The New Chimera

Lilith let herself enjoy the moment for a few minutes more before she got back to business. During that time, Emily and Vithi wandered off, seemingly uninterested in further discussion, while Kirdin dragged Lilith’s parents off for more training, Judy trailing behind them.

Siph gave Lilith a wink and a mental Fill us in later as she left, leaving Lilith and the Parallels with Kali, Anna, Alex, and Raphael. “Alright, before I sorta derailed everything, we were talking about what we were going to do with Eve?” Lilith said.

“Yeah!” Eve said, puffing up her cheeks. “Way to steal my thunder!”

“Can it, pipsqueak.” Carmen replied. “Don’t even try to pretend you weren’t worried.”

“I’m not a pipsqueak, I’m just as old as you!” Eve protested.

“Sorry, Eve, that was rude of me. I should have been able to keep my feelings in check a little more.” Lilith said, looking Eve in the eyes.

Eve glanced to the side. “I-it’s fine. As my boss, I suppose it is only natural you are allowed to dictate the progression of work-related meetings. Anyway, as I had been saying, I need to create a base of operations, and for that I’ll need to make some sort of sub-dungeon, or get help building a castle or something.” She looked to Kali. “Is there a way I can make a sub-dungeon or something similar?”

Kali nodded. “Yeah. But your dungeon isn’t nearly developed enough to get there. That comes much further down the line.”

I’ve checked it out. Nuwa confirmed. At this rate, I believe I can get that in…a year or so. More if people keep bugging me and distracting me.

“Yes, distracting you from sitting around and watching your numbers slowly tick up.” Carmen drawled. “Are you sure you’re not just trying to avoid socializing?”

N-nothing of the sort. I just…don’t see a point to it, that’s all.

Anna coughed. “Alright, so, since that’s going to take a while, what’s your plan until your lair is constructed? If you don’t have one, you’re more than welcome to come crash with me, I’m sure I can find something for you to do.”

In a rush of air, Eve was back behind Lilith. “Absolutely not! I know what you’re trying to do, and you’re not going to get to dress me up!”

Anna sighed. “Well, it was worth a shot. But, really, what is your plan?”

“I’m going to stay here and work on my fighting style. I can’t fight the same way as Lilith does, so I have to figure something out.”

“Why not?” Anna asked, frowning.

“The whole point of choosing a different appearance is to keep people from figuring out that we’re related. We have a number of extremely rare or completely unique Skills, so if we fought the same way it’d be a dead giveaway, duh. Sheesh, you’d think I’m the only one putting any thought into this.”

“Ooh, can Jameson and I train with you!?” Anna said, eyes sparkling. “It’ll be just the three of us, like it used to be!”

Eve seemed to struggle with that for a moment. “I-it would be best if you didn’t get too used to my presence. The life of the Queen of Monsters is a lonely one, and I cannot have companions amongst normal people, for fear of allowing spies into my midst.”

Anna thought about it, then smiled impishly. “But, what if we’re not your companions?”

“Elaborate, mortal.”

“You’ll be incognito as a mysterious loner that was roped into a group, infiltrating the ranks of the mortals to gather information. Sometimes you’ll just vanish for long periods of time while you attend to your business as Queen of Monsters. You’ll appear in the nick of time, saving us when all else seems lost! Then, at the critical moment, as we are coming to assault your castle and are backed into a corner, you’ll reveal yourself and take off, crushing us with your sudden act of betrayal!”

Eve perked up, and then sagged. “Your plan has merit, but now that you know about it I cannot in good faith implement it, nor can I implement it with people who know I am Queen of Monsters.”

Anna sighed, disappointed. “I suppose you’re right. I’ll be real, though, I just wanted us to be able to spend a bit more time together now that we’re all in contact again.”

“No, the plan still works.” Kali said. “They just need to defect with you. You can just make them your Champions and put them in a contract that prevents them from leaking your secrets. They already know the biggest secret of all, that you and Lilith are the same person, so you can’t afford to leave them alone.”

Eve brightened considerably. “O-of course! I’m not sure why I didn’t think of that before!” She cleared her throat, then pointed a finger at Anna. “Heed my words! Now that you know my secrets, you’ll never be able to escape me! I’ll dog you to the ends of the earth if I must!”

“What if they go to Haven? Will you just leave them alone then?” Carmen snarked.

“It’s a figure of speech!”

Anna giggled. “In that case, I’ll be your loyal subject, your majesty.”

“What?” Eve asked, momentarily taken aback. “I…I mean, I’m glad someone is going to treat me with the respect I deserve. As a reward, I will allow you the rare pleasure of referring to me by name whilst we are in private. You will have to do so whilst we are in the lands of people anyway, so you best accustom yourself to it now.”

“By that she means she feels weird when you call her that.” Carmen translated, shooting Eve a smug look.

“S-shut up, no one asked you!” Eve whined. “I’ve got an image to maintain!”

“And, like Lilith said, you don’t have to maintain it in front of us. No one’s going to judge you for it here.” Alex soothed. “This should be where you can relax.”

“No! Unless I am forced to do so to disguise myself, I cannot risk letting myself get into the habit of dropping my guard. If it happens in public then no one will be able to take me seriously and everything will be over.”

“Whatever. You do you, I guess.” Alex replied.

“That’s not something you could stop me from doing. The only one with the authority to do that is Lilith.” Eve huffed.

“But…won’t it get tiring to pretend like this all the time?” Raphael asked. “For your mental health or whatever, wouldn’t it be better to try and drop your guard, at least around the other Parallels?”

Eve looked almost convinced for a moment, then shook her head. “No, it’s still too great a risk.”

