[REND] B2. 1.2 - Home Sweet Aloneness Again

I closed my bedroom door before opening my right hand. My palm was a mess of crumpled pimple patches and caked makeup. Trying to disguise the inhumanity of my palm was just making it obvious.

The crystals have multiplied and gotten bigger. The small patch of skin that had turned into a thin gold sheet had spread, thickened, and hardened. Huh, sounds like I’m describing something nasty.

Point was, my flesh was becoming more like the plating of Spooky Erind’s golden gauntlet. The pimple patches were crumpled because I spent most of the time half-clenching my hand to hide these changes from Deen. Not that the patches were doing a good job of hiding anything.

And it was much harder to fully close my hand. Oh, wait. I couldn’t do it anymore.

Luckily, Deen went through bouts of depression; she didn’t notice my weird right hand. It really was for the best that I moved out of her place. A hassle being on my guard all the time.  

I discovered the changes on my palm and other parts of my body when I woke up last Saturday. My Adumbrae side was spreading again. Too much for my artificial Core to suppress? I obviously used a lot of my Adumbrae power during the docks mission, even turning into a giant werewolf.  

But the changes hadn’t worsened for the past couple of days. Perhaps a sort of equilibrium was reached by the competing forces inside me.

Hey, this is the two wolves story Deen told me last time! What did she say again? Something about the one I’d feed would grow.

How could I feed the artificial Core? The answer was those pills. I had brought my ‘share’ of what Myra had given us. Not sure if they had an expiry date or what, but Deen and I have agreed that we needed to eventually take them, or Dario would get suspicious.

“Hmmm… What’s the best way to cover this?” I wondered, examining my palm.

I couldn’t pretend to have been injured and wrap this up in bandages. Deen and the hero wannabes would know that wasn’t true. What about wearing a glove? Nah. That’d just draw attention to it. I could go with my plan of revealing this to only Deen, maybe say that it must be the effect of the artificial Core. Explain that I wanted to hide this from Dario because I didn’t want to be a test subject in a lab.

Or I could just lean into the whole thing and reveal my ‘Core powers’ to the group—I could summon a mask and transform. Not the Blanchette mask. I would keep that a secret. Blanchette was too risky to use with others since I might lose control of myself. Plus, it already had its own storyline.

I’d use the gift from Spooky Erind.

I concentrated on summoning the new mask, the same way I did when using Blanchette. Instead of picturing the red wolf snout, I thought of what I’d seen when Spooky Erind previously visited my dream.

“Oh, here it is.”

Liquid gold flowed out of the crystals on my palm, floating upward into a jiggly blob. From gold, it turned to silver. The blob solidified into a full mask, compared to Blanchette’s half of one, which was bigger than my face.  

It was chrome in color, its shiny cheeks displaying my reflection as if it were a mirror. It looked like a beautiful mannequin, the well-crafted ones in the high-end department stores, not those crap ones you’d find in flea markets that could pass as scarecrows.

Curiously, the mask had no eyeholes. What was supposed to be its significance? I knew that Adumbrae's powers were related to the person. Corebring powers too. Then again, mannequin heads didn’t have eyeholes either. Did it mean that I would be a mannequin? A short mannequin that would be. Being self-deprecating, I'd probably wear kids’ clothes when transformed.

The mouth and lips were exquisitely carved. Not sure if that meant I couldn’t talk again. I could sow the seeds of drama more easily if I didn’t just grunt and growl like Blanchette. As much as I loved to bite of the heads of people with my fangs, there were times that being able to communicate was preferable.

Another oddity on the mask was the symbol in the middle of its forehead. It appeared to be a representation of an eye crudely painted on the chrome surface. It was out of place on the otherwise clean mask. The red lines were uneven and shaky; even the paint used was cracked and peeling in places. A gold line appeared in the middle of the eye symbol, bisecting it.

Then it opened, revealing an actual eye with a mesmerizing golden pupil.

“That’s so pretty…” I said, leaning in for a closer look. That was a pun. A third eye? Look? Get it. Someone would probably find that pun funny.

