Chapter Seventy-Four

You look up so that you can meet Daphne in the eyes. The girls--Daphne and Charlotte--stepped out of the Gardening Club’s greenhouse some time ago and were looking for you and Abigail when you stepped out of the alley.

“Bend over,” you say.

Daphne blinks. “Pardon.”

“Bend over or I’ll have to use my tentacles,” you explain.

Daphne looks over to Abigail who shrugs. “Okay?” Daphne says. She leans forwards a bit. It’s not much, but it’s enough.

You reach way, way up, splay your little human hand as wide as it’ll go, then pat-pat Daphne on the head. You shiver a little. It feels real nice.

Then Abigail pats you on the head. You feel a silly smile tugging at your lips and you let it grow. Being patted while patting is the best. You summon a tentacle from between the places people forget and use it to pat Charlotte on the head. She laughs at the contact.

Patting with a tentacle doesn’t have nearly as much of an effect.

This will require further study.

In fact, you’re starting to think that this whole headpat business is a lot more complicated than it first seemed. You’re pretty sure that cutting off Abigail’s hand and patting yourself with it wouldn’t do much. It’s the fact that it’s Abigail that’s giving you the pats that make them so good, not the fact that it’s Abigail’s body.

Giving pats feels good too, but it feels better when you give them to Abigail than to Daphne. And giving pats with tentacles... you bring your tentacle around and pat Daphne’s head with it.

Not as nice.

Strange.

You’ll need a whole bunch more time spent experimenting with the art of patting. Or maybe it’s a strange sort of science.

You are determined to become a patologist.

“Dreamer has discovered the whole ‘it’s better to give than to receive’ concept, I think,” Abigail explains to Daphne.

You snort. That’s silly. Getting things is way better than giving them. Morals. You shake your head.

“So, um, what now?” Abigail asks. She’s looking towards Daphne as she says this and is blushing a bit. Is this more courting stuff? Couldn’t they do it some other time.

“I think we’re going to have to put a pin on any plans,” Charlotte says. Her voice isn’t happy as she speaks.

You look around, spotting for the first time a large group of men moving towards you, all of them carrying large shields in one arm and little sticks in the other. They’re wearing black, with a white ‘I’ shaped symbol on their shields and big swords strapped to their hips.

“Oh no,” Abigail says.

You frown. These people look like those Inquisition sorts you had to deal with to save Poutine. You wonder what they want.

More of them show up from the other side of the school building, then even more of them appear on the roofs above and around the corner of the greenhouse. A few of the club girls are shood back into the building by the inquisitors.

A few of the Inquisitors, those wearing long robes instead of armour, rush behind the lines of shield people and start casting complicated spells into the ground and air. You feel a bit of a tingle crawling around you, and all of a sudden you connection through the immaterial plain is cut.

Weird.

You poke at the barriers they’re building with your big body and almost wince as one of them snaps. One of the mage-sorts screams out something and they redouble their efforts.

You hope Abigail won’t be mad that you broke someone’s thing.

One of the Inquisitors steps up. He’s important. You know this because his hat is very tall and ends in a point, with little feathers and some fluff stuck to it and there are tassels around the brim handing down to his shoulder.

It’s a very nice hat.

You kind of want it.

“Are you Misses Abigail, Daphne, and Charlotte? Accomplices of the Class C threat currently claiming the name ‘Dreamer?’” the man asks.

Abigail’s hand tightens around your shoulder. You hear her whisper “Oh no,” under her breath.

Charlotte steps to your side. “They have marksmen on the roof. More in the distance. If they fire, we die.”

You’re frowning extra hard. You don’t recall giving anyone permission to hurt your friends.

“What is the meaning of this?” Daphne asks.

“You are all under arrest for the high crimes of heresy against the non-existence of gods, the act of creating a group of worship, and multiple accounts of public disturbance and malfeasance.”

“No, no, no,” Abigail says.

You shake your head. “The girls didn’t start the cult, I did,” you say.

The man stiffens. “Don’t let the creature talk. It must be disposed of. Are the shields in place?”

“They are!” One of the mages says. “It can’t reach through the immaterial anymore. It’s harmless.”

Harmless? Sure, you can’t reach through the one plane, but what about reaching through time?

Tentacles that were definitely there all along don’t appear, because they were there already, and they snatch the men on the roof and wrap them up nice and tight.

And what about the imaginary?

Pretendtacles snatch shields away and make them stop existing.

And they didn’t even cover the astral, mental, ancient, magical or dream planes. Terribly lazy.

There’s a lot of screaming as shadow tentacles suck up some men, as grasping tentacles made of pure divine power slip through the hastily erected shields the mages put up, and as some of the inquisitors fall asleep and slip into a realm that’s all yours to play around in.

Meta tentacles squiggle away to go read some other story, and tentacles from the impractical plane flop around uselessly.

Then you boop the shields between the immaterial and this plane and they burst apart. Soon, everything is tentacles, as it should be.

Now you have lots of specimens to use in your patological studies.

Also, you have a new hat.

***