Becoming Monsters is the creation of AiLovesToGrow, setting used with permission.

  This idea comes from Amethyst Dragonfly.

  —

  Chapter 22: Simplicity Itself

  The next day dawned bright and clear. Abbey opened her eyes and savored a bit, the sheets comfortable, the bed soft, the memories of the day at the Guild Hall bright and clear. Slowly, she realized that something was off. A feeling she hadn’t had in almost a month. She had woken up alone.

  One sniff told her why. Coffee was brewing, and that meant Justin was up and at it. She gnced at the clock on the wall. Still early enough that she did not need to rush. Plenty of time to wonder about where the clock on the wall had come from, since she most certainly hadn’t put it there and there hadn’t been one when they went to sleep the previous evening. Eventually, something else unexpected came to her. The smell of eggs cooking. Justin did a lot, but on the culinary side he usually stuck to drinks. His solid food work at his workpce was usually limited to a microwave. It did smell good, though, and since the beep she soon heard usually indicated that the coffee was ready she decided to get to the rise and shine part of the morning.

  The kitchen held a few more surprises. The first was that Justin was not wearing pajamas, but athletic clothes. He looked a bit sweaty, and some sand was sticking to his legs in pces. Put it all together and he looked like he’d already gone for a run on the beach this morning. Which didn’t make any sense at all, since he hated running in sand, he’d also made breakfast, and even after he finished that it was still a bit earlier than he usually liked to get up. Justin looked up at the bedroom door as she emerged. “Hey love, perfect timing. Your coffee is on the table, I’m just finishing this up.”

  Her first sip was another shock. The coffee was about a step less sweet than he usually made, right on target for her favorite. He normally added a bit too much cream and sugar by reflex given what concoctions flew from his hands. She still liked it, so she didn’t say anything, but this time around she could see that there was an open sugar packet on the counter he’d used half of. “Oh, Justin, this is perfect!”

  He froze for a second. “Hold on. I thought I was putting too little… you like it better like this? And you never said anything?”

  “We’ve only been together a month, Justin, no matter how eventful it’s been. You were still dialing it in.”

  He tapped his forehead before turning back around to flip the eggs in the pan. “Maybe in real time, but I still have a couple of years worth of dates and talks up here the first w… huh, I’m allowed to say it now, aren’t I? That the first Wish gave me. Even in those I can’t remember you mentioning it.”

  “Caught me blue-handed. I didn’t mind, so I didn’t compin.” Abbey sat herself down in the seat, pondering this new change.

  “You could have, you know. I’d have fixed it, both at the shop and at home. Now let me also guess something. You like your eggs scrambled, cooked crispy, with herbs, served on toast open-face with a slice of pepper jack?”

  Abbey took another sip of her remarkably good coffee. “That is incredibly specific, and also a hundred and ten percent accurate. How did you guess?”

  He slid the eggs out of the pan and onto a pte, turned and set it in front of her. “Because that’s what I reflexively made for you this morning, when the st time I tried to cook an egg on a stovetop I had to use the lid to put out the fire.”

  It was also delicious, and by the time Justin finished making his own Abbey was looking apologetic with a nearly empty pte. He had made himself something almost identical, and started digging in. Abbey took another sip of coffee, swallowed, then thought to ask something that had been on her mind in the night. “How is your Status doing? I checked mine, and though my Ten aren’t degraded I’m still at 2% Mana. I’m afraid we’re going to be cleaning things by hand for a while.”

  Justin’s eyes got that slightly gssy look of someone checking their own screen. “Actually… exactly the same here. I’m at exactly two percent mana, and my Ten are all normal. Even being bnked yesterday, that’s really slow. Mind if I chug the second mana potion Ghata gave me? Not for nothing, I’d rather have some buffer.”

  “Good idea. From what I’ve heard, you’re going to want to wash it down with the coffee afterwards to get the taste out.”

