"Jin," Isaac said with heavy exasperation as he walked around the trunk of the tree. He had called out to her a couple times but she didn't stop until she could put the trees between her and the other pokegirls waiting on the pit.
Her injuries were gone but she was still mildly hyperventilating and her eyes were still flickering with suppressed mania. She had dropped down into a seated fetal position with her neck against a trunk. Isaac's irritation was overcome by concern, so he lowered himself down next to the Enchantress. He could feel fearful tremors coursing through her body from the contact between their shoulders. "Hey, Jin," he started to ask with a much gentler tone. "What's wrong? You're not still hurt, right."
"She's a monster," Jin said like she wanted Isaac to look under her bed for the Tenebrous Seraph.
Isaac fought against the urge to wrap her in his arms. He was supposed to be here correcting bad behavior. "She's not a monster, Jin. She didn't want to fight, she says she has trouble holding back."
Jin shook her head. "I mean, when she threw me, it's all I could think. I couldn't do anything, I couldn't even process what was happening until after you recalled me. I've… I've never felt that helpless."
Isaac sighed and remembered Elena's estimation of Jin's character from way back when she was the only pokegirl in his harem. That was during his birthday last year. "Well," Isaac was the tamer, it was his role to manage this circus. “Do you think you can face her long enough to hear what she had to say?”
Jin's back and shoulders stiffened momentarily, then she hunkered down. “I don’t want to listen to her bragging about how easy it was to beat me.”
Isaac fought not to sigh. That's what Jin would do if she was the overwhelmingly triumphant one. "She was trying to apologize, Jin."
Jin scoffed and asked, "What for?" Her tone got bitter. "She didn't do anything wrong, she took me out with one hit. She's easily your best girl, she can already fight the big sisters."
"It wasn't supposed to be a serious fight, you surprised her and she reacted instantly. She feels bad for hitting you so hard."
Jin stared at him through the corner of her eye. She was still sulking and still tightly clutching her resentment. "Sure she does."
Isaac couldn't help but let a little of his impatience come through. "Jin…"
Near black eyes rolled as the Enchantress responded with a sardonic, "Hai-hai. I accept her apology."
"You have to tell her that, Jin. After you let her give her apology." Isaac stood up and dusted off his pants. "I'll go bring her here so you don't have to do this in front of everyone."
Jin slumped and her defiance started to recede. “Hai…”
Isaac went to the edge of the pit and waved to catch the attention of the Seraph so he could beckon her over. He couldn't help but jump when Anahita cleared the entire distance, including the difference in elevation, with what seemed to be a casual hop assisted by one stroke from her six wings. She dismissed them as she landed.
Okay, Isaac could see how facing her could leave one with the opinion that she possessed monstrous qualities. She wasn't flagrant with her power like Astoreth, which made the demonstrations quite surprising. Isaac steadied himself and then motioned towards the tree Jin was behind with his hand. "I talked to Jin and she'll listen to you now."
Hearing her name, the Enchantress came around the trunk with hesitant steps and a stiff and defiant expression to compensate. Anahita assumed the same demure posture she had taken when she first tried to make amends. "I'm sorry. Like I said, when I saw you use that Lightning Strike-"
Jin snorted. "That was Shocking Grasp, it's a touch spell. Not Lightning Strike."
Anahita tipped her head up to study Jin and Isaac's expressions in turn."A spell? But-"
"I'm an Enchantress, of course it was a spell. Look, don't worry about it. It was a training accident. I'm healed, I'm fine. I'll keep training and hopefully do better next time."
Anahita's eyebrows twitched in a subtle furrow but she nodded and quietly muttered, "Thank you for allowing me to apologize."
-
Isaac lifted his pencil and held it vertically with his arm fully extended. He pushed his thumb up the wooden sleeve until the tip of his thumbnail was under Anahita's chin. She didn't wear her head coverings while indoors. Then he moved the drawing implement to line up with the line of her shoulder. He eyeballed the width in proportion to the height of her head. That was why he had ruled it out with his thumb on the pencil, and then translated that correlation to his drawing pad. He continued measuring proportions with his thumb on the pencil, everything in relation to the height of her head, until he had a sketchy representation of Anahita's bodily proportions on the page.
She was so incredibly stationary while meditating, Isaac couldn't resist compulsion to indulge in some figure drawing. Jin had tried to model for him but she couldn't hold still nearly long enough.
Isaac was about to repeat the process of measuring proportions, this time using the width of Anahita's eye to plot out the face, but her eyes were open and fixed on him. She had an inquiring lift to her eyebrows but she was totally silent. "Sorry," Isaac said as he gave an apologetic smile and put the drawing pad and pencil down. "Couldn't resist."
"Resist what, master Isaac?" Oh man, the way she called him master was dangerously ego expanding.
"Please just call me Isaac. I don't want the master stuff to go to my head. And I was drawing you without your permission."
"I am your wi- your pokegirl. My body is yours to do with as you please." So very, very dangerous. "However, I don't believe I am a worthy subject of art. Your other pokegirls, they are much more beautiful than I."
Okay, that just wasn't true, and Isaac had the knowledge to at least provide some compelling evidence. The fact that she was beautiful. "Well, I'm the artist and beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I don't like to quantify beauty, really. It's more, you have it or you don't."
Anahita's voice became slightly forceful and she responded with conviction. "Chandrakanta is more beautiful than I am."
"Candi is definitely closer to the feminine ideal than you, but that goes beyond beauty to me."
Anahita perked up as she responded. "Then… what is beauty to you?"
