Snippets: Human/Nature pt 3

[strange_natures]

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/335317.html?thread=1934730453#cmt1934730453

As they made their way down the high street, Karen found herself scrutinising the passers-by in a way she wouldn't have predicted even a week ago. Perdita would definitely have caught her notice back then, you just didn't see one-eyed amazons every day in Wightbury; Abby might have done if he'd been moving, far too comfortable in his own skin for the age he appeared; but Fox, Griffin, and the 'local talent' all passed for normal with ease. She would never have dreamed that Melanie Fisher was anything more than she seemed. How many others had she encountered over the years, without even knowing?

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https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/335519.html?thread=1936730271#cmt1936730271

While she waited for Fox to get a move on Karen kept an eye on Perdita, who was sitting cross-legged in the containment room, murmuring a nonsense litany at the creature inside. Every so often she seemed to just phase out of existence, which made the creature noticeably calmer, and then phase back in, which made it go completely berserk.

"Can we stop her from tormenting it like that?" she asked when Fox reappeared.

He very nearly stormed into the room, but paused the moment he saw what Perdita was doing. "It's okay: she's trying to figure out which areas of reality it can perceive her in - an eldritch wanderer should be able to perceive her through the full spectrum, but this one obviously can't; something's damaged its sensory organs."

Karen tried to imagine being trapped in an alien reality without sight or touch, and found that the past few days gave her far too much insight into how that might feel. The wound in her side still ached with every movement, and she'd promised Eddie Walton's widow that his killer would see justice... but there was no justice in ignoring a legitimate case for temporary insanity.

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https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/335931.html?thread=1939987771#cmt1939987771

"So all we have is that they've left Wightbury," Karen said, slumping down in her seat. "We've only got eleven days until the new moon, and the only thing we know for certain is that there'll be another four murders somewhere on this planet."

"It's worse than that," Abby said, throwing a file down on the desk in front of him. His face was drawn and even more ashen than usual; if it had been anyone else Karen might have said he was looking his age. "I'm pretty sure they're in Newport, or they were a three nights ago."

She couldn't help but stare at him. Even though she dreaded the answer, she asked, "How can knowing that be worse?"

"Well, from all appearances, it looks as though they've learned they can also run their abomination of a spell on a full moon."

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https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/336341.html?thread=1941585365#cmt1941585365

As promised, Perdita returned from the treeline a few minutes later, unexpectedly dangling a vaguely conscious man by one ankle. "You know how I feel about prying eyes - speaking of: keep an eye on my lunch for us, would you?" she said, dropping him in a crumpled heap before going back to studying the latest spell, seemingly oblivious to the looks she was getting from the few remaining SOCOs.

Staring down at the man who'd lamped Agent Fox with a candlestick, Karen wondered whether he had any idea just how much trouble he was in - and possibly how much danger he was in. "She was joking, right?"

Griffin didn't answer, she just leaned down and told the guy: "Honey, I'm not being funny, but the sooner you start talking, the sooner we can find a take-away that'll deliver your weight in junk food to a field."

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https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/337150.html?thread=1946751486#cmt1946751486

"Oi, Mush One and Mush Two, over here!"

"Remind me why we brought her?" Fox muttered, sinking his face into his hands.

"I'll go," Karen replied.

The moment she was outside, Perdita handed her a piece of paper with names and dates, even a partial address. "Shit went to Skelton yesterday; I've written down the bumf."

"What... how did you get this?"

Pulling a pinched off cigarette from behind her ear, she said, "Camaraderie of smokers: eight people with exactly one thing in common, stuck in a freezing cold half-a-shack in the pissing rain; doesn't exactly take a trickster god to get everyone yattering, now, does it? Now can we see the other crime scenes before I run out of benzos again?"

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https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/337628.html?thread=1950079708#cmt1950079708

Griffin went through the normal patter for the interview tape, then she leaned forwards, and said, "Mr. Jones, an additional caution for cases that come through my department: if you claim that the devil made you do it we will investigate the accusation further, and he takes a very dim view of being named as an accessory to murder."

Karen mentally filed that away for future consideration. She was well past the stage of asking if it was a joke.

***

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/337732.html?thread=1951770180#cmt1951770180

Karen chewed her lip for a moment, then turned to Witman and said, "Okay, let's bounce some ideas from a muggle perspective: whoever cast the spell didn't care about the skillset of the... people they were summoning, so presumably they didn't have a task in mind; they just needed members of each species for some reason - assuming that reason wasn't to mix some horrifying paint to redecorate with."

