by Viola Grace
She hesitated. “Anything is fine.”
He cocked his head. “You have something in mind that you are not mentioning.”
She shook her head. “Nope. There is one food that I am not going to eat in front of you. I turn into something from a ravenous zombie movie, and there are next-day consequences.”
He wrapped his arms around her, and she wished that he had put something, anything on.
“What is this mysterious food? Not today, but perhaps one day when you are willing to take the risk.”
He leaned close, so she whispered, “Tacos and obscene amounts of hot sauce.”
He lifted his head in surprise and grinned. “That was my avatar’s favourite food.”
She blinked. “Your what?”
“My avatar. I get to remain on earth, but I can’t just make a body to move around in. I need a container. So, when the time for the body is done, I go looking for a new one, and their soul departs.”
“So, there is a human in you?”
“Certainly. There is one in all of the walking gods. We simply negotiate for the place we occupy. We give them what they wish, and we move in.”
“Whoa. So, there is an actual person bonded to you?”
“Of course.”
She tried to take a few steps back, but she couldn’t. He was still holding her.
“What does he think about all—” She waved her hand, gesturing to both of them. “This.”
“He is definitely in favour. He was the one who alerted me during the interview. He has been on the lookout for our mate since we managed to achieve all of his goals.”
“What did he want?”
The Boss blinked. “He does not want me to tell you.”
“Why not?”
“It will make him seem... shallow?”
She smiled. “How old was he when you introduced yourself?”
“Fifteen.”
She pressed two fingers to her forehead. “He wanted... a fit body, money, and girls.”
He nodded. “A very good guess. There was also something in there about true love and family.”
She was a little surprised. “Can we do family? I would think it is a limited thing.”
He snorted. “It is. Not being able to find our queens until now has definitely put a damper in the idea of family.”
She groaned. “So, you have three people in your head, after all. Great. Just like me.”
“Well, you have the goddesses and any spirits they have collected since birth. It just takes a little bit of worship to wake them.”
She snorted. “Of course. Will I ever talk to your human?”
“He is about half of my speech. His brain designed the games and came up with the plan to find our queens.”
She cocked her head. “So, all the business-related stuff is your human?”
“More or less. We do overlap quite a bit.”
“So, why are you talking right now?”
“Because you are pressed against me, and it is very difficult for him to concentrate.”
She nodded. “Pizza.”
He smiled. “Pizza?”
“That is what started this conversation, so I am ending it with pizza. I am going to need something to regret tomorrow morning.”
He inclined his head. “Pizza it is.”
He walked her through the marble palace of his house, and they sat in front of a fire and had pizza delivered by a startled delivery boy.
She pulled her hair to one side and sat near the fire, resting on one palm. “So, what do you normally do for fun, that doesn’t involve women?”
He grinned. “It is going to be odd.”
“I am braced for it.”
“I design costumes for the games.”
She gasped scandalized. “You? You are spiral-boob guy? Oh, that’s it. We are done.”
He bowed, and she recognized the style. “Koji, don’t apologize for him.”
“I must. The master can’t, and the human is embarrassed.”
She put her pizza aside and beckoned to him. “Come here. This is going to sound odd, but I want to talk to the human. Since I can’t say his frickin’ name. That sounds like something a teenager would do as well.”
He sat straight, and colour stained his cheeks. “You are talking to him.”
She knelt and scooted across the floor. She beckoned to him and kissed him sweetly. “Now, being a woman is uncomfortable enough without adding distorting additions to our breasts.”
She picked up his hand and placed it on her left breast, looking at him. “Now, do you want to bind that up and twist it into a weird cone?”
He smiled. “Let me verify the shape of the right side.”
“Go nuts.”
He was very careful and very detailed. “You know, out of all the women that I have known, you are the first one to simply encourage me to take my time.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Those other women have caused a problem. I would refrain from mentioning them.”
He smiled. “I have watched many interactions but never got the nerve to participate.”
She took his hands and wove her fingers through them. “And yet, I am fairly sure that it is you who held me when I slept.”
His expression was surprised. “How do you know?”
“It is a difference in technique. For example, if the goddess was here, you would be out of control. He would be out of control. Since it is just me, you are fine. No over-stimulation from whatever it is that they put out.”
“But isn’t that what attracted you to begin with?”
She looked into his eyes. “What initially attracted me was that there was a man who could make me feel delicate and sexy just by standing next to me. It wasn’t him, it was the shoulders.”
He smiled. “We have worked very hard on the shoulders. The height came from my father’s side.”
“Well, I have a problem finding clothes, shop in the men’s department for the sleeve length, and find long hair annoying, but the others won’t let me cut it. I am smart, but that doesn’t get you anywhere unless you can prove you fit in. So, I stand out. I was designed to stand out, and now that I know, I am wondering if the height thing is related to housings two other beings.”
