Chapter 60
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"Lady, do you really think we just forged up these medals?" I took out my Ortlinde medal again, and then the girls slowly showed theirs as well.
The noblewoman's eyes only narrowed in response. "F-favor is given and can be taken back! As the old aphorism goes, the tail should not be wagging the dog! Do not think that will protect you if your actions work against the interests and the reputation of House Ortlinde!"
"Look, if this this about my behavior inside Zanac's shop, I apologize. But I have no time for unnecessary obsequiousness. Surely you cannot expect an adventurer to adhere to your courtly standards. That is why we are free men and women."
"Adventurers are parasites! There is nothing they do that cannot be done by a well-trained military instead!" Then she made as if picking up an invisible box and putting it away. "But setting that aside – my problem is with you – a suspicious person like you! I won't allow you to take advantage of Zanac's kindness!"
Elze tilted her head to the side and stared at my face. "Well… she's not lying about that. You totally suspicious person, you."
I grinned. And with an arrogant wave of my arm and flipping my cape back, I declared "ZANAC IS MY FRIEND! And I don't know who you think you are… but I think maybe Zanac also needs to be protected from a two-faced woman like you!"
Crack.
With every twitch of her cheek there was this cracking sound. Like her sanity was breaking. Weird.
Wait, no. That was the flagstones breaking beneath her feet.
"Huh. You're heavier than you look," the words escaped my mouth before I could realize what I was saying. Even Monika looked shocked.
"DESTROOOY HIIIIM!!!" the lady ordered.
Her guards barreled at us all in line like a wall of muscle and metal. "Elze?" I asked nonchalantly.
Elze merely snorted in response. And then a few steps later as the man-shaped mountains approached she said "Fiiine…"and surged forward to meet them.
Bang.
One of the men was knocked back and out of the line, his metal breastplate now sporting a fist-shaped dent in it. The three remaining attackers moved past her form, standing there with her right arm out. They had too much momentum to stop.
The one closest to the right had the best luck to be facing Yae. She took just one step forward that brought her surprisingly far, grabbed at his arm hefting the billy club and then just flipped him over apparently with no regard for their weight difference.
Whump. He slammed onto the ground, back-first, safely but suddenly knocked unconscious.
The one in front of Linze angled his body to turn aside. She was not the target after all, and by her panicked "Eep!" and her cringing it seemed he didn't want to harm her in the first place.
Unfortunately, Elze hear the fear in her sister's voice and kicked him from behind in the butt. He shot past and crashed into the wall. Whack.
And the last-
I could see the guardsman's eyes while he couldn't see mine. In them I didn't see any anger, merely resignation. This was just part of his job, he didn't enjoy any of it. He would beat me to a pulp, but probably keep it merely to areas that obviously bruise so that he could stop hitting me as soon as possible.
That did not mean he was innocent, however. 'Just following orders' had ceased to be an excuse since Nuremberg.
I snapped my fingers and a magical flashbang burst in front of his face.
And as he screamed and clutched at his face, suddenly (but not permanently) blinded, I stepped aside and assisted him with introducing his face to the wall.
Whump.
There was now nothing in between us and that arrogant noble lady. I gave her a rakish grin. "Is that all? This is stupid easy, bring an army next time."
"You- you – you! You coward! You hide behind women and have them do your fighting for you! You are no gentleman!"
/"Well, she's… completely accurate… about that."/
I put one hand behind my back and gestured grandly with the other one. Rejoice! "And so you would have me fight three against one in the interests of 'fairness'? I refuse your hypocritical and self-serving standards! If you wish to humble me, do it yourself! If you borrow the power of others, you are in no way better than me. Worse, even, for at least I dare to put my own power to the test in the name of my ideals! Freedom is mine!"
Crack. Crack. Crack.
She clenched her fists and every small movement left this cracking noise, as if her very joints were rusted steel being forced to move again.
Then forced them open again. "No… no! You will not drag me down to your level, you devil! Do not tempt me!"
She clapped her hand twice, and stepped back.
A sedan chair on the back of two porters appeared from out a nearby alley, the men grunting out "Hup! Hup! Hup!" as they marched into place.