  Justin’s face screwed up a bit. Drinking the st one what felt like a lifetime ago numbered among the worst things he had ever tasted. “Ugh, I was trying to forget that. Alright, be right back.” He went off to their bedroom to retrieve the vial, and by the time he got back out he found Todd pouring some coffee for himself as Abbey expined what was going on to both him and May. The Succubus, in turn, had her wings folded forward over her as a privacy cover, and under it Justin could hear little Alex enjoying a breakfast of his own.

  Todd saw him emerge and set down his coffee, pulled out a notebook, then got writing. “Alright, time to put my math major to use. Do you remember how much the st one gave you? They came from the same batch, so it’ll give us a decent baseline.”

  “Uh… not exactly. I drank it about ten minutes before I put myself in the hospital.”

  Todd's eyes flicked over the tracery of incredibly fine scars still visible on Justin’s skin. They were hard to notice unless an observer paid attention, but knowing what put them there made the Bard shudder. “Okay, good point. I’d probably forget specifics under those circumstances, too, and I’m the one with Bardic Knowledge. Got a ballpark, at least?”

  Justin scratched his head. “Probably fifty-ish percent? It was pretty strong.”

  Todd chuckled. “Yeah… say what you will about the taste, and I’ve said a lot, but the Alchemist May orders those from knows his stuff. Drink it whenever you’re ready.”

  “That would be never, but here goes nothing.” Justin popped the top, closed his eyes, and tossed it back like he was drinking to forget. His face afterwards looked like what he wanted to forget was ever having drank it. Abbey was standing, rubbing his back as he leaned on the thankfully-sturdy table and violently coughed.

  Todd nodded. “There are days I suspect that May keeps getting potions from him to make sure I don’t binge them.” May’s tiny smirk in response more or less confirmed this suspicion. “So, you were at 2% mana before. How about now?”

  Justin called up his screen to get another nasty shock. “I’m all the way up to eight percent.”

  The scratch of Todd’s pencil stopped abruptly. “So. We have something like a 90% reduction in effectiveness. That’s… uh, either really good or really bad. Or neither.”

  “How very specific of you.” Justin’s tone was significantly more sarcastic than his usual. Todd couldn’t bme him.

  “Sorry!” Todd looked a bit sheepish. “Chances are against your Mana pool suddenly multiplying itself by ten, so the excess probably had to go somewhere. Either to secure this Wish or to power previous ones is most likely. I would love to figure it out, really, and not just because it’s my homework until Alex can travel.”

  Abbey stiffened up. “I think I might know at least some of it. My own mana just jumped to eight percent.”

  Todd was suddenly scribbling notes again. “Okay, THAT is interesting. I’m assuming your Intelligence scores, Csses, and levels aren’t quite the same?” They shook their heads. “Then your mana pools shouldn’t be, either. So that means that when you poured water into that bucket, it went out proportionally, which means…” he trailed off into mumbles for a bit as he drew some diagrams, flipped a page in his notebook, and kept scribbling notes. Muttering to himself, he wandered back into the guest bedroom.

  “That’ll keep him busy for a while,” May chuckled. She reached under her wings to adjust something, then lifted her wings away from her body. It seemed Alex was done with his breakfast, snuggling onto his mother’s bosom on top of some kind of tank top. “Do you need anything from us?”

  Abbey shook her head. “Not really desperate, but if you want to grab some groceries I wouldn’t object. If I’m not greatly mistaken, the fridge got bigger overnight, so there should be plenty of room.”

  May looked at the appliance in question. “Gd I wasn’t just imagining things. I know I’m one to talk, dealing with dream logic as often as I do, but still. I’ll go grab some extra supplies with Ghata ter, Song’s back at the hospital today taking care of things. It’s Monday, after all, the people she needs to update are there now.”

  Justin winced again. “Right, Monday. That means the two of us have jobs to get to. At least for now. I’m handing in my notice today, even if my mana’s still not regenerating right at the end of it I’m pretty sure I can do better at Camp.”

