The Stars Have Eyes - Chapter 23

Joe was having a wonderful day. Spending the morning clothes shopping with Maggie had been quite the eye-opening experience. It reminded him, among other things, that his girlfriend was drop-dead gorgeous. Not that he’d forgotten. Even he wasn’t that thick. However, he had gotten used to her beautiful features and stylish figure to the point where he took them for granted and didn’t really think about them. They were now at the forefront of his mind, which made it difficult to focus on much of anything other than Maggie whenever she was in the room. That was hardly an issue, seeing as how Joe didn’t have anything even remotely important to do.

Still, at some point it dawned on him that staring intently at the girl’s face while she was doing her brainiac things was kind of rude and possibly a bit creepy. He knew full well that she didn’t mind this attitude, but the guy felt a bit awkward nonetheless. Doubts started welling up within as he questioned if he was good enough for her, or whether he deserved this kind of impossibly good fortune. It wasn’t just the house or her appearance, but her personality as well. Between bouts of ruthless logic, Maggie had repeatedly shown that she genuinely cared for him. This made Joe incredibly happy, of course, but also somewhat guilty.

Sensing his doubts, the girl’s eyes slowly opened as she hover-sat in her usual spot near the bed.

“What is the matter, Joe?”

“Hm? What do you mean?”

“Your facial microexpressions suggest you are experiencing some internal conflict.”

Just like Joe had a fairly solid grasp on Maggie’s personality, the opposite was also true. She didn’t need to read his mind to tell he was concerned about something. Not that she had a habit of probing into his thoughts or anything. That would be quite rude, if nothing else.

“Oh. It’s, uh, nothing to worry about,” he evaded the question. “Just can’t believe how much of a jammy dodger I am.”

The girl tilted her head questioningly, prompting Azgod’Kalar to poke up from her hair and twist its little body into the shape of a question mark.

“In what way are you a shortbread biscuit with jam filling?”

“Uh… I don’t… know about any biscuits, Maggie. It’s just something me and the lads use to call each other lucky bastards. Got it from some ancient fantasy game.”

“I comprehend,” her eyes flashed with understanding. “Furthermore, I now require jammy dodgers.”

“The biscuits, you mean?”

“Yes. I theorize they would pair nicely with Jeeves’ tea.”

“Oh. That does sound pretty good, actually. Want me to pop down to the shops and fetch some?”

He’d never heard of that particular biscuit before, but the convenience stores at street level had all kinds of pastries and treats on offer. Even if they didn’t have jammy dodgers specifically, he’d surely find something that was close enough. Alternatively he could’ve had the robo-butler handle this errand, but that talking appliance wasn’t good at anything that required even the tiniest bit of thinking.

“I would appreciate it,” she smiled happily.

“Starberry flavor, right?”

“Indubitably.”

Joe got up, threw on his new jacket, and went about his mission with a grin of his own. It felt good to do something for his girlfriend, even if it was a small and inconsequential gesture. As he rode the elevator down, he realized just how idiotic his worries were. It was silly to think himself unworthy of Maggie after that unforgettable first kiss showed him just how important he was to her. Idle thoughts had a way of turning ugly for no good reason, so he decided to keep himself occupied with something other than staring blankly at the girl’s face once he got back.

As he stepped out of the elevator and walked through the hyper-scraper’s relatively spacious lobby, Joe was surprised to see Agent Johanson. Actually, it was more accurate to say it was the state of her that astonished him. She was in uniform as usual, but her fatigues were so filthy that she had two custodial drones skittering around her feet. The small spider-like robots frantically picked up all the flecks of dirt and dried mud that fell off her person every time the woman smacked her forehead against the wall. Which, incidentally, was something she had been doing at a rate of once every two or three seconds for the past five minutes.

“AJ?” he called out to her. “You okay?”

The sullied soldier stopped her skull-thumping and looked towards Joe with a face that made it clear she was not, in fact, okay.

“I’ll live,” she said dryly.

“No, seriously, what’s going on? You look terrible. In, like, more ways than one.”