Isaac brought his hand up to press his knuckle into the seam of his lips as he thought. His response was muffled by the fingers in the way of his mouth. "Beauty is recognition of health, particularly fertility, reproductive health. Humans seem to have universally developed an instinct to value healthy, fertile females. You can tell a lot about someone's health by looking at them. Clear skin and a well proportioned body indicate nutritional health. Symmetry shows developmental health. Secondary sex characteristics, pronounced breasts and hips, less pronounced jaw and shoulders, those suggest hormonal health. All of these influence the well being of offspring born to that woman. Like, it's crazy but apparently kids born to overweight women score lower on tests designed to measure cognition.
"So it's this instinctive recognition of desirable female traits that humanity developed that's at the root of the concept of female beauty. Even other women have this instinct, maybe because there's also an instinct to ensure there's potential mates for their own offspring. It takes like… sixteen generations before the risks of inbreeding are totally negated. That's a lot of people.
"So that's what led to this universal ideal, then that breaks down and alters in more specialized populations based on the environment. Eventually as things stratify more you get into what I consider to be fashion rather than beauty. People are also influenced by the culture they're immersed within. If they hear that slender bodies are the most desirable, if they see all of the men pursuing slender bodied women, if the elite women are all slender, then that makes an artificial pressure to favor slenderness. It doesn't overwrite the more primitive ideal, just tips it in a certain direction."
Isaac sighed. "It sucks to not be beautiful, people usually would rather be disabled than unattractive. And there's a lot that can happen while developing to reduce beauty, which is unfortunate. I'm sure a lot of people could be a lot more physically beautiful if they had a better environment growing up." That was true of many human qualities, but that wasn't relevant to Isaac's current strange lecture.
Isaac picked up his drawing pad and flipped two pages back to a more finished drawing of the Seraph he was discussing the aesthetic concept of beauty with. "So here, you've got an appealing hip to waist ratio, you're proportional in your limbs, you have good skin, you're symmetrical. Your muscles, your hair and eyes, your tattoos, that's all the unique parts of your personal look. Which I quite like. I like a lot of different sorts of looks. Also, any real woman who is less than ideal is still better than a perfect figment of someone's imagination."
Anahita shifted her posture so she became small, but she held eye contact with him and appeared to be fighting against a growing smile. "...I see. Thank you. I do not mind if you draw me while I meditate."
Huzzah, Isaac had forgiveness and retroactive permission. His mind suddenly jumped on the subject of meditation. "You meditate instead of sleeping because of the Tenebrous template, right? I'm not disturbing your rest?"
Anahita shook her head gently. "Meditation is all about pushing aside outside distractions. I was not bothered." She turned her head away but then looked back towards him. "I… would prefer if you didn't call my template Tenebrous, though. It is more than darkness."
Isaac was curious about that. "What do you call it?"
Anahita was silent for an unusually long period of time as her expression changed from contemplative to uneasy. "I do not have an alternative name for the template. It is just that my masters expressed a dislike for 'Tenebrous.'" Her expression went back to placid and neutral with one deep breath in and out. "It is an unlocking of a further understanding of ki. Most pokegirls discover the dark side of this understanding, because the life of pokegirls is often one of violence." She lowered her head. "It is how I discovered it.
"When a fighting type only understands the darkness it creates an imbalance in her internal energies, and she chases the power further into darkness. The same can happen with light energy. A pokegirl tipped too far into the light may be just as destructive as one in the dark, one who is Tenebrous. It will be self destruction. She will be too passive, she will fail to consider her own well being. The ideal is to maintain a balance. To walk the narrow path between. To embrace both sides. It is impossible to achieve for more than a single moment at a time, but the true power of ki use is found in those moments."
Isaac knew that term but hadn't been aware that he'd already witnessed its use. "Ki, like chi from ancient Chinese medicine?"
"I do not know." Anahita paused and looked up for a moment. "Either it is the energy from the ancient Chinese medicine or it is something similar enough in concept that the ideas proved applicable with some work."
"Where did you learn? It must not have been the Docheri."
Anahita nodded. "In the foothills of the Himalayas. There is a monastery that veterans of the pokegirl war settled in. They believed the monks living there could help them achieve greater mastery over their powers. The very first pokegirls to develop this template believed they were mystic masters, but it turned out they were not even monks. Simple survivors who made up things as they went. It became a place of learning and a sanctuary for fighting types who wished to learn."
Isaac scratched his chin. "Somehow that seems very Buddhist to me…"
Anahita looked very interested. "What do you know about Buddhism?"
Isaac gave an embarrassed smile. "Probably not enough to actually make that call. Still, I'm fond of some Eastern philosophies because they're at the root of some practices I use to help manage myself. I think it would be cool to go to this monastery some day, be able to talk with your masters."
Anahita smiled with a serene glow in her eyes. "I will write to them to see if they will allow us to visit."
-
Isaac wasn't happy to be awake at this time. Something had slipped across the bond with Chandrakanta. He grumbled internally about meddling Megami.
If his brain had woken him up earlier, he could have gone back to sleep after a trip to the bathroom. If it had been later, it would have been right around when Elena came awake so he'd have her company. As it was, there would be nothing for him to do besides lie with his head in the pillow and wait until Elena disturbed his efforts to resume sleeping.
Summer morning twilight was already invading the home, so it really wouldn't be Elena to wake him. Light, especially growing light, made it really hard for him to sleep. Besides, it sounded like Elena was up early as well. Downstairs singing to herself in the kitchen.
Elena was non-verbal while she worked.
Tiny blond with pointy ears in bed with him. Leggy redhead with bunny ears snuggling with a raven black on the bedroll. He needed to do something about the sleeping arrangements. More space was necessary. What was the state of his finances? Isaac knew nothing about becoming a homeowner.
A particular note caught his ear and returned his attention to the mystery voice downstairs. Process of elimination left one possibility. She didn't sleep, after all.
Isaac peeled out from Neasa's sleeping embrace and he made a low shush to calm her subconscious. Same for Oleksandra, he noticed the sudden perk to her ear. Avoiding the floorboards he knew to be treacherous; Isaac made his way downstairs and turned into the kitchen.
