This choice: Give yourself multiple bodies • Go Back...Chapter #73The Perfect Disguise by: Seuzz   You take a deep breath. This operation isn't nearly as tricky as the ones before, but you don't want to fuck it up.
Carefully, you further prep the sigil. An empty bottle to hold your original imago. The bottle containing Chelsea's original essentia and the bottle that now holds her imago. The sheet onto which you've carefully drawn the sigil that will let you switch between imago. You stand back, eyeball it all for a moment, then close your eyes—Frank's eyes—and extend your hands again.
Thunder rumbles as you chant, and you seem to feel the elements slip through your hands, like liquid filaments. Your imago streams off your substantia and into a receptacle. You grasp Chelsea's essentia, chant a phrase, and it arcs from its bottle to your body, attaching to the wheel that holds the other two essentia. You suppress a shiver. You grasp the new sigil and drape it over your substantia. You grip your imago and Chelsea's, and they simultaneously sizzle and strike like bolts of lightning, grounding onto your substance.
That completes the operation, but you keep your eyes closed and study the occult image that floats in your mind's eye. It shimmers under your stare before resolving, not into an image, but into a complex sigil whose significance you recognize: Chelsea's imago manifesting to the physical world.
You smile, and release your hold on Frank.
* * * * *
Your eyes flutter open, and you've just a brief glimpse of a dusky ceiling before you screw them tightly shut again. If it's to be done, it's to be done right.
You turn your attention inward, and find the place that holds your essentia. (So easy to find now.) They float in a void, like burnished globes. Twin planets revolve about each other in one; twin planets revolve about each other in another. You grasp the third, and pull it into yourself.
The world lurches. Your eyes pop open, and your chest heaves. You swallow a little bile, and cough daintily. You blink and touch your lips. Sharp, curved fingernails scratch.
You pull your hand away and stare at it. It's small, with trim fingers and polished, satiny nails. I need to try a new color, you vaguely think.
You smile lazily, and let yourself settle back.
It feels very natural. Unnaturally natural. You permit yourself a pert frown.
Of course, it had all felt very natural when you were wearing a mask of someone else: you had felt just like that person. Similarly, it had felt very natural when you had slipped inside Frank and Joe. You never would have said—to yourself or another—that it felt artificial, like you were only in "disguise."
But in retrospect, it feels now like there were layers. That in wearing a mask you were still peering through eyeholes; that in operating Frank and Joe you were wearing a skin over your own.
But this feels seamless. Your skin—Chelsea Cooper's skin—prickles in the air. The prickles sink into your body—Chelsea Cooper's body—and vanish into a smooth interior that is Chelsea Cooper's interior all the way through and to the other side.
The thought "I'm Will Prescott" buzzes in the back of your head. It's like an irritant. You've only to brush it away—
Frank's face looms into view. "Is that you, Will?" he asks.
That Prescott-like buzz blooms, and you're briefly overcome by dizziness. You grunt. You lose none of the firm, creamy sense of Chelsea Cooper, but you feel anchored to yourself again. "I'm here," you chirp. "And it's amazing."
* * * * *
Frank helps you up, and you bounce lightly on the balls of your feet before doing an effortless backward flip. You come out of it with upthrust arms and fingers exploding like starbursts toward the ceiling. "What do you think," you say, shaking the hair from your face.
"Very nice," he says dryly. "She looks just like she did before."
"Just like she did before we got ahold of her," you gloat. "I'm running her operating system underneath."
"Is that wise," Frank asks. You frown. "I mean, it seems easy enough to lose yourself in a mask. If you've even got her essentia—"
"It's no different than what you and Joe have going," you retort. "Their imago, their essentia, my— Our anima."
Frank still looks skeptical. "That's true. But in case you hadn't noticed—" He tugs his ear. "Joe and I seem to be running pretty close to our original personalities. I mean, we're totally on board with this rebel group we've got going," he hastens to add. "There's no way we want the Stellae catching up to us. They'd rip your— Our anima out of us, and that'd be like being killed." His color turns chalky. "I just mean that it's real hard not to stay in character. There's no reason to even be in character as 'Will Prescott'," he adds.
"So why are you worried about me," you ask, and put a well-practiced, deadly inflection into the question.
