Rising Shards

Marms found one of the big bathrooms, the kind that's just like a regular bathroom and not a school one with the stalls and junk. It was a pain getting me to fit through the door, but we finally had some privacy after that.

Marms locked the door, then realized the bathroom wasn't very private. "Er, I can wait outside." She said, staring at the door like she'd turn to stone if she looked away for a second.

I had already shifted back, once more wishing I'd worn my adaptive gear. But at least I just had some ratty clothes I didn't care about on, not minding that they were shredded when I shifted. Felt weird to think about how I'd been running around naked this whole battle, but I put that thought aside. I didn't shift back in front of a bunch of people, we safely got away.

"You're good, don't worry about it," I said.

"Alright, if you..." Marms said, then yelped, still staring at the wall. "Can you warn me when you shift back?"

"Dunno how I'd do that," I said. "I guess I better learn how to talk when I'm in Downside mode. You got the pack, too?"

Marmalade unclicked a small side bag she had around her waist and tossed it back to me. "Obviously!"

"Lifesaver," I said.

"I promise I won't peek," Marmalade said.

I got my clothes back on quickly so Marmalade wouldn't have to stand there like a board for too long. "All clear, girliepop."

Marmalade sighed as she turned back to me. I thought about teasing her about how dorky she was about being near me naked after we skinny dipped together, but I held my tongue. Well, not really, I still made noises, just less teasing.

"Marms always saving my ass," I said, then sang from a country song, "Sweet Marmalade..."

"What the hell is that?" Marmalade laughed.

"Sweet Marmalade!" I said. "That old-ass song. Tell me you've heard it, I figured that's where you got your name."

"Never heard that in my life," Marmalade laughed.

"Sweet Marmalade..."

"Are there more lyrics or is it just that over and over?"

"Pretty much just that," I said. "And a couple stanzas that are just innuendos. Speaking of sweet, did you get a new perfume or something?"

"Huh?" Marmalade's eyes widened. "I, uh...was trying something out. But I had it on like a day ago so it probably faded."

"I guess my senses way better when I'm in Downside mode, because I could smell it when we were with Reed," I said.

"I uh...wh...that's..." Marmalade stuttered.

"It's great, don't worry," I said. "You should put it on again!"

"Heh, alright," Marms said. "Maybe I'll let you try it, too."

That loosened her up a bit at least.

"OK, now that you can talk again, I gotta say, did you seriously one shot that guy?" Marmalade asked. "The bookshelf one."

"I did, yeah," I said.

"And he got all weird sexist before he turned to Elka goop," Marmalade said. "Surely this Reed thing isn't going to be important after this, is it?"

"I hope not, I really don't wanna have to remember lore about these guys," I said. "You wanna just sit alone in this bathroom, or do you wanna walk somewhere?"

"Is that a serious question, or are you messing with me?" Marmalade asked.

"I mean, I don't care either way if you wanna hang out here," I said, fidgeting with the sink for a second. "Well, wait, we could go over some secret stuff, this is private enough."

"Yeah, we should probably talk about what happened with Aira and Syval," Marmalade said.

"Yeah..." What could I even say? When they ate those Atrian crystals, they like ate somebody? Were they fused together now? Syval had that familiar looking dude ghosting out of him, and Aira had...

"Who is Jeans again...?" Marmalade said. "I know the name, just...a refresher would be good."

"Zates' ex. But that doesn't feel like the right way to describe it, Zeta was more like her pawn," I said. "She's the one that was running that castle in the void when Ovie and 09 went all super monster mode."

"So that's really bad to have her in the mix," Marmalade said.

"Yep," I said, really annunciating the "P" on that yep. "I can't even judge either, because I can turn into a freaky monster demon thing now because I drank something from that lab."

"At least yours is still you," Marmalade said.

"Maybe..." I said. "You know what my silver lining about today is though, there's no way Downside didn't get spotted on that stream, so I can finally get some recognition."

"Hang on, let me check," Marmalade said.

We decided to head back to our dorm room, which meant we needed to be a bit more careful about what we were saying.

"Looks like..." Marmalade winced as she checked her phone. "The stream got banned after about three minutes, a dude was peeing in the corner on one of them. You'd think doing a killing game would have nuked the stream, but nope."

"Ew."

"I always wonder what they do in a killing game for bathroom breaks," Roux said.

"Yeah, me too...wait, oh my god—" I felt pure dread as I looked to my right, where Roux walked beside us.

"Howdy," Roux said. "Quite the festival out there, huh?"

"When did you get here?" Marmalade asked.

"About when you started talking about piss," Roux said.

"OK, so you didn't hear any of the..." Marmalade coughed.

"Hear any of what?" Roux asked.

"Nothing, don't worry about it," I said. "Why are you here?"

"I was going to tell you that Chumbler has shirt money so come with me if you want your cut," Roux said. "Should I instead ask why you ran away when things were just getting good? Or why you two were hanging out in a single person bathroom together? I saw you leave together. Very suspicious."

"It's nothing like that," I said, not knowing what I even meant.

"You probably just wanted somewhere to shift back in private from your Roux Jr. form," Roux said.

"Yeah, that's it!" I said. "Wait, don't call it Roux Jr.—wait."