Mentally and physically exhausted as she was, she couldn’t just turn away Joe’s genuine concern. She sighed and slumped against the wall, forcing the custodial drones to skitter away in something resembling panic.

“I just can’t stand that witch anymore. Seriously, what’s her deal?” she dropped the tough soldier act.

“Well, she can be a bit harsh at times-”

“Don’t you dare say she bloody means well!” AJ snapped. “This is abuse! Bullying! Torture! Nothing else!”

“Woah! Easy now. Why don’t you get off the floor and tell me what’s got you so stressed out?”

“It’s this fooken thing!”

She threw something across the empty lobby as she yelled. It was a fist-sized stone that clattered loudly as it rolled across the floor. Joe couldn’t tell, but it had ‘Magh’rathlak the Observer’ written on it in an alien language. AJ couldn’t read it, though she figured it was the one she was supposed to get, seeing as how the other two stones she’d found said ‘Maggie’ and ‘Mags Oh’ in plain English. The realization that she was dealing with not one, but two unannounced decoys irked her quite a bit. Her justified anger quickly turned to panic as she saw one of those janitor bots skitter straight towards the filthy object, no doubt intending to take it away somewhere. Thankfully she was able to yoink the stone away from it with a telekinetic pull.

Joe leaned over and got a solid look at the stone in her grip and noticed the alien writing. He had no idea what those sigils meant, but they looked familiar enough for him to recognize them as Maggie’s handiwork. Putting two and two together, he realized she must have sent AJ to find this stone which, judging by her filthy fatigues, was buried somewhere in the nearby park. The soldier’s frustration made more sense, but her outburst still seemed like an overreaction. This assignment didn’t seem any more laborious than usual.

Which, incidentally, also meant at some point he’d accepted ‘laborious’ as the ‘usual.’

“Ah,” realization dawned on him. “Yeah, okay, I think I get it now.”

“Get what?” the woman glared at him.

“Maggie’s been riding you too hard. I’m gonna have a word with her when I get back, so why don’t you get on up and get yourself cleaned up.”

He was expecting AJ to smile, or sigh in relief, or something along those lines.

“Ughhh…”

What he got instead was a groan so painful he almost thought she was passing a kidney stone or something.

“What? Did- Do you not want me to do that?” he asked in confusion.

“No. I’d appreciate it, but… I can’t use the stairs. Sorry, no, I mean, I have to use the stairs.”

“… We have stairs?”

The soldier blinked in disbelief, then pointed towards a small glass door tucked away in the back of the lobby, just to the side of the elevators. Visible just beyond it were a depressing array of steps.

“Bugger me with a bread bin, we have stairs!” he exclaimed, though his wonderment quickly turned to horror. “Wait, there’s over a hundred floors between here and the apartment! Are you seriously going to climb all of that?!”

“I’d really rather not, but I don’t have a choice. I was told I wasn’t allowed to use any machinery or electronics until I returned this stupid thing,” she wiggled the stone for emphasis.

“That can’t be. Aren’t you just misunderstanding Maggie’s instructions? Surely you can at least use the elevator.”

“I specifically asked if I could. Want to guess what she said?”

Joe took a deep breath, then held his hand out to AJ.

“Come on, the floor’s no place for a lady.”

She snorted a laugh. That twig of a man was offering to help her back on her feet? Well, he meant well, so she graciously accepted the gesture and let him do his best to hoist her up. However, rather than let go, he dragged her towards the back of the lobby. AJ went along with it at first, but stopped and pulled back when she realized they were headed towards the elevator.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m taking you up to Maggie,” he declared. “It’s high time you and I had a word about the way she’s treating you.”

“Are you mental? Do you have any idea how stupid that is?!”

“It may be stupid, but it’s the right thing to do.”

“I could lose my job! Or worse!”

“I’m pretty sure climbing stairs all day isn’t part of your job.”

“No, but following orders is, and mine are to cooperate with that witch as much as possible.”

“Cooperation is a two-way street, innit?”