"And they had to have a reason to summon to the centre circle first, then separate the four into the individual corners..."

The smash made them both jump; they turned to see Perdita staring at them, a broken mug spilling tea across her feet.

"Fuck me sideways with a broken broomstick, you crazy diamonds, why didn't I see it?" she said before she bolted for the containment cell, grabbing a marker without breaking speed.

"I mean, I do like that we were helpful," Witman murmured, "but I have a really bad feeling about this."

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https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/338208.html?thread=1953448224#cmt1953448224

"I don't want to send you on a wild goose chase, Gramps, and if I'm right this is mental, even by dodgy industrial standards," Perdita said as she scribbled spellwork down another tentacle. She began to draw shapes in the air with her other hand, conjuring bright lights into sigils while she hummed a strange melody that slipped in and out of reality. The creature screeched as the tentacles she was working on crumbled to dust and faded into the air.

"Calm down, babby," she told it, absently petting a few tendrils, "they're still there; I just need a graft for your shadow aspect."

"That's some pretty serious surgery if you're wrong, Perdie," Abby said, crinkling his brow.

"I'm a hundred percent certain I'm not wrong; that's not the same thing as being a hundred percent certain I'm right."

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https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/338495.html?thread=1955347007#cmt1955347007

"Listen, I like that your concern for other beings extends further than nicking my lunch," Perdita said, "but a healer couldn't pull this off any more than I could treat a heart attack without exploding the patient." She paused for a moment to calm the creature again, before continuing: "Very simplistic explanation: some beings are spread across more than one reality - Nev's an easy example, he has two aspects with anchors in two realms, so he doesn't have to change his physical shape like Elfie does, he can just flip around so his fox side is the one on display; if he needs to travel to the etheric realm he can just pull on the anchor his Self is tethered to over there and 'poof'. This poor little bugger's had all its various bits hauled into the physical realm, but it can't set anchor here; it's flailing in the wind, but it's so fragile that I can't just put the pieces back in place, so what I need to do is bind together all the seams that are falling apart, recreate its aspects until it has one of each again, and then tuck those into its physical realm aspect and hope I've bought it enough time to recover from what those bastards did."

"That sounds complicated," Karen murmured as she filed away the information, especially what she'd just learned about Agents Fox and Griffin.

"Pfft, sealing up a rip in the space-time continuum with two bits of blu-tack and a wire coat-hanger was complicated; this is a sodding nightmare."


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https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/338942.html?thread=1956927998#cmt1956927998

"Sorry to leave you baby-sitting, but she'll be fine as long as you remember to throw a bottle of tequila at her every few hours," Abby told Witman, patting down his pockets. "If she insists on cigarettes they're in the top drawer of my desk; other than that just follow your instincts with missing persons."

"You're going somewhere?" Fox asked.

"A witness spotted, and I quote, 'a fuck off great glowy octopus thing' in a tunnel system they were trespassing in last night; Griffin and I are going to follow up while you and Thewlis pay the good captain a nasty visit."

Almost every fibre of Karen's being screamed against facing another eldritch creature, but the little strand that always got her into trouble made her say, "If the witness is right you'll need more than just the two of you."

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https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/339047.html?thread=1958568039#cmt1958568039

"If you're spooked, I don't think I want to know what's happened while we were gone," Karen said.

"We've identified the tenth human victim from missing persons reports; his name's blacked out for safety reasons," Witman replied, passing over the file she was holding.

Karen took it and scanned the information, not understanding why the constable was reacting the way she was - the victim was nineteen, seemed like a promising young man, the recent picture of him with his pet cat put a bit of a lump in her throat, but she didn't see anything significantly different about this tragedy compared to the previous ones, or why it could be unsafe to know his name.

Then she glanced into the containment room: Perdita was no longer surrounded by multi-dimensional tentacles, instead she was folding one up into the shoulder of a glowing being that looked uncannily like the kid in the file.

"She says our killers are trying to make genius loci," Witman said, as if the statement was any kind of explanation.

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https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/339238.html?thread=1960255014#cmt1960255014

"I think you need to tell me about this 'Sons of Fomor' case," Karen said, even though she was very sure she wasn't going to like it.

"It's complicated," Fox replied, "but a cult decided that taking genius loci off the endangered species list was an easier way to fix the planet than convincing people to look after the place." After a quick sideways glance he correctly guessed where he'd lost her: "Genius loci are a type of deity, capable of generating vast quantities of magic as easily as you or I breathe; just one can support an entire preternatural ecology, and healthy nature spirits and elementals affect the ecology of the physical world, so..."