Anahita's tattoos were all one contiguous composition with one image blending into the next. She had an image of the yin-yang between her shoulder blades, the two opposite halves occupied by the image of two figures reaching for orbs that floated ahead of them. The yin-yang was framed with a mosaic pattern that her wings sprouted from when manifested. This was supported by two temple pillars that were overtop the mid and lower back muscles. The pillars stood on an island in the middle of a pond or wide stretch of river that was tattooed over her sacral process, the bones and muscles that connected the spine and the pelvis. Two mirrored rapid currents flowed away from the image of the water, wrapping around her buttocks and curling around to run down her thighs.
Isaac's eyes were fixed on the ink that made up the water as Anahita's hips swayed to the song she was gently singing to herself. Every once in a while a shake or shimmy would cause the bow she tied the plain apron in to obstruct his view.
She wasn't wearing anything else as she blissfully beat up a bowl of some sort of batter. A skillet was heating on the stove top.
She twirled in place along with a relatively powerful note she'd been building towards and the Seraph froze like a deer facing a spotlight when she realized she had an audience. The clouds and air currents printed on her arms were still, the sun and moon covering her breasts were hidden by the cooking apron although the constellations between them could be partially seen. Also hidden was the island temple motif that repeated over her abdomen and the lotus flower that emerged from the water to cover her pubic mound.
The two of them stood in silent alarm and befuddlement, a battle for the wills of two awkward introverts to reestablish social awareness.
"An-" Isaac began but the Seraph whirled around in a blur and resumed stirring with mechanical motion. "Sorry, I'll g-" Isaac began as he turned back to the stairs.
"I wanted you to see me!" There was a rush of wind and the subconscious recognition of Anahita's scent. The Seraph appeared between him and the steps after her image resolved from the blur of motion. "I… I asked Chandrakanta what I could do to show my favor for you and… she…" Anahita's resolve melted from the heat of the blush spreading across her entire person.
She suggested Anahita make a pancake breakfast for him wearing nothing but an apron. Thank you, meddling Megami…
-
“So you just tamed the pokegirl with at least a strength factor of twenty on the kitchen counter without any precautions?” Elena held Isaac in an icy stare from over the lip of her teacup.
Anahita was alight with her embarrassment while she tended the skillet, now properly dressed. Breakfast had been a little late. Oleksandra was blissfully devouring pancakes while keeping one ear angled towards whoever happened to be speaking. Neasa was also assuming the role of amused and passive observer. Jin had her chin propped up, dramatically leaning into her hand with her elbow jammed into the table. Her expression was sour and she was reducing her short stack into soggy crumbs without eating anything.
“No, I took precautions,” Isaac stated in his defense.
Elena looked like she may have clicked her tongue, but she hadn't actually produced that sound ever since she'd parted ways with the conservatory. “I didn’t hear you, well her, hauling the restraints downstairs.”
Isaac had a lot to explain so he started with an apparent non sequitur “Okay, so you had me work on that spell list to be more formidable, right? But I’m not going to be fighting pokegirls. That’s stupid. I could be captured by them and I thought if I’m captured by pokegirls then there’s maybe a chance they want to use me.”
Elena interjected with, “And a smart tamer lets himself be used so he’s alive to get rescued.”
“Yeah,” Isaac muttered his agreement darkly. “But I’d have plenty of chances to touch her, so that’s why I’m working on discreet touch spells that weaken their victims. Touch of Idiocy is what I started with. I thought, well fuck it, I'd already be getting raped I might as well see if I can erode her defenses enough to bond her to me. I also might as well pick up Touch of Fatigue and Touch of Weakness too. Anahita was willing to not resist the effects of the spells so I uh… explored some alternate applications during foreplay.”
Elena stared with an unreadable expression and then faintly smiled “Clever. I’ll be testing you to see just how discreet you can be with these touch spells later.”
Anahita came over to the table and deposited a freshly steaming pair of pancakes on the Grandelf's plate. Elena's expression of gratitude was cut off by a sudden sneer directed at the Seraph from Jin. The Enchantress stared straight into the eyes of her newest harem sister as she spoke. "I didn't realize you were such a slut." The last word had the inflection of a poisoned dagger.
Something changed in Anahita's eyes, something that made them even brighter than normal, but otherwise the Tenebrous Seraph froze. Elena's ears jumped and she made the anticipatory motions to interpose herself between Anahita and Jin. Isaac broke the momentum of the situation with a single word that roared out of his mouth.
"JIN!" Isaac had foreseen that Jin was going to press someone's buttons eventually. He hadn't been prescient enough to see that it would be his.
Everyone present jumped and then froze with their eyes wide and fixed on him. He always had this effect on people when he really got animated by his aggression. It made him feel like some sort of villain. He didn't like it, so he always tried to suppress his anger instead.
Anahita was the first to react, she fled from the kitchen while covering her face. Isaac sighed deeply and turned away from the rapt attention of the three other young pokegirls. Elena was leaning back in her chair, taking a slow sip of tea. Oleksandra and Neasa remained silent but Jin started with a trembling, "Isaac, I-"
Isaac's temper hadn't cooled down enough. "Not now, Jin," he spat. With that Isaac stormed out of the tiny kitchen/dining room, into the living area after the distraught Seraph. Jin could feel her rational mind crumbling under the weight of her suddenly unrepressed and roiling emotions. She desperately looked to anyone else for comfort, to provide her with some emotional stability to desperately cling to while the turbulence in her heart subsided, but they were just as disgusted with her as Isaac. Neasa was glaring at her, Oleksandra was scared of her. Elena was cold.