“You- That- But-”

Agent Johanson wasn’t sure how to respond to that, mostly because Joe had a point. What she was going through was borderline slavery, at least from her perspective.

“It’ll be fine, trust me,” he reassured her. “Maggie’s a bigger softie than you might think.”

“I sincerely doubt that.”

“Also, it’s not just about you. It’s about her. She’s been acting… off lately.”

Joe couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but he felt as if the girl had regressed rather than progressed in terms of the whole humanity thing. She was still all smiles and cosmic butterflies when it was just the two of them, but her attitude towards others was strangely harsh and demanding. Just today she had snapped at the clothing store employee called Jelly for no reason, and then seemed strangely suspicious of the fish-and-chips vendor lady. In some ways, it was as if she’d gone back to how she used to be a month ago, when she was still struggling to comprehend most human emotion. Something must have happened over the past several days to have caused this, but Joe couldn’t think of anything that would warrant this sort of negative change.

“Alright, let’s do it,” AJ relented.

She knew better than anyone that she wouldn’t last long if the severity of the ‘experiments’ kept increasing. Though she had her reservations, something had to be done sooner or later, and this was as good an opportunity as any. Besides, she was sort of planning to have Joe pacify the Class-3 on her behalf anyway. Last but not least, she felt like she’d throw up if she saw that bloody stairwell again. Psyching herself up to challenge it was why she was banging her head on the wall when Joe found her.

“For the record, I still think this is a dumb idea,” she added.

“Of course, it is. I came up with it.”

AJ allowed herself another short laugh as she followed him into the elevator. Things turned a bit awkward during the ride up as both of them realized just how much the soldier reeked of sweat and dirt. Joe tried not to make a big deal about it, but he wasn’t used to this sort of stench and ended up coughing once or twice as a result. This, in turn, made Johanson even more self-conscious about it.

“That jacket looks good on you, by the way,” she tried to distract him.

“Thanks. I actually just got it,” he wisely avoided mentioning Maggie.

“Really? Where from?”

“Place called Owen, Owen & Owen, at the shopping center two hyper-scrapers down.”

“You mean that one with the big blue diamond sign hanging from it?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh. So that’s what that was about.”

“You didn’t know?”

“Well, I’m still kind of new to the area.”

“Fair enough.”

“So, this store, what sort of clothes do they sell?”

“All kinds. Costumes, casual, swimsuits, formal stuff – you name it, they got it.”

“Hmm. That’s good to know.”

AJ had already given up on making it to her date on time. Because of all the delays she’d put herself through, she only had about an hour before Maloney was going to pick her up. It wasn’t enough time for her to adequately prepare for it even if she didn’t have to climb those stupid stairs again. She would’ve called it off already if she wasn’t barred from using any and all electronics. However, if a clothing store was that close, then there was a chance she might just barely make it, depending on how this confrontation played out.

Unfortunately, it didn’t start well. Joe and AJ had barely entered the apartment when the lady of the house came out to meet them in the hallway. The cold look on her face made it clear she was quite cross.

“Maggie, we need to talk,” the man spoke in a serious tone.

“What about?” her eyes narrowed at him.

“The way you’ve been acting these past few days. It’s worrying me. Also, I think you should ease up on AJ a bit.”

“I see,” her expression relaxed a bit. “I will gladly hear you out, but I must first attend to my obligations.”

The girl held a finger up towards the pair, then pointed it towards her left with minimal movement. The ginger woman behind Joe instantly slammed against the wall in response. The force of the impact knocked the air out of her lungs, and the continued pressure made it hard for her to take a breath. The man looked between her and Maggie with frantic disbelief. Though he expected things to get a bit dicey, he hadn’t imagined the situation would instantly turn violent.

“Bloody hell, Maggie! What’s- Hey! Let me go!”

Joe’s complaints were cut off as he was hoisted into the air and floated outside the front door, away from the other two. Maggie’s grip on him was firm enough to keep him from getting in her way, but not enough to cause harm.

“This isn’t like you, Maggie!” he pleaded.

