Tanya and Marcy looked at each other, both mouths open.

"Pete," Marcy asked. "What did you just sign me up for?"

Pete baulked, turning to Marcy with guilt all over his face. "I, uh, just wanted to make sure you got a good deal." He scratched the back of his neck.

"I believe it's a fair deal for all parties," Mrs Eceer said, but even she had her lips pursed together in a similar way to Pete.

"What do you think?" Marcy asked Tanya.

"I know nothin' about any of this, but if Mrs Eceer says it's a good deal then I trust her."

Marcy looked at Pete. He shrank under her gaze. She sighed. "And if Pete thinks it's a good idea, then I trust him too." Her tone sharpened. "Doesn't mean I wouldn't want a say, though."

"Sorry," Pete peeped.

"Are you in, then?" Tanya asked.

"Yes. Should we go? I should probably start by checking the wards and experimenting with my mixing console and—"

Tanya slipped off her jacket, summoning one of her cannon arms. She chose her more typical laser style one instead to guarantee they didn't get deafened, but the point came across anyway.

Marcy's face lit up. "Oh my goodness, I completely forgot."

"If you'll be wanting to start using that energy, then you'll need to find Olena to explain it to you," Mrs Eceer said, making it very clear she didn't plan on helping in the slightest.

Pete walked towards the back room, peering around. "Is she in the back or something?"

Mrs Eceer's smile was utterly malicious. "Oh no, she lives off-site, near the Peabody estate. Do you know it?"

"Outside the wards?" he complained.

"Ah, yes, sorry to be an inconvenience," Mrs Eceer said. She wasn't sorry.

Pete grumbled all the way to the door, loading up his gun.

"Oh yeah, she may be carryin' a monster body back here with a hipster guy if all's gone well too!" Tanya called behind him.

Pete grumbled some more. "Of course she fuckin' is," was the only word Tanya picked up before the door shut behind him.

Marcy giggled. "Thanks," she said to Mrs Eceer.

"Don't mention it."

Tanya swapped sofas, flopping down on the arm of Mrs Eceer's armchair and lightly elbowing her in the shoulder. "No thanks from me, that's for sure. What about my say in the situation, hm?"

Mrs Eceer erupted into a monologue. "Tanya, you know that organising business deals is more my forte and, furthermore—"

Tanya couldn't hold back her grin any more.

"You don't care, do you?' Mrs Eceer said, deadpan.

"Not in the fuckin' slightest." Tanya got up, slapping her hands against her knees as she sat back beside Marcy.

When she looked back up, Mrs Eceer was rubbing her temples. "You will be the death of me, all of you."

Tanya wondered what Olena had done now. Before she could ask, Mrs Eceer had stood, closing her notebook with a slap.

"Now, if you will excuse me, I'll be off." Mrs Eceer began walking toward the back garden. Tanya had started spotting her out there more and more. She seemed to have claimed the abandoned car out there. Tanya had filled it with cushions and used to hang out with people out there before the apocalypse. Mrs Eceer had added an old countertop from who-knows-where and a lot of notebooks.

"So, where do we start? Do we even know how transfers work yet? I have so many questions!" Marcy squealed.

Mrs Eceer walked back over. "Is this the first tattoo transfer?"

"Uh, yeah?" Tanya replied. "Back when me and Marcy sorted our deal for her helpin' me talk to my family, we agreed to one custom and the transfer of me resonance cannon test."

"I have changed my mind on leaving," Mrs Eceer declared. She sat back in the armchair and opened the notebook again. "Oh—but only if that is okay," she said to Marcy, more as an afterthought.

"Absolutely."

Mrs Eceer dropped into her chair, getting more comfortable. "Proceed."

"So to answer your questions," Tanya started, "I don't really know how it works, an' I'm gunna start by looking at the tattoo through my overlay and inspecting where you want it and seein' if it'll tell me anything."

"OoooOoo," Marcy replied. She nodded and lifted up the side of the shirt, showing her waist. "Do you think I should have it where you do?"

"I'd go more hip now that I've tried a couple out. I think it would be sturdier—worse for clothing though, so it's only if you are okay with that."

Marcy nodded slowly. "That makes sense." She clapped her hands together. "I guess I'm going to be cutting up some trousers then!"

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Tanya snorted. "Let's not get carried away." She looked down at the resonance cannon, rubbing her hands together. "Now what can you do?"

Tanya lowered her concentration, allowing the overlay to take over her senses—only, it didn't really.

Words were appearing and describing the things she could see, especially around the tattoo, but the strain she was used to feeling in her head was gone. It felt surprisingly normal—more like reading a book than accessing an alien Interface.

She could close and open things in her Interface with ease now.

I suppose dyin' and talking to our new alien god had some positive side effects.

Bit by bit, she put together a picture of how the tattoo worked. Things like the rod preventing the knockback and the larger head allowing for a wider beam of sound were things she'd considered whilst designing the cannon, but things like the arm having two different joint points—one behind the head itself—to allow it to angle itself up and down were just parts of her design she hadn't thought through and worked themselves out well.

Behind the text, Tanya could see both Marcy and Mrs Eceer waiting patiently. Marcy had lowered her trousers' waistband to show her left hip.

"What's your… Strength, and… Is that your…uh… dominant leg or the other, like, one?" Tanya asked. She could feel the strain of trying to talk whilst processing words—it felt like talking over a loud conversation.

"12 and uhhh," Marcy thought about it for a second, shuffling her feet around on the floor. "I'd step forward with that one first if that's what you mean."

