Blending In, Pixie Style

There are times when all you can do is blend in and hope to remain unnoticed.

Blending in is especially important when you are on foreign hostile territory spying on the preparations of an enemy unit. Particularly when you are going to have to go up against said enemy unit within two months.

Then there are other times when the way you blend in, might be slightly different than expected.

"People were vying for power, and our protagonist was caught smack-dab right in the center of it all," I continue my story, going full into narrator mode, using all the voices and vocal ranges that I had practiced for years.

By now the kids were all sitting comfortably under the impromptu tree that had apparently appeared overnight and been the first thing that the kids ran towards when they got up from their slumber. Knowing that it would look odd for this tree to randomly appear, I decided to double down.

"Oh, magic tree, is the protagonist pretty?" One girl calls out from the crowd.

"Very pretty, with a chiseled jawline that could be used to carve the hardest of stones with. Arms so strong they could lift a fully grown cow." I say trying to tailor the story for my audience who are of course little kids who for some reason were allowed to go unattended on a Saturday morning.

"Holy cow, these kids are eating this story up?" Raygunnr adds, cutting into my rhythm with his own commentary. Fortunately, his Mana Language doesn't seem to be recognized by the kids.

Just as I think that, I see one of the quiet boys in the back, tilt their head quizzically at us. Yes, my way of blending in had completely changed due to the audience that we were now dealing with. Kids naturally inquisitive would no doubt come explore and then likely warn their parents of our arrival. Regardless of how this went, our cover was blown. So now the idea was to keep the kids as entertained for as long as possible without giving up the idea that we were a trio of foreign spies hiding in a magical tree that randomly appeared in the middle of enemy territory. Simple, right?

Our plan was simple. We would hide here, gathering more information on the enemy movements and capabilities. I would provide the distraction to the kids by telling them stories, Zero would watch and share his findings once we left, and of course Raygunnr would just sit here and have to live vicariously through us, which was why he was now adding his oh so colorful commentary.

"You realize we aren't exactly hiding," Raygunnr adds, apparently reading my thoughts easily as part of our conjoined pair bonding experience. "I mean, from what I can tell we are a three meter tall tree by now, not including how far down our roots have gone. Hey, just how far have our roots gone?"

With that I smile, and decide to continue with my story.

"Now our hero, he had a big problem, what do you think that problem was?" I pose to the kids, letting them tell me the story they want to hear.

"He had really bad breath?" One boy calls out.

"Yes, a chiseled jaw that produced excessively bad breath," I repeat. "But that wasn't all."

"Oh, he was cursed," another girl calls out.

"Yes, cursed with what?"

"A giant bald spot," yet another child called out.

"You really are just going to do this? Here as well, outsource your story to the students?" Ray asks, still apparently hung up on my unique way of trying to get out of teaching classes, which I have now incorporated into my story telling practices.

Hobble, hobble.

At this point, I see the small form of a little girl limping forward. Her right leg clearly missing from just below the kneecap, as she uses a carved wooden crutch under her right arm. It was clear that either the crutch was made wrong, as she was now taller than the crutch, or she had grown since she first sustained the injury. Either way, I couldn't help but feel sorry for the girl.

"Bruu-der," the girl's exhausted voice cries out. Only after hearing the cry did a boy near the front, the one that called out about bad breath looks suddenly flustered, before getting up and turning around to see his sister.

"I bet they call her Eileen," Raygunnr posed, his voice mocking as he told what he thought was one of the funniest jokes ever. I just groan with the exceptionally poor taste in puns.

Then I see a faintly corrupted thread of dull golden karma flow from Raygunnr out and connect to the little girl. I am watching this exchange, trying to understand exactly what is happening and how karma is now being tied to this event.

When the boy, the obvious brother gets up and cries out, "Ileena, what are you doing out of bed?"

Closing my eyes, I now understand something deeper about karma and what it is capable of. To the world's perspective this child was just an unnamed character that only gained value once we interacted with it, as such the name of the child was not applied until it was dictated. Now, with Raygunnr's comment, the system chose that moment to assign her a terrible name that was also a pun.

Hearing the brother call out the poor girl's unfortunately accurate name, Raygunnr cringed, "ohh, that is unfortunate."

"Hope you are happy," I reply in Mana Language to that comment.

"What? You can't blame that on me? That is an unfortunate coincidence." Raygunnr responded defensively.

With that, I fully connect a Telepathic link between the two of us, where I reply that last memory of the corrupted thread of karma heading out from us, well Raygunnr, with me as an unwilling hostage, out to the little girl, where her fate was instantly corrupted by his comments.

"Oh wow, that explains so much about this world and its seemingly Ironic names, that poor girl." He responded, clearly feeling guilty about the unfortunate comment.

"See, told you that you weren't funny," I reply. I can tell that he almost wants to argue with the comment, but then I realize that I can still take this thread of seemingly negative or at least corrupted karma and purify it a bit.

