they'd been through together.
Or perhaps it was because of everything they'd been through together? Taylor knew, had read, that relationships and 'feelings' could easily bloom during intense moments, and it wasn't like she didn't find the other girl attractive physically or personality-wise. Hell, she'd accidentally told Vicky that much just a few minutes ago.
God, she was really going to have to sit down and think about this, wasn't she?
Someplace quiet, and private, where she wouldn't be interrupted for at least a few hours.
Maybe another Instanced Dungeon? They didn't have a time limit, and it didn't seem enemies from one floor moved to another, so she'd have all the time in the world and would be able to grind out some levels at the same time. Speaking of which, she kind of wanted to bask in her current progress…
A quick murmur under her breath, hidden by Vicky's enthusiastic response to an almost-absent question she'd asked about the other girl's last raid, brought up her character sheet.
Name: Taylor Hebert
Class: Not Applicable
Active Title: Beast Slayer (Provides 40% damage buff and 10% Loot from Beast-type Enemies)
Level: 17
HP: 2150/2150
MP: 1650/1650
STR: 30
DEX: 30
CON: 26
INT: 20
WIS: 20
CHR: 30 (20 Base + 10 from The Circlet of the Fairy Queen)
LUK: 20
Available Stat Points: 0
Available Skill Points: 0
God, she was proud of those numbers, proud of the efforts that she had made, and why wouldn't she be? Sure, it hadn't been the best delivery, the most flawless of raids, but she'd been trying to protect Amy and learn how her powers worked -not to mention getting used to fight with two very unusually shaped swords- at the same time. She was a work in progress!
The fact that Amy was still wearing the ring she'd gotten from joining Taylor was…that was really nice, made Taylor feel warm, especially when she'd said she 'couldn't take it off' and damnit she was getting distracted again! Was this what having a crush was like? Just…drifting off mentally? Because if so she…!
Well, actually, she didn't mind all that much, Amy was really cute, and snarky, and fun to be around even when things were trying to eat them, and had stuck with her, and hadn't gotten her arrested or murdered…really, what wasn't there to like?
"…back Ames! So, Taylor and I were talking, and she just agreed that she'd love to get your number!" Victoria's latest chirped comment had Taylor's head snapping up from her paperwork, cheeks simultaneously paling and blushing furiously at the same time, and her eyes meeting the crimson-cheeked Amy's eyes as her improved mental abilities informed her that she had, in fact, absent-mindedly agreed a few seconds ago that she wanted to exchange numbers with Amy and spend sometime with her in the future. Because she'd been so busy thinking about the fact that she may or may not have a crush on Amy, that she'd let her mouth give answers to questions based on her subconscious desires instead of actual thought.
Well shit. Guess I have to take her to the movies or something. she mused to herself, a small but growing smile on her lips as a red-faced Amy handed over her phone for Taylor to add her number to. Wonder what they have showing?
So distracted was she, that she didn't notice -or open- the notification on her HUD, informing her that 'Trial Player Amelia Claire Lavere' had reached 25% Loyalty Index, making her eligible for promotion to 'Standard' rank, for several more hours. Not until she was at home, in bed, getting ready to fall asleep.
Curious, she had looked through several tutorial windows quite carefully indeed for further information on this particular portion of the System, the requirements and benefits therein, and the meaning of the various ranks.
Those very details, and the implications, kept her up for a long, long time.
[1] https://www.patreon.com/astandupphilosopher
[2] https://discord.gg/3VKjmXBYY8