(ʰᵗᵗᵖˢ://ᶦʳᶦˢˢᵃⁿˢᶠʳᵒⁿᵗᶦᵉʳᵉˢ.ᶠᶦˡᵉˢ.ʷᵒʳᵈᵖʳᵉˢˢ.ᶜᵒᵐ/²⁰¹⁶/⁰¹/ᵃⁿ⁻¹⁸ᵗʰ⁻ᶜᵉⁿᵗᵘʳʸ⁻ʳᵒᶜᵒᶜᵒ⁻ˢᵉᵈᵃⁿ⁻ᶜʰᵃᶦʳ⁻ᵇʸ⁻ᵍ⁻ᵇᵒʳᵍᵉˡˡᶦ.ʲᵖᵍ)
She stepped into the personal sedan and pointed at me again. "This is not the end of this! Count yourself lucky that it is uncouth to disturb the peace!"
"Hurgh!" The porters tried and failed to lift her.
The bright rouge on her face meant that no one could see her blush. She sat primly and then her porters tried again. With effortless ease they hefted the divan chair's posts to their waist level.
"Hup! Hup! Hup!"
"I am Zarah Zorea Zenovivie, daughter of Marquis Zenovivie of the Regulan March! Too many peons like you take advantage of Zanac's generosity! Too many of you forget to respect the House that has shed so much blood to defend you! I will remember thiiisss…!" she shouted leaning out of the window as her servants tromped away down the street.
And then soon enough they were gone.
Leaving behind the injured bodyguards of House of Zenovivi. And then suddenly out from the alley emerged a donkey-pulled wagon with more servants dressed in garish orange and yellow. They hefted the unconscious guards and piled them onto the wagon, and then... slowly… evacuated from the scene.
And then we were left blinking in confusion. Regular Reflet citizens began walking through the street as if nothing had happened.
/"… well… that just happened..."/ Monika said numbly.
"We leave for a week and my nice sane hometown goes crazy. What the heck?" I huffed.
/"Is this really a thing we should be doing? You get a little bit of power and authority and suddenly you're picking fights with nobles? No, Player, YOU are the mid-boss."/
"It's fine. We're not going to be abusing the Duke Ortlinde's protection, so there's no harm in trolling some low-level flunkies."
"But she's from a Marquise," Linze said hesitantly. "I don't think you should be picking fights with lords like that."
"Marquis? How far below a Duke is that rank?"
"It's… right below the Duke, I think? But they rule a March… a border region. And the border region between Belfast and Regulus is a very important one," Linze answered.
"I see." I rubbed at my chin. Huh. And all this time I thought it was something like the leader of a knighthood or a light cavalry raiding squadron. Turns out that's the Maquis – the French guerilla fighters in WW2 and directly referenced as the Federation-Cardassian border independents in Star Trek. THAT's what I was thinking about. Ma-quis. Nor Mar-quis.
And then I sighed. "Ah, shite."
"Also I think you were just bullying Zanac's niece or cousin or something," Elze added.
"Double shite."
I turned around, opened the shop doors slightly and poked my head in. "ZANAC!" I shouted indelicately. "Who did I just piss off?!"
"Zarah, eldest daughter of Marquis Zorah Zornes Zenovivie!" he shouted back, not even looking up from what he was doing. "She's technically my aunt even if she's younger than me! She can really hold a grudge – she still hasn't forgiven me for muddying her dress from that time when we were little children. How do you think I learned that my special Null magic had something to do with fine clothing!"
"DAMMIT."
Elze and Monika began openly laughing behind my back.
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-
And so, with all of that done, we returned to the inn.
We feasted. Then we rested. There was nothing to look forward to than to finally be able to sleep in a bed with a roof over our head. Even comparing it to the luxury of that hotel in Alephis, our rooms in the Silver Moon Inn had a warmer, homely charm.
I shucked all the heavy clothes I'd been wearing for almost a week straight now, and collapsed onto my bed. I removed my headset for the first time in so many days, and it felt weird not to have its weight straining my neck. Monika emerged again from the projector, but upside-down.
/"Exhausted? Player, I know you have poor impulse control but from what I've seen it's about time for you to slow down. I know you like to ham it up, but there's a line to cross when you just turn into an asshole."/
While defending ourselves against noble over-reach was excusable, where was the person who could keep his temper from being directly insulted? All of that could have been avoided if one simply did not put on airs; be it commoner or noble at large. /"What's up with that behavior?"/ she asked.
I exhaled heavily. "I have no excuse. Many social maladjusted people unintentionally offend people and then we worry so much about it after the fact. Embracing the ability to cause offense… well, hiding your feelings of inferiority with making others feel inferior… that's the dark side of trolling."