"Having watched the effects of the die-off in real time I actually agree with the killers' underlying logic," Abby said, "but certainly not the methods used. Although, this one at least makes more sense now."

"It does?" Fox asked before Karen even had chance to.

"Nature spirit for the instincts, obviously; then you've got your human for a nice, solid anchor to the physical realm, and the eldritch wanderer for the links to power-sources in other realities; both make your bouncing baby godlet far less susceptible to the selection pressures that did for so many of his predecessors; at a guess they've added dusk-wight thinking it'll make their creation easier to control." Glancing at Karen, he added, "The Sons of Fomor only had one success, but, to be fair to them, that could be because he disintegrated half their members within minutes of regaining consciousness; I don't imagine a copycat would want to ignore that potential outcome."

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https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/339460.html?thread=1962058500#cmt1962058500

"I've managed to ink the seams together, but waking him up before I've finished the permanent repairs won't end well, so your questions can wait," Perdita said, dipping the tip of her brush into a gash she'd cut across her arm. She wrote a thick bar of bloody sigils around her patient's left thumb, fixed the design in place with a quick flare of intent, and added, "As soon as I'm sure he's not going to explode I'll go after the one you lost in the sewers, but you need to bring me the others as fast as you can, faster if possible."

"Others?" Griffin echoed, tilting her head until it almost hit her shoulder. "The spell's only worked twice that we know of..."

"Yeah, but it's not like either of the normal 'build-a-deity' avatar enchantments: these arseholes aren't just thinking outside the box, they've fired the box into the fucking sun," Perdita said as she dipped her brush again. "Pay attention: their spell starts with all four beings in the centre circle, then the outer circles only summon a quarter of each and recombine the pieces - four ingredients in, four shoddily made genius loci out; sidesteps the instability issues from overfilling an avatar, and means they get more product. So, one of this particular batch of cookies ended up painted across his final destination; we've got littl'un here; that leaves two, plus the four from the full moon, makes six more victims to find and reconstruct before they destabilise and, well, redecorate."

Karen couldn't even begin to accept the big picture as reality, so she focused on the detail she could immediately understand: "How long do you think we have?"


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https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/340067.html?thread=1965490275#cmt1965490275

"Listen," Perdita said, squeezing the tube of henna, "you can keep allotting your belief elsewhere, but I reckon someone who'll chase an eldritch entity down a dark alleyway falls under my protection; as such I think you need at least one shielding spell before you rush off again like a mad-head."

"But I don't have the magical ability to power it," Karen replied, trying not to squirm at the cold tickle of the patterns being sketched across her back.

"That's why I'm not looking at anything permanent - this'll take a finite amount of hits once one of the others has charged it, after that you'll need a refill. I'll put the ingoing and outgoing points on the insides of your elbows, so you don't hit anyone accidentally and wipe them out. You right or left handed?"

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https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/340678.html?thread=1967716038#cmt1967716038

At first Karen thought the darkness was foul-smelling smoke, but it flowed and coalesced, spinning together a shifting form of shadowy dust, motes of sparkling star-fire, and the fractal unreality of multi-dimensional tentacles, until finally she could make out a near-solid figure. The giant, cloudy form of a sabre-toothed cat gazed at them through three glowing opalescent eyes, and mumbled, "Ohff, fhorry, fhifhn't eayifhe ee fhad homfhany," around the eldritch abomination that was dangling from her mouth like a recalcitrant kitten, still dripping sewage water from its tendrils.

"Oh, thank god, you got him," Karen said even as she retreated. The strangled noise made her glance at DI Coltham: he'd frozen in place, eyes wide and staring. Ten years running the Odd Squad, and a goddess in her borderlands aspect was too much for him? Her mouth dried as she considered how he could have managed to avoid what she'd seen in a couple of weeks.

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https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/340885.html?thread=1969733781#cmt1969733781

"First off, they're victims, but 'survivors' isn't exactly accurate: they're entirely new beings," Perdita said. "Second off: what do you want us to do, pull straws as to which family gets one back, and then shrug and tell the grieving relatives 'whoops, sorry' when the kid remembers themselves a bit too clearly and disintegrates?"

"Okay, that's definitely a problem, but you can't just keep people."

Perdita grinned and pointed at herself with both thumbs. "De facto alternate for leader of the Wild Hunt; I think you'll find scooping up unattended waifs is in the job description. I can call up the horde if you want to make it official, but we all know Nev'll only get a face on."