“Agent Johanson has blatantly, willingly, and knowingly disregarded my instructions,” she coldly replied. “I am merely administering punishment in accordance with my obligations.”

The accused could do little except gurgle incoherently under the weight of the Class-3’s telekinetic might. She was trying desperately to resist, but her mind was jumbled and unfocused at the sudden turn of events. What little psionic force she could muster was barely enough to keep herself from getting crushed. Breaking free was out of the question.

“But the instructions you gave her are completely insane!” Joe shouted through the front door. “At first I thought AJ was exaggerating when she said you were bullying her, but this is way worse! Seriously! I don’t know what’s going on with you, but this isn’t you!”

His attempts at talking sense into the girl backfired, causing her stoic expression to break into an annoyed scowl and for her grip on the psionic to tighten even more.

“Bold of you to assume you know my true self,” she scoffed, her eyes fixed on the psionic.

“Okay! I admit, the whole cosmic entity thing is way over my head! But, I know the girl I fell in love with would never force such senseless cruelties on another person!”

She clenched her eyes and her teeth as those words cut deep. Her head snapped towards Joe, her face plastered with an expression of fury far more severe than any she had shown before.

“I don’t like the way she looks at you!”

Joe’s face cycled through seven different expressions as this revelation sunk in.

“You’re… jealous of AJ?”

“I am, yes. I am fully aware how illogical it is, but I can’t help but feel the way I feel. Contempt wells up within me whenever I see you two together. Despite my best attempts, it is… difficult to contain that emotion.”

Indeed, she hadn’t intended to force the Agent to climb the stairs. When she gave out the assignment, her exact words were that Johanson wasn’t allowed to use any electronic devices that would aid in her stone-finding quest. This implicitly excluded the elevator, since vertical mobility had nothing to do with the task at hand. However, Maggie’s jealous side momentarily took over when the woman requested explicit clarification on the matter, hence the genuinely dickish ban on using the lift. The girl never went back on her word, so she couldn’t do anything even though she later recognized she had been needlessly harsh on the psionic.

She was actually intending to apologize, but seeing AJ and Joe walk in together caused a surge of spite that, as stated, she struggled to keep in check.

“It’s, not, like, that,” the struggling soldier barely squeezed out.

“Y-yeah! What she said! We’re just friends!” the man backed her up.

“You’re friends now, but what about in a month? Or a year? You grow on people, Joe. Like an invasive flesh-eating fungus, it’s inevitable you’ll reach her heart eventually!”

The man felt wounded by those words. The rather disturbing and slightly insulting nature of Maggie’s metaphor hurt, but not as much as the implication behind it.

“So you don’t trust me, is that it?!” he pressed.

“I… do not, no,” her voice turned sad. “You’re gullible, optimistic, and naive. You allowed something like me into your life and thoughts so easily, for which I will forever be grateful. At the same time, that is precisely why another might worm their way in and replace me, regardless of intentions.”

As per usual, it was hard to argue with her assessment. It wasn’t borne out of something as superfluous as too many soap operas, but from her increased understanding of just how fickle the human heart was. People changed with time, and so did their relationships. Friends forgot one another, enemies found forgiveness, lovers drifted apart, and acquaintances became something more. Things didn’t always turn out that way, but it happened often enough. Joe and Maggie shared a powerful bond at the moment, which was precisely why the girl feared what might become of it.

The man could only guess at the depths and severity of her concerns. Luckily, he had gotten pretty good at reading between her lines, and managed to sense the gist of it.

“Then give me a chance. How can you say you trust me or not if you never let me prove myself? Sounds like you just decided something about me on your own, and isn’t that the sort of thing you said you wouldn’t do anymore?”

Joe knew how to argue with Maggie. Though she was striving to become more human, she was ultimately a creature of logic that adhered to her ‘obligations’ above all else. One of those was to include Joe in any and all decisions that affected both of them, which she promised to do after her one-sided choice to have them live in this apartment together. It was a bit questionable whether her stance on Joe’s trustworthiness counted towards this. The guy was grasping at straws, and he knew it.

“… It appears I have made an error.”

