Double Trouble – Chapter 7 – Call Her George

Charlotte

It took a few seconds for Reckt to open her eyes and realize she wasn’t about to be eaten. When she did, her first reaction was to launch herself at me and Mikaela, arms flung out wide. Mikaela looked like she wanted to sidestep, but I grabbed the sleeve of her shirt to hold her in place as Reckt threw her arms around our necks. Mikaela could have pulled free, the cloth obviously wasn’t strong enough to hold out if the both of us put our all into it, but she didn’t so she must have felt at least a little guilty. She just stood there, awkwardly, while I patted Reckt on the back and the blonde let out sob after sob.

“I-I thought I was going to die!” she managed after the tears had subsided a bit. “I thought you’d run away and leave me here, or maybe get caught yourselves, and then we’d all be eaten by spiders, and… and…”

“Shhh,” I whispered, stroking her hair to comfort her. “It’s fine. I’ve got you. You’re going to be alright.”

“It’s hardly as if you were in any real danger with us around,” Mikaela muttered. She was looking pretty awkward, standing stiff and clearly not knowing how to pull off the whole ‘comforting’ thing. It made me wanna roll my eyes, but… this wasn’t the time for a sibling squabble.

“What Sis means to say is that we wouldn’t let anything bad happen to you. I know it might be hard to believe from a pair of rookie adventurers, but we’re actually a lot stronger than we look.”

“Y-yeah?” Reckt asked, releasing Mikaela to wipe the snot from her nose. My sister took the opportunity to back up a few steps. I did the reverse, pulling Reckt into a tighter hug.

“Yeah. We’re strong, alright? Strong enough that those dumb spiders never stood a chance. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t hear so much as a chitter from them ever again.”

Reckt laughed. It was weak, and a little forced, and her eyes kept darting around in a way that said she didn’t quite believe me, like she was looking out for the next attack, but… it was a laugh, all the same, and being able to laugh at your problems was a good first step towards getting over them.

“It’s fine,” I reassured her. “We had an epic battle with the mama spider while you were out and it sent all the little ones flying.”

“The… the mama spider?” Reckt asked. “I don’t… I don’t see it anywhere?”

“And you won’t,” Mikaela chimed in. “It’s buried underground.”

“Yeah, we kinda turned its burrow into a blast furnace,” I explained. “An absolutely wretched way to go, but after seeing the state it put you in I can’t say that I’m feeling all that bad for it…”

“R-right,” Reckt whispered, wiping at her eyes this time. With a different sleeve than the one she’d used on her nose, thankfully. “Does that uh… are we… are we safe?”

“Safe as a babe in her mother’s arms,” I promised her. “No monsters are going to get you as long as I’m around.”

“Or me,” Mikaela volunteered. “I know I might be a bit… standoffish, compared to my sister, but I too promise not to allow any harm to befall you.”

“That’s… uh… Thanks?” Reckt half-asked, clearly unsure how to take it. Not that I blamed her – a couple of cute girls like us promising protection probably didn’t amount to much in her mind. She’d see in time, though. Assuming we actually stuck around, at least… Actually, I suppose it would be rather hard to stick to her side and go on grand adventures, but… We’d figure that out as we went.

“For now, I’ve got something to talk about with my sister,” I declared, giving Reckt a little squeeze.

“W-wait!” Reckt demanded, panic evident in her voice as her arms tightened around me. “Y-you’re not going to leave me, are you?”

“Nope!” I promised, giving her a pat on the head. “I’ll be, like, half a step away at the most. Just far enough for a sound-proof barrier to work while I’m chatting with Sis.”

Reckt clearly didn’t like the sound of that, but she nodded her head reluctantly anyway. I honestly felt a bit bad about it, but there was something I absolutely needed to discuss with Mikaela that Reckt couldn’t be allowed to hear.

“How about you change clothes, in the meantime?” Mikaela suggested. “I have some extras in our pack. I’m not sure how well they’ll fit you, but they’ve got to be better than what you’re currently wearing.”

“Y-yeah,” Reckt agreed, looking down at herself. “I’ll take anything, honestly.”

“Good, because anything is what we’ve got!” I declared. “What’s your favorite color?”

“My… my favorite color?” Reckt asked. “Uh… Blue, I guess?”

“Blue it is! You got anything blue in that pack of yours, Sis?”

Mikaela rolled her eyes, but nevertheless reached into her bag – or more specifically the Empty Bag she kept hidden in her actual pack. A few seconds later she was tugging out a sky blue dress with some pretty deep cleavage. I wasn’t sure if Reckt really had the assets to pull it off, being quite a bit smaller than us in the chest department, but I guess that’s what I got for trying to play it cool and locking in the color without even knowing what our options were.