He carefully hugged her. “One thing that he didn’t mention was that I wanted to find a woman who could just accept me. So far, you are the only one who had fought me when it came to getting gifts.”
“I told you, him, them, all ya’ll. I like my own stuff.”
“He wants you to get the respect you deserve. When you start meeting with the investors and event organizers, those clothes will be armor.”
She frowned. “Why would I need that? I just run the office.”
“Before the six days and seven nights, he is going to hire a new office manager. You will become the partner and administrative aid.”
She leaned back in his arms. “Partner? I thought the other gods were partners.”
“No, they are shareholders. They contribute and reap the benefit. You are proof that it is possible to find a queen in today’s day and age.”
“So, the cut scenes?”
He smiled slyly. “Worship. They don’t have to know your actual name to worship you.”
“The cosplay?”
“Worship.”
She was getting the idea. “And the figurines are statuettes for representational worship.”
“Correct. The more attention we get, the brighter we burn. When no one knows our names, they can still brighten our essence.”
She heard the goddess inside her chuckling. “So, that is why she started waking when the cut scenes started. All the different monsters, one goddess.”
“Correct. Alwis-Haub is a fictional character, but her likeness is now tethered to you. Any attention she gets makes you stronger.”
“And you get stronger from Embor-al.”
“Correct. We just need to accumulate enough ener
gy that they can find each other more easily in the next life.”
“Why didn’t he just tell me that to begin with?”
He hugged her again and whispered against her ear, “I didn’t want you to know I was here. I thought you might act differently.”
She leaned up and kissed him, her tongue teasing his. “Take your time, do what you like. Tonight is just for you and me. They can have their ceremony later. The humans get to play, too.”
Being previously familiar with his digital body was a blessing because she knew how much stamina he had. The human must have been pulling on some of the master’s control because he was slow, thorough, and definitely a quick study.
The pizza was cold and the moon was high when they finally stopped wrapping around each other. She chuckled as he held her near the fire. She was going to be sore in the morning.
Chapter Fourteen
She pulled off her rescued sweatshirt and dropped it onto the bag that contained her change of clothes. Her sports bra and leggings were marked with silver webbing on a mottled crimson background. It was not a subtle look.
“When did all this stuff get here?” she looked around the full gym that took up a tenth of their filming space.
Neil grinned. “Yesterday. You were busying building a virtual death machine. How did you level up so far and so fast?”
She looked around and muttered. “I read the manual.”
The trainer stepped up to them and smiled. “I am Marc. I don’t believe that I have had the pleasure of your name.”
She cocked her head. “Serene.”
“Do you work out regularly? You are in amazing shape.”
She looked at him and saw right through the bullshit. “Really? How strange. I work in an office and don’t work out at all. My muscles have minimal tone, and some days I can’t run up a flight of stairs. I am beginning to doubt your assessment skills.”
He paused. “Ah. I see. Perhaps you would be amenable to a personal assessment?”
Neil choked on his water.
The Boss arrived in his workout gear. He looked like he was about to wrestle a minotaur.
She blushed when she looked at him. He was wearing a few bites and a lot of scratches. The tank top exposed the marks on his shoulders to a good advantage.
“Ah, Marc, making yourself at home?”
“Geez, Boss, did you try and fuck a Tasmanian devil?” Marc clapped him on the arm.
The Boss looked at her and smiled. “I didn’t try anything.”
Marc looked confused, but as the others arrived, they got down to the business of warmups.
It was forty-five minutes later when Serene’s determination got the better of her. She tore a blister while doing curls.
“Ow!” she blew on it and tried to remember where the first aid kit was.
Marc was walking toward her, but the Boss got there first. He picked her up and carried her to the side, and he kissed the back of her hand. Heat ran through her, and it pooled in the torn skin. As she watched, the injury sealed and healed.
Marc was frozen nearby. She smiled brightly. “I have never been to Tasmania.”
The Boss chuckled. “You will learn to heal yourself soon enough, Serene.”
She looked at Marc. “He’s like you?”
Marc snorted. “Not hardly. You are one of the queens?”
“Apparently.”
“Why are you trying to work out?” It was rather an acknowledgement of her ineptitude that she hadn’t actually been classified as working out.
“I need abs. Just little ones.”
He snorted. “Make them.”
“Wait, I can just do that?”
“Sure. As long as you don’t make huge changes, little cosmetic ones are easy.”
The Boss was scowling. She finally figured out why. “I will still be your workout buddy so you can watch my ass in spandex.”
His expression turned into a rueful grin. “That does boil down my motives rather nicely.”
She smiled and asked the goddess what to do. She pressed her hands to her abdomen and focused. When she lifted her hands away, there they were. Abs.
She sighed in relief. “Thank goodness. Now I am ready for the photos and scans.”