I scowled. "Right, I shouldn't be just pulling shit on random people. Thinking back… she was right, I was being very rude. If I just gave everyone the basic level of respect instead of dismissing them from how they look, from their social station… I'd have more possible allies and be much less of a hypocrite."
There was no reason for me to do these things maliciously. Trolling people was fun. If that woman… Zarah… would fly off the handle for something so little and beat people down for that, well maybe she deserved a little comeuppance. But still there was no real reason for me to trigger her for that. My scowl deepened. Weird. Why did I so strongly feel the need to express that disdain in the first place?
Self-entitled people will never really be happy as they expect to have more and will always want more. I exhaled again and relaxed my body. Monika stared down at me, looking for something that I couldn't identify.
Some time back, I bought and placed several mirrors around the room. One of them glued to the ceiling. By varying the angle and which mirror to project to, Monika could actually present the illusion of walking around. Free of the confines of her little box or the conical constraints of a projection mist.
By placing a [Mist Wall] inside a stack, she could actually move around the light-scattering mist layer. What she couldn't normally move around however, was her own projector light, though she could vary the angle it exited the lens.
All combined, this meant that in a dark, shuttered room, Monika looked almost convincingly solid as she sat down beside me on my bed. I looked down to see there was actually some slight deformation on the bed surface. If I were to put back on the headset, she could edit out the light beams and overlay her 3D rendered image to complete the illusion.
"So…" I began, a small smile slowly growing on my face. "Haptic feedback, huh? I wonder how long you were working on that."
Monika blushed and avoided my eyes.
I hummed. "Thinking about it, it's obvious how that would work. A holographic image is just a matter of scanning lines, and if there's any interruptions in the scan, that can be converted into information. So you can actually… feel things. It makes sense, it's a direct externalization of your platform."
/"It's not just that. Bouncing sound waves off the walls also works."/ She began poking at my bare abs. /"It's why I don't clip through things anymore when indoors. Outdoors, I can vaguely do point aural sources for surround sound."/
Looks like talking with Charlotte did prove useful. I reached out and poked back, at her squishy cheeks. "But how are you even doing this? This is new. Hiroyuki Shinoda's tactile holograms using ultrasound?" (ʰᵗᵗᵖˢ://ᵐᵒᵗʰᵉʳᵇᵒᵃʳᵈ.ᵛᶦᶜᵉ.ᶜᵒᵐ/ᵉⁿ_ᵘˢ/ᵃʳᵗᶦᶜˡᵉ/⁷⁸ˣᵃ⁵ˣ/ʰᵒʷ⁻ʰᵃᵖᵗᶦᶜˢ⁻ᵐᵃᵏᵉ⁻ʰᵒˡᵒᵍʳᵃᵐˢ⁻ʸᵒᵘ⁻ᶜᵃⁿ⁻ᵗᵒᵘᶜʰ)
It wasn't full tactile sensation yet, but there was significant pressure there to let me know not to push deeper and break the illusion. But too much ultrasound would have results more like microwave heating. It was very dangerous. And if Monika could bounce sound off invisible walls, she could boil people's brains inside their skulls.
/"I can do… interesting things… with static electricity too."/
Right. I manipulated location and configurations of matter, she could influence energy states. Then, much to my surprise, Monika bent down and I felt a tingle at my lips.
She pulled away, blushing heavily.
I grinned back. Well.
My eyebrows wiggled. Monika clenched her fists on her lap and turned away. But I could tell a small smile also tugged at her cheeks.
What a man and his smartphone did in the privacy of their own room, well, that was no one's business but their own.
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"Lady, do you really think we just forged up these medals?" I took out my Ortlinde medal again, and then the girls slowly showed theirs as well.
The noblewoman's eyes only narrowed in response. "F-favor is given and can be taken back! As the old aphorism goes, the tail should not be wagging the dog! Do not think that will protect you if your actions work against the interests and the reputation of House Ortlinde!"
"Look, if this this about my behavior inside Zanac's shop, I apologize. But I have no time for unnecessary obsequiousness. Surely you cannot expect an adventurer to adhere to your courtly standards. That is why we are free men and women."
"Adventurers are parasites! There is nothing they do that cannot be done by a well-trained military instead!" Then she made as if picking up an invisible box and putting it away. "But setting that aside – my problem is with you – a suspicious person like you! I won't allow you to take advantage of Zanac's kindness!"
Elze tilted her head to the side and stared at my face. "Well… she's not lying about that. You totally suspicious person, you."