They knew. I felt like I was on a treadmill that abruptly stopped.

"Oh please, don't look so terrified, I've known for quite some time about your other form," Roux said.

"How?" Marmalade asked.

"I told you I know who Tokickaman is," Roux said. "Syval told me about his crystal feasting and your little devil drink after the camping trip."

"That bastard," I said. My head hurt, but I needed to act fast or this would get even worse.

"He didn't say it was you that drank it, but it was pretty obvious with the whole ice wall thing," Roux said.

I grabbed Roux by their shoulders. "Roux, you can't tell anyone about me, I'm being serious."

"Why not?" Roux said. "I'm sure you told Faleur and Ohri, at least."

Roux squinted as my silence confirmed otherwise.

"You didn't even tell Faleur and Ohri? Did you tell Lillia, perhaps?"

More silence.

Roux punched my arm. "Why not, you dumb, foolish dumbass?"

"It's...to protect them," I said, looking to Marmalade. She didn't have any answers either. I guess I shouldn't have expected her to, these were my choices.

"I believe that you are foolish and simple minded," Roux said.

"Guess so," I said. "If I agree to that, can you not tell anyone?"

"Hmmm," Roux said.

"And please don't make any other deals," I said. "I'm exhausted, I'll debate you about this later if you promise to not tell anyone."

"Hmmmm." Roux really drew out their answer. "I suppose."

I sighed. Another damn person finding out about this.

We had to walk at the edges of the Falling Shards crowd, it was like I was at a terrible concert as we found Chumbler, Z.O.K., and Elisa. Someone put more screens up, showing...what else? Seth Kerres, Lucian, Achilles, and Gwen standing on a little makeshift stage. Lucian looked like he'd been run over by three trucks, but was smiling as he had a microphone in hand.

"Haha, so I've realized the error of my ways," Lucian said.

"I'll say!" Gwen said.

"Seth Kerres, my affection for you got a bit out of hand," Lucian said. "Will you please still be my...best friend?"

"Oh my gosh," Elisa gasped. "Redemption arc."

Three girls near her had their eyes well up like they just heard a beautiful, soulful live performance of a singer followed by a heartfelt and tearjerking speech.

"Ohhh, awww, redemption arc," They all nodded and repeated it.

"Once my cuts and bruises heal up, I can't wait for us to play more mat ball together at the new Falling Shards!" Lucian said.

"Lucia-demption." Elisa said.

"Lucia-demption!"

"I got something to say, too," Achilles said. "I'm uh. I'm still pissed and I hate everyone but I could've stopped this but I wasn't tough enough. Or actually, it's everyone else's fault but mine."

"Lucia-demption and Achille-demption. At the same time."

"Wow. Wow!"

"I know!"

"He didn't even apologize," Marmalade said.

"I hate it here," I said. "Chumbler, where's our damn money?"

Chumbler handed us each fifty bucks.

"Our sales got cut off after a few minutes when a teacher said we were illegally using people's likenesses without their permission." Chumbler said. "But I managed to hide this money away."

"I don't wanna ask where, but ending up with fifty bucks is about what I should have expected from all this." I said, already thinking of what game to buy with it.

"The stinging disappointment of less money than you expected," Roux said, waving the fifty dollar bill at me.

"This is better than I figured, actually," I said.

"Yes, I was planning all along for you to see the error of your ways, learning a valuable lesson about not profiting off of men," Roux said.

"You were the one who was all in on the shirt thing," I said.

"No, I was playing 12D chess," Roux said.

"Just admit that for once you were wrong," I said, realizing immediately that I'd made a stupid error.

Roux grinned like a cat that successfully blamed the family dog on something they were responsible for. "Eh? What was that? Hm?"

"Nothing, damn it!" I said.

"What was that, Koridia? For once? Those two words did a lot of interesting lifting there. Like strangely shaped weights that give very clear meaning to your words." Roux said.

"Kay, we're done here," I said. "Marms, come on."

Marmalade followed me, but Roux annoyingly followed us, too.

"You really think I'm right most of the time?" Roux asked.

"No, I meant to say that you never admit when you're wrong," I said. "Admit for once that you were wrong, not admit you were wrong for once. Not that you're usually right. Big difference."

"Uh huh. I doubt that," Roux said. "Oh Koridia." They patted my back, which made me feel kind of comforted and condescended to at the same time, very annoying mix. "Now that we're in the shirt business together, I believe I can also be in your secret hero business as well."

"What do you mean by that?" I asked.

"I mean, I can make sure you don't get yourself into even stupider scenarios," Roux said. "I can handle marketing, planning. I bet there are some supervillains out there you could take on."

"Pfft, come on," I said, hating that I kind of liked the idea of defeating a supervillain.

"You even have a superhero name, it's Roux Jr.!"

"Nah, I go by Downside," I said as I winked at Marmalade.

Leading a double life like this was exhausting, and I honestly wondered to myself why I was even keeping it a secret sometimes. I guess things would get bad for me if they found out I broke into that lab and stole their gunk. But now more and more people knew. And as Marmalade shot me a quick smile back, it hit me that I was very glad that I wasn't alone.

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