She'd screwed up again. She screwed up so bad this time. They'd probably never forgive her, she was so awful to be around. Always bitchy and clingy and jealous and angry and miserable and sad. She couldn't stand the frozen, silent attention of her two harem sisters anymore so she ran out of the back kitchen door. She'd hide by herself, like she always did, so she wouldn't have anyone to hurt. No one but the person who was always there with her. Herself.
Isaac found Anahita with her eyes squeezed shut, drawing in deep breaths through her nostrils and exhaling through her lips. The creases that formed at the corners of her eyes were moist. She was leaning against the wall that separated the small antechamber and the kitchen, just out of sight. Her palms pressed flat on either side of her body.
"Anahi-" The Seraph's eye’s snapped open and she pushed away from the wall with uncanny swiftness. She took his hands in hers with a much more sedate and gentle motion. She lifted the backs of his palms up towards her face as she bowed her head down. When Isaac's knuckles touched her forehead she timidly murmured, "I'm sorry I'm such a shameful pokegirl."
Isaac grit his teeth and let out a slow breath. "Jin was being a bitch. There was nothing shameful about what you did, Anahita."
The Seraph let go of his hands and straightened up to study his face as Isaac continued. "You are a pokegirl, you're a sexual creature. Even if you were an ordinary human, humans are sexual creatures and you're in a relationship with me. You are… you view yourself as my wife, right?" Anahita was silent but her eyes briefly flicked away before slowly reconnecting with his. "Which is fine. At some point 'wife' just meant 'woman' and you are my woman. I really appreciate what you did for me and Jin was completely out of line. She-" Isaac cut himself off and growled from the frustration he felt with himself and his Enchantress. He'd let things slide for too long and now suddenly he was just so sick of it all. "I need to stop making excuses for her."
Anahita breathed in and smiled as she gently exhaled through her nose. "You care for her, and I would like to understand her. She is my harem sister. If you can help me understand, I would appreciate it."
Isaac rubbed the back of his head as he looked around for the invisible explanation of Jin's behavior. "I mean, Jin probably never would have had an easy time making friends, she just doesn't have the personality for it. She was born from a Sorceress pokewoman named Himiko. Himiko belonged to a merchant traveling with overland caravans, Jeong-Ho Park. He treated them like his family, which made him an outsider to the other caravanners. It didn't help that he was dealing with mostly ethnically Han Chinese when he was from the northern part of the Korean peninsula and Himiko was Japanese." Isaac almost said 'obviously Japanese,' but that was only obvious from his moderate level of exposure to the language.
Isaac kept sharing what Jin shared with him, along with the insights he pieced together. "Jin traveled with them, learning magic from her mother and a little bit of business from her father. Because her early childhood was so transient and she was the only child, she never got much practice interacting with kids her age. When she did get the chance she was shunned for being mixed race. 'Mongrel', she got called that a lot. She also saw her father get mistreated and it stuck with her. She just started assuming everyone would reject her and so to protect herself from that hurt she rejected them first. She thought she'd always be okay because she had her family, as small as it was.
"When she was twelve her father finally saved up enough to buy property in his hometown. He went into business with his older brother and they were doing pretty well when a nest of Annts split. The new queen led her swarm for the town and because Himiko had experience protecting Jeong's wagon they were recruited into the defense."
Isaac sighed. Jin only shared this once, late at night when the memories were clawing their way to the surface and refused to allow her to sleep. "The city officials wouldn't even speak to her, didn't even acknowledge that she was there crying for them to tell her where her mother and father were, when they came to foreclose the home. She had to figure out what had happened by what little she heard between the administrators chatter before she was recalled into her ball. She was given over to her uncle, her father's brother and business partner, but he never even released her before trading her to the ranch just out of town here.
"She lost everything, even her own language because of the speech T2s. She was abused by one of the breeders, a Witch named Albina, who was supposed to be taking care of her. Albina hated Jin because her favorite daughter, Emiliya, had been traded to Jin's uncle.
"Jin really stopped trusting anyone then. It was her and her magic against the world. Elena she opened up to a little but it wasn't until I just… I just gave her a beginning spell tome. It really wasn't even mine, Elena gave it to me. I don't know why I did it, it just made sense to me. She was a Witch, she needed to learn magic and Albina had mostly destroyed the one she had. Just that little bit of kindness and she clung to me so hard…"
Anahita put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a warm and serene smile. "You are a kind man."
"No, I'm not. I just… it makes sense to me to be that way. Show kindness to people who are sad, help people if they're in trouble and I can do something that's not that big of a deal." It made Isaac uncomfortable to think about himself as a good or kind person. Because he could remember a lot more times when he wasn't good or kind. The goodness and the kindness didn't stand out in his memory. The failures to be so did.
"The guy running the ranch, Jarek. He was a real piece of work. He'd bond the breeders to himself and then get them to lure in the next 'girl he wanted to steal for himself. He had this feud with Elena because she always resisted him, so he also had issues with me and was going to sell Jin off to be abused by a rich pedo. Albina got drunk one day and taunted Jin with the plan. I couldn't let that happen so I helped her with a plan to escape. It wasn't a good plan but Elena saved us."
Isaac sighed. There wasn't much more of the story that was relevant. "To avoid suspicion, we sent Jin over to Astoreth's home for six months. I don't know if you met Star's girls, she fosters infernal kits who would otherwise probably wind up in some infernal counterpart of the Docheri. It's cut throat, bitch eat bitch. Jin fit in a little too well… Actually managed to come out on top for most of the time. Then in the spring I was able to take possession of her and it was pretty good, just the two of us. Any new girl has been rough but she wasn't like this…"
Anahita nodded or bowed her head. "The others explained some of this to me. They accept that she needs special attention from you. I can accept that as well."
Isaac brought both hands up to scratch the sides of his crown. "No, that's… that's not right. It's all sort of crashing down on me right now but I've been handling this all wrong. I… Jin needs to really put some work into changing her habits and I need to make sure she does it."