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"Ileena, is that you?" I call out, not quite knowing what I am going to do, but I choose this moment to fire purifying rays of Holy magic down at all of the children. With a highly focused ray focusing directly at Ileena.

"You speak?" Ileena asks, excitedly.

"Yes, but we need to keep this a secret, for I am a magical tree," I respond.

"Everyone knows trees can't use magic," one of the skeptical boys calls out from the front.

Hearing that, I just pause, and make the obvious rebuttal.

"I'm a talking tree, trust me, I can do magic," with that rebuttal, the kid pauses and seems like his brain short circuited from trying to come up with a rebuttal to that.

"Come here Ileena, and place your hand on my trunk," I respond. I need her to get a bit closer so that I can open my third eye and properly Heal her leg back so that it is perfectly aligned with the other leg, along with removing any possible bulging disk issues, or irregularities that might have come about from being forced to hobble around for so long.

"Don't do it, it's a trap," Raygunnr responds, his comments meant solely for Zero and me, as he knows the kids either can't see his comments, or can't understand Mana Language.

"You are not funny," I reply in Mana Language, while trying to put on as sincere of a smile as possible.

"Oh come on, this is how every Horror movie involving a human eating tree begins," Raygunnr tries to defend himself.

"Don't they normally start with the beloved family dog going missing first?" I retort, only to instantly regret even entertaining this line of questioning.

"Oh yeah, though you and Zero could likely count for that. Me too. Though I could be like Iron Man, the Black Sabbath version, not the overly Copyrighted mouse version."

I just shake my head at that comment.

Rustle, rustle.

Of course, somehow my disgust at Raygunnr's comment somehow causes the still growing tree around us to shake, as if moved by a gentle breeze.

"Okay," the tiny Ileena says, as she begins moving forward between the sea of sitting kids who move out of her way.

"Just letting her act as the sacrificial lamb, seeing if the tree will dare eat her right in front of everyone watching. Heartless, but good survival skills. Let the weak get eaten first…"

"All right, I am going to take away your speaking privileges if you keep this up," I respond as that was a bit much. I understand the fact that he is getting a bit stir crazy from being in here with all of his senses being deprived. Well all of his normal senses, but he is able to keep his mental connection to my surface thoughts going quite freely.

I pause, wondering if he is going to test me. While I don't know if it will work immediately, I have a few ways that I think I could legitimately get him to be quiet, the first by disrupting his mana circuits, followed by draining his mana entirely. To even more increasingly painful ways of getting him to stop without killing him. Fortunately, he either realizes he crossed the line, or can read my threats and realizes that I could easily come up with a way to get him to stop for the moment, as he remains quiet for the rest of the little girls trip to our tree.

Touch.

I can see a faint outline of a hand that touches the tree. It is a tiny warm spot that seems to swell with the power and spirit of youth. Seeing the hand, I instantly open my third eye and begin casting Healing Magic on her small frame immediately.

Clatter.

Almost instantly the girl drops her cane to the ground as she seems to seize up with the effects of pure Healing energies coursing through her body. I mentally grab her body with Telekinesis, making sure she doesn't fall and hurt herself more, while I continue the process of creating a new leg.

The leg spirals out, cords and muscles growing in quick patterns that instantly fill up and match the genetic sequencing that is presented in her DNA strands.

I am on the part of creating the bones for the foot, and wrapping those bones with muscles, tendons, and skin when Raygunnr finally speaks again.

"Oh, I should have gone for Peg, or Peggy, if I knew she was going to have a name created from my humor."

"You are still not funny," respond, but I feel slightly better, as I can tell that he is relieved that the girl's misfortune was fixed. I can also feel from our shared mental bond that the sight and idea of child with a wound was particularly traumatizing to him. I assume there is something deeper to this, which caused his comments, but I don't even want to focus on that at the moment.

Instead, I just focus on healing the rest of the girl's problems. I fix everything. Malnourished bones and muscles, improved by mana and Qi being pumped directly into her body. Underdeveloped growth plates due to trauma, fixed with reinvigorated plates that focus on making her as strong and resilient as possible. I even make sure to place an outline for both a mana and qi core within her body, so that when she becomes old enough, she can have a talent to fall back on.

"Whoa!" The kids all cry out in unison at the sight.

What probably looked like the work of a few seconds to them, was a lot of effort on my part.

"Tell me, Ileena," I begin, while mentally glaring at Raygunnr, who apparently felt the annoyance through our shared mental link. "What type of magic would you want to use when you grow older?"

There is a pause, as Ileena just stares slack jawed at me. Well at the tree, but in that moment I can feel her eyes pointing straight at me, as if she can see me hiding inside the tree. Well hiding inside a mechanoid suit that is hiding inside the still growing tree.

"I, I? I don't know?" She stammers out confusedly.