“Put that on, will you?” she suggested, tossing it to Reckt. The girl let go of me to grab it out of the air, stumbling a step or two backwards in the process. I was ready to catch her with my magic if she fell, but thankfully she managed to regain her balance before it came to that.

“I’ll be talking with my sis just a couple steps away, ok?” I said, giving Reckt the kindest smile I could manage. “Hell, I won’t even move from this spot since you moved back a bit. I’ll stay right here while you change.”

“A-alright,” Reckt confirmed, nodding. She was obviously more than a little frayed around the edges, but hopefully a change of clothes would do something to help restore the cocky personality I knew and… liked? A little? Maybe? Certainly more than the sight of her whimpering like a kicked puppy, at least.

In the meantime, I went and used a little magic to erect a sound-proof bubble around Mikaela and me. It wasn’t anything fancy – if I knew more about how sound waves worked, I could probably have constructed some sort of cool physics based spell, but as it was I just sorta brute forced it by creating a bubble of magic around us and willing for sound to be kept in. It took a lot more magical energy to maintain, compared to if I had a clear image of what I wanted and how I wanted the magic to go about it, but I had big enough reserves to brute force the whole thing.

“Let me guess,” Mikaela began. “You want us to come clean about our identities?”

“Not completely,” I replied. “I just… think it might put Reckt at ease a little if she knew what badasses we were.”

“Maybe,” Mikaela hedged, “but we don’t really know her… what are you going to do if she starts spreading rumors?”

“Oh, come on, it’s not like we can hide as perfectly mundane adventurers forever. I mean, what are we going to do the next time someone’s in trouble? Not show off our awesome powers in a bid to save them as soon as possible?”

“Why? So that we can play hero at the cost of our secret identities?” Mikaela demanded. “I know that leaving people in fear doesn’t feel good, but so long as we save them in the end, then-”

“And what if we don’t?!” I interrupted. “Save them, I mean. What if we’d come too late for Reckt? What if those stupid spiders had injected her full of poison, or used their digestive acids to turn her into mush? What then?”

“Then… I suppose we’d be feeling a lot worse,” Mikaela begrudgingly admitted. “But that doesn’t change the fact that we’re risking war if we reveal ourselves.”

“Then what if we had a way of doing it without revealing ourselves?” I asked. “Like… Like… I don’t know, a secret identity, so far removed from who we are that nobody would ever put it together?”

“You mean like a pair of human adventurers?” Mikaela asked, rolling her eyes. “Charlotte, we’re already doing that.”

“Yeah, but like… what if we had another identity? One completely removed from both being princesses and being human adventurers?”

“Like what?” Mikaela asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Like… maybe we could go out as succubi?” I suggested. “Dye our hair a different color, wear a mask, use our succubi wings instead of the angel wings everyone knows us for and put our tails on display?”

“So your plan is to… what? Play a succubus super hero?” Mikaela demanded.

“Sure, why not? It’s like, a whole second step removed from our real identities! Even if someone figured out it was us, they’d still have no idea who we really were. It’s like… using one secret to cover up another like a stack of hats covering other hats!”

“That’s…” Mikaela sighed, shaking her head. “Why don’t we talk about this later, alright? When we’re actually alone and not three feet away from one of the very people we’re supposed to be hiding from?”

“That’s just Mikaela-ish for ‘No,’ isn’t it?” I grumbled, crossing my arms.

“It’s Sollian for ‘we’ll talk later,’” she insisted. “Now drop the stupid barrier so that you can go back to comforting Reckt. She looks like she’s about to have another nervous breakdown.”

“Fiiiiine,” I grumbled. “But I still say we should at least let her know we’re badasses! It’ll make her feel safer.”

“Do whatever you want,” Mikaela replied, sighing. “Just so long as it doesn’t get us caught…”

I just grinned. Those were the exact words I wanted to hear.

***

Mikaela

***

“Hey Reckt!” Charlotte called, waving her hand like a maniac. “Guess what? I got permission to tell you what badasses we are, so that you won’t have to worry so much!”

“Huh?” Reckt asked, tilting her head to the side. “Don’t you think it’s a little early to be talking about yourself like that? I mean, I know you took care of the spiders, but-”

“No, I mean we’re really badass!” Charlotte insisted. “Come on, Mikaela, tell her how badass we are!”

“Very badass,” I replied, my voice an utter deadpan and my eyes not even aimed in their direction. “Now come and help me with the other cocoons, will you?”

“The other cocoons?” Charlotte asked, turning away from Reckt. “Oh yeah, there were more of them, weren’t there?”

“The human sized ones are a lost cause, but the smaller ones seem to still contain life of some sort. I can hear heartbeats when I focus.”

“Hear heartbeats?” Reckt asked, before shaking her head. “I mean, wait! Shouldn’t we at least check the human sized cocoons? Just in case?”