I grinned. And with an arrogant wave of my arm and flipping my cape back, I declared "ZANAC IS MY FRIEND! And I don't know who you think you are… but I think maybe Zanac also needs to be protected from a two-faced woman like you!"
Crack.
With every twitch of her cheek there was this cracking sound. Like her sanity was breaking. Weird.
Wait, no. That was the flagstones breaking beneath her feet.
"Huh. You're heavier than you look," the words escaped my mouth before I could realize what I was saying. Even Monika looked shocked.
"DESTROOOY HIIIIM!!!" the lady ordered.
Her guards barreled at us all in line like a wall of muscle and metal. "Elze?" I asked nonchalantly.
Elze merely snorted in response. And then a few steps later as the man-shaped mountains approached she said "Fiiine…"and surged forward to meet them.
Bang.
One of the men was knocked back and out of the line, his metal breastplate now sporting a fist-shaped dent in it. The three remaining attackers moved past her form, standing there with her right arm out. They had too much momentum to stop.
The one closest to the right had the best luck to be facing Yae. She took just one step forward that brought her surprisingly far, grabbed at his arm hefting the billy club and then just flipped him over apparently with no regard for their weight difference.
Whump. He slammed onto the ground, back-first, safely but suddenly knocked unconscious.
The one in front of Linze angled his body to turn aside. She was not the target after all, and by her panicked "Eep!" and her cringing it seemed he didn't want to harm her in the first place.
Unfortunately, Elze hear the fear in her sister's voice and kicked him from behind in the butt. He shot past and crashed into the wall. Whack.
And the last-
I could see the guardsman's eyes while he couldn't see mine. In them I didn't see any anger, merely resignation. This was just part of his job, he didn't enjoy any of it. He would beat me to a pulp, but probably keep it merely to areas that obviously bruise so that he could stop hitting me as soon as possible.
That did not mean he was innocent, however. 'Just following orders' had ceased to be an excuse since Nuremberg.
I snapped my fingers and a magical flashbang burst in front of his face.
And as he screamed and clutched at his face, suddenly (but not permanently) blinded, I stepped aside and assisted him with introducing his face to the wall.
Whump.
There was now nothing in between us and that arrogant noble lady. I gave her a rakish grin. "Is that all? This is stupid easy, bring an army next time."
"You- you – you! You coward! You hide behind women and have them do your fighting for you! You are no gentleman!"
/"Well, she's… completely accurate… about that."/
I put one hand behind my back and gestured grandly with the other one. Rejoice! "And so you would have me fight three against one in the interests of 'fairness'? I refuse your hypocritical and self-serving standards! If you wish to humble me, do it yourself! If you borrow the power of others, you are in no way better than me. Worse, even, for at least I dare to put my own power to the test in the name of my ideals! Freedom is mine!"
Crack. Crack. Crack.
She clenched her fists and every small movement left this cracking noise, as if her very joints were rusted steel being forced to move again.
Then forced them open again. "No… no! You will not drag me down to your level, you devil! Do not tempt me!"
She clapped her hand twice, and stepped back.
A sedan chair on the back of two porters appeared from out a nearby alley, the men grunting out "Hup! Hup! Hup!" as they marched into place.
(ʰᵗᵗᵖˢ://ᶦʳᶦˢˢᵃⁿˢᶠʳᵒⁿᵗᶦᵉʳᵉˢ.ᶠᶦˡᵉˢ.ʷᵒʳᵈᵖʳᵉˢˢ.ᶜᵒᵐ/²⁰¹⁶/⁰¹/ᵃⁿ⁻¹⁸ᵗʰ⁻ᶜᵉⁿᵗᵘʳʸ⁻ʳᵒᶜᵒᶜᵒ⁻ˢᵉᵈᵃⁿ⁻ᶜʰᵃᶦʳ⁻ᵇʸ⁻ᵍ⁻ᵇᵒʳᵍᵉˡˡᶦ.ʲᵖᵍ)
She stepped into the personal sedan and pointed at me again. "This is not the end of this! Count yourself lucky that it is uncouth to disturb the peace!"
"Hurgh!" The porters tried and failed to lift her.
The bright rouge on her face meant that no one could see her blush. She sat primly and then her porters tried again. With effortless ease they hefted the divan chair's posts to their waist level.
"Hup! Hup! Hup!"
