Tanya pulled away the needle for the last time, wiping it against the cloth.

"Done?!" Marcy asked, her lagging energy returned in an instant.

"Yep!"

Marcy grabbed the mirror off the side where she'd left it, levering it out from under some empty crisp packets and around a half-drunk tin of lemonade. She marvelled at the design.

Tanya's vision was filled with notifications. She was excited to read them, but not as excited as seeing Marcy's reaction to testing it, so she dismissed them.

Between Tanya and Assistant, they made busy work of tidying things out of the way, watching Marcy marvel at her tattoo whilst they did. "Great work, bud," Tanya whispered to Assistant.

It gave her a proud thumbs-up back.

Tanya smiled. "Whatcha think?"

Marcy looked at her with wide eyes. "I love it!"

"Only one thing left for it then," Tanya said, backing towards the door.

Marcy tilted her head.

"Testin'."

Marcy gasped.

The two of them began by walking, but by the time they hit the fresh air outside, they were jogging and giggling.

"We should irritate Pete and Dante enough to get rid of them more often!" Marcy exclaimed.

Tanya fell into stitches. "Hey, you said it, not me!"

Marcy leant against her legs, and Tanya stretched out her aching shoulders. They caught their breath in the middle of the street.

Marcy looked around more intently for the first time.

The buildings were still in ruins from the boss, with cascading bricks down the front of the kebab shop. Mrs Eceer did her best with sweeping, but specks of glass still sat in the crevices of the pavement, catching the light when the sun escaped from behind the clouds. It was an uncanny feeling. Looking to the right, the scaffolding was bound with rope and stashed to one side. They hoped the building didn't need it because there was no easy way of getting it back up again. The other way was just more destruction. The office block had claw marks taken out of the roof like a gripping fist, and no amount of sweeping could rid the layer of dust that found its way across the pavement before it. Further towards the wards, there were buildings that barely looked like buildings anymore at all.

"This street has seen some things. Was this the Mini Boss?" Marcy asked.

Tanya shook her head, scuffing the tip of her boot against a piece of broken plastic."It was a real Boss."

Marcy's head whipped towards her. "What are those like and—how did you kill it?"

"We didn't. I had to teleport it away and, well, it didn't end well for us." She took a shaking breath, suddenly feeling exposed in the middle of the street.

Assistant landed on her shoulder; a comforting weight.

"You don't have to—"

"It's okay," Tanya affirmed. She stood up straighter. "It was this huge vine monster, taller than the buildings." She held up her hand to the top of the office block, closing one eye to line it up properly. Then she flexed her hand into a claw, until it covered the damage just like the tendrils did.

Marcy followed her gaze. "Oh…wow…" she said, realising.

"Its heart was its weakness, I think—it was like this orb in the centre of its chest. Probably a more powerful Core of some kind, now I think about it. We just didn't have the means of takin' it down though."

"We?" Marcy asked.

A gust of wind blew down the street. The feel of her hair tapping against her face calmed Tanya.

"Uh, the group you guys met coming through: me and Olena and Eceer, Ishita and her son, and this guy called Boris with a hellhound."

Marcy's eyes grew wider. "I forgot about the hellhound. He was absolutely gnarly."

"She actually." Tanya chuckled. "Fifi."

Marcy baulked. "Fifi?" She shook her head. "This world is so freaking weird."

Tanya let out a breath. For the first time in a while, her breath didn't pool into a steamy shape in the air.

It's gettin' warmer.

The warmth should've been comforting. But it made her stomach knot. Spring meant time kept moving—and so did everything else.

This really is life now, huh?

Before she could dwell on it much further, Assistant tapped her shoulder.

The emotion emanating from Assistant was clear. Even without their emotional connection, it was vibrating with excitement.

"Okay, okay," Tanya said. "I think Assistant wants you to try out your tattoo."

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"Oh yeah, we can do that," Marcy said. With the sun creating this glow behind her mohawk and the slight smirk in the corner of her mouth, she really did look like some kind of hero. The illusion quickly shattered. "Uh, how do I do it again?"

Tanya clicked her tongue. "That's… a good question." She flexed and unflexed her hand, imagining summoning Assistant. Assistant twitched.

"You felt that?" Tanya asked.

Assistant nodded.

"Huh, interestin'. Anyway." She tried it a couple more times, thinking through her different tattoos. Assistant was the easiest for sure. With a slight thought, it was like she awakened it, and then it crawled out itself. Phantom Brand felt more like pushing—tensing her leg and glute muscles like in the gym. Most of the smaller ones almost fell out; she'd seen that with Ishita's Prosthetic too.

Tanya eyed the design on Marcy's arm. It was larger than that, but smaller than something like Phantom Brand.

"I think imagine tensin'," Tanya said.

Marcy strained, her face turning red. She braced her legs into the ground and stored tension in her entire body.

Tanya saw the ink ripple.

"More your arm specifically?" Tanya added. "Imagine you're flexin' it out."

Marcy changed tack, looking down at her shoulder and tensing different muscles. She ended up alternating between tensing her upper arm and her back.

Tanya leaned in slightly, watching the skin ripple like a liquid screen. The light caught on the ink as if it were bubbling beneath glass.

A smoothed corner was the first to turn three-dimensional, and the entire design looked completely warped around it. It reminded Tanya of a Photoshop warp tool, expanding specific sections and the rest straining around it. Bit by bit, the mixing console came free.

Tanya whistled low. That was faster than she expected.

Marcy caught it in her hand, staring between the console and the blank arm where it was moments before. All that showed it had been tattooed at all was the slight scabbing of the thickest lines, creating a phantom of the basic shape.

"How do you feel?" Tanya asked.