Marc chuckled. “But, you are still going to come to workouts?”
“Of course. I was just worried about the cosmetic aspect. Now that it is fixed, I can start trying to maintain it.”
The Boss grinned. “Excellent.”
Marc cleared his throat. “Right. Well, we have ten minutes. Would you like to learn how to do crunches?”
She nodded.
She went to the mat, and the Boss supervised while Marc held a hand over her newly visible abs, and she grunted and contorted until the time was up.
He helped her to her feet.
“Well done. Normally, with a woman who looked like you, I would try and initiate sex, but something tells me that it might be fatal to attempt it.”
She laughed. “Oh, it would be, and he wouldn’t even be within arm’s reach of you.”
There was something in her that was confident that she could deprive a god of his avatar and send them on their separate ways. Interesting.
Showered, dressed, and in the office for the morning meeting, she tapped her pen on the notebook. “So, you can heal yourself?”
He checked his laptop and absently said, “Yes. It was the first thing I was taught. It made the bodybuilding easier.”
“Uh-huh. So, the scratches and bites from last night. They were just too much to manage?”
He smiled slowly. “I remember the feeling of you around me every time they twinge. The bitemarks remind me of the soft noises you tried to silence until you bit me.”
She shivered. “Ah. Here, I thought you were trying to show off to the office.”
He nodded. “That too. It is also rubbing it in Marc’s face that none of his pantheon have found their matches. They pride themselves on being young and powerful. It doesn’t do any good if they are alone.”
“If it is the pantheon I am thinking of, only a handful of them had spouses.”
“But all of them had lovers, favoured or otherwise.”
“Oh. Right.”
He chuckled. “Sex is one of the binding forces of the universe. Solitary beings are always so bitchy.”
“And the ones without hands must be frustrated.” The words came out of her mouth before she could say anything.
He laughed and looked at her. It was the human smiling and looking out. She sighed.
“What is with the sigh?”
“Well, as you are not the master, I don’t want to call you the Boss all the time, and since calling you the human seems a little rude, I was wishing that I knew your name.”
He frowned, beckoned her close, and whispered it into her ear. She nodded, smiled, and said, “Thank you... Victor.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “It has been a while since I have heard that. Coming from you, it doesn’t sound so bad.”
She got out of the chair and walked around, spinning his chair toward him, she straddled him and kissed him quickly. “Nice to meet you, Victor.”
He gripped the back of her head and returned the kiss with interest.
She never used his name in mixed company, but she loved to whisper it in the night.
* * * *
Two weeks later.
Serene was sitting next to the Boss with orders to keep things light. They were on a panel about motion capture. Some of the other models who worked for the competitor were discussing how hard the process was.
Serene snickered, and the entire panel turned to look at her. “Oops.”
The moderator asked, “So, do you find the process hard?”
“The process? No. It is pretty straight forward. You act as if you are in an environment that you can’t see, and pretend that there isn’t a person behind you acting as your scabbard. It is actual
ly quite fun if you have the right partner.”
She smiled, and the Boss took her hand.
The model from the end spoke into her mic. “What does she know, she only does monsters.”
Serene stood up and covered the Boss’s ears. “Don’t talk about him like that. He’s sensitive.”
The room erupted in laughter, and then, the Boss got up to show the clip scene of Alwis-Haub being blown forward into Embor-al’s arms. He showed it again and again at different stages of production until it was her in her suit and him in his.
“On this day, we had a goof. Serene was tired of jumping, and her ankle turned on launch, which turned into this awkward flailing where I caught her. When you are recording, you have to watch out for happy accidents that can spark the imagination.”
He went on about arranging the scene for levels and textures, but finally, the floor was open for questions.
“Hi, this is a question for Digital Demons. Um, how many takes did it take to film the kiss?”
The Boss looked back at her. She held up her fingers.
“Nine. We had a variety of events before the kiss, but the actual kiss had nine takes. Four are available for random selection on levels ten, fifteen, twenty, and thirty.”
The next person asked, “Why are you including more cut scenes in the game?”
“Demand. The players want the cut scenes, and Embor-al and Alwis-Haub interacting are very popular. They can be skipped or set to ignore.”
The next person asked, “Ms. Serene, why are you all the female monsters?”
She leaned forward. “Scale. I am already taller and broader, so it is easy to exaggerate me a little than take someone smaller and exaggerate them a lot. For anyone other than Alwis-Haub, I wear boots that take me up half a foot.”
They asked a second question. “Why not Alwis-Haub?”
“Because my scale and the Boss’s scale match. We are a very impressive pair of monsters.”
The room laughed again.
He played more of the cut scenes, including being slapped in the face.
“Now, we don’t condone violence, but this monster was subdued without bloodshed.”
The video couple was moving on. He grabbed her arm and held it gently while going in for a kiss.
