Twisted Destiny

Gamma hooked me up to a whole bunch of different apparatuses, some of which I had already seen the last time Gamma examined me but she had also brought along quite a few new ones. An interesting sight to behold apart from the fact that being hooked up by this many cables and medical patches was quite frightening as well.

“I’m sorry for this, Amicia.” Gamma commented as she put another cold patch on my forehead. “But I need to do this to get the most complete image of what’s happening with you.”

“Go ahead. I don’t really mind.”

“You look pretty goofy with that sticker on your forehead though.” My sister poked my forehead.

“Watch out or you might get electrocuted with about one-million volts.” Gamma warned, looking incredibly serious.

I’ve never seen my sister pull her hand back faster at which point Gamma smirked. “That was a joke, wasn’t it.”

“Yep, sorry. I had to do it.” She chuckled as she continued hooking up more and more machinery to my body.

“You aren’t going to turn her into a cyborg, right?” Hilda asked, also, hopefully, jokingly.

“No, I just want to cover every avenue I can, I’m even checking her chakras.”

“You can do that with one of your machines?”

“I have a machine for everything. Some are more experimental than others though, but they shouldn’t be dangerous.”

“Shouldn’t?” Sam squinted.

“I’ve tested them all on myself and I didn’t die, neither did I get hurt. The one machine that did, I’m not going to attach to her.”

“What did you make that one for?” My girlfriend looked intrigued, cupping her chin in her hand.

Gamma froze for a second as she thought about it. “I think… If I recall correctly I wanted to have one to massage my muscles while I was asleep. Apparently I didn’t ground it correctly as it shocked me pretty badly.”

“Oh, I remember that.” Veanya nodded. “You looked so fluffy afterwards. All your hair was standing up straight for a week.”

“Yeah….” Gamma agreed. “Was pretty painful at that moment but rather funny looking back at it.”

My family then let Gamma get on with her work as they didn’t want to let our Purple ADHD Tornado lose too much focus. They occupied themselves mostly with me, trying to keep me from getting more anxious or bored. It had already become pretty clear that no one was going to get to work today; but Hilda had already managed to find a good excuse for their absence so at least for her and my two parent figures that wasn’t going to be an issue.

After about an hour, a piece of paper got printed out of one of Gamma’s machines. “I see I see.” Gamma nodded, intrigued by the data that she was gathering. “That’s better news than what I had expected.”

“What are you seeing, my dear colleague?” Veanya was the first to jump up.

“I actually found a sign in one of the data sheats of the entity that’s inhabiting Ami.” She replied to the point. “It’s a very very easy to miss detail but my eye just managed to fall on it.” She showed the paper to Veanya who quickly started studying it.

My sister joined Veanya in looking at the piece of paper, but her confused look betrayed that she didn’t understand much of what was on it. “First of all… What language is that… Second of all, I don’t see anything.”

“It’s a shared scientific language a lot of us deities use. As you might gather, English isn’t very widely spoken throughout the divine realms. This language, which doesn’t really have a name, is basically our lingua franca.” Veanya replied to the first question. “But as for your second question… I must say I’m also not seeing what you are referring to, Gamma.”

“If I use some human technology as an example, what you are seeing there is both Amicia’s baseline magical ‘frequency’.” She air quoted that last word. “Aside from that is the frequency of her magic right now.”

“It’s a lot stronger now, yeah.” Veanya nodded. “And it keeps increasing.”

“Yep, that’s what it should look like, yes. She’s gaining followers at a steady pace and we are already quite some time further than that first measurement.” Gamma confirmed. “I ran some extra calculations, using a couple of formulas to isolate only her base frequency. You can see that on this purple line over here.”

“Ah, okay.” Veanya looked at the data again but then waited for Gamma to continue her explanation anyway.

“What I found is that there’s a different mana frequency somewhat hidden in Amicia’s which quite possibly is the devil that’s inside of her head.”

“Alright, and what can be done about it?” Sam crossed her arms as she came to stand beside me.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” I asked, a bit dumbfounded at that reply.

“Not as far as I know right now, but that’s not necessarily bad news. It’s not optimal, but not bad either.”

“Having a devil stuck inside her head is quite bad I would like to argue.” My sister squinted at our purple Goddess.

“That’s why I would like to add the last nuance.” Gamma smiled. “The deviant frequency is slowly but surely losing power. Aligning itself with Amicia’s over time.”

“So your little theory from earlier that the devil is being influenced by Amicia actually carries weight?”

“Basically, yes. Her state of being is being aligned with Amicia, slowly, but it’s definitely happening.”

My sister nodded enthused at what she was hearing. “Do you know how long it will take for her presence to be completely gone?”

“Hard to tell. Could be a week, could be a month, could even be longer than that. Depends on the half-life time being constant. If it is, I’d say about two weeks. If it’s not, which is more likely the case seeing as Amicia doesn’t live in a vacuum, everything could happen. But I doubt her influence will rise. So she probably has the worst behind her.”

While this news should delight me, I didn’t feel too good about it.

“What’s wrong, Ami, you don’t look too happy about it?” Sam was quick to pick up on my hesitation. “Is it Diana’s influence?”

“No, I’m pretty sure this is my own sentiment…” I replied, certain of my words. “It might sound weird, but I feel kind of sorry about her.”

“She tried to kill me, kind of succeeded in doing so…”

“I know, I know… but identity death…” I shuddered, “That’s still quite rough.”

“I get where you are coming from, Sis, but like Sam said, that’s not a good person who is stuck inside of you. Don’t forget she got there by her own volition. She literally tried to do a hostile takeover of your own body.”

“I know…” I crossed my arms and puffed my cheeks up. Rationally I knew that this was probably not something to be sad about. I mean, that devil had probably destroyed several planets worth of life, we even conversed with some of the ‘survivors’.

But to just feel yourself being eaten away, slowly… Without the possibility to do anything about it…

“Well, I, for one, am happy that you don’t take it lightly, Amicia.” Nikki commented and grabbed me for a hug. “I would be more worried if you took it lightly. Your vengeance-like alter ego wouldn’t dare to think twice about it.”

“I would somewhat prefer her to deal with the emotional backlash…” I replied.

“I would rather not because the neighbours won’t like my kitchen island getting sliced in half again.” My sister tried to lighten up the mood by cracking a small joke.

“Maybe I’ll just let her slice the sofa then, it’ll make less noise.”

“As long as your magic gets the sofa fluff back inside of it I’m fine with that.” Élise ruffled her hand through my hair.

“Are you going to continue doing some more tests, Gamma?” Sam asked after my sister and I had calmed down again.

Gamma nodded, taking back the paper that had made its way into Hilda’s hands. “Just to be sure I haven’t missed anything, yes. I might be a bit hyperactive but I do like to be thorough.”

“I wouldn’t want it any other way.” Sam approved Gamma’s message. “Keeping my Amicia safe is my top priority.”

“Aside from spreading the gay agenda.” I smiled.

“That’s a very close second, my love. And they are also not mutually exclusive.”

“That much is true.” I stuck out my tongue ever so slightly.

“So while we are waiting for Gamma to finish… Is it okay if we listen to the radio or do something else?” Nikki asked.

“I can tolerate music while I’m working, but I would prefer you to not play any games while I’m around. Otherwise my attention will go to that instead.” Gamma answered. “Some kind of lo-fi music if that’s okay. Those calm beats help my mind be orderly and well-structured.”

“Alright, some smooth beats coming right up for the cat in purple.” Nikki smiled and got the remote of the radio set.