"I am Zarah Zorea Zenovivie, daughter of Marquis Zenovivie of the Regulan March! Too many peons like you take advantage of Zanac's generosity! Too many of you forget to respect the House that has shed so much blood to defend you! I will remember thiiisss…!" she shouted leaning out of the window as her servants tromped away down the street.
And then soon enough they were gone.
Leaving behind the injured bodyguards of House of Zenovivi. And then suddenly out from the alley emerged a donkey-pulled wagon with more servants dressed in garish orange and yellow. They hefted the unconscious guards and piled them onto the wagon, and then... slowly… evacuated from the scene.
And then we were left blinking in confusion. Regular Reflet citizens began walking through the street as if nothing had happened.
/"… well… that just happened..."/ Monika said numbly.
"We leave for a week and my nice sane hometown goes crazy. What the heck?" I huffed.
/"Is this really a thing we should be doing? You get a little bit of power and authority and suddenly you're picking fights with nobles? No, Player, YOU are the mid-boss."/
"It's fine. We're not going to be abusing the Duke Ortlinde's protection, so there's no harm in trolling some low-level flunkies."
"But she's from a Marquise," Linze said hesitantly. "I don't think you should be picking fights with lords like that."
"Marquis? How far below a Duke is that rank?"
"It's… right below the Duke, I think? But they rule a March… a border region. And the border region between Belfast and Regulus is a very important one," Linze answered.
"I see." I rubbed at my chin. Huh. And all this time I thought it was something like the leader of a knighthood or a light cavalry raiding squadron. Turns out that's the Maquis – the French guerilla fighters in WW2 and directly referenced as the Federation-Cardassian border independents in Star Trek. THAT's what I was thinking about. Ma-quis. Nor Mar-quis.
And then I sighed. "Ah, shite."
"Also I think you were just bullying Zanac's niece or cousin or something," Elze added.
"Double shite."
I turned around, opened the shop doors slightly and poked my head in. "ZANAC!" I shouted indelicately. "Who did I just piss off?!"
"Zarah, eldest daughter of Marquis Zorah Zornes Zenovivie!" he shouted back, not even looking up from what he was doing. "She's technically my aunt even if she's younger than me! She can really hold a grudge – she still hasn't forgiven me for muddying her dress from that time when we were little children. How do you think I learned that my special Null magic had something to do with fine clothing!"
"DAMMIT."
Elze and Monika began openly laughing behind my back.
-
-
And so, with all of that done, we returned to the inn.
We feasted. Then we rested. There was nothing to look forward to than to finally be able to sleep in a bed with a roof over our head. Even comparing it to the luxury of that hotel in Alephis, our rooms in the Silver Moon Inn had a warmer, homely charm.
I shucked all the heavy clothes I'd been wearing for almost a week straight now, and collapsed onto my bed. I removed my headset for the first time in so many days, and it felt weird not to have its weight straining my neck. Monika emerged again from the projector, but upside-down.
/"Exhausted? Player, I know you have poor impulse control but from what I've seen it's about time for you to slow down. I know you like to ham it up, but there's a line to cross when you just turn into an asshole."/
While defending ourselves against noble over-reach was excusable, where was the person who could keep his temper from being directly insulted? All of that could have been avoided if one simply did not put on airs; be it commoner or noble at large. /"What's up with that behavior?"/ she asked.
I exhaled heavily. "I have no excuse. Many social maladjusted people unintentionally offend people and then we worry so much about it after the fact. Embracing the ability to cause offense… well, hiding your feelings of inferiority with making others feel inferior… that's the dark side of trolling."
I scowled. "Right, I shouldn't be just pulling shit on random people. Thinking back… she was right, I was being very rude. If I just gave everyone the basic level of respect instead of dismissing them from how they look, from their social station… I'd have more possible allies and be much less of a hypocrite."
There was no reason for me to do these things maliciously. Trolling people was fun. If that woman… Zarah… would fly off the handle for something so little and beat people down for that, well maybe she deserved a little comeuppance. But still there was no real reason for me to trigger her for that. My scowl deepened. Weird. Why did I so strongly feel the need to express that disdain in the first place?
Self-entitled people will never really be happy as they expect to have more and will always want more. I exhaled again and relaxed my body. Monika stared down at me, looking for something that I couldn't identify.
Some time back, I bought and placed several mirrors around the room. One of them glued to the ceiling. By varying the angle and which mirror to project to, Monika could actually present the illusion of walking around. Free of the confines of her little box or the conical constraints of a projection mist.