Fortunately the girl seemed convinced by the argument.

“Very well, Joe Mulligan. I shall allow you to demonstrate whether you are capable of remaining faithful without my oversight.”

She released the man and lessened her grip on the psionic.

“S-so, you’re not jealous anymore?” he asked warily.

“Of course, I am. As I said, I cannot help the way I feel,” she frowned. “I can only offer apologies and ask for forgiveness.”

“That’s… fair, I guess. But if that’s the case, shouldn’t you let go of AJ already?”

The woman could breathe freely now, but she was still pinned to the wall quite firmly.

“Why would I?” the girl inquired.

“Isn’t… I mean, you just said-”

“That is a separate matter,” she cut him off. “I recognize that my personal feelings have resulted in me treating her unfairly, but Agent Johanson’s failure to adhere to her obligations is her own. Appropriate punishment must be administered.”

“What kind of punishment?” the woman asked warily.

“By taking the elevator, you have saved yourself approximately one hundred and thirty minutes of vertical travel. Spending that same amount of time in telekinetic suspension will be sufficient.”

AJ felt that was quite unfair considering Maggie admitted she was in the wrong, especially since it meant she’d absolutely miss her date. It was regrettable, but hardly the end of the world. Officer Maloney surely wouldn’t mind rescheduling. The issue was that it gave off a bad impression to do it so late, especially since the psionic had nobody but her own narrow-mindedness to blame. Actually no, that wasn’t true. Maggie was the one chiefly responsible for all her recent misfortunes. Ultimately there were worse punishments than a two-hour time-out, so she decided not to push this particular issue.

However, there was another matter that the annoyed soldier couldn’t help but bring up.

“But what’s the deal with you riding my butt so much? I don’t mean just today, but just in general.”

“I do not understand what you are referring to, Agent Johanson.”

“You’ve been messing with me ever since we put you under surveillance. It started with those winks nobody else could see, then you demanded I move in with you so you can subject me to these ridiculous ‘experiments.’ Seriously, you can’t tell me that counting the grains of sand in an hourglass or whittling a log into toothpicks were intended to help my psionics.”

It was ludicrous to think that jealousy was the root cause of all that harassment since AJ and Joe didn’t even exchange words until after the ‘contract of doom’ was already made.

“They were, actually,” Maggie rebuked her. “I recognized that your biggest flaw as a psionic is your narrow mindset. All of the tasks I have given you would have been trivialized if you applied your telekinesis or telepathy accordingly, yet you stubbornly employed exclusively physical means.”

That way of thinking wasn’t AJ’s fault. It was actually ingrained in her by the Supernatural Eviction Agency as a sort of security measure. All power corrupted, and psionics had power unlike any other. Having them flaunt their gifts on an everyday basis could lead to them developing dangerous notions that they were somehow superior to the rest of mankind, and that they should be in charge. The Agency wanted to avoid their psi-ops going rogue because of this trend, so it actively discouraged the frivolous use of their abilities. It drilled into their skulls the notion that, barring combat scenarios, psionics should only be used as a last resort once all other means have been exhausted. Agent Johanson had proven herself especially gifted from an early age, which was why her instructors made sure to really jam that mindset in her skull. She became an excellent, obedient, and diligent soldier as a result, but it also rendered her horribly inflexible in certain regards.

“My experiments were meant to broaden your way of thinking, among other things,” Maggie added.

“And you couldn’t have just told me that sooner?!” AJ raised her voice.

“You must arrive at your own revelation for it to bear appropriate significance. To do anything other than subtly guide you towards enlightenment would be a great disservice to you.”

The fact that the woman had found the stone in under a day showed that the unspoken lesson had started to sink in, which was why Maggie was telling her all this now. She would’ve been singing a different tune if she knew about Maloney’s involvement. However, she wasn’t omniscient. She mistakenly concluded everything had gone as planned, hence her smug demeanor. Her ‘disciple’ did not take kindly to that attitude.

“What about the bloody winks?! What was the point in those?!”