Carmen raised an eyebrow. “So, you’re saying you’re not cut out for this whole business, that you’re not good enough to just switch between two personas at will? Besides, if you’re going out ‘in the lands of people’, won’t you need to drop the act anyway?”

“That’s…that’s…”

“She makes a valid point, you know.” Anna pointed out. “If you just go around acting like this in public, you’re going to draw a huge amount of attention.”

Eve groaned. “Fine. I just wanted to act cool while I made my debut.” She said. “Can’t you let me have that?!” She paused, frowning. “But don’t get me wrong, that’s only about the whole ‘mortal’ and ‘lands of people’ and that kind of stuff. I meant everything else I said.”

“Including the bit where you said we were all really important to you?” Carmen teased.

Eve, face rapidly beginning to turn as red as her hair groaned again. “You guys are the worst!”

Anna chuckled. “Fine, fine, I’ll stop teasing you. So, how exactly are we going to go about this?”

“Until we get this whole…‘the government of Haven doesn’t like us’ thing worked out, we’re going to train here in the dungeon. I’ll drop by and pick up you and Jameson every morning, and then maybe from time to time we can head out into Haven and I’ll teach you all how everything works. They’ll be dangerous missions, of course, but I’m sure you can handle it.”

Anna opened her mouth like she was going to make a retort, then apparently decided against it. “Sounds good.”

“Can I come with you guys too?!” Raphael asked excitedly. “I’ve always wanted to fight alongside a Perfect Chimera, so it’d be super cool to be in your party full-time!”

Eve hesitated, then shook her head. “I’m afraid you’re under a sort of house arrest, like everyone else living here, except for Grandpa. If someone comes to take you while we’re out, then I’ll have to reveal myself and blow my cover, and I can’t afford that.”

“But I can learn how to make myself look like other people! If I can do that, then can I come?!”

Alex ruffled Raphael’s hair. “What about when you have to get magically scanned by someone or something? Then what?”

Raphael pouted. “Who say’s that’ll happen?”

“If you all head to any healers or any Haven governmental buildings you’ll have to. For that matter, won’t Eve also have problems with this? I’m sure dad scanned you.”

“Already scrubbed it from the records!” Kali said proudly. “That aside, her magical signature is going to be different now that she’s a Higher Being. There’ll still be some similarities, but it’s different enough that most software wouldn’t flag it anyway, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

“Can’t you just scrub the rest of our signatures?” Raphael asked.

“Elenoa would make a fuss about it. It’d basically turn into an international incident and would make trying to be a peacekeeper really hard for Lilith.”

“Oh.” Raphael said, disappointed. “I guess that makes sense.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it.” Lilith told her. “It’s not like we’re never going to have the chance to be teammates. Once everything’s settled down a bit, I’m going to turn my attention to making sure you all won’t have to be cooped up here anymore. And in the meantime, as long as you’re not in any cities, we can let you guys visit other places if you want.”

“And if Tunem has been looking into it and knows where we’re going to pop out?” Carmen asked warily. “What do we do then?”

“That’s under control.” Kali said. “As long as we let me do the teleporting, it shouldn’t be an issue. It’s built into the system that you can’t scry or otherwise look into any details of the admin functionalities, so if we just head to my place and let me use my personal teleport on you all, then he won’t be able to pin down any exact details about the transit. And divination isn’t exactly foolproof in the first place, so unless he’s putting a lot of effort into it, he won’t be able to get any useful information so long as you don’t stay in one place for a while. It’ll cost a bit of Worship, but it’ll be worth it.”

“But if he is putting in that effort, we’re still out of luck, that right?” Carmen said, raising an eyebrow.

“Aside from Alex, he hasn’t made any attempts to look for any of you.”

“He’s looking for me? Doesn’t he know I’m safe?” Alex asked.

Kali frowned. “Yeah, he does. Unfortunately, he doesn’t really care about that. What’s he does care about is getting you back to him. That was his aim ever since you left for the Society, and it was one of the biggest incentives I used to get him to pick Lilith as the recipient of Vithi’s lamp. So, having you whisked away again so soon doesn’t really sit right with him. I’m pretty sure he’s willing to bring you into Council custody against your will if it meant getting you back in his life.”

“So, what? Do I just have to sit around here doing nothing until this all blows over?”

“Well…I don’t know.” Lilith admitted. “I was hoping we wouldn’t get to this point. At worst, we just have you keep training here, and hopefully we have this resolved in a year or two.”

“Actually,” Carmen began, “do we know if they’re even going to make moves? I’ll admit I’ve been a bit too distracted to check on all of our Watches all the time.”

I flick through them from time to time. Nuwa said. Elenoa’s definitely gearing up for a confrontation of sorts, but I can’t tell for what. The Society’s kinda in shambles after losing Kali, but they’re pulling themselves together, and everyone on Earth is still too busy trying to figure out how to reorganize things to worry about attacking us.

“Hmm.” Carmen said. “Not promising, but…well, we can worry about it after we’ve made all the warp gates. Speaking of…”

While Carmen was speaking, Eve made her way out from behind Lilith and grabbed Anna’s hand, tugging her hand somewhat forcefully and leading her out of the room. “Come on, let’s go start training. We’ll pick up Jameson when his meeting finishes.”

Anna blinked. “Now?”

Eve rolled her eyes. “I’m not letting my minions go out into the world without any knowledge of how to defend themselves. And, since the two of you are going to be some of my closest accomplices, I’m going to personally make sure you’re capable enough to support me on the battlefield. That means that you’ll need to get as strong as possible as fast as possible, so we won’t have a moment to waste. Carmen’s told Jameson to let us know the moment he’s free, and one of us will pick him up when that happens. Until then, it’s just the two of us.”

She narrowed her eyes and gave Anna a wary look. “And if you even think about dressing me up, I’m going to make you run laps.”