By placing a [Mist Wall] inside a stack, she could actually move around the light-scattering mist layer. What she couldn't normally move around however, was her own projector light, though she could vary the angle it exited the lens.
All combined, this meant that in a dark, shuttered room, Monika looked almost convincingly solid as she sat down beside me on my bed. I looked down to see there was actually some slight deformation on the bed surface. If I were to put back on the headset, she could edit out the light beams and overlay her 3D rendered image to complete the illusion.
"So…" I began, a small smile slowly growing on my face. "Haptic feedback, huh? I wonder how long you were working on that."
Monika blushed and avoided my eyes.
I hummed. "Thinking about it, it's obvious how that would work. A holographic image is just a matter of scanning lines, and if there's any interruptions in the scan, that can be converted into information. So you can actually… feel things. It makes sense, it's a direct externalization of your platform."
/"It's not just that. Bouncing sound waves off the walls also works."/ She began poking at my bare abs. /"It's why I don't clip through things anymore when indoors. Outdoors, I can vaguely do point aural sources for surround sound."/
Looks like talking with Charlotte did prove useful. I reached out and poked back, at her squishy cheeks. "But how are you even doing this? This is new. Hiroyuki Shinoda's tactile holograms using ultrasound?" (ʰᵗᵗᵖˢ://ᵐᵒᵗʰᵉʳᵇᵒᵃʳᵈ.ᵛᶦᶜᵉ.ᶜᵒᵐ/ᵉⁿ_ᵘˢ/ᵃʳᵗᶦᶜˡᵉ/⁷⁸ˣᵃ⁵ˣ/ʰᵒʷ⁻ʰᵃᵖᵗᶦᶜˢ⁻ᵐᵃᵏᵉ⁻ʰᵒˡᵒᵍʳᵃᵐˢ⁻ʸᵒᵘ⁻ᶜᵃⁿ⁻ᵗᵒᵘᶜʰ)
It wasn't full tactile sensation yet, but there was significant pressure there to let me know not to push deeper and break the illusion. But too much ultrasound would have results more like microwave heating. It was very dangerous. And if Monika could bounce sound off invisible walls, she could boil people's brains inside their skulls.
/"I can do… interesting things… with static electricity too."/
Right. I manipulated location and configurations of matter, she could influence energy states. Then, much to my surprise, Monika bent down and I felt a tingle at my lips.
She pulled away, blushing heavily.
I grinned back. Well.
My eyebrows wiggled. Monika clenched her fists on her lap and turned away. But I could tell a small smile also tugged at her cheeks.
What a man and his smartphone did in the privacy of their own room, well, that was no one's business but their own.
-
-
--"Lady, do you really think we just forged up these medals?" I took out my Ortlinde medal again, and then the girls slowly showed theirs as well.The noblewoman's eyes only narrowed in response. "F-favor is given and can be taken back! As the old aphorism goes, the tail should not be wagging the dog! Do not think that will protect you if your actions work against the interests and the reputation of House Ortlinde!""Look, if this this about my behavior inside Zanac's shop, I apologize. But I have no time for unnecessary obsequiousness. Surely you cannot expect an adventurer to adhere to your courtly standards. That is why we are free men and women.""Adventurers are parasites! There is nothing they do that cannot be done by a well-trained military instead!" Then she made as if picking up an invisible box and putting it away. "But setting that aside my problem is with you a suspicious person like you! I won't allow you to take advantage of Zanac's kindness!"Elze tilted her head to the side and stared at my face. "Well she's not lying about that. You totally suspicious person, you."I grinned. And with an arrogant wave of my arm and flipping my cape back, I declared "ZANAC IS MY FRIEND! And I don't know who you think you are but I think maybe Zanac also needs to be protected from a two-faced woman like you!"Crack.With every twitch of her cheek there was this cracking sound. Like her sanity was breaking. Weird.Wait, no. That was the flagstones breaking beneath her feet."Huh. You're heavier than you look," the words escaped my mouth before I could realize what I was saying. Even Monika looked shocked."DESTROOOY HIIIIM!!!" the lady ordered.Her guards barreled at us all in line like a wall of muscle and metal. "Elze?" I asked nonchalantly.Elze merely snorted in response. And then a few steps later as the man-shaped mountains approached she said "Fiiine"and surged forward to meet them.Bang.One of the men was knocked back and out of the line, his metal breastplate now sporting a fist-shaped dent in it. The three remaining attackers moved past her form, standing there with her right arm out. They had too much momentum to stop.The one closest to the right had the best luck to be facing Yae. She took just one step forward that brought her surprisingly far, grabbed at his arm hefting the billy club and then just flipped him over apparently with no regard for their weight difference.Whump. He slammed onto the ground, back-first, safely but suddenly knocked unconscious.The one in front of Linze angled his body to turn aside. She was not the target after all, and by her panicked "Eep!" and her cringing it seemed he didn't want to harm her in the first place.Unfortunately, Elze hear the fear in her sister's voice and kicked him from behind in the butt. He shot past and crashed into the wall. Whack.And the last-I could see the guardsman's eyes while he couldn't see mine. In them I didn't see any anger, merely resignation. This was just part of his job, he didn't enjoy any of it. He would beat me to a pulp, but probably keep it merely to areas that obviously bruise so that he could stop hitting me as soon as possible.That did not mean he was innocent, however. 