Marcy's eyes were electric. "Fantastic!"

"An' dizzy and a little bit nauseous?"

Marcy replied in the same triumphant declaration. "Absolutely!"

Tanya laughed. "Just take it easy, okay? Keep an eye on your Attributes. We don't want it to start pullin' energy from the wrong places."

Marcy nodded a few times too many, and Tanya eyed up the route to the sofa in case she needed to help the woman back inside. She would have added some more warnings, but doubted Marcy would care. It not being every day that she got something this exciting was definitely a double-edged sword, and Tanya related to not wanting to wait a minute more to try it.

Tanya looked back from plotting her route into the parlour. Marcy was perched on the kerb, hunched over the glowing console like a DJ between tracks. Marcy's fingers flew across the knobs, twisting and pressing and moving with a seasoned fervour.

"This is really cool!" Marcy said, with the strangest voice Tanya had ever heard. It took her a moment to realise it was even Marcy saying it. The voice resonated, a low boom but incredibly nasal at the same time. It was the kind of voice that would never exist outside of software.

"It's working then?" Tanya asked.

Her voice shifted throughout the sentence as she fiddled with the controls. "Yeah—one second—let me make it do something…" Marcy played with some more buttons.

She held the device in both hands, pinky finger, similar to a handheld gaming console. Tanya guessed it was far smaller than a normal mixing console, but Marcy didn't seem to mind. Marcy shifted the weight in different ways, trying it in both hands separately and then settling it onto her left forearm.

Assistant hovered nearby, gaze fixed on the warping tattoo like a dog watching someone cook.

"Aha," Marcy said. She had one hand to use the console now instead of two, but far more ability to move. She could turn even the innermost knobs with ease.

"Here we go…" Marcy said. She created the same howl as earlier, positioning it within the same dustbin and changing the settings to make it as realistic as possible. Tanya thought it was slightly better than before, a richer echo and specific point or origin, but it was close, and she wasn't certain.

Then it moved, and the sound was directly behind them. Tanya jumped and swung around, but there was nothing there. She stared upwards at where the sound was coming from, almost able to imagine the mouth of the creature making it. There was a wetness to it that made her skin crawl.

"Oops, sorry," Marcy said. "Hang on…"

It flicked away again. The howl bounced from the empty kebab shop's metal counter, then crackled against the parlour's window shutters. Tanya's eyes snapped toward each source in turn, but still there was nothing there.

Marcy's forehead was lined with her concentration. "Hold on, what if I—"

It moved even faster as Marcy clamped down two faders with one weirdly angled hand. She squatted, placing the console onto her legs so she could use both hands freely. The sound danced through the streets, moving up and down like a running creature, complete with panting between the loud noises.

Tanya's eyes darted between alleyways. For a split second, she was sure something had moved near the Kebab shop. She had to remind herself this was all magic.

There were two of them, then three. A bead of sweat formed on Marcy's forehead.

"Don't overdo it," Tanya warned.

"Can you hear that?" Marcy exclaimed at the same time.

Tanya tilted her head from side to side to measure the sound. "Three of them?"

Marcy clapped her hands. "I can't make multiple noises at once. This is just panning them so quickly between locations, it sounds like I can."

"Huh, that's really cool," Tanya said.

Marcy leant in close, doing it one more time even faster. Her hands flew over the console. For a moment, it sounded like a mob of them. "Phew." Marcy leaned backwards onto her hands and wiped her brow with the back of her hand. "Awesome."

Tanya reached down a hand to help her up.

Another notification appeared. Tanya saw it was an Achievement, and started reading when she saw a familiar face running over.

"Ishita?" Tanya asked. Her heart skipped a beat.

She turned on Notification suppression.

Was I supposed to come and see her? Have I missed something?

Then saw the look on Ishita's face. Ishita's face wasn't annoyed—it was urgent. Tanya straightened instinctively.

Is Fahad okay?

With Marcy firmly planted on her feet, Tanya patted her shoulder and jogged over to Ishita to meet in the middle. Tanya couldn't help but feel the parallels between this and them meeting so many weeks ago in a similar spot.

"We have some news—" Ishita said.

"Is Fahad okay?" Tanya said at the same time.

Ishita didn't miss a beat. "Yes, he's fine."

"Then…?" Tanya continued

"You need to see it," Ishita said, before finally offering a polite smile to Marcy. "Hope you don't mind if I steal her a minute," Ishita said, but her tone gave away how she really felt; she needed Tanya now.

Ishita started walking back again, ushering Tanya over.

Tanya looked back and forth between Marcy and Ishita. She hated leaving abruptly like this, but Ishita's tone had already locked her nerves into alert. Tanya followed Ishita on instinct.

"Marcy, are you okay to—" Tanya started, over her shoulder.

"Of course. I can't be using this any more today anyway."

"Tomorrow for the flash design?" Tanya called. She remembered the electricity talks. An' I'll talk to Olena too!" Tanya added, now halfway across the street.

"It's a date!" Marcy called back.

She grinned at Marcy's voice—then turned, and nearly hit the doorframe. It brought her crashing back to the urgency she'd tried to ignore. "So what is this all about?" She tried to keep her tone light, but Ishita's silence was really worrying her now.

Ishita paused on the stairs, turning around. "It's not that bad—I just wanted to get someone elses eyes on it as quickly as possible. Maybe it's fine." She opened her mouth to say more, then thought better of it and closed it again.

Scaling the stairs two at a time, Ishita's sari waved behind her, and her sandals slapped the stairs with each step. She paused again at the top of the stairs, swinging her door open and holding it there.

Ishita took a deep breath. "Tanya, I want you to meet Majorie and Adam."

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