With that, I kind of force her down a path, but it's one of the best paths, at least in my opinion. "Would you want to be a healer?"

There is a pause as she looks like she wants to say yes, but then catches herself.

"I take it, you don't want to be a healer?" I ask.

"Is there flying magic?" Ileena asks.

Hearing that, I just sigh, "what is with kids and wanting to fly?"

I reply while shaking my head, only to cause the tree branches above me to rustle around again as the leaves bounce into each other.

"Okay, kettle, calm down. I think I can name at least one other person who would love to fly," Raygunnr chides me, I am about to reply, but realize with annoyance that he is correct. I do love flying.

"Okay, how about I make you the ultimate healer?" I pose.

"The ultimate healer?" Ileena asks, confusion evident in her voice.

"Yeah, a healer with wings," I reply, remembering the modification that I made to Mallory's magical core so she could summon her own wings and fly.

"Ahhh! Yes! Yes! Yes!" With that Ileena gets so excited that you'd think I just offered her a year's worth of free kittens.

"A year's worth of free kittens? Isn't that just two? And then you just wait for them to multiply over the year?"

And like that, I roll my eyes and give a slight tap to his mana circuitry to see if I can easily disrupt his speech through Mana Language, or if I need to get a little more personal. Fortunately, I am able to cut off his bursts of energy through a modified form of Disrupt Casting, one that focuses on dispersing energy waves around me, thereby breaking the mana particles up. Mentally, I equate this to the equivalent of talking into a fan, where the soundwaves seem to get chopped up. In this, there is that effect, but there is more to just making it so a Teleiotís can't talk, as this has secondary effects like disrupting possible burst damage from spells, and other facets.

Just as I mentally plot out differences in what I am doing, and how it is a superior version of Disrupt Casting, I get a system message.

New Skill Gained: Improved Disrupt Casting has reached level 1! Improved Disrupt Casting is a Strength X2, Dexterity X2, Endurance X2, Perception X2, Intelligence X2, and Willpower X2 based skill.

With that notification, I can see Raygunnr's eyes go wide, as I can tell that he too got this skill, thanks to our shared connection.

He opens his mana circuits as if he is about to talk, but I instantly use Improved Disrupt Casting on him, causing him to pause. At that, I smile, basking in the silence.

Well partial silence, as there are still twenty or so kids outside this tree, along with an Ileena who wants to be a future healer with wings. And who am I to deny a girl the chance to make the world a better place by following her dreams.

"You could always—" Raygunnr began, but was cut off as I could feel my Improved Disruption Casting skill increasing rapidly. It seemed that being stuck inside Raygunnr and his nearly endless stream of color commentary would pay off handidly.

Smiling to myself I make a few adjustments to Ileena's core, making it so she will clearly be able to become a Tier VII healer, who can summon a pair of magical wings for a miniscule 10% of her reserve mana.

"There you go, when you are of age, you will find your latent ability as a healer unlocked, along with your wings." I reply, feeling a sense of pride and accomplishment.

We might be at war. We might be spying on the enemy, trying to gain a strategic advantage of intelligence against our foes, but I did make the world a slightly better place.

Even now, I could feel that corrupted golden thread of karma that Raygunnr had spoken into existence become purified and added to my reservoir of good deeds. This is good, as I no doubt still had a lot of negative karma to work off, and with this, I felt like I was one step closer to having a fairly clean slate.

In fact, things were going so good, that I felt that I could leave right now and call this overall mission a complete success. I knew where the enemies were, they had advanced to Qi sword art, that could manifest through specialized blades, something that we didn't have at World's End. Also, it seemed that we would not be able to forge large enough weapons for our mechanoid Teleiotís partners in the time that we still had remaining, meaning that there would be a clear reach advantage to the Legrand forces. Also, there was still the question about how durable their armor was, especially compared to the reforged structure that I had been performing to Raygunnr's body since our partnership began.

That said, all of that was tomorrow's problems. For this moment, right here and now, I was once again reminded about the power and beauty of this world. How meaningful moments remained around every corner, if you just took the moment to stop and watch the world come to life around you. This moment right here, one where I am in the heart of an open field surrounded by a gaggle of enemy children who are captivated by magic, and by our time together, this is what I will use as my motivation to get better and stronger. These moments will be what I use to push me forward in my attempts to continue to let this world thrive.

Smiling, I realize this is all worth it, and riding that initial height of success, I say possibly the stupidest thing possible.

"Okay, whose next?" I ask, instantly regretting the question the moment I ask.

"Oh, oh me, pick me!" Everyone's hands rise up as they all shout in a cascading unison of noise. I am so distracted by my own incompetence that, I miss the easy moment for a free skill up.

"Well, that was stupid. Hey! I can talk again! Ye—" Raygunnr began, only to be cut off when it was clear he would not stop now that he had his moment to speak again.

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