  Abbey closed her eyes and nodded. “Same here. I got the job offer from the Marshal officially, and that starts in exactly two weeks from today. Wishes take the path of least resistance to work, and that means that what’s happening is easiest to accomplish by taking… what, sounds like eighty percent of our combined MP?”

  “No such thing as a small Wish, I guess. Even beyond our pools being linked somehow, the rest is doing things like teaching me to cook and making me wake up early to go on a run. That st bit was probably a big chunk of it by itself, by the way.” He finished the st bits of his coffee with a wry grin. “Let’s get cleaned up and dressed, at least. We have time.”

  The two got to it, but yet another difference from the day before showed itself. Their shower was no less cuddly or flirty than the many they had shared, but somehow they were clean and finished in just about half the time. Every time Abbey turned around, Justin seemed to have the exact thing in hand she needed. Shampoo? Check, he was already massaging it in. Loofah? Soaped up and waiting. Towel? He even knew to pass her the less-fluffy one for her head first to let her get it wrapped up.

  It was as they were getting dressed that Justin suddenly paused again. “Hey, Abs? Random question.”

  “I might have a random answer. Give it to me.” Abbey couldn’t use her magic quite as effectively, so she was having to struggle a bit with an actual button-down shirt.

  “You said that Wishes follow the path of least resistance, right?” Justin was pulling his apron down from a hanger to put into his backpack.

  “Always. A Wish will do everything to make the request happen, but if there’s more than one way it’ll try to go for the one that uses less power. I think that’s why we didn’t see Attribute burn this time, what you asked for is… really close to who you already are. It just had to fill in a bit to do it.”

  Justin thought for a second. “Then that means… when I made the first one, for a good girlfriend. It didn’t necessarily have to make you into that person? You were the best pick, least resistance. Does that mean you were already close to asking me out?”

  Abbey froze. She heard the words, even understood them, then experienced a complete mental blue screen. Justin was completely correct. When he’d made his Wish, it had been for “a good girlfriend.” He didn’t target her, he didn’t say he wanted a Genie or some other precise thing that would require it to target her, so that meant that the Wish had looked for the woman who was closest to being there already. In any other world, she would have gotten to him that night in time to give him a stern talking-to about the gravity of his two remaining Wishes and told him how to recognize whomever the Wish had decided on. But… it was her. The Wish had only needed to tweak one event and fill in the gaps. “I… I think so. Heck, Brittany and I were talking about it as we were walking to the BuckStar that evening, and she was encouraging me to get it together to ask you out.”

  Justin’s smile was broad, his heart lightened. “Color me relieved. I woke up this morning thinking about it, Abs. I didn’t want the start of what we have to have been you being forced into it.”

  “And that’s why you’re you, love.” Abbey managed to get herself moving again despite blushing a deep purple and metaphorically melting into a gooey puddle of feels. “I’m pretty sure that was part of your definition of ‘good,’ anyway. If you forced someone into it, that’s not a good situation. So, uh, not to change the topic, but where exactly did you run to?”

  “Nowhere in particur. Just along the sand, turned right and kept going until I felt it was long enough, got back and started the coffee just in time for it to finish when you walked out. Seriously, how?”

  “The first Wish gave us a lot of memories, Justin. This one’s teaching you everything I like and need, then nudging you along that path. Pretty sure you could stop yourself from doing it, but it’s putting the Good Hubby Checklist in there from top to bottom.”

  “You actually have a checklist, that includes egg sandwiches?”

  “Metaphorically speaking, Justin.” Abbey adjusted her tie.

  Justin was ready, too. “While I know that’s USUALLY obvious, Abs, please know that in this situation it really isn’t. Going to take a while to get used to this.”

  “Pain killers are in the cupboard. Our mana is high enough to keep the bad headaches at bay, but your muscles are going to start getting really sore around dinner time. Take some now while you have food on your stomach and more when you get your break, okay?”