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https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/341217.html?thread=1971879905#cmt1971879905

"The good news is Perdita's managed to stabilise the new one, and the first one's woken up," Fox said as he hung up the call.

"That amount of good news doesn't come without a sting in the tail," Karen replied, hoping that she was just being pessimistic; Fox's pained expression told her the hope was futile.

"I think we're going to have to rule out questioning him; the poor kid hasn't stopped screaming since he regained consciousness."

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https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/341399.html?thread=1973014935#cmt1973014935

"You think she's right, don't you, about keeping those kids," Karen said, already knowing that it was a statement rather than a question.

"I think in an ideal world we'd be able to reunite the families, but we're stuck in a world where we can only choose the least harmful course of action," Fox replied. "Those kids need protection, and the general public needs protection from them - it's not as though any of the victims' parents could pick one up by the scruff and put him on the naughty-step if he's having a tantrum."

"No, I understand that, but... they're better now, right? Now she's put binding spells on their manifestations, or whatever it is she did, they're not as dangerous."

The look on his face was answer enough.

"Oh."

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https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/341604.html?thread=1974686308#cmt1974686308

"I still haven't managed to calm Cosmo down," Perdita said, scrubbing at her wrist, "but Phoenix is doing better. I think he can handle some questions as long as you're all careful."

"Cosmo and Phoenix?" Karen echoed.

She shrugged. "Unusual names are a fine family tradition for the Waifs and Strays pantheon; wouldn't want our newest members to feel left out. Besides, they're deities; it's not as if you'd get any respect introducing yourself as Stephen the Sea God, is it?"

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https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/341943.html?thread=1976434359#cmt1976434359

The kid looked very small to Karen, almost fragile; the clothing from Victim Support hung off his slender frame, and his fingers trembled as he accepted the offered mug of tea from Abby. This close it was much easier for her to accept that he was a different person to the human victim, not just because of the changes to his appearance: the same sensation of realer-than-thou that roiled around Perdita like a stormcloud was seeping off him in waves; far less powerful, but noticeable if you recognised what you were feeling.

A three week old genius loci, already disrupting the fabric of reality simply by existing, and only going to grow stronger with time. And there were still another five of them out there somewhere.

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https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/342228.html?thread=1978370772#cmt1978370772

"I still don't remember being called Phoenix," Phoenix said, crinkling his brow, "but it hurts when I try..."

"I've told you to stop trying; we need to get your sense of selfhood stabilised before you can start rooting around in the past." Perdita tapped him lightly on the nose with the tip of one finger; with her other hand she wove a net of shimmering magic sigils and dropped it over his face, pulling at the threads like a spider checking her web. Whatever she read there triggered a disapproving 'tchah' sound, but her exasperation was gentle, almost fond, as she said, "You daft little bugger, I'm going to have to redo your stitches again."

"Sorry," he said, rubbing at the binding spells neatly printed into his fingers, "I guess I just don't feel very Phoenix-like right now. A dead bird the cat's dragged in, maybe, but not a Phoenix."

Karen knew an opportunity to build a rapport when she saw one: "You could always shorten it to Nick, at least until you start feeling it more."

The kid's dazzling beam almost made up for the stunned outrage on Perdita's face. Almost. Karen smiled at her as apologetically as she could, and said, "You did say he needs to start building his own identity as soon as possible."

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https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/342285.html?thread=1979917325#cmt1979917325

"It's not a problem," Karen said, "we don't need to know the specifics for it to be useful. Is there anything else you can tell us about where they kept you, anything you remember from when you escaped, landmarks maybe?" Her heart sank as Nick abruptly licked his fingers and stared into middle-distance, his mouth dropping open as abject horror dawned across his face.

"I think I ate one of them..."

"Eh," Perdita said, breaking the following silence, "voluntary sacrifice: if they're going to dick about making gods they should know we normally come around from it with the munchies; nobody's going to miss some dipshit cultist who committed suicide-by-deity."

"They might," Karen said, sitting upright and staring at her. "We've been looking for missing persons who match our victim profile, not for missing persons who could be our killers..."

Perdita booped Nick on the nose, distracting him from the memories. "See, sunshine, you did good; eating twice your own body weight in Twiglets wouldn't have been nearly as helpful."

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https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/342881.html?thread=1983338849#cmt1983338849

"Logic dictates that the one who escaped with Nicky-boy is from the full moon batch; after I've checked on Cosmo I'm going to take a looksie in the river," Perdita said.

"Is it normal logic, or your very special brand of it?" Abby asked.