"Yeah. That's good. You'll want to… get in the right pose for… uh, shooting it until your Strength is a bit higher. Kinda like… how people box. I'll explain it to you later." Tanya still paused between some words as she latched onto reading new things without meaning to, but it was improving bit by bit. She realised she just had to sort of stare into space. As the world around her blurred into an out-of-focus haze, the boxes of text became less gripping to her focus.

She could explain while she was going, but there wasn't much to reveal yet, so she moved on to looking at Marcy's hip.

For a moment, she didn't know what she was looking at. There was nothing at all aside from the basic skin information, but then mountains of information started flicking in and out. She struggled to work out what was introducing the information and then getting rid of it again. First, she tried having both her tattoo and the skin in her field of vision, then she summoned hers in case that helped make it more stable. She eventually realised it was about her, specifically thinking about this design on that skin.

The words stabilised, and Tanya opened box after box. At first, it made sense—she read a box and it had a shorter set of arms to make up the difference between being on a waist vs a hip. But then Tanya read the next, and that one had an even larger cannon head and hole for resonance to escape.

Is that because she has more sound power to put in it?

The third had both of those things and also a wire around the back that seemed to attach to her spinal cord. Tanya hadn't included that in any of her designs and had no idea what it would even do. The Ability wording changed slightly with each variatiuon too, but nothing huge enough that she could see specific, clear benefits.

"Huh," Tanya eventually said. She was going to close the Interface to take a break, but she realised that if it was getting easier to process, trying to improve her tolerance to it would help her save the Concentration she was putting in to suppress it.

"I think…" Tanya started. "Nah, I don't know."

"What do you see?" Mrs Eceer asked.

"It's, uh, like a shit ton of variations, I guess? Thicker metal bars, different materials, all sorts. It's a real mix and match. Like some of them change multiple things. If I'm honest, I don't really know what those changes are doin' really."

Marcy tapped her foot. "Is it like you can pick what things you want to change?"

Tanya began pacing, her hand in its typical position on her chin. "Not sure that makes sense. I think these are supposed to transfer as is."

Tanya began opening and closing boxes again, trying to recreate the exact same changes as before in the sea of option dropdowns.

"What were your exact inputs to the overlay?" Mrs Eceer asked. Tanya could see her tapping through her own overlay, seeming to be trying to apply elements of her own in case it would reveal anything.

Her conversation was growing more and more fluid. If she focused on being able to do too much, she'd start stammering again, but overall, there were far fewer pauses.

"Hm, mine doesn't really work like that," Tanya said. "It's more…vibey?"

Mrs Eceer scoffed.

"Hey, it's not my fault—" Tanya's mind picked that exact moment to remind her that she was processing visuals at the same time as speaking, and she lost the thought.

Trying to remember what she was going to say eventually lost her the cannon image in her head altogether.

They all sat in a contemplative silence. Tanya's pacing slowed, then stopped. She sat down again.

Tanya wondered how Assistant and Ian were getting on.

Assistant appeared on Marcy's hip in Tanya's mind's eye, and all of the same options appeared again.

"Wait, what?" Tanya leant forward. She opened the drop-downs. It was the same as earlier: different length fingers, changes to the thickness of the outlines, and different nail designs.

"Hm," Mrs Eceer said.

"Is everything okay?" Marcy asked, more nervously.

"I, uh, don't know. I mean, yes, everythin's fine. I'm just not sure what this is…"

She stopped focusing on Assistant, and the design disappeared along with the information.

"Hold on…" Tanya said.

She focused on the cannon, and it appeared. Then she did Assistant. It also appeared. Each of the overlay boxes were like random spawns, appearing in a spattering across her vision. Finally, she tried imagining something different. She decided simpler was better and imagined a generic sword. Nothing happened.

Tanya flopped back in her seat, grinning. "Fucker," she said. "It wasn't givin' me information about transferring at all, just how I could make variations of the design for other people.

Marcy and Mrs Eceer leant back too.

She dug around the pop-ups about the location and her existing design. She couldn't find anything that helped her with transfers. Anytime she got too close to imagining the design on Marcy, it would appear and open all of the variations again.

It took her five minutes of concentration to eventually get rid of the variations, through a range of filter changes and focusing on imagining exactly what she wanted. Even then, she wasn't sure this would be how it worked as a transfer; it could be the ability to recreate it perfectly as a new tattoo.

Tanya sighed. The ache in the back of her head from having so much information in her vision at all times became just intense enough to bother her, and she closed it again.

Not good enough to keep it up then, yet.

Mrs Eceer and Marcy's attention had lapsed into different tasks whilst she worked. Whereas Marcy had summoned her mixing console to fiddle with a quiet whisper, Mrs Eceer had the same vacant look that marked her deep in her Interface, doing who knows what. She still somehow realised as soon as Tanya was finished, though, even without looking up.

"No?" Mrs Eceer asked.

"Nothing," Tanya replied.

"Oh," Marcy said.

"There's no pressure," Tanya said, excitement sinking. "I could make you a copy, or we could do a new deal for another custom tattoo?"

"I mean, it's a real Ability, right—just for transferring tattoos?" Marcy asked. Her nervousness slipped through.

Tanya read it to her.

• • •

Passing the Mark Level 1 Unlocked from Achievement: Not Your Vessel You may permanently transfer a tattoo from your own body onto another living being—ally or otherwise. The transferred tattoo retains its current state, but may behave differently depending on the host.

• • •

"The System hasn't screwed us up yet, and someone needs to be the first. It says it will be the same tattoo, and this isn't a super strong one," Marcy babbled. "Right?"

"It's one I made when I was testin' how to keep my Vitality needs low, so it should be an easy one in that way."

Marcy took a deep breath. "Then do it."

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