Chapter 22: Book 1: Chapter 10 (Part 1 of 2)

I was back in the faux-admissions office with the green wallpaper and the beige carpet. Everything was the same with the secretary sitting behind her desk and the huge double doors leading to Dean’s office on the right-hand side. The only difference was this time Shana was with me.

“This is not what it was like before,” she whispered, and her hand reached out, touching mine. I took hold of her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

“This is what I saw. According to Dean, they used some kind of expectation filter,” I explained and tugged on her hand, moving us toward the desk.

Before I could say anything, the bespectacled secretary looked up from her paperwork and smiled.

“Mr Carter, lovely to see you again and it is a pleasure to meet you too, Miss Colton. The Dean of Admissions has instructed me to send you in directly,” she chirped and pointed to the oversized double doors.

“Thank you,” I said politely and led Shana to the doors which opened automatically as we approached.

We walked through and the doors slammed shut as they had the first time. Shana jumped at that, but I’d been expecting it, so I kept my cool. The start-up warehouse-style office of Dean’s was unchanged except for the presence of a row of old school arcade games and pinball machines on the wall to our right.

“Motherfucker!” Dean screamed as he ran across the room and invaded my personal space.

The scruffy man embraced me enthusiastically, though since I’d gained a few inches in height and had been taller than him before I could see clearly over the top of his head. He was in the same Hooters T-shirt and blue denim shorts and his vocabulary was as excessively vulgar as ever.

He held the hug just long enough to make it uncomfortable and then released me.

“Hey, Dean. Good to see you,” I said neutrally.

Dean didn’t pick up on my ambivalence and kept going. “You too, you big bastard. What are those muscles made of? Iron?” he chuckled.

“This must be the young lady you picked up,” Dean leered, turning to Shana who was a little dumbstruck at his exuberance. “She’s a sexy fucking babe, Torin. Why haven’t you fucked her yet?”

“For shit’s sake Dean,” I growled at him angrily and gave him a little shove on his shoulder. “That’s super inappropriate and a really shitty first impression, might I add. Wait, does that mean you’re watching us?” I asked as his words sunk in.

“Yeah,” Dean said, exaggerating the implied stupidity of my question. “What the fuck else am I going to do?”

“I don’t know, run this Framework that has transformed the world,” I griped, stating the obvious.

“Pfff...it runs itself mostly, and I have peons to do the rest, so I people watch. Not just you, so don’t go getting a big head thinking you’re the Grand Poohbah or something,” he laughed at his own joke.

“That’s not my point and you know it, arsehole,” I grumbled, my anger overriding my sense of self-preservation.

Fortunately, Dean was in an amiable mood and didn’t take my berating him in a bad way.

“Untwist your knickers mofo, your language is almost as fucking bad as mine,” he grinned.

“You’re obviously a bad influence,” I snarked back.

He shrugged that off and took Shana’s hand in his and bowed slightly.

“I apologise profusely, Mademoiselle,” he crooned, and kissed the back of her hand. “But you really should fuck him. Acheronians have big fucking cocks and the stamina to go for hours on end.”

Shana’s cheeks blushed a deep scarlet at his direct line of advice.

“Um…thanks, I think…Dean,” she stammered and withdrew her hand.

“No worries,” he told her. “Well, as I have been watching, some of the time, I know you haven’t even got your core yet, Torin. We can’t be here for you, so it must be for this little lady. Let’s take a look under the hood.”

As he finished talking, he reached out and tried to lift up Shana’s shirt. I reacted without thinking and my hand shot out, grabbed his wrist and pulled him forcefully to the side. My other hand whipped up, grasped him by the throat and slammed him into the wall behind us.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing,” I growled in a cold rage.

Literally. Ice crystals started to form on Dean’s throat where I gripped him.

“In addition to having big fucking cocks, Acheronians are a mite bit over-protective of their women,” Dean wisecracked conversationally, as if he wasn’t being throttled by me. “You can let go, dude. You can’t fucking hurt me, and it was a joke, in retrospect, I admit, not a very funny one. I, of course, meant getting a look at Shana’s character sheet.”

“Torin, you can let him go,” Shana pleaded.

She had moved up to my side and laid a hand gently on the arm that still gripped Dean tightly. The cold rage faded sufficiently that I could bring myself to release him.

“Don’t overstep again, Dean,” I barked, unable to stop myself from threatening him.

I put my arm around Shana’s waist and pulled her in close and she nuzzled in tightly and it felt exceptionally good.