The eye excitedly darted this way and that, erratic and faster compared to a normal human eye. I wouldn’t be surprised if it popped out of its socket with its extremely jittery movements. Cool and creepy. The whole mask-summoning bit added a vibe to the transformation, too, rather than just suddenly changing. Befitting of a main character.

Time to find out what this thing does. I held the mask and brought it to my face.

But then, I paused.

Wait… Should I wear this?

There was no doubt that more of my body would change if I continued using my Adumbrae power. Heck, I even dyed my hair black yesterday night to cover all the white strands that’ve been popping everywhere. And I had black contacts ordered online for the possibility that my eyes might turn red any day now.

Spooky Erind told me that I needed to get stronger because enemies would come. It didn’t feel like a lie, but it was also sort of a trap to get me to use my Adumbrae powers more. I suppose the solution, really, was to ‘feed’ my Core to counteract the transformations.

“Here goes,” I said, putting on the mask.

Something changed.

But I couldn’t tell what. I didn’t suddenly feel stronger, like I did when turning into Blanchette. If anything, I felt weaker. Though there was an overwhelming energy inside of me. Could be the Core acting up.

I looked down at my hands—they had the same chrome color as my mask. They were similar to the limbs of a puppet, with individual pieces attached to joints. All my joints were black balls, including the segments of the fingers, my wrists, and my elbows.

Not just my arms. My entire body had changed into this… metal humanoid figure.  

“This is so cool…” I paused.

I could speak! I could talk to people and stir up drama and confusion!

“Hurray! I can already think of some fun dialogue.” My voice had a metallic clang to it and sounded a bit fake, similar to a generated voice. It was apt since I had turned into a robot creature.

How interesting. Usually, Adumbrae grew wings, horns, tentacles. Biological parts. They rarely became inorganic. My hand was turning into Spooky Erind’s gauntlet, so I must be that special.  

I thought of something to try. I rotated my arms the wrong way, and it worked! I could bend my fingers and touch the back of my hand. So weird being able to move in unnatural ways, similar to the feeling of sprouting a tail. But I wasn’t sure if this party trick could help in a fight. I should go out to check the rest of my body in front of the mirror.

I turned around to get the mirror on my table and—

“What the fuck?” An unexpected sight greeted me. I rushed to my bed, to the body half-splayed on it.  

My body! My back was on the bed while my feet draped down to the floor.

“Oh, shit. Am I dead?” I giggled. Or as near a giggle as a robot could. “Spooky Erind’s going to be annoyed that I’m asking that question again.”

I knelt at the side of my bed and touched my cute face. In my vision, there was a gray tinge outlining my original body. I hoped it didn’t mean I was deceased. I couldn’t check if my body was cold because I didn’t have human skin to feel the temperature with. This was one of the rare times I realized the importance of skin.

Logically speaking, Spooky Erind wouldn’t allow me to die. There shouldn’t be any problem.

Still, I’d like to understand what was going on. This was my body. The most important body in the whole world!

The chest of my Erind body wasn’t moving. I put my ear over its nose and mouth—weird to refer to my body as ‘it’—but I couldn’t hear any breathing. I couldn’t feel even a hint of air on my metal cheek. Could I even sense that? I lightly touched my own cheek and confirmed the answer was ‘No’.

I don’t have skin, remember?

I remembered a scene from a movie on how to check if a person was breathing. I needed a mirror. Or a cellphone screen would work too. I took my phone out of my original body’s pocket. Then I held it under my real nose. No fog on the screen.

What next? A flashlight! Check the eyes to see if they’d move.

I was about to go to my study desk when I remembered that I was already holding my phone. I pressed the screen for the fingerprint recognition. My phone lit up but didn’t unlock. You have no fingerprints, idiot!

I couldn’t even open it with a code because the phone wouldn’t recognize my metal fingers tapping the screen. I was a freaking robot, and technology was holding me back! Next thing I knew, a captcha would paralyze me. Wait, I could use my real body’s fingerprints! Or I’d just get a flashlight and pretend to be a doctor checking a dead body.

I rummaged through my drawer and got a small flashlight. I pried open my real body’s eyelids and shone the light on an eyeball. It wasn’t moving.