The girl’s self-satisfied smile broadened into a wide smirk AJ hadn’t seen in a long while. It was that same shit-eating grin she always had on her face during the first few weeks. The one that said louder than any words, ‘you’re so pathetic that it’s adorable.’

“I find your flustered reactions to my prodding to be most interesting.”

In other words, she liked to watch her squirm, just as Johanson suspected. The agent did not handle this confirmation well. Had it been delivered differently or under more amicable circumstances, she might have taken it in stride, perhaps brushed it off with a triumphant ‘I knew it!’ That was not what happened. AJ was mentally, physically, and emotionally drained. Both her brain and her bones ached from the unwarranted telekinetic assault just now, and her thoughts were clouded by all the frustration she had built up on this assignment. That seemingly innocent yet clearly mocking admission was of little significance compared to all of the stress she was under, but it was still enough.

It was the metaphorical straw that made Agent Johanson snap.

“CUNT!”

AJ’s full-volume profanity was punctuated by a burst of force that freed her from Maggie’s grip, nearly demolishing the wall in the process. She lunged at the momentarily stupefied girl and hurled a right-handed punch straight at her face, only to have her fist collide painfully with an invisible wall. A torrent of what was essentially concentrated rage followed a split second later. The psionic energy smashed clean through the barrier and struck Maggie dead on, sending her crashing into the opposite end of the hallway. The excessive force caused the building to shake and rumble ominously while reducing decorative furniture and floor tiles to bits and pieces. Joe tried to run in and stop the rampaging psionic, but an invisible hand slammed the front door shut, locking him out of what was about to happen.

“I’ve had it with your smug arse!”

The soldier, having abandoned all reason, shoulder-tackled Maggie. Her built-up frustration burst outward with tremendous force once more, sending both of them crashing into the living room. AJ then kneed the girl in the gut hard enough to momentarily make her airborne and followed up with a backhanded punch to the face. The telekinetic energy suffusing the strike sent the girl tumbling across the room until she smashed into the massive television screen, shattering it in spectacular fashion.

The sound of glass breaking and the sight of sparks flying everywhere momentarily brought the rampaging psionic her senses. She breathed heavily, unable to believe what had just transpired. Not just her lashing out, but the fact that she was able to toss a Class-3 entity around like a ragdoll even though it was definitely resisting. Her jumbled thoughts came to a grinding halt when she saw Maggie stand up, covered in cuts and bruises, yet with that same damned smirk on her lips.

“Is that the best you got?”

That snarky taunt was enough to light ablaze the sputtering embers of AJ’s rage.

“Pretentious smarmy twat!”

Verbal abuse and psionic energy flowed freely as she smashed Maggie from the side hard enough to pin her to the wall.

“Your tits are fake and your personality is shite!”

Her next assault broke it completely, sending the girl tumbling into the adjacent bedroom and making the whole floor quake ominously once more. The soldier’s output was spiking so much that it shocked both herself and the military personnel monitoring her implant readings.

“Stop watching me when I pee! I can fooken tell!”

As silly as the notion seemed, pouring her frustration, spite, and anger into her telekinesis allowed her to exert much greater force than usual. She demonstrated that further by slamming Maggie into the floor with an invisible hammer that had the approximate size and weight of an overloaded garbage truck.

“Quit being so bloody smug about everything, you cosmic knobend!”

AJ had no idea why or how this was happening. In fact, it went against everything she was taught at the academy.

“And piss off with those big words! They don’t make you sound smart!”

A clear and focused mind was necessary to manifest psionic abilities with any degree of power or control. That was what she had been told, and it had served her quite well thus far.

“Someone ate the starberry pie I put in the fridge! I know it was you!”

However, as she sent Maggie flying out of the window, AJ was quickly reminded of another aspect of her mental powers. Namely, the psionic feedback. Having exerted so much energy in so little time made her feel a recoil like none other. Her vision went black, her ears screamed with a maddening ring, her muscles tightened against her will, and her stomach felt like it was doing backflips. A plethora of extremely unpleasant symptoms racked her head-to-toe, but the most pronounced one was the way her brain threatened to exit her skull through her ears and nose. The resulting wave of pain made the woman fall to the ground screaming in agony while clutching the top of her head. Backlash this extreme had a very real risk of killing her at worst and leaving her brain-damaged at best.