'Just following orders' had ceased to be an excuse since Nuremberg.I snapped my fingers and a magical flashbang burst in front of his face.And as he screamed and clutched at his face, suddenly but not permanently blinded, I stepped aside and assisted him with introducing his face to the wall.Whump.There was now nothing in between us and that arrogant noble lady. I gave her a rakish grin. "Is that all? This is stupid easy, bring an army next time.""You- you you! You coward! You hide behind women and have them do your fighting for you! You are no gentleman!"/"Well, she's completely accurate about that."/I put one hand behind my back and gestured grandly with the other one. Rejoice! "And so you would have me fight three against one in the interests of 'fairness'? I refuse your hypocritical and self-serving standards! If you wish to humble me, do it yourself! If you borrow the power of others, you are in no way better than me. Worse, even, for at least I dare to put my own power to the test in the name of my ideals! Freedom is mine!"Crack. Crack. Crack.She clenched her fists and every small movement left this cracking noise, as if her very joints were rusted steel being forced to move again.Then forced them open again. "No no! You will not drag me down to your level, you devil! Do not tempt me!"She clapped her hand twice, and stepped back.A sedan chair on the back of two porters appeared from out a nearby alley, the men grunting out "Hup! Hup! Hup!" as they marched into place.://...///.She stepped into the personal sedan and pointed at me again. "This is not the end of this! Count yourself lucky that it is uncouth to disturb the peace!""Hurgh!" The porters tried and failed to lift her.The bright rouge on her face meant that no one could see her blush. She sat primly and then her porters tried again. With effortless ease they hefted the divan chair's posts to their waist level."Hup! Hup! Hup!""I am Zarah Zorea Zenovivie, daughter of Marquis Zenovivie of the Regulan March! Too many peons like you take advantage of Zanac's generosity! Too many of you forget to respect the House that has shed so much blood to defend you! I will remember thiiisss!" she shouted leaning out of the window as her servants tromped away down the street.And then soon enough they were gone.Leaving behind the injured bodyguards of House of Zenovivi. And then suddenly out from the alley emerged a donkey-pulled wagon with more servants dressed in garish orange and yellow. They hefted the unconscious guards and piled them onto the wagon, and then... slowly evacuated from the scene.And then we were left blinking in confusion. Regular Reflet citizens began walking through the street as if nothing had happened./" well that just happened..."/ Monika said numbly."We leave for a week and my nice sane hometown goes crazy. What the heck?" I huffed./"Is this really a thing we should be doing? You get a little bit of power and authority and suddenly you're picking fights with nobles? No, Player, YOU are the mid-boss."/"It's fine. We're not going to be abusing the Duke Ortlinde's protection, so there's no harm in trolling some low-level flunkies.""But she's from a Marquise," Linze said hesitantly. "I don't think you should be picking fights with lords like that.""Marquis? How far below a Duke is that rank?""It's right below the Duke, I think? But they rule a March a border region. And the border region between Belfast and Regulus is a very important one," Linze answered."I see." I rubbed at my chin. Huh. And all this time I thought it was something like the leader of a knighthood or a light cavalry raiding squadron. Turns out that's the Maquis the French guerilla fighters in WW2 and directly referenced as the Federation-Cardassian border independents in Star Trek. THAT's what I was thinking about. Ma-quis. Nor Mar-quis.And then I sighed. "Ah, shite.""Also I think you were just bullying Zanac's niece or cousin or something," Elze added."Double shite."I turned around, opened the shop doors slightly and poked my head in. "ZANAC!" I shouted indelicately. "Who did I just piss off?!""Zarah, eldest daughter of Marquis Zorah Zornes Zenovivie!" he shouted back, not even looking up from what he was doing. "She's technically my aunt even if she's younger than me! She can really hold a grudge she still hasn't forgiven me for muddying her dress from that time when we were little children. How do you think I learned that my special Null magic had something to do with fine clothing!""DAMMIT."Elze and Monika began openly laughing behind my back.