Anahita gave one nod of her head once again. "I agree that it sounds as if she needs guidance. Thank you… for your assurance. Explaining Jin's behavior as well. I hope the two of us will get along well, even with these difficulties."
Isaac gave a sad little smile. "Speaking of assurance, I lashed out at Jin before I came to you. About as bad as I ever have in two years." Isaac sighed. "I'd better go… I need to check on her and… I don't know what. She's probably going to be a mess and it's really hard to be firm with her when she's like that."
Anahita smiled. She had a subdued but very genuine seeming smile. "That boy who was with the Elves in Dnipro, he believes you go easy on Jin because she is similar to you." She looked thoughtful. "He seemed rather remarkable. He was performing many pokegirl techniques."
"Gabi," Isaac said. "He's actually a Titto." Anahita said nothing but her eyebrows raised in a questioning gesture. "Yes, I know. It's a long story. I guess he's right but right now I need to go find Jin."
Isaac and Anahita returned to the kitchen. Elena had finished frying up the last of the pancake batter so Anahita had her breakfast. Isaac was pointed towards the direction Jin ran off, outside. He went to the empty greenhouse. No Jin. He checked in the greenhouse with growing plants. No Jin. He circled around the house and didn't find the Enchantress, but when he stood still and thought about whether she would run off into the woods like Neasa used to, his eyes were eventually drawn to the latch on the door leading down into the cellar from the outside. It wasn't fastened.
Down in the darkness, curled up in the far corner, was an emotional wreck of an Enchantress. When she looked up and saw her tamer approaching her sobbing intensified and she pressed herself deeper into the nook she was occupying.
Isaac slowly approached and sat down within arms reach, but didn't extend a hand to the distraught magic type. He leaned the back of his head against the cool stones, pulled his knees up towards his chest and crossed his arms over them, and waited.
"I'm sorry," Jin whined between sobs.
Isaac's hand jerked towards her, but he kept it folded under the other. "What are you sorry for, Jin?"
Jin made a pitiful noise of pure frustration. "For being such an awful pokegirl."
"You're not an awful pokegirl, Jin. Why are you sorry?"
"For being such a jealous bitch! There, I said it!"
Isaac sighed. "You can't help being jealous, Jin. You can't help that you're disagreeable, which is really all being a bitch is. You can behave differently when you're feeling bitchy or jealous, though."
"If you hadn't made me evolve into an Enchantress I wouldn't get so jealous!"
Isaac was a bit startled by the accusation. "Jin, I didn't make you evolve."
Jin shifted her weight so that she was on her knees, putting her closer to Isaac. Her mouth was pulled into an ugly scowl and her eyes were open wide and frantic. "You bought the stone, you said you wanted an Enchantress! I just wanted to be a Sorceress like my mom! All I wanted to do was be a pokegirl you could rely on like Dad relied on her! He always said he didn't need another pokegirl because he had her!"
“Wha-" This was a new level of irrational from Jin and Isaac was racing to keep ahead of it. "Jin, you came to me because you wanted to win against Nadezhda. You wanted to evolve.”
“But you should have stopped me, you knew!”
“I didn’t know it meant this much, I thought you had changed your mind.” Isaac was fighting to not raise his voice to match Jin's. He was mostly successful but there was a strain from the effort. He had to remain in control of himself.
Jin’s entire body started to tremble in frustration as her mouth contorted from all of the muscles pulling her face to frown. She threw her hands in the air dramatically. "Just, just put me through a level four. I'm broken. A broken pokegirl. It'll fix me. I'll be better, better for you and everyone else."
Isaac's gut twisted from what Jin just asked for. "Jin, you're not bro-"
"Yes I am!" She was nearly shouting. "I've always been this way and it's not what a pokegirl is supposed to be. I'm willful and selfish and bitchy, I'm broken!"
"Fine," Isaac said with an aggressive, emphatic punch to his tone. "If you're broken, I'm broken too. We broke in the exact same spot, just our cracks spread in different directions. So, what should we erase from my personality?"
Jin was stunned for a moment. There was a genuine look of injury on her face. "M- Isaac you're not…"
Isaac didn't relent. "If you are then I am." He turned her words right back on her. "I've always been this way and it's not what a tamer is supposed to be. I'm a wimp, I'm a pushover, I'm lazy and I never take charge. I'm just as broken as you are." He stared hard without letting his cold expression waver.
Jin leaned away from Isaac to the point that she lost balance and fell back on her butt. "You're not broken. Isaac… Isaac you're perfect."
Isaac couldn't help but ease off with his response. "Then you're perfect too."
They both shared a small moment of almost laughter. Neither of their statements were true, untrue to an absurd degree.
Jin scooted over so that she was in physical contact with Isaac. "Why couldn't I be your only pokegirl?"
Isaac sighed and looked up at the beams that supported the floor of the home above them. "Jin, you're an incredible girl. You're brilliant, fun, driven, cute, sexy, and still growing. I love watching you work, especially when you're engrossed in creativity or deservedly putting some stuck up bitch in her place. I love when you get possessive and cling to me because I honestly still doubt, deep down, that I'm somebody someone like you would want. These are all great qualities but they can also be bad qualities. You jealously lash out, you get stubbornly obsessed, you tear strips off yourself for little failures and you bottle up everything until you burst. And I don't really balance you out very well. I've only gotten this far because I'm not really as young as I seem. I've got… whatever it is that gives me all this extra insight. So just the two of us would probably be a disaster."
Jin sat back away from him and turned her focus towards his face. Her eyes were back to being a bit too wide, eyebrows up with unhappy excitement. "That's what I hate! If you put me through a conditioning cycle, if you'd just fix me-"
"Jin, conditioning cycles aren't magic fixes for problematic pokegirls." Isaac's voice was heavy with weariness. "They're traumatic brainwashing that will grind down everything that makes you unique by bombarding your mind with fear and pain. I'm not going to use one on any pokegirl I'm with, ever. It's high tech barbarism that's only tolerated because no one witnesses the process."
