Katelyn.
For a moment, both girls just stared at each other, then the more life-sized version of the small Pixie she'd spoken with jumped as though something was crossing her mind.
A heartbeat later, everything that had been scattered about her lair abruptly vanished.
"If it helps…" Katelyn offered with a delicate smile. "My sister's room has definitely been worse before."
"Right…"
"And, not to nitpick, but why didn't you 'do' what you just did beforehand?"
"I haven't really had people around to worry about it?" Abby shot back, breathing deeply while tossing what she had in her hands to the floor, all the articles of clothing disappearing as they hit the carpet.
"Now, anyway, this is—well, my 'core' room." She offered an arm lazily waving over the myriad of nineties rock posters, terrible pink paint, and general alt-vibe that Katelyn was looking at. When she raised a brow at it all, Abby simply scoffed at her. "Way too high, eyebrows-McGee, and also, it helps keep me sort of umm, sane, I guess?"
"I figured…" Katelyn offered, nodding and adjusting her expression accordingly. "I spent God only knows how long as an over-hungry box. Trust me, I get it."
"A little over a year, actually…"
"A what now?"
"A year, you spent around one year as you were… at least, from the point I started paying attention to you. Honestly, it might have been even longer, sorry about that, I haven't exactly 'been' myself as of late…"
Katelyn blinked at that revelation, thoughts momentarily stuttering to a halt before the gears kicked back into place and she lurched into full operation again.
Though rather than dwell on it, she just stored it away for later as she noted the grimace the other girl was giving her.
"Yeah, I sort of lost track of things too, for a while… Back when I first started here, I was kind of, well, all hands on deck, you know? B-but, recently, as in the last eighty years or so, I've been sort of stuck. Honestly, it's cool to have someone to talk to again, though! Must be pretty awesome coming from the future and all."
"Sure…" Katelyn intoned, moving to start poking around the space, mind cataloging the other woman's supposed 'age' while glancing between the posters, rows of books and games all messily shoved on shelves. "If you call the early twenty-twenties the 'future' then I guess you can say I came from it."
This time, it was Abby's turn to look confused, swallowing a moment before asking a very clear question she took several seconds to articulate. "What 'year' is it?"
"Twenty-twenty-three last time I was 'evidently' there to see it."
"That's all?"
"Yeah, I mean, they came out with a few cool things like AI stuff you can fool around with, but I'm not really much of a techie person. I was more—"
"Cheerleader?"
"I was going to say I was in 'law school', but, yeah, I've done some cheerleading…"
Abby just sat on her bed, nodding slightly, as though to acknowledge that fact, her eyes glazed as she let out the air she'd been holding.
A weak smile formed as she brought her knees up to her chin, both arms wrapping around her legs as he spoke. "I left home in the early two-thousands, like, twenty-fifteen… But it's been around two centuries that I've been here, so, I just assumed…"
Both were silent for a time. Katelyn gnawing on the other girl's admission while wondering if she'd been stuck as a mimic far longer than she thought…
Though, probably not when she really gave it some serious consideration.
There hadn't been enough 'resets' to account for that much time passing, had there?
Either way, she got a fairly decent sense of just how lonely Abby was as her dejected expression zoned completely out, mind drifting away as though it were a rudderless ship.
The girl probably realized just how 'screwy' the timeflow actually was, assuming Abby wasn't lying about things. And, if she wasn't, that meant things weren't quite so 'linear' as they might seem.
Given that she'd been here longer than Katelyn by an extensive margin, the difference was likely more significant than either of them likely cared to contemplate.
Katelyn continued to idly wander the room as her 'host' lost herself in introspection, slowly making her way to the only door she could see in the place.
Yet, when the strange girl spoke again, the abruptness surprised her, especially given it arrived with a complete and total lack of inflection.
"Hey, fair warning, but my 'core' is back there. I'm not arguing if you feel the need to take a swing, but I will kill you if you go near it."
The Monster stopped what she was doing to look at the 'dungeon', who had flopped on her back and was currently staring at her through a mop of hair, her eyes dull and disinterested while watching her with barely existing consciousness.
"Wasn't planning on it." Kate muttered, though her words didn't seem to have the slightest effect, or even bring the other girl back to a semblance of presentness.
No, all Abby seemed to do was shrug as if it really didn't matter to her either way, an honestly 'large' red flag when it came to the art of pushing buttons, and it wasn't hard to see how this might be a bad idea.
After a few moments wherein Katelyn decided she was unquestionable still in a somewhat delicate situation, she returned to the other side of the room, if for no other reason than to be polite.
Katelyn wasn't so beyond the concept of 'manners' and 'body language' to realize when her presence was and wasn't tolerated.
"Not to sound like I'm not interested in hanging out, but… what exactly is it you wanted to talk about?"
Abby twitched, coming back to life after a dozen heartbeats, focus returning to her eyes as she lifted herself back up, scratching the back of her neck. "Yeah, don't worry if I kind of daze off like that; this is 'me', but so is everything else." She tried to explain, biting her lip. "Sometimes I just don't have the focus to be everywhere at once, and I get a little—mhm, stupid…"
"Like, literally or..."