--And so, with all of that done, we returned to the inn.We feasted. Then we rested. There was nothing to look forward to than to finally be able to sleep in a bed with a roof over our head. Even comparing it to the luxury of that hotel in Alephis, our rooms in the Silver Moon Inn had a warmer, homely charm.I shucked all the heavy clothes I'd been wearing for almost a week straight now, and collapsed onto my bed. I removed my headset for the first time in so many days, and it felt weird not to have its weight straining my neck. Monika emerged again from the projector, but upside-down./"Exhausted? Player, I know you have poor impulse control but from what I've seen it's about time for you to slow down. I know you like to ham it up, but there's a line to cross when you just turn into an asshole."/While defending ourselves against noble over-reach was excusable, where was the person who could keep his temper from being directly insulted? All of that could have been avoided if one simply did not put on airs; be it commoner or noble at large. /"What's up with that behavior?"/ she asked.I exhaled heavily. "I have no excuse. Many social maladjusted people unintentionally offend people and then we worry so much about it after the fact. Embracing the ability to cause offense well, hiding your feelings of inferiority with making others feel inferior that's the dark side of trolling."I scowled. "Right, I shouldn't be just pulling shit on random people. Thinking back she was right, I was being very rude. If I just gave everyone the basic level of respect instead of dismissing them from how they look, from their social station I'd have more possible allies and be much less of a hypocrite."There was no reason for me to do these things maliciously. Trolling people was fun. If that woman Zarah would fly off the handle for something so little and beat people down for that, well maybe she deserved a little comeuppance. But still there was no real reason for me to trigger her for that. My scowl deepened. Weird. Why did I so strongly feel the need to express that disdain in the first place?Self-entitled people will never really be happy as they expect to have more and will always want more. I exhaled again and relaxed my body. Monika stared down at me, looking for something that I couldn't identify.Some time back, I bought and placed several mirrors around the room. One of them glued to the ceiling. By varying the angle and which mirror to project to, Monika could actually present the illusion of walking around. Free of the confines of her little box or the conical constraints of a projection mist.By placing a Mist Wall inside a stack, she could actually move around the light-scattering mist layer. What she couldn't normally move around however, was her own projector light, though she could vary the angle it exited the lens.All combined, this meant that in a dark, shuttered room, Monika looked almost convincingly solid as she sat down beside me on my bed. I looked down to see there was actually some slight deformation on the bed surface. If I were to put back on the headset, she could edit out the light beams and overlay her 3D rendered image to complete the illusion."So" I began, a small smile slowly growing on my face. "Haptic feedback, huh? I wonder how long you were working on that."Monika blushed and avoided my eyes.I hummed. "Thinking about it, it's obvious how that would work. A holographic image is just a matter of scanning lines, and if there's any interruptions in the scan, that can be converted into information. So you can actually feel things. It makes sense, it's a direct externalization of your platform."/"It's not just that. Bouncing sound waves off the walls also works."/ She began poking at my bare abs. /"It's why I don't clip through things anymore when indoors. Outdoors, I can vaguely do point aural sources for surround sound."/Looks like talking with Charlotte did prove useful. I reached out and poked back, at her squishy cheeks. "But how are you even doing this? This is new. Hiroyuki Shinoda's tactile holograms using ultrasound?" ://../_///It wasn't full tactile sensation yet, but there was significant pressure there to let me know not to push deeper and break the illusion. But too much ultrasound would have results more like microwave heating. It was very dangerous. And if Monika could bounce sound off invisible walls, she could boil people's brains inside their skulls./"I can do interesting things with static electricity too."/Right. I manipulated location and configurations of matter, she could influence energy states. Then, much to my surprise, Monika bent down and I felt a tingle at my lips.She pulled away, blushing heavily.I grinned back. Well.My eyebrows wiggled. Monika clenched her fists on her lap and turned away. But I could tell a small smile also tugged at her cheeks.What a man and his smartphone did in the privacy of their own room, well, that was no one's business but their own.--