Jin's insistent posture gave way and she shrunk down, curling up and wrapping her arms around her knees again. She wasn't looking at him, but her unfocused gaze suggested she was dedicating all of her attention to listening. Isaac continued. "You don't need a machine to scramble your brain, you just need to apply yourself to correcting your own bad habits. You hate making the same mistake twice. You hurt Anihita’s feelings but I think, if you really try and apologize to her she’ll forgive you. Then you’ll prove it to her by not doing that again.”
The Enchantress muttered into her folded arms. “I’m just going to fuck up again some other way.”
Isaac tried to produce a gentle smile. She wasn't wrong, that would be true for him and anyone else as well. “Yeah, you will. These sorts of things don’t just get better and go away, Jin. You have to get a little better every day and not lose the motivation to improve when you backslide. The best you can do is dedicate your effort into not fucking up as bad the next time.”
She slowly tipped over to lean her head against his leg. “...hai.” She stayed that way for a long time, thinking deeply and absorbing comfort through physical contact. After close to a minute she rolled her head to look up at him. "How come you're so good at this sort of stuff? Calming other people down, rationalizing feelings that don't make any sense?"
Now it was Isaac's turn to be silently introspective. "Because… I have to do this for myself, sometimes when I'm not very calm. I get really unhinged ideas sometimes and couldn't always rely on anyone else to help me make sense of things. I got some training that was developed for people with similar problems, saw some specialists, but it is and always will be on me to master myself."
There was a long silence while Jin stared without expression at a particular crack in the foundation. She broke the quiet by asking, "So… what do I do? I didn't really want to be an Enchantress, but I didn't want to say anything because what you and the others said made sense and I didn't want you to think I was being selfish."
Isaac reached up and pulled Jin's head towards him with a gentle touch. She leaned into the contact eagerly. "Jin, this is who you are, what you want to be. It's okay to want something for selfish reasons and none of the benefits or advantages to the Enchantress breed were worth you giving up on something so important to you."
"I screwed up…"
"We screwed up, Jin. But we can fix this."
She sat up to look at him with searching eyes, two tiny sparks reflected from the light coming through the crack of the cellar door. "How?"
The sparks grew in brightness and intensity when she heard Isaac's single word answer. "Archmage."
-
"Where do you keep getting all of these Mana stones, Jin," Isaac asked his Enchantress in exasperation.
"From the conservatory." Jin answered with a peppy, matter-of-fact tone. "They're left lying all over the place in the labs and people throw them out if they get the tiniest crack. I'm practicing charging them. I'll need three if I want to become an Archmage, after all."
It was only a few days after Jin's big meltdown. Not enough time for much incremental improvement to occur… "Jin, it takes years for most Sorceresses and Enchantresses to master the manipulation of magic energy needed to safely evolve. Out of the seven stones you've pilfered, three wound up with shards embedded in your skin after they shattered. You remember how much that hurt, right?"
"Yeah… I want to get better at fighting though."
That was obvious. Isaac was regretting putting the idea that evolving to an Archmage was the solution to Jin's dissatisfaction in her head. It was her new obsession and she was chasing it with just as much zeal as any other. He'd been scheming with the big sisters for a solution, though. "What if you could get better at fighting a different way, if you promise not to try evolving until Elena, Chandrakanta, and Astoreth all agree you're ready?"
Jin's ponytail swished behind her head as she cocked it to the side in an unintentional mimicry of Oleksandra. "What would stop me from just trying to evolve anyway?"
Isaac snorted out a bit of laughter. She was at least practicing more self awareness. "Well, ideally, you would, but if you take us to Astoreth's she can explain the proposal in detail."
-
"The power you've agreed for me to bestow upon you will prevent you from evolving and it can only be removed by me, Candi, or another celestial or infernal of comparable power. When we determine you're ready to attempt the evolution to Archmage, I'll temporarily remove it and then, after you succeed, grant it to you again. If you want." Astoreth took a moment to study Jin dispassionately. They were alone in her office, sitting at her desk. The Enchantress felt her spine tingling to curl in submission but stiffened up and returned the stare with a hard look of her own. There was the faintest softening of Astoreth’s expression, then she broke eye contact and leaned over to open a drawer in her study desk.
“To learn infernal techniques you must enjoy committing evil.” Astoreth returned to sitting upright and sat a foil wrapped package on top of her desk. "This is imported dark chocolate from Noir. I’ve been saving it for a special occasion. Jin, if I were to leave, would you enjoy taking and eating that chocolate bar?”
Jin’s left eyebrow shot way up and her ponytail shimmied behind her when she cocked her head to the side. Her gaze darted quickly from studying Astoreth’s expression to examining the chocolate. Astoreth grunted as the corner of her mouth twitched. “For the sake of this thought experiment, you’re confident there’s no chance I will find out it was you.”
Jin’s ponytail flicked against the back of her neck as she nodded instantly.
“Congratulations," shadows swarmed around the Enchantress seated across from the Hild and danced across her skin like flames. "You have the capacity to enjoy evil and are now Fiendish.”
“But I-”
“Would knowingly take something that is not yours, that you are not entitled to, and that the loss of which would detrimentally affect the individual it belongs to.” The infernal smiled, mostly with her mouth, as she broke the chocolate bar in the wrapper and then tore the package open.
The infernal veteran popped a bit of the treat into the corner of her mouth and continued her commencement for Jin’s new template. “Now, that little bite of chocolate is…” Astoreth paused and closed her eyes. She focused on the sensations coming from her tongue as she played with the melting amalgamation of cocoa powder, sugar, and cocoa butter in her mouth. “Delicious, and also something I would easily forgive you for taking from me.”