I was practically dead.

Perhaps it was more accurate to say this was an empty shell rather than a corpse. My soul transferred into this metal form—this was the gimmick of my second mask. I preferred this to my Blanchette transformation, where my Erind body gets poofed to another dimension.

Before doing some more tests, I tried to fix the position of my real body.

“Wow, do I need to diet? So heavy!” I had difficulties heaving the lower half of my real body onto the bed.   

I raised its left leg and dropped it as a test. The leg bounced on the bed normally. Nothing seemed to be different with it. From having super strength to being weaker than my Erind self back when I was human. This must be a joke.

I rushed to the kitchen, took the sharpest knife from the rack, and returned to the bedroom. Holding the knife against the skin of my real hand, I gently tried to slice it. I couldn’t. I increased my force until the skin turned red. Giving my all, I still couldn’t injure my real body. It was like slicing a tough old meat with a blunt butter knife.

Good to know that my real body retained its superhuman durability. I sighed in relief—metaphorically, as I couldn’t actually breathe.   

What would happen if I died?

My theory was that if my robotic self got destroyed, I’d simply be returned to my previous body. Maybe I’d lose usage of this specific mask as a consequence. There was a chance I was wrong, and I’d permanently die if I got killed while my soul was outside my original body, my consciousness dissipating into nothingness.

On the other hand, what would happen if my real body were decapitated while my soul was outside? Not good, I bet. This was a pretty terrible downside to this mask compared to Blanchette’s feral brain. Weak too.

What could this metal body even do?

Nothing much of note about my metal body. I did have this weird hair, like really thick cords. Could I plug my hair into something? And there were symbols painted where the fingernails should be. Looking closer, there were nearly invisible grooves on the tips of the fingers, as if they were supposed to open like my moving mouth.

Was my power shooting something out of my fingers?

I went to the windows and swung them wide open. Stepping back, I aimed my finger at the space. My condo unit was facing the street, and the building across was much lower than this one. If I ended up shooting out something dangerous, I’d hit nothing.

“Hopefully, I don’t create a disco ball or something,” I said, focusing on the thought of using my power. I didn’t need to worry about anyone noticing my rushed power test because… nothing happened.

Mental note—the next time that Spooky Erind visits me, ask about my powers. Was there an instruction manual? Would she let me borrow it? Knowing Spooky Erind, she’d think it was funny not to help me. She must be laughing, watching me puzzle over this new mask.

I examined my fingers. “It shouldn’t be complicated. Blanchette’s ability was pretty straightforward.”

I looked over my shoulder. My real body on the bed had that faint gray outline. I may dislike highlighters, but my real body was obviously being highlighted for a frigging reason. Now, should I continue with this test or try it somewhere else, like an abandoned building? If my finger started spewing fire, this was going to turn into a problem real fast.

But my intuition told me it wouldn’t be like that. My power was related to targeting my body. It wouldn’t damage it. And I was excited to find out what my power was!

I pointed my right index finger at my pretty Erind self.

Just a bit, I thought. Please don’t be flames or lasers.

There was a hiss, similar to that of a soda can opening. Something burst out of my finger and hit my real body. The projectile was connected to my finger with a blue shining thread.

As soon as the connection was made, I knew what to do.

“Sit up,” I said.

My Erind body sat up on the bed.

(Author's Notes: This is Pino, a mask from the prior cycle. (Erind is yet to name this transformation.) I kept the descriptions a bit vague to have wiggle room for official art later. Maybe we could make it a bit sexy, like the twins in Atomic Heart? Lol.

A gimmick of Pino is that Erind’s real body is around. It presents an interesting challenge, but it is also annoying. It made Erind not want to use this transformation in the original version of REND. My solution in this version is to make Pino be able to puppet the Erind body, subject to restrictions. The body can't do much other than move, so Pino can't use it to easily interact with others. She has to be creative. This is way better than if the Erind body was useless. This also boosts the power of Pino by a lot since she has a strong puppet available from the start.

Thank you all for your support! It feels surreal that we're now in Book 2.)