Shou was starting to lose count of the number of times she’d woken up bound and gagged this week, although the circumstances for this morning seemed far more pleasant than most of her previous encounters. She was on her bed, without any clothes, and Khaesho was staring at her from a corner, slowly eating an apple. She felt sore all over, and for a moment forgot about the bonfire and Nikolak. “Hey there handsome… I had such a good time last night I don’t even remember you tying me up, much less everything that happened after that.”

Khaesho choked on his apple, the concern and tension falling away to be replaced by mirth as he cleared his throat. “Okay good. That answers the first question and the biggest concern. It looks like I got to you in time. Nikolak. How are you feeling.”

Emotions poured through Shou, and her mouth opened before it even realized it. When it did, someone else’s voice issued forth, a slightly lower tone than what she usually used. “Quite fine, thank you. Felt nice to blow off some steam. I’d appreciate if you untied us though.”

Shou snapped her lips closed, looking from Khaesho to herself in the mirror with confusion. “What… what was that?”

He strode forwards and started picking knots apart. “That, Shou, is one of the rarest and most exclusive sensations in existence. We Vash use the noun Autec, it’s the feeling of your patron using your body for you.”

“We? Vash? Patron?” She remembered the warehouse. Remembered the fire. Remembered striking a deal. “That… that wasn’t a dream then, was it?” Khaesho didn’t answer, so the silence spoke her name. “I’m… I’m a Vash.”

“Correction!” He flipped her over, muffling her with a pillow as he undid enough rope to simply start pulling it off of her. “You’re Vash to exactly half of a Stráž, particularly the most volatile and unstable Stráž in existence, and the closest thing to a demon that actually exists in reality.”

She wriggled back over, staring up at him. He was straddling her, which was nothing new, but something in the way he looked at her made her feel… vulnerable. He’d looked at her lustfully before, but there was something new in his eyes now, something deeper. If she had to put a word on it, she would have leaned towards something like anticipation.

“I’m guessing that means you still have Kalokin?” She focused on Khaesho, expecting to see Kalokin just behind or inside of him, but when she did, the bottom of her mind fell away and she felt Nikolak’s soul again, adjacent to hers, connected. She felt her patron’s memories and emotions bubbling at the surface, and as she did, Nikolak was able to access enough of her brain and soul to speak.

“Yes. Now you are both Vash. Now we all get what we want.”

“You think I wanted this?” Khaesho’s mood snapped to anger in a heartbeat. “Nikolak you know me. You’ve shared my soul for… decades. What makes you think I wanted to lose you?”

“You wanted to gain her.” As Nikolak used her mouth, she shared a few choice memories. Shou got to see firsthand what Khaesho had seen when he first looked at her. She got to see herself through his eyes for that first night, for their date the following day. It was flattering, in a way. It was also confusing and probably an invasion of privacy, but still flattering.

Shou cleared her throat, reclaiming her vocal chords for now. What had Kesh called it? An Autec? It was a strange feeling, but not unpleasant. “Kesh can you either let me get dressed or undress yourself?” She knew which she wanted, but to her vague dismay, he sighed and rolled off of her, tossing some of her clothes over as he did.

“You’re making awfully light of the situation. Shou you were just kidnapped, and your answer was to sign your soul over to an entity you barely even know, much less understand. Even setting divine mechanics aside for now, you’re wanted for arson.” He tossed that morning’s paper down, headline blazing; profits up in smoke? Warehouse fire devastating for local businessman. Quietly, Kesh continued. “There’s a bounty out for information on who started it, and while I covered my tracks, I’m decently sure every man in that building is going to remember your face for the rest of their lives.”

That brought her back down to earth. She remembered the screaming… remembered the smell of scorched flesh. Both had seemed so pleasant then, but now they made her sick, as they rightfully should. “What… what happened to me back there? After I accepted Nikolak… I’m guessing that’s not normal.”

“She consumed you. When a Vash and their Stráž are particularly in sync, emotionally and mentally, their souls resonate. You get a kind of constructive interference the exact same way you do in music, and it amplifies both your strengths while combining your minds to better control it. Soul Resonance is the single most powerful weapon we know of, and we know enough about science to understand the implications of your people splitting the atom.”

“Oh. That’s… that’s good, right?”

“Wrong. A healthy resonance requires balance. With you, inexperienced and ignorant of even the basics of divine mechanics, Nikolak swamped you. Had I not intervened, she would have accidentally consumed your soul and burnt your body to ashes along the way.”