“I’m telling you now there’s no one in there,” I warned, going over to one of the smaller cocoons. “But if you want to waste your time…”

“Come on,” Charlotte said, pulling out her blood dagger. “I’ll take a look with you.”

I snorted, knowing full well that Charlotte could simply rip through the threads with her bare hands if she really wanted to show off. She’d likely jumped at the chance to show off her weapon without even thinking about it, though. At least Reckt looked suitably disturbed by the blasted thing, but that just served to remind me how incredibly distinctive the blood blades were. I’d have to warn Charlotte against using them if she actually wanted to follow through with her hairbrained scheme to play hero without being caught. At the very least, she’d need to restrict their usage to one identity or the other.

For my own part, I turned my attention to one of the smaller cocoons, taking hold of the silken strands and roughly pulling it open. At the same time, something inside shifted, responding to my movements. Before I could rip more than a tiny hole in the thing, a white horn came flashing out of the hole, piercing towards me.

“Woah!” I cried out, instinctively tossing the bundle of silk away from myself and into the air. The cocoon squirmed even as it fell back towards the ground, and by the time it actually hit the dirt the horn had torn apart the creature’s cage enough for it to burst out.

“What?” was all my sister had time to say before the creature turned its attention towards her and charged at her, transforming into a white blur that rammed right towards her chest.

“Watch out!” Reckt called out far too late. “It’s a horned-”

“Bunny!” Charlotte squealed, hugging the creature against her chest and spinning about. “Oh by Granny, I’ve always wanted one of these! Mama always warned me it would be too much work, but… ah, why didn’t I think of getting a monster rabbit as a pet? You’ll be way easier to train!”

“A horned… rabbit… actually,” Reckt muttered, staring in shock at Charlotte. “I… I’ve heard those things can pierce through solid steel with their horns…”

“And yet it failed to penetrate silk,” I pointed out. “Either the webbing, or Charlotte’s clothing.” Of course, in the former case, it was only because the thing had been bound up too tightly to move. In tearing open the cocoon, I’d loosened its binds. Why it hadn’t penetrated Charlotte’s clothing was a bit more of a mystery, but not much of one – considering Mama’s worrywart nature, I’d have been more surprised if she hadn’t found some way to enchant our belongings with extra defenses. “That said… in what world is a monster rabbit easier to train!?”

“Well, monsters are intelligent, aren’t they?” Charlotte pointed out. “Like, maybe not exactly comparable to a human, but they have basic problem-solving abilities. It shouldn’t be hard to teach it a few command words and I’m sure it’s smart enough to be potty trained without any issues!”

“It’s a man-eating, carnivorous rabbit,” Reckt pointed out, joining me on the side of reason. “There’s no way you can just treat something like that as a pet!”

“I can hide it… hold on a sec…” She paused, likely pulsing some magic through the creature to get a better idea of its form. “I can hide her in my bag when we’re in town! She won’t be a bother to anyone!”

“She’s a monster, though,” I said, stating the obvious. “Look, she’s trying to escape your grip and gore you even as we speak.”

“Silly rabbit, don’t you know I’m stronger than you?” Charlotte laughed, before emitting a burst of magic dense enough to be visible. The rabbit froze and then suddenly began to tremble, only to freeze again when Charlotte scratched her behind the ears and swung her around in a hug. 

“Just what I always wanted! My own little bunny rabbit! I will name her George, and I will hug her and pet her and squeeze her!”

“…George?” I couldn’t help but ask. “Setting aside the absurdity of taking a monster as a pet, you’re naming a female rabbit George?!” 

“Hehe~” Without missing a beat my sister giggled and switched tracks as she continued to squeeze and pet her new rabbit. “Don’t worry, little Bonny, I won’t hurt you! Just don’t try to hurt the squishy people like Reckt, alright? Let all your aggression out on me instead!”

I don’t know how much that rabbit truly understood, but she apparently knew enough about humans to start vigorously nodding her head, clearly worried for her little life.

I frowned, certain that something wasn’t right but not quite sure what. Why did I feel like Charlotte had pulled a fast one on me?

~~~

Author’s Notes

I wanted to get through a bit more of the chapter, initially, but this felt like a natural end? So I went with it. Hope you enjoy!

Depression continues to be a bit Bad, and to interfere with my work – but I think it’s getting a bit better? Hoping to be more productive in this upcoming week, at the very least… Get something more than just a chapter of DT done, you know? I feel like I can manage that, as long as depression doesn’t take another turn for the worse… We’ll see, I guess? DX (Many thanks to all of you for being so patient with me!)

Also wanna give thanks to FallingLeaf, who did an amazing job of editing and even came up with the title~! Hope you all enjoy. 🙂