“They are also super possessive and domineering,” Dean continued as he brushed the ice particles away. “But that’s not a problem for you is it, Shana,” he chuckled knowingly.

“No, it’s not,” she retorted unperturbed, having already adjusted to Dean’s attempts at embarrassment.

“Then my work is done,” Dean extolled with fake piety. “The match is made.”

I’d calmed down enough to discern a smidgen of what he was up to, after all, Shana was now ensconced in my embrace.

“Dean, you’d be like, the matchmaker from hell,” I said, blowing a soft raspberry at him. “And for the record, I didn’t need any help in that regard.”

“Snoozers are losers,” he shouted over his shoulder as he walked over to his bean bag corner.

He pushed a couple of the bean bags together and then patted them. indicating we should come and join him.

As we walked over, I muttered. “Not rushing something isn’t snoozing.” Shana laughed lightly at my sulky comeback.

“Tonight, though?” she whispered hopefully.

“Oh, fuck yeah, no matter what,” I answered.

We settled into the bean bags and Dean grinned at us.

“Okay, what have we got to work with here? Civilian! Well, that sucks. But you have plenty of unallocated potential which is something we can definitely work with,” he muttered to himself.

Then his glassy-eyed expression vanished, and his focus snapped back on us. I was 99% sure he was Hollywooding again. He already knew everything there was to know about Shana and me. Dean was acting like this was all new to him, but I was sure he had decided which path he was going to direct us down before we got here. Some of what had occurred during our first day, the quests, and loot drops were a bit too convenient to be entirely coincidental.

“Alrighty then,” Dean started. “It is beholden upon me as your guide to remind you that you can choose to be utterly fucking stupid and refuse the awesome advice I’m about to give. It is your character and therefore your choice, well Torin’s really since your soulbound to him but let’s not sweat the dirty details, time enough later for that. You can choose to advance to level two of Civilian if you wish.”

Dean gagged as he said this and then theatrically mimed puking all over the room for ten seconds. I shook my head at his antics.

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“Dean, today, please,” I requested.

He settled back onto his bean bag, by which I mean he fell off a few times, imitating Chevy Chase, before returning to the matter at hand.

“If the meaning of my display somehow fucking escaped your notice don’t do this. Torin, go all dominant Acheronian on her if you need to,” Dean said.

Shana interrupted whatever other plea he planned to make. “I have no interest in being a Civilian. How do I use the unallocated potential?”

Dean brightened up and steepled his fingers drumming them together. “Excellent,” he said aping Monty Burns. “It’s easy-peasy. You basically get a do-over on your initial character creation. Your potential is high, so you have two broad possibilities for building your new character. You can remain human and take a P-grade class. P-grade classes are the bottom rung of the third tier of classes. They are pretty decent and wouldn’t be a terrible use of your integration potential, or you change to a second-tier species and still have enough left over for an S, R or Q-grade class which are at the top of the second tier. What you can go for depends on which species you pick.”

 “Your bossman here,” Dean said and lightly punched my arm. “Has a third-tier species and a K-grade class plus a few other bells and whistles. And you’ve seen what a badass he is, right?”

Shana nodded, silently absorbing what Dean was telling her.

“My advice,” he went on, “is take the latter. This is a special rule-ignoring moment where many options are open to you, especially on the species change front, which will be closed or very difficult to obtain after this. You might be a few stat points lighter by taking a slightly lower grade class in the short term but shifting up the class tree is a lot easier than bumping your species tier.”

“I’m not sure,” Shana said uncertainly.

I couldn’t imagine the idea of changing species appealed to her, it certainly hadn’t to me when Dean informed me that I’d become an Acheronian, though I was adjusting to the reality of it remarkably quickly. That could be due to the cataclysmic events unfolding around me and I might experience a total freak out when I got some downtime. Time would tell on that front.

“Here,” Dean said, producing a tablet that was too large for it from his pocket. “I have taken the liberty of putting together a sample of suitable selections for you to peruse. These take advantage of your naturally strong Mana capacity and absorption. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Don’t worry I’ve filtered out all of the fucking hideous ones,” he said brightly.

Shana took the pad from him and absently thanked him, her eyes already glued to the screen as she started reading through the contents.

“Shana, will you be okay looking through this for a minute by yourself? I need to have a private word with Dean,” I asked her.

“Mmm, yes,” she mumbled distractedly.

I stood up from the bean bags and motioned to Dean to follow. We walked over to the arcade games. I noticed the closest was a classic Pac-Man game.

“What’s up dude, why the cloak and fucking dagger?” Dean said.

“I just wanted to ask you some personal stuff, okay,” I said.