"Nope, I one hundred percent start to just run out of brainpower, and things just go on autopilot. Believe it or not, you've actually sort of been a big part of why I've got so much of myself again… As much as I hate to say it, I probably owe you a pretty big 'thank you' for helping me out."
"By eating people?" Katelyn asked, admittedly slightly confused on the manner of how she'd been 'helping' while also, as Abby had claimed, 'plundering' her monsters.
"Pretty much. I get you're new to it all and are probably missing a lot of context, but how dungeons work is that we need 'souls' to function. It's sort of like our version of food, but it doesn't kill us if we don't get it.
"I'd say it's more like we go into hibernation? Again, auto-pilot works, but we gain sapience as we grow in power, and we grow in power 'from' killing people inside of us."
"And when monsters kill people?"
"I take their souls. I can either keep them, sort of like a battery, or use them to toe the line or start making expansions faster than we usually can. Those souls get mixed into my own magic, and we reach a sort of chemical balance that we all need to function correctly.
"Without them, it's just all 'dungeon' magic, and we can't survive off that indefinitely, or else we—well, sleep…
"You just so happened to show up while I was being suppressed by the locals and started making waves again; heh, you've got so many people pissed off and confused about what's going on here, it's honestly been the most entertainment I've had in decades!
"Even if I've had to 'literally' take an active role in trying to hide you from subjugation teams by bending so many rules as far as I could push them. Yet," Abby sighed, clicking her tongue while looking at the ceiling, "you just kept killing and never dying, so…"
"You're a leech!" Katelyn accused, glaring at the girl who snorted and crossed her arms.
"Coming from the chick who ate half my monsters whenever she decided to go hunting, I don't really want to hear it."
"Just how much experience were you sucking from me?"
"Hey! I left you with half! N-not exactly by choice, but without me, you'd have totally eaten shit out there! Not literally, obviously, but you know, metaphorically!
"Honestly, the only thing that's been our saving grace is that nobody ever got a good look at what you were. Err, nobody except for 'two' adventurers a while back. But they moved from the city, or I assume they have, because nobody's figured out it was a 'mimic' causing all the chaos.
"The real theory out there is that there's some sort of serial killer somehow jumping between dungeon shards for easy experience."
"So," Katelyn began, still trying to work out a rough idea of what had been happening, "I show up, start feeding you, and, now what? You're back to your old self?"
"More or less." Abby grinned, beaming at her in earnest. "I was pretty fair in the early days when the town around me started growing. You know, still holding onto my human 'morals', trying not to take more lives than I needed...
"But, as more people got stronger while I was still trying to get my feet wet, they decided to umm, well, sort of 'enslave' me…" At Katelyn's raised lip, the woman sighed with a nod. Not bothering to look for pity as she carried on, clearly having an emotional issue, but pushing through all the same.
"I didn't really take it that seriously at first, as there's no actual rule that says someone has to 'keep' their core just lying around… But, I still need souls for a lot of what I do, or at least slivers of them.
"It's like a currency… I use soul-infused magic to make smart monsters or give them upgrades or levels, skills, and anything else you can really think of. When a monster dies, it isn't really 'killed' as my natural mana is able to just bring it back, which is different than if I were to artificially make a monster as smart as I am because it would take genuine power for its upkeep.
"Thus, the need for souls, small as the toll might be." After a moment, she continued, pointedly looking away as though embarrassed. "I didn't really catch on to what they were doing quickly enough… And, by the time I realized they were starving me out by marching overleveled people through me, none of which I had any real hope of killing off, I was already starting to fade away.
"Once I did, my 'dungeon self' was sort of keeping it all running as is, if you know what I mean. Sort of like a body that just knows it has to breathe to stay alive, and once they had me in a state where I couldn't fight back—yeah…"
"They fucking lobotomized you?" Katelyn asked, horrified by the premise of it but also strangely intrigued and, maybe just a little too interested, strictly for curiosity's sake, of course. She had absolutely no designs on trying to figure out if she could take this all for herself, but if she could, it would be nice to know about.
"Pretty goddamn much…" Abby laughed, though it was a fairly humorous chuckle, "I've since learned it's what sort of happens to dungeons that are either too nice, aren't careful, or sometimes, are just too well known…
"Now, I'm pretty much just used as a training tool by the kingdom that popped up around me, letting teenagers get a taste of what real delving is like in a 'wild' dungeon.
"I'm flooded with too many shards of different teams, all filling me at the same time to really focus on any one of them, and so rarely does anyone die because I cannibalized all my good monsters trying to stay sane and fight back however I could that—now, all that's left is, hmph, well, you've seen them…"
"The ugh... the big fucker looked pretty mean," Katelyn offered, not sure why she was trying to cheer her up, but it wasn't like Katelyn was 'heartless'. She simply acted in what was often her best interest without much care for those around her.
It wasn't a rule, merely a preference. And as things stood, being on Abby's good side was definitely the better of her few options.