"These two are already territorial with each other, probably thanks to the nature spirit being from industrial waste-ground; if the third one had gotten out as well then he and Nick would have been too busy scrapping to make a run for it, therefore our escapee was one of the second batch - i.e. the spell that tore up a rural lake spirit, which is likely to be pulling the kid towards water the same way the old crone pulls me towards starfields." As she said it she tapped her right temple, next to her milky, opalescent eye. "Local water consists of sewers, canals, a knee-deep park pond that's more duckshit and syringes than H2O, or a nice, fast-flowing river. Easy enough to follow, you cheeky old fart?"

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https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/343208.html?thread=1985037224#cmt1985037224

"Is it supposed to tingle like this?" Karen asked, rubbing her back against the car-seat in an effort to itch the shield-spell temporarily stained into her skin. It hadn't felt like much of anything until Fox had charged it, now it buzzed in a steady pulse that verged on maddening.

"Probably, it's a bigger reserve than someone with no magical training would normally take," Fox said, picking another fried chicken leg out of the family sized bucket in his lap. "Perdita's terrible at estimating power levels; I doubt she even realised I'd need some recovery time."

Karen winced as he took another bite, crunching contentedly through both flesh and bone in a way that reminded her of the normal, everyday foxes that rooted through her bins at night. It had never even occurred to her that wielding magic might burn calories the same way wielding physical tools did.

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https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/343344.html?thread=1986770736#cmt1986770736

Karen pinched the bridge of her nose. It was one thing to talk to loved ones in a normal missing persons case, or even a homicide case. It was another when you suspected their loved one might be a murderer and had to dance around the topic. A manslaughtered murderer. Or a suicide-by-deity, if you accepted the supernatural community's definition; she still wasn't sure she could do that, even though Nick had spent a good three or four hours throwing up after his little revelation.

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https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/343582.html?thread=1988529950#cmt1988529950

"More junk," Fox growled, leafing through the occult books on the shelf.

"I'm not even sure you're right about me knowing it when I see it," Karen replied. She glanced up when Fox froze, staring into the book he was holding open - or rather, at the colourful notelets stuck to the pages. "Wasn't expecting it to be post-its."

"All spellbooks have deliberate mistakes for safety reasons, and since the ones in the non-magical population are copies of copies they tend to have even more," Fox said, turning the book around so she could better see the hand-drawn sigils and notes. "Our missing person has worked out the corrections."

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https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/344441.html?thread=1993621881#cmt1993621881

"We seem to be gathering quite the collection," Fox said, looking into the containment room. Inside, Perdita was in a third circle, wreathed in smoke-like tendrils of light that formed and reformed strange shapes in the air around her. The boys were both curled up on their cots, watching her work with obvious fascination.

Karen shook her head and wished she could clear the dull prickle between her shoulder-blades. "I'd almost prefer it if they were being released deliberately; at least then I wouldn't have to think about what could happen when the next one gets out among the general public."

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https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/345071.html?thread=1995313135#cmt1995313135

"This one looks different," Karen said, watching the smoke-like swirls of sparks that wraithed around Perdita.

"Yeah, the nearest multi-dimensional being wasn't eldritch, they were... I don't think there's a human word for it; real sweet beings, always want to see what you're doing in their domain; whether you want to play." She twirled light between her fingertips, her frown pensive until she shook herself slightly and added, "Life could get interesting if there's something dangerous in range of the next spell."

"Dangerous like me, you mean," Nick said.

"Like us," Cosmo echoed, his voice still cracked and hoarse from screaming.

Perdita rolled her eyes at Karen, then waved her free hand at the pair. "Please, you two are just big puppies: a bit of chewing is to be expected, once you're better trained you'll be no bother. I'm talking about something actually dangerous."

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https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/345447.html?thread=1999040871#cmt1999040871

"The boys'll get over the whole manslaughter thing eventually," Perdita said, flicking the ash off the end of her cigarette. "I had to pull the human personalities to the front to avoid a couple of fatal cases of body dysmorphia when their minds surfaced, but once they start switching between aspects the consciousnesses should start integrating; that'll shift around the cultural inhibitions a bit. Fingers crossed they blend instead of having to create personality overlays like me." She spotted Karen's questioning look, and added, "I'm a Presence within an avatar, but the avatar personality didn't fuck off like she was supposed to; sharing didn't work out so they wove bits of each other into yours truly. It's damn sight harder for four quarters to cooperate like that than it is for two wholes though, so let's hope it doesn't come to it."

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