The strain on AJ’s mind then started rapidly diminishing. It and all the rest of her aches and pains gave way to another, far less unpleasant array of sensations. Her tortured head was resting on something that was both cool and warm at the same time, yet also undeniably soft. There was no way this was the floor. As her eyesight gradually returned, it became clear her cranium was lying on the pale skin of Maggie’s thighs, which had been exposed as a result of her dress getting ripped to tatters. One of the girl’s hands was gently stroking the woman’s forehead while the other kept a soft grip on the top of her skull. A kindly smile rested on her thin lips and a warm un-light seemed to radiate from her swirling eyes.

“Welcome, Sarah Johanson,” she spoke quietly, “to the moment of your revelation.”

The woman’s eyes darted between Maggie and the Maggie-shaped-hole in the window’s shatter-proof glass.

“Do not concern yourself with me,” the girl reassured her. “It would take more than mere defenestration to incapacitate me, even when weakened.”

“Defene-whatsit?”

“Defenestration. Formal. The action of throwing someone out of a window.”

AJ was more than a little surprised to find out there was a word for that, but it was hardly the only shocking revelation she’d received in the last few minutes.

“This is what all that abuse and harassment was for, wasn’t it?” she weakly asked.

“Quite so.”

“Damn it. I’m never going to hear the end of this.”

The woman could do little but grumble in defeat. She felt played like a fiddle, made all the more unpleasant by the fact that it was orchestrated by a cosmic entity that was incapable of deception. Indeed, Maggie hadn’t lied to her even once. She had simply kept quiet as to the true nature of her experiments while letting AJ’s prejudice and personality do the rest. This behavior definitely skirted whatever cosmic law kept the Class-3 brutally honest, but the excuse of ‘following obligations’ was a powerful one.

As for the results, the agent wasn’t quite sure what to make of them. She had somehow subconsciously tapped into her anger and hatred in order to wield them as a weapon. AJ’s thoughts drifted to the two rogue psionics she’d confronted in the past. Both of those lunatics exhibited tremendous power despite the lack of formal training or regulatory brain implants. Before she had just assumed their extraordinary gifts had driven them crazy, but now she felt as if it might have been the other way around. If abandoning reason and giving into her baser instincts gave her this much of a boost, then going completely off the deep end would surely produce even more spectacular results.

Of course, she wasn’t about to become a raving lunatic whose grasp on reality was tenuous at best. Nor was she in any state to analyze her outbursts in any great depth. She’d leave it to the people monitoring her condition to figure out the exact science and mechanics behind that phenomenon. For the moment, she merely held onto the feeling of manifesting her rage so that she may do so again, hopefully consciously. Her mind calm once more, the woman rose to her feet. Maggie had graciously dampened the psionic feedback to the point where the only negative repercussions AJ felt was a momentary shortness of breath and a wave of exhaustion.

However, she had a hunch her wallet would not survive the long-term consequences of her actions. Glancing around at the devastation she’d left in her wake, the soldier was overcome with a sense of foreboding that all of the damage she caused would be coming out of her salary. Given the relative opulence of the apartment and its decor, she’d likely have to remain in Her Immortal Majesty’s service until she was five hundred and ten years old to pay this off.

“S-sorry for the mess,” she murmured.

“Hm, yes,” Maggie spoke with mild bemusement. “Now that you mention it, the property damage exceeded my expectations, much as you have. I shall rectify this.”

AJ felt a familiar sting in her brain that told her of spiking psionic activity in the area. Given present company, she wisely shut her eyes and turned away from the Class-3. She heard all kinds of scraping, crashing, banging, and clanging while she was sporadically pelted with gusts of air and bits of debris. This lasted for almost a minute before settling down completely.

“All done.”

When the psionic opened her eyes again, she saw the bedroom had been put back together as if nothing had happened. She didn’t even need to see the other rooms to determine they had received much the same treatment.