The Hild reached down with both arms and brought out the small shipping crate full of the same exotic chocolate bars. “If you ate my entire stash, however, not only would I be furious with you and demand justice in some form, you would also be making yourself unwell.” A piece of the luxury confection was handed to the flabbergasted Fiendish Enchantress. “Chocolate?”
Jin gingerly accepted the offered piece of chocolate without ever breaking away from staring fixedly at Astoreth’s face.
-
"How is evaluating the Elves for magical competency going?"
Elena wiped her hands on the front of her long skirt before she responded to Isaac's question. "There's the usual distribution. Golloriel was able to find most of them when she was appointed by Queen Vershnyk. Anfisa easily shows the most promise and there were only two that Golloriel missed entirely. Neasa plans to contact Nimlothel to inquire about teaching Anfisa and Virag to call living weapons, then we'll work with Golloriel to call hers. Finally the five of us should be able to teach the entire remainder of the court. That will certainly empower them against any future incursions."
The Grandelf looked over to where Isaac's pokegirls were demonstrating even more techniques for Gabi's sake. The Titto was proving to be incredibly versatile and extremely eager to improve her combat potential. She was a her to Elena, with Elena being so rationally minded. "Gabi certainly looks pretty today, don't you think?" Elena's identification of the shape changing pokegirl with a complicated sense of self was reinforced by the form she was wearing today. The most feminine yet, with prominent breasts and everything. She was back to her near albino coloration save for a single streak of color in her bangs, a rich violet.
Isaac focused on the subject of conversation and his mouth moved like he was sucking on a lozenge while his cheeks colored a little. "Yeah, she does look pretty today." Gabi had told Isaac to anticipate a new look today, something the Titto had been working on for a while. It wasn’t really a conscious thing, but the difference was enough to flip Isaac’s assumption as well.
Elena's focus shifted to where Jin and Anahita were engaged in conversation. "There hasn't been any more trouble between Jin and Anahita? I half expected more to crop up with Jin becoming Fiendish."
"No," Isaac shook his head. "Anahita is very determined to get along and Jin's been doing better since our talk. Anahita actually wants a chance to meet Astoreth's crew, so long as you and Candi are there as well."
Elena looked speculative. "That shouldn't be a problem. I'm sure Chandrakanta will love it." One of the Vershnyk Elves waving her over caught the Grandelf's attention. "Excuse me, Isaac. It appears in needed once again."
"No problem," Isaac responded. He was curious what the Fiendish Enchantress and Tenebrous Seraph were up to anyway. While it wasn't heated, Jin's body language was argumentative.
"That doesn't count," Jin said definitely as she pressed two fists against her hips and leaned towards the piece of paper Anahita had been making marks on.
"You told me to perform magic." Anahita said while she gestured towards the calligraphic sigil. "This is magic."
"You'd never be able to take the time to sit and draw that during a fight!"
Anahita's serene expression never changed. "You didn't say it had to be combat magic. This is the magic I know to do." Anahita rose from her kneeling position and faced the Enchantress. She pulled the corners of her mouth into the slightest smile. "Do you still believe I am unable to tell the difference between magic and chi arts?"
Jin ducked her head down while shaking it wildly, making a frustrated and infantile growl as she did. "Fine, you're familiar with both but I bet I can learn your chi stuff."
Both of Anahita's eyebrows rose gently and her lips pressed together while her jaw dropped open slightly without breaking the seal of her lips. "Very well, what are the conditions of the bet?"
"Huh?" Jin blinked as she left her mouth slightly agape.
"I have succeeded in your challenge, now you have challenged yourself to learn chi arts. How long do you have to complete this challenge and what do I win if you fail, or what do you win if you succeed?"
Jin mussed her hair with both hands. She pulled out her hair tie and redid her ponytail as she answered. "Loser… loser has to wear whatever the winner says for… a day. And I get two weeks."
Anahita pulled her mouth askew but relaxed the muscles of her lips and nodded. "Very well. We will see what two weeks produce."
-
Jin whined pitifully as her concentration broke without producing any tangible outcome yet again. She had gone to the library for research, written in for advice from a minor fighting type gym, and consulted with some sergeants of the Vorona Corps though Gabi. She still had nothing to show for her efforts in learning how to manipulate her vital energies the way fighting types could, and it was the fourteenth day of her efforts.
Isaac and Anahita were sitting and watching her from a distance. "She is trying too hard," the Seraph observed.
"That's Jin," Isaac answered. "Go easy on her when she loses, please."
Anahita shook her head. "I do not want her to lose, I want for her to understand." She stood up and made her way over to the burned out Enchantress. The Seraph received a brief glare as she approached, but Jin turned her head away when she caught herself backsliding.
"I still have an hour," the frustrated, Fiendish magic type muttered.
"I know," Anahita responded as she lowered herself down to her knees beside her harem sister. "That sigil I produced, I learned its pattern by studying my tattoos. I was making use of its magic long before I understood it was magic." The Seraph lifted her left hand and displayed the underside of her palm. "See, it is here."
Anahita stretched her hand towards Jin with a slow hesitancy. She gently pressed the hand against Jin's shoulder and Jin could feel some sort of magic activate. "What was that," Jin asked.
"It will be clear if you humor me. Please use one of your self-discovered meditative level techniques, please." Jin did as was requested, firing off a jet of flame with her version of Burning Hands.
Anahita nodded. "Now, will you attempt to use one of your standard method spells?"
Jin scoffed but outstretched her hand again to prepare the spell. Her eyes got wide and she thrust her hand out two more times with nothing produced. "Wha- what!? What did you do?"
Anahita displayed the sigil on her palm once again. "If I channel chi energy through this, the enchantment activates and creates an anti-magic field around whatever I touch next."