Oh. Shou felt Nikolak give an internal shrug of sheepish guilt, along with a soft apology. “But you saved me! So… everything is fine now, right?”

“Also wrong.” His expression darkened. “You channeled too much of her magic in too short a period of time. Usually, that warps a person’s soul to the point that their body rejects it, or the body itself begins to breakdown in an effort to match a stranger’s soul. That is, consequentially, why I had you tied up. I know you enjoy it and Nikolak doesn’t, and your reaction on waking was the best way I could think of to gauge exactly how much damage has been done to you.” He sighed, rubbing his temples. “Which, as far as I can figure, isn’t terribly much. By all accounts, even after I knocked her out of you, your soul should have warped to the point that you naturally drifted together again. I expected you to wake up, already resonating with her, slowly adsorbing into her to become a single soul, but that hasn’t happened.”

Khaesho stared at her, and Shou thought she recognized the look now. Fascination, with curiosity at what was to come next. “Kalokin’s never seen anyone do what you did and walk out unharmed, and while I wouldn’t call you unscathed, the fact that your soul isn’t mana burned and torqued in half means you’re either some metaphysical anomaly, or you’re the single best personality matchup of Stráž to Vash that’s ever existed.”

Shou had been taking her sweet time getting dressed, hoping to tempt Khaesho into chasing her, but it seemed that wasn’t in the cards for the moment. She still did a little shimmy as she pulled her booty shorts up, just to tease him.

“Will you please stop that!”

Confused, Shou looked over her shoulder. “What? Why? Don’t try to say you don’t find me attractive anymore.”

“No, not you Shou. You. Nikolak. Stop using Shou’s body to try and seduce me like she’s some three-bit whore. There will be plenty of time for that after she’s acclimated, but I will not let you make the mistake of treating her as your own personal meat suit.”

That stung, and Shou almost angrily opened her mouth before she clamped down on the notion, eyes wide. Khaesho was right; she should be terrified, scared and scarred both by what she’d just done, and concerned for what the future would bring, but the affection and lust rolling off of Nikolak had drowned out all of that. It was Nikolak who was offended, not her, but they both realized Khaesho was right about the same time.

Nikolak at least had the good sense to feel guilty- apparently, she was good at feeling guilty- but Shou gave her an affectionate smile and whispered to her internally. Don’t worry girl, we both deserve some good dick after what we’ve been through, let’s just get ourselves sorted first, okay?

Okay! Nikolak thought to her, and they both returned their focus to Khaesho as she spoke. The autec wasn’t quite so uncomfortable when Shou knew Nikolak was about to hijack her body. “Right. Sorry. I’ll be good. For now.”

“Where is Kalokin anyways?” Shou glanced around, but even Nikolak’s massively heightened senses couldn’t find him.

“He’s resonating with me, so we can put our heads together and try to think out how to best proceed.” He sighed, a wry chuckle escaping him as he hopped forwards and collapsed on her bed.

Shou quietly noticed that neither of them had any soot or smoke about them, he must have bathed them both while she was out of it. “What do you mean? I, no, we” She corrected herself after checking that Nikolak did in fact agree with her, “think there’s only one logical way to proceed. You teach me how to control mana, I seduce and court you like a modern woman, and we chase after our happily ever after.”

His response was as fast as it was resolute. “Absolutely not! Er, to the first half, at least, I wouldn’t mind the second.”

“Wh-what?” The smile fell from her face.

“You cannot keep her. Nikolak has no idea how to properly form a soul bond, and you know nothing about… well, anything, as far as the soul is concerned. If you two remain as you are, you’re likely to die, be consumed, become accidentally enslaved, become brainwashed… there are so many ways this could go wrong for you that it’s a miracle it hasn’t already.”

“Well, that complicates things a bit, but… we’ll figure it out, right?” She and Nikolak’s dream, so sure moments ago, suddenly seemed to be sinking in quicksand.

Khaesho nodded absentmindedly, staring off into space. “Yes Shou, don’t worry. I’ll figure out how to extricate you from Nikolak’s soul. We’ll get you separated, and your life can get back to normal.”

Panic rose within her, strong enough that she couldn’t tell whose it was. Most likely, it was both of them. “You can’t! You… can you?”