  Justin was already wearing a smile, but if he hadn’t been that would have given him one. “You got it, love. I have to get to css, but I’ll see you at the end of shift?”

  “Sure thing.”

  Justin gave his fiancee one more hug then got going. He got his ptop and tablet into his backpack along with his homework. Through the door to his dorm, across campus, to his waiting css. Despite everything, he’d managed to get himself caught up on Literature. Actually slightly ahead, he had the homework assignment for NEXT css already mostly done. He wrote, he sketched, he answered questions, he ate, and he did it all again, he dropped by a computer b to print out his two weeks notice. It was all smooth, it was all according to his pns for the day. Two months ago, having a day go this well would have either given him new life or been a sign of the end times. Today it felt like it could go no other way.

  The magical feeling managed to st the entirety of eight hours. Enough to carry him through his school day, to the bus, over to his workpce, waving to his coworkers. Enough to make sure he had a few minutes before his shift was supposed to start, then knock on the manager’s door.

  An annoyed grunt of a “who is it?” answered him.

  “Justin, sir. Can I talk to you for five minutes before going on shift?” Justin’s heart was thudding in his chest, and he had to invoke every bit of discipline he had to follow this one through. Come on, man, you rewrote reality yesterday. This can’t be THAT bad.

  Another annoyed grunt. “Come in.”

  Justin opened the door. The man was glowering at him from his chair. “Thank you sir. I wouldn’t have knocked, but it’s important.”

  “You just got a raise, so you’re not getting another one.”

  Justin breathed in deeply to settle himself. “That wasn’t it, sir. I…”

  “Spit it out, your shift starts in three minutes.”

  “I got a job offer as an apprentice at the Guild Hall.” Those words hung in the air between them for a moment. Justin opened up his backpack to pull out the letter he had written, offering it to his boss. “This is my two weeks notice. I intend to accept the offer. I like the job, but between me being a semester from graduating and needing more than this company is willing to give, I couldn’t stay.”

  The manager grabbed the paper and gnced at it briefly. “You sure about this?”

  “I am. I was making four times as much per hour there sharpening knives. Even if my apprenticeship doesn’t work out, that will put me a lot closer to paying off student loans and paying for a home.” He forebore to mention that the home in question was a mansion that was paid off, and that he was just trying to keep up on taxes. It didn’t matter for this conversation.

  “Alright then. Hand in your apron and name tape, you will not go on the counter today, and you will not be needed any other day. Go home. We will mail you your st check.” His expression had not shifted in the slightest. He had looked exactly like that the st time he’d told Justin to mop up a spill.

  Justin felt like he’d been punched in the gut. He wasn’t ready to go work at the Camp full-time, not with his mana issues unresolved. He tried to not let it show on his face. “Yes, sir.” His boss… former boss… turned back to his computer, presumably finding someone to cover the closing shift. Then again, maybe not. Justin had worked at that location for two and a half years. Gone, as if it had never been. Justin took off his apron and name tape, set them on the chair to his side, turned, and left the room.

  Two blocks away, Abbey was knocking on a simir door. A woman’s voice called “come in!”

  The office held two people. One was a petite, pale Human woman with a dark pixie cut. The other was a much smaller, equally pale Pixie. This was the pce where hopes and dreams went to live or die in this bank. Human Resources. The Pixie was the speaker, using an accessibility app on a tablet to speak. Like many of her kind, she didn’t have a voice of her own.

  “Um. Hello. This is a bit awkward.” It was also a situation that Abbey hadn’t ever really thought through for herself.

  The Human woman to her left tapped a few keys on her keyboard, presumably calling up a file. “I’m not seeing any particur reason you have to be in front of us looking nervous, Abbey! No compints, good performance reviews, good adaptability even during Status issues. That’s rare.”

  “So, that episode with my Status is part of this. Nobody made me feel unwelcome! Far from it! I love this team, and they’ve been good to me.”

