Deja Vu [DRAFT ONE: UPDATED DRAFT ABOVE]

7: Will

"We need to talk."

Karen doesn't grab me by the arm like Amanda does, when she needs something, but it's harder to break her grip even if she uses no physical contact.

"Is it important?" I ask. "I promised Amanda I'd watch her." I point to the 'sparring arena', which we're currently on the edge of. Amanda and Garrett are going paintbrush to halberd (my life is so weird) and given that Garrett only needs to open a small portal to stick a weapon through it and that Amanda is Amanda, they're pretty evenly matched. She's no longer using acid paint, but rather an oil-esque material in appearance that seems to have some kind of explosive properties, which she is fortunately not using to blow Garrett to smithereens.

Amanda scares me.

Karen frowns, partially disturbed by my profound lack of ability to pay attention. "Yes it's important."

"Shiloh might need us?"

"Shiloh! We're going to duck out for a few seconds." Karen yells.

The ferret's purple eyes blink open and he looks up from his bench, nodding to us. "Be right back!" His grin is a little unnerving, especially with his oddly canine teeth, but hey, Shiloh tries. Given that he's an alien whose conceptions of emotion and likely even thought processes are different from ours, I decide to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Karen leads me upstairs, towards our individual rooms. The four rooms are located around the four corners of the upper floor of the lair Shiloh's set up for us, while the sparring room is on the bottom floor, as is the exit back into the Veins. It's cozy, like one of those elegant, expensive log cabins in the woods, and it even has wooden pillars. It just so happens to be a log cabin with a sparring arena at its heart, no kitchen, and no actual wood, given that it's a projection created by our desires and some magic by Shiloh.

I think. He might've mentioned it being a pocket dimension at one point?

"I need to show you something." Karen says, pulling me aside.

"Cool, but why are we in Garrett's room?"

"Because he's the only one of us who's enough of a screen hog to literally place a TV in his magical pocket dimension mancave." Karen says. She places a hand to the box below the TV, which is more or less useless because we don't have reception down in the Veins, and it whirrs to life, the TV screen blinking to life with it. "See?"

"I don't get it."

"I'm a technopath. I can manipulate electronics."

"Oh!" I say, "Wait, how much can you do?"

"Right now, I can turn it on and off. I didn't expect to learn the language in a week. I only just figured out there was a language, or that I could speak it at all."

"But what you're saying is that you could do a lot more than short circuit machinery."

Karen nods stiffly, a faraway look in her eyes.

Never mind. All the girls scare me.

"Karen, you could actually take out the government if you got a handle on something like this."

"Well, thank goodness I'm not under the 'corrupting influence' of a Diosite shard-" she looks at me, sizing me up, "In theory."

I nod, but my clothes feel tight and I can feel myself shaking. "Have you told the others?"

"I've told Garrett." she says, "Amanda's busy right now, but hey, I'll talk to her. She's the creative type, so she probably has some ideas... you know, it's not like I'd hide crucial information from the group. Not much to hide." Lightning arcs between her fingers.