“So, uh, what happens now?” she asked warily.

“Phase one of your training is complete. I will give you three days to recuperate fully, after which we will continue with phase two.”

“Ugh. Great,” she groaned. “Let me guess, more tedious and obtuse tasks?”

“I am not at liberty to discuss my plans with you. Knowledge of them would reduce their effectiveness,” Maggie bluntly stated.

“Can you at least tell me whether you’ll get off my back?”

“I can indeed confirm that phase two will not involve me standing on your back, whether metaphorically or literally.”

“That’s… good, I hope.”

That weird phrasing filled AJ with doubt, but she wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Whatever ‘phase two’ entailed, she had the next few days free, effectively immediately. That included the next few hours, which meant that there was still a chance for her to make her date. She’d be dead tired and fighting the urge to pass out the whole time, but she was confident she could soldier through it. She’d just need a little bit of help with her preparations, and she had a hunch the Class-3 would be willing to assist.

“So, I need a personal favor. No deals or pacts, just a one-sided request.”

“I hear you out, at least,” Maggie said with a small smile.

“You wouldn’t happen to have a dress I could borrow, would you?”

“I do indeed have a garment you could wear, though it wouldn’t fit you very well around the chest area.”

AJ’s eye twitched at the incidental jab at her bust size, but she pushed that irritation down. This was neither the time nor the place for an encore performance. Besides, she’d use it for ‘ammo’ later.

“Could I ask you to transmute it so it fits properly, then? It’s kind of an emergency.”

Maggie’s brow furrowed in confusion.

“What emergency requires formal wear?”

“I… actually have a date. In like, fifty minutes. Officer Maloney’s taking me to Leonardo da Pinchi, and I need to dress the part.”

The girl’s eyes went wide in surprise, betraying she had no idea. She then raised a hand and covered her mouth in embarrassment as she picked up on what AJ was subtly putting down. Maggie wouldn’t have to be jealous of the psionic if she had a man of her own to occupy her thoughts. It was such an obvious solution that she genuinely felt terrible for not thinking of it. That said, she wasn’t about to let this chance slip away. She therefore gave the woman her full support. The requested garment was altered accordingly and handed over in less than a minute. AJ took it into the bathroom and locked herself inside as she started cleaning up.

It was at this point that Maggie finally let Joe into the apartment.

“What happened?! Are you alright?!”

The man was understandably flustered. He hadn’t heard much from the outside since the place was soundproofed, but he still felt a few worrisome tremors.

“Your concern is appreciated, but unnecessary,” she said her usual line.

“Unnecessary my arse! Look at you!”

Though Maggie had repaired her casual outfit, numerous cuts and bruises were visible on her face and through the thigh slit. Joe could immediately tell things had gotten extremely violent despite the apparent integrity of the apartment’s interior.

“These injuries are negligible and easily mended. I will tend to them immediately.”

She stepped forward and pulled the panicked man into an intense kiss. He didn’t resist, but the sudden gesture made him flail his arms around a bit. The man felt something flow out of the back of his throat and into Maggie. When she pulled back a few seconds later, she was completely healed and Joe was left a bit lightheaded. He momentarily found himself wishing Maggie would get in scraps more often, but chased that dubious thought away in favor of a more pressing concern.

“Where’s AJ?!”

“She is cleaning up and getting ready for her date.”

“She… What?”

“She is cleaning up and getting ready for her date,” Maggie graciously repeated herself.

“… Is it with Officer Maloney?”

“You knew about this development?” the girl blinked in surprise.

“No, just a guess.”

He figured it must have been a mutual acquaintance, and the policeman was without a doubt the most eligible bachelor of the lot. It was a bit strange that they decided to go out together even though their last meeting turned violent. Not that Joe was in any position to comment on weird ways to start a romantic relationship. He was simply wondering if getting into fights was simply how AJ made friends. It was a silly thought to be sure.

Yet, judging by how chipper and upbeat she was around Maggie from that day onward, that definitely seemed to be the case.