"But I could use my… My…" Jin stopped talking as her eyes grew wider and wider. She hung her head. "You've been trying to explain it to me and I wouldn't listen. How? I'm an Enchantress, I was a Witch. I’m not a fighting type."
Anahita nodded sagely. "It could be argued that all standard elemental pokegirl techniques are achieved through chi manipulation. It is the natural energies of their bodies. You must have discovered the method through observation and some inborn talent. You were born from a pokewoman, perhaps if you were born human you would have inherited blood traits.”
Isaac had made his way over to referee if necessary. Now he wanted to poke a little bit of fun. He made sure his words came out with obviously joyful inflection. "Wait, Jin. Did you accidentally discover ki use instead of properly learning meditative casting?"
"I can cast meditatively!" She blurted out. Then she shrunk down and muttered, "At least, I've been able to since I evolved… I really couldn't before then." Jin suddenly jerked upright and her eyes were shining with the spark of an idea. “Wait, I could never figure out how to make my techniques stronger because I was treating it like magic. I managed to power them up a little accidentally but Anahita, you’re like an expert at this chi stuff.” Jin bowed her head low enough that her ponytail flipped to fall forward instead of behind her head. “Will you teach me how to produce more powerful attacks?”
Anahita smiled and returned Jin’s bow. “I would be happy to share my knowledge. The first lesson is simple. All chi begins with the breath…”
(-[|]-) End 16.3 (-[|]-)
Dalida the Dorben S-Goth spotted Isaac, Jin, and a lot of others. Some she recognized, Neasa and Oleksandra. Others she hadn't met yet, but she'd thought she might know who the tall and slender Elf-type could be. If only she could have met Elena on a better day than today. She trotted up to the group. "Isaac, Jin," she called out in greeting. "Bad news."
"Dalida," Isaac responded. "What's up?" He looked around. It was the last day of the trimester, the day the magical combat tournament was to be held. The people gathered were not what he expected. There was none of the excitement that should accompany a campus event like this. There weren't any pokegirls who appeared to be anticipating a fight. "Where is everyone?"
Dalida shook her head and glared towards a particular human woman with brightly dyed hair. "Everyone else withdrew because Miss Sugary Bitch decided to win using Daddy's money. She bought a Kissitacoatl just for this tournament." The S-Goth took a second to appraise the Enchantress. "Nice threads, by the way. Have you been working out?"
"Thanks. Yeah," she flexed a bicep and then pulled out the fabric of her top, a piece of clothing vaguely inspired by a Hanfu. "I'm worried I didn't use the right sort of stitching and they won't hold, but we'll see." She was dressed like she had robbed a Goth and a Seamstress from Edo, punk and traditional silk. She also was sporting a collar, which she argued vehemently Isaac should get for her as his first michinnyeom. Apparently that had been a term of endearment her father had used for her mother.
Now Isaac was worried that all his pokegirls would expect a collar and then people would think he was one of those types. It didn't help that he wasn't sure he wasn't.
Jin cocked her head and her hips as she looked the winged serpent pokegirl up and down from a distance. "As for everyone who dropped out, sucks for them. Guess I only have one match to win."
Dalida's mouth twisted into a grimace on the right side and a goofy grin on the left. "Jin, you know about the Kissitacoatl, right? You can't use any magic near them."
Jin waved her hand dismissively over her shoulder as she moved towards the staff members running the tournament. "Yeah yeah. I'll just improvise."
Dalida fell in alongside Isaac, who was a few steps behind his determined magic type. The S-Goth looked up at his face, trying to see if he was just as confident as his Enchantress. "Okay, what's going on?"
"Jin's got some new tricks she's excited to try out," Isaac answered with a shrug. "She's been practicing for the past…" Isaac looked up as he struggled to recall how much time had passed. "Over a month at least." Jin had reached the table with the staff members and impatiently turned to wave her tamer over. He would need to be the one to enter her. He jogged up to the table, breaking away from Dalida.
There had been very few people lingering about for the tournament everyone anticipated wouldn't happen. The news that Isaac's disagreeable Enchantress was going to fight the dedicated anti-magic pokegirl reignited interest and the open spaces roped off for spectators quickly started to fill.
Isaac was standing in the space marked out for the tamer on his and Jin's side of the arena. Vasylyna was standing with her Kissitacoatl, a young looking pokegirl who wasn't displaying anywhere near the confidence her prospective opponent was. Vasylyna made up for it by dripping smugness. Her posse were all in attendance and raucously cheering on their social lynchpin. As if it was going to be her fighting. "Still making your pokegirl fight, Isaac? You really enjoy watching your pokegirls suffer, don't you?" Her fanclub added their voices to the jeer without contributing any new ideas.
Isaac didn't even focus on the young woman taunting him when he responded. "Jin wants to fight."
"Fight? What's an Enchantress supposed to do against such a high tier pokegirl without magic? Will it even seem like a fight for my Inessa?"
Jin pulled out her ponytail and started trying her topknot up. "Oh, she'll know she's in a fight alright. Poor sweet little thing, fresh out of the ranch? It's going to be the fight of her life." She snugged the knot up. "Sorry about what's going to happen, Inessa. I've got nothing against you, but your owner is a spoiled rotten cunt who's talked shit about my master." She turned to the officiator. "I'm ready whenever she is, by the way."
Inessa glared until it was her turn to indicate she was ready. As soon as the match was called to begin Jin let out a fearsome ki-ai and took an open fighting stance. The Kissitacoatl flinched away from her opponent, cowed by the influence of the Yell technique. Jin’s body rippled with tight muscles and a flicker of black flames tipped with crimson. Bulk Up empowered by Infernal Might. The light of her hellfire still shined in her sadistically smiling eyes.
미친년 (michinnyeom) - “crazy bitch” Korean