"I guess I'm not," he stammers. "Except— Well, when we started all this, we all assumed that 'Will Prescott'—" He crooks his fingers into air quotes "—was going to be running things. Not Chelsea Cooper." No air quotes around "Chelsea Cooper," you notice. "We were all going to be Stellae," he adds. "Renegade Stellae, retrograde Stellae, but still Stellae. And Chelsea—"
You let yourself crimson. "I've got the essentia for it, Frank. I can be Chelsea and a Stellae. In fact, I've got double the essentia for it. Chelsea's essentia is just— Well, it's to make the package more complete, that's all. But I'll be switching over to the others when I need to be. Mastering Glundandra. Then I won't just be Chelsea, I'll be more than Chelsea. Or maybe I'll be the Chelsea that should have been. Chelsea as she'd have been if this were a well-run universe." You tilt your chin.
Frank swallows, but his eyes harden.
So you relent. It's one of your—Chelsea's—talents: feigning retreat. "Alright, I'm just a little drunk on my new self, I guess. It's pretty heady, Frank. I mean, come on, don't you get a little light-headed just looking at them?" You grasp your breasts and hold them up. Frank's eyes widen, and water, before he looks away. "And that's just looking at them. Imagine having them, and holding them, and feeling them from—"
"Alright, alright, you've made your point. Put some clothes on, okay?"
"I guess I could," you laugh. "After all, Gordon is waiting."
"Waiting for you, up in the fuck room?" Frank asks. His tone is churlish.
"For me. Maybe for you." You give him a coquettish side-long glance. "He's a natural for you take over, Frank. A warrior, a captain. Someone who can whip the troops into shape, train them, help them unlock their potential. And he's the one who gets to touch—" You cradle your breasts in the crook of an arm, and with your free hand lightly trace a line down the curve of your stomach toward the tuft of hair between your legs.
Sweat pops out on Frank's brow.
Then the doorknob rattles. You shriek and whip around, dropping to your knees to cover your nakedness. Behind you, Jonathan Straussler's jolly voice sounds: "Hey kids, where's Will gone off to?"
* * * * *
At least Joe's return sobers you up. He's shameless about ogling you, and the easiest way to deal with him is to put aside Chelsea's native personality and force your own to the fore. You calmly explain to him what you did to yourself this afternoon, all while snapping on panties, pulling on tight jeans, tucking yourself into a sports bra and pulling on a short, flannel top. (Chelsea likes clothes that are a little too small. It reminds her that she needs to exercise and eat right; and it keeps boys in a tense state of expectation that she'll bust out of her too-tight restraints at any moment.) "So you're now Chelsea Cooper to the core," Joe grins.
"To the same extent that you're still Joe Durras and I'm still Frank Durras," Frank says. "The way Will explains it, he's built on the inside exactly the way we are. Everything the original girl had, but with his anima running things."
"I guess we can stop calling you 'Will' then," Joe chortles. "Start calling you 'Chelsea'." He draws up close and peers down at you with a rakish smile. "Is that gonna change our relationship?"
There's no denying that Jonathan Straussler—tall, blonde, willowy Jonathan Straussler—is very attractive. So is Joe, when he's out of that mask. So is Frank. But you stare back at him evenly, and—
Oh, God damn it! You do feel a flush of desire, and from the glint in Joe's eye you can tell that he's spotted it. His smile widens.
But you've got Chelsea Cooper's self-control now. "We're going to keep things on a professional basis, Joe," you coolly tell him. "And that means—"
Two things happen simultaneously, to interrupt you. First, your phone trills. Instinctively you check it: Gordon. He can wait, though, for the ballroom door has opened and another Jonathan Straussler hurries in. The one standing before you abruptly vanishes. "Sorry," the new arrival says. "I left a placeholder while I ran back to get this. You didn't see me go, because I'm good that way."
Fucking show off.
He brandishes a golden disk, which you recognize as the little device he used when you first met him, to test you out as a Stellae. He fiddles with it, and mutters. "You're using Chelsea's essentia?" he asks, and you nod. "Cool, check it out. No reading." He shows you the disk, but of course you don't know how it works. "You're invisible, Chelsea," he says. "Under that face, with that essentia, you're just an ordinary girl. Well, as ordinary as girl looking like that can be," he leers.
"A perfect disguise," Frank says. "Isn't that what we want?"  | Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
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