“Got it. I know what you’re going to ask,” he said.

“You do?” I questioned.

“Sure man, you’re my main motherfucker and I know exactly what’s on your mind. Shana is clean as a whistle, dude. No need to bag and tag your meat soldier when he’s on deployment,” Dean winked. “Not like the girl you dated at college who had the clap. Although since the Framework’s come online, there isn’t any venereal disease to speak of,” he said.

“Fucking Nora,” I swore, and rubbed my temples. “That is not what I wanted to talk about.”

“Oh, fuck, sorry dude, my bad. Got my wires crossed a bit. I see where you’re coming from now. Yes, you can totally knock her up even though you’ll be different species, the Framework has absolutely taken that into account. Although as a third-tier species your fertility is restricted,” Dean confided.

“What the fuck?” I yelped in surprise.

That wasn’t what I wanted to talk about either, but the information was plenty disturbing. Dean mistook the cause of my startlement and blathered on.

 “There is nothing wrong with your swimmers, dude. It’s necessary to limit the number of high-tiered people, otherwise, they’d dominate the galaxy in a couple of centuries. But it’s all cool, just means you get to fuck her loads and there is nothing wrong with that, am I right?” he said and elbowed me in his idea of shared camaraderie.

“Bloody hell, Dean. This is not about sex,” I whisper-snarled at him.

“I know dude. I’m fucking with you,” he laughed. “But just so there is no misunderstanding like last time, everything I said is true. You don’t need condoms. And you will probably need to fuck a girl three or four hundred times before she’ll become receptive to your seed. After that, you’re good to become her baby daddy.”

“You’re still doing it,” I snapped.

“I know, funny isn’t it. But seriously breeding is going to be something that affects you as you incorporate your new Acheronian instincts and drives. Which is what you dragged me over here to discuss isn’t it?” he asked rhetorically.

Bugger. He had me dead to rights. That was precisely why I wanted to talk to him.

Shrugging off his know-it-all pomposity I said. “I have concerns, yes.”

He put his hands on my shoulders “Son, don’t be ashamed of your urges, this is all perfectly natural and something everyone goes through. Now, let’s take these sheets down to the laundry room before your Mum gets home, yeah,” he said, faking a parental ‘talk’.

I pushed his hands away. “You’re an ass, you know that right?”

“Fucking A I am. However, my mockery has an apt purpose. What you are experiencing is somewhat like puberty. You have undergone a sudden physical change that has altered your biochemistry. Yes, it will have a modest effect on your behaviour, but it won’t radically alter it and in a few days, you won’t even notice,” he said, finally taking this talk seriously.

“Fine. That is a relief I suppose,” I confessed.

“Of course, it is, Torin. No one likes feeling like they are being controlled externally,” he empathised.

I searched his face for any hint that was another backhanded joke at my expense, considering what he had imposed on me. I couldn’t see any, perhaps the irony of his statement truly was lost on him.

“What was all that crap about having babies? I only met Shana yesterday and I’m way too young to be a father,” I told him.

He laughed hysterically in my face for a full minute. When he straightened up and got a view of my nonplussed expression, he relented a little.

“Oh, you’re being serious. You’ll understand what I mean when you plug your appliance into her socket for the first time. That particular urge will overpower whatever pathetic resistance you think you’ll be putting up,” he chuckled.

“You just said these changes weren’t going to control me,” I said, exasperated with him.

“And they won’t. All living things have a powerful drive to procreate, you humans with all your success have just become adept at suppressing it,” he explained. “Guess what? You aren’t human anymore, you’re an Acheronian and for them, that drive is even more intense.”

“Overpopulation and climate change are concerns of the past. Whatever walls of logical arguments your cogent mind will erect will be battered aside by the wrecking ball of want, need, and desire. When you’re balls deep between that pretty young things legs there is only one thing you’re going to be thinking about doing. And the bond between you is only going to intensify that need and transfer it over to Shana, to boot.”

“Which is a good point I probably ought to have warned you about. You’ll want to think carefully about who else you soulbond unless banging uggers and raising a brood with them floats your boat,” he finished.

“Christ, do you have to be so crude,” I groused at him.

“I may be crude, but I’m also right. The only way you can feasibly avoid becoming a parent in the Darkwyrlds would be to take a vow of celibacy. Fancy that, do you?” Dean taunted me.

Celibacy wasn’t on the cards, not under any circumstances.

“Oh, look I think Shana has narrowed down her selections. Let’s go take a look at what she’s picked out,” he said, changing the subject and crossed the room to where Shana waited for us expectantly.

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