"He's Grog… The only 'Hob' goblin I didn't eat. And I reviewed that particular bit of weirdness with you, him, and that team that almost knicked you, again and again since I've woken back up, and all I can say is that it was all chance…
"Grog isn't supposed to spawn so close to the entrance. He's my last boss, but he can, by design, show up elsewhere as well; there is some forced randomness to it all, it's just not really the norm. Likewise, there usually aren't so many goblins in his camp, but you decided to keep eating them and scaring them off until they ran into Grog's leadership aura and—fought…"
"And the ugh, the 'adventurers' that were there?"
"Ha! Fucking suppression squad." Abby sneered, hate in her tone. "A lower-level one, at least in the grand scheme of things, probably not new to the job, but their whole 'thing' is to barge through the dungeon and bully anything inside. Then, map it all out to make sure there haven't been any changes before reporting back to their guild and doing it all again later."
"Yeah, that sounds—not amazing…"
The dungeon girl smirked at Katelyn, laughing with a clear sarcastic tint before brightening a fraction and stepping in close to place her hands on her shoulders. "It's really not... But now you're here, and even if I can't really fight back yet, I'm at least in the 'game' again! What's better is that they've got no idea about any of it."
A thought occurred to Katelyn as she blinked at the dreadful expression of cruelty that was cracking across Abby's almost fracturing features. She paused, less from the terrifying 'nightmare smile' and more because something wasn't quite making sense, and she felt she needed clarification.
"If you need souls but don't put them in your monsters, then, how do people, you know, level?"
"Hm? Oh, that's easy. Easier not to think about it, mind you, but 'dungeon magic' seems to be a sort of raw energy not entirely different from a soul? It's weird, don't get me wrong, but both are cross-compatible with each other. That said, I can't 'make' souls from scratch, only the energy they feed on.
"What I 'can' make is a sort of pseudo-soul that I, in turn, then twist into a real one when making a 'smart' monster, but I need genuine shards of a real soul to do it. Likewise, because my magic isn't exactly the same, I can't just 'print' fake eternal sparks and eat them…
"Mostly, it comes down to souls being able to consume my magic to improve themselves and vice versa! B-but, while a soul can eat a soul, dungeon magic can't 'eat' dungeon magic."
"Complicated…" Katelyn intoned with no absence of sarcasm, understanding the premise, if not the reason.
"Blame the gods if you want." Abby sighed, releasing her and taking a breath. "This is all part of their whole 'schtick' in this universe, so if you want more details than that, you've gotta find one and ask."
"I take it that's a bit of a fat chance?"
Abby just snorted at her as she turned away, not answering the question and instead returning to her bed to sit down before crossing her legs. The fabric of her tights crinkled around the knees as she slapped them, a kind of manic energy restoring her otherwise dour mood. "So, now that you've kind of gotten the four-one-one, what do you think?"
"About—what?" Katelyn asked, not willing to give anything away.
"Working together. You know, a little teamwork, I scratch your back, you scratch mine, tit for tat, mi casa es tu casa?"
"No offense…" Katelyn began, raising her arm at the grinning girl to forestall her eagerness. "But I sort of want to go 'outside' again?"
"Who said you can't?"
"Uhh…"
"Look, if you want to run outside and go 'explore' the town, I'm not going to hold it against you; after all, if you die, you're just going to wind up back here again anyway… You're a dungeon monster, after all!"
"So—I'm immortal?"
"Eh…" Abby shrugged, rolling her hand back and forth like a rocking boat. "More, able to resurrect than 'immortal'. An important distinction, by the way. And, the price for doing that sort of thing isn't going to be cheap if you want me to keep you as you are, after all, you're a 'smart' monster, and I already went over the rules for that.
"Plus, given that I'm pretty much just assuming you 'are' going to try and wander out at some point and probably get yourself killed, it is a big ask on your end of things to just assume I'd be the one paying for that. No, I'm going to require some reciprocation."
"I think I'd make it perfectly fine out there."
"Sure, I wouldn't bet against you either. Pretty people 'do' tend to get away with more before shit really hits the fan, and I don't think I've ever heard of a mimic, evolution or not, that has really nailed the whole 'Demi thing' like you have.
"Still, at some point, you'll fuck up, get hungry and eat someone, run afoul of the law, the 'reason' doesn't really matter. You'll end up attracting the scrutiny of someone who can break that cute little backstory you've got running with your feat, and after it's game over.
"Again, super curious how you even 'have' access to those as a monster, but my point remains the same. Trust me, I went through the whole process when I was younger as well.
"There's always something that happens, and besides," Abby chirped, her demeanor brightening right back up again, "is it really so bad to have a home to come back to and a friend waiting there?"
Katelyn wasn't sure if she wholeheartedly agreed with the other woman...
That said, in exchange for what was 'functional' immortality, needed or not, she could entertain the idea. She wasn't 'pleased' to have her freedom ransomed and held over her head as it was, but—as the saying went, when in Rome…
"For argument's sake, what exactly did you have in mind? I mean, I'm not going to say 'no' to cooperation, but I feel I need a little more from you than an info dump and your tragic backstory…"
Abby just smiled at her, ignoring the barb, her wicked grin growing wider by the second as she stretched out her legs, languid and happy as could be.