He apparently didn’t notice their distress. “Oh, it’ll be difficult, but it’s happened before. You’re not the first accidental Vash, and sometimes the binding rituals just go wrong, usually from people lying about who they are to try and secure a divine’s patronage. Tonight, we rest, for tomorrow will certainly be exhausting. I’ll contact the other Stráž while I’m sleeping, we’ll need their help to sort this out.”

Emotions and plans warred within Shou. She should protest this! No, she didn’t want to alienate him. It was wrong! But he knew more than she did. She struggled to find the right words to say, to tell him that she didn’t want to be split from Nikolak, but it took her too long to decide, and her choice was made for her.

Khaesho could see the indecision and anxiety on her face and reached out to caress it. He didn’t know, but his hand tenderly cupped her jaw exactly the same way she’d melted a man’s face earlier that day. “Relax Shou. I’ll figure this out for you. You don’t need to worry, I’ll fix everything. Just… try to get some sleep.”

In the end, she didn’t say anything. Just waited until he was asleep. Then, she waited until his soul leapt from his body, stretching west across the sands to where Nikolak’s siblings no doubt resided. Once she was sure he was gone, she quietly rolled out of bed and started to gather a few things.

Phone. Wallet. Blanket. Water bottles. Sketchpad. A change of clothes. Her first set of lockpicks. She swept the change off her dresser and into her purse, then grabbed the solid glass egg Dominic had gifted her. Shaped in fiery reds and yellows, he’d surprised her with it on the debut of her first big performance. He’d promised that if she kept it with her, it would someday hatch into a phoenix, as bright and gaudy as she’d been herself upon the stage.

It was, perhaps, the only memento she had with any emotional attachment. Everything else… well, she could come back for it. Someday. Tonight though, the streets called to her in a way they hadn’t called since she got clean. The night reeked of danger and excitement, questions yet unanswered, uncertainty thick upon the air.

The only certainty she had was that she wasn’t going to give Nikolak up so easily, and that Khaesho clearly didn’t understand that she wanted to keep her. Didn’t? Or Wouldn’t? Or couldn’t? Regardless, she wasn’t going to let anyone else make decisions for her.

Shou crept out into the hallway and locked the door behind her, listening as she always did to that little voice inside of her that beckoned. Except now, that subconscious call was real, a guardian manifested in her soul. If she could just buy some time, if they could figure out this soul bond without Khaesho splitting them up, they might prove to him that he was wrong, that he and Kalokin both were wrong.

And so, she danced off into the night.

Forwards.

---

Outside, alone in the cold, Dominic stared up at Shou’s apartment. He had guessed that she’d return home at some point, as most people would, but was absolutely surprised to find another soul entwined with hers. Affection and contentment seeped from the both of them, sweet enough to make him sick; that explained everything. She was already seeing someone, someone she’d lied about to keep hidden.

What could possibly be so terrible that she’d lie to him? She’d never lied to him, he’d had a first-row seat to her spilling the beans on every one of her life’s secrets. He was the only one who knew exactly what kind of hell she’d run away from when he met her on the street, not even his father knew all the details of her past. And yet, there was no denying it. She and he were so physically close that they could only be in bed together, and emotionally they weren’t much further away than that.

Worse, this stranger was definitely a mage. He remembered Tom’s glassy-eyed statement… ‘you’re one of them.’ That’s what he meant. Shou wasn’t rescued by some PMC or rival gang. She was rescued by her magi lover, and a decently powerful one at that. Clearly he was also in the process of teaching her how to cast; she’d learned at least well enough to conjure the flames to burn down his warehouse and destroy his friend’s face.

Something still didn’t add up. James’ mind had been severed from his corona and Bo had been driven insane by some nightmarish visage. He’d have to play his cards very carefully if he wanted to get Shou back even as a friend, certainly if she was learning to cast mana he’d never be able to use her as a battery ever again. Not without her knowledge and consent at least.

He turned, tossing the flowers into a trash can as he went. This man, whoever he was, wasn’t going to steal Shou from him. He could still fix this, he just needed a plan… but clearly he didn’t have enough time. The mage’s soul arced overhead like a bolt of lightning, cast with precision and confidence, and shortly after that, he watched Shou slip out of her apartment. No time for a plan, no time for a devious machination. All he had time for was the truth.

Or, at least, a very convincing ad-lib. He followed quietly from the shadows as he called one of his friends. Maybe tonight might turn out alright after all.