  “I hear a ‘but’ coming. Do I need to pull up separation forms?” The woman swiveled in her chair to look at the folders on a shelf behind her.

  “I’m sorry, but you do. This is my two weeks notice, I have received a job offer from Marshal Jordan Shapiro at the Guild Hall, which I intend to accept.”

  The woman shook her head, as did the Pixie. “Well, now that’s a darned shame. Melodie, standard separation forms, or do I have to do something different for a notice? This is new to me.”

  The Pixie flew over to the bookshelf and tapped a folder three to the right of the one the woman was looking at.

  “Ah, yeah, that would make sense. Okay, Abbey, you have three things to do for us in the next two weeks. Well, I call it three things, but each of those is a checklist. One for separation, one for change of duties so that we know where you went, and one for training someone to your primary duties if possible. Ask your supervisor about who that will be.”

  The Pixie flew back to the pad on her desk and started dancing around the surface. The woman’s voice emerged from it. “Busy two weeks coming for you. Sorry.”

  Abbey’s shoulders sagged. “That is a relief. I’ll get started on that right away.”

  “One more thing,” the Human woman delicately interjected. “You will still need to keep up with most of your duties, but we cannot allow you to sign for closing a drawer or counter and cannot let you take things in or out of the vaults. Sorry about that, but it is a security thing now that you know you’re leaving.”

  “I completely understand. Thank you. Supervisor and Legal are on the list, so I’d better do them first.” Abbey turned and walked out of HR, the thumb of her left hand rubbing the brand new ring on her ring finger. She was on her way to a new opportunity.

  It was getting te back home. Justin had sent Abbey a text telling her he wouldn’t be at the coffee shop before he hopped on the bus to make his way back to the seaside manor.Todd had been pying with his newborn son in the living room out front, but one look at Justin’s face had convinced him to leave the man alone… and tell the other guests to do the same. As he’d stood on the beach to feel the sun, Justin felt his new ring grow a bit warm. Comforting, really, like Abbey had held his hand for just that moment. It helped. The sun had set, and now Justin was sitting on the dock. Legs swinging over the open water, mind everywhere and nowhere at once.

  He’d done it. He’d proposed… ish… to Abbey. He’d meant it, too. Even with hindsight being 20/20, he would not change the Wish he’d made. What it meant was still anyone’s guess. Other than cooking lessons, a couple of extra yers of instincts for what she’d need, and an unholy kind of motivation for exercise, anyway. He’d wished to be as good a husband to her as she had been a girlfriend to him. That was a lot. More than a lot, Abbey was an actual magical Genie, bending her talents and pure goodness to turn his life around. What could he ever hope to do that would ever come close to being the equal of that?

  She had it all. Before they were together she had the better life trajectory, better job, the more powerful Race, a completed degree in a better field, everything. He’d had a job slinging coffee for barely over minimum wage and a severe case of burnout. Now he’d traded the job for a busted gss sword, some scars, and a truck load of hope for a future he prayed he could make. The burnout had evaporated, but in its wake came the simultaneous determination to do something with his life and the utter terror of failure to do so. After all, if he failed it wasn’t just him anymore. She’d said yes, and Abbey wasn’t the kind of person to lie. No matter what he did, he’d be dragging her through it. Already had, really.

  He stood up, there at the edge of the pier, and pulled one particur shard of gss out of his pocket. The pommel stone, stained red with his own blood. While his mana was still critically low, he felt he had enough to do one thing. He grasped it in his palm and focused, the process not taking more than fifteen seconds or so. In the end, he opened his hand and blew the dried blood away over the ocean with a single puff of air, having pulled it out of the now-clear orb. Justin might have bled to come this far, but moving forward he had to take care of himself if he was going to hope to take care of Abbey. His wife.

  As the cold autumn breeze began to blow, Justin walked back to the seaside manor. Abbey would be back soon, and he didn’t want to wait the extra minute or two it would take for her to find him out back before he was in her arms again.