Southside Coven: Path To Power (IX): Plotting A Personal Project

  --- Jon Whitaker ---

  He was feeling a bit weird about seeing Artemis again after the whole ‘our mentors/secondary mother figures are sisters’ thing. As well as Miss Edna’s whole ‘you’re cousins’ thing.

  The fact that Felicia, his actual technically adopted cousin, was regularly hanging around -and currently avoiding him after the mess with DeSade- did not make any of this simpler for him. (Yet another reason to stab DeSade the moment Rosalind doesn’t need him…)

  He was hoping the fact that Artemis had sent him a text to meet her at the library, meant the awkwardness would be minimal but… (my social anxiety is still acting up…)

  Which is why, while finding Artemis was relatively easy, actually approaching her was significantly less so.

  “Are you just going to stand there or actually take a seat?” The other teen dryly asked him, never looking up from the book she was reading and taking notes from.

  “Sorry.” He grimaced, sliding into a chair. “I wasn’t sure about… things after everything with Miss Edna and Miss Edme…”

  Artemis took a breath and let it out. “I’m going to be honest, I just want to power through that awkwardness and work on our legally grey magic project.”

  “That is completely fair.” He nodded, perfectly happy to do just that. “So what are we working on next?”

  “Well, we’ve still got a couple weeks but we need to keep working if we want to get everything done before the arm begins to degrade.” Artemis pointed out, before opening and pushing a notebook his way. “But I have figured a few things out after working on the previous cut, and there is one thing I definitely want to try.”

  “Infusing external affinities?” He frowned, skimming over the various notes.

  “Right,” Artemis nodded, before standing as she frustratedly explained that, “Last time I had so many ideas for conceptual affinities, and we did so little with them!”

  The other teen started to pace as she worked herself up. “And since we fused our [Protective] and [Defender] affinities I’ve just come up with so many ideas we could do! Ideas that would only multiply if we brought in our summons to assist! Hell, I might even be able to convince Audrey or Val to bring in something extra!”

  “Okay?” He slowly nodded back, a little put off by her unusual excitement. (Though if we are bringing in others…) “I’ve got a couple people I can probably ask for help too?”

  “Anyone with something interesting?” Artemis checked. “We’ve got a limited amount of materials so we need to make the most of them.”

  He thought about it. “Well there’s Pix with her [Nature], [Light], and [Mischief] affinities. Then my friend Ying has a [Storm] and [Dragon] affinity.” Admittedly, he’d have to talk to her about it beforehand given their current awkwardness.

  “Uh, then I’ve got a couple of contracting summons who could probably help us… I mean Wolf is a wolf with wind powers?” He paused, a little unsure of the rest. “And then Basil is… I’m actually still figuring out her affinities… There’s Melon, a Flufflepuff… And then there’s Noctis who is… some kind of guardian fear thing…” (Who I also need to talk with…)

  “Those are… some interesting possibilities.” Artemis admitted, as she considered them. “Especially that Dragon affinity, that’s like a holy grail if you can convince her to help us out… Though the rest is situationally useful… Then again, I would love to get Val, Espanta, and this Noctis in a room together with the Horror’s arm… I mean something has to happen if we mix four separate fear affinities.”

  “Uh, good something or bad something?” He had to ask.

  “An interesting something!” Artemis grinned, sounding just a touch unhinged.

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  (I thought I was the one with Madness exposure here… Actually…) “In that case… Basil might do something interesting too…”

  “How so?”

  Remembering DeSade’s whole thing about ‘discretion’ and the fact that they were in a very public library. “Uh, she’s… if you meet her you’d understand, but summoning her here… is probably a bad idea.”

  He didn’t have nearly enough snacks on him to keep her from trying to eat the books.

  Artemis gave him a… complicated look, before asking, “On a scale of one to you, how… off is this Basil?”

  That made him frown. “I feel… offended by this question.”

  Artemis winced. “I meant, on a scale of non-Deviants to ‘passively scares horror demons’ where does Basil rate?”

  “Well… If I’m a five on the scale,” He pointedly began, while pointedly ignoring the fact that even by his own scale he was like a six. “She’s probably an eight or a nine.” (Then again the Cheshire is a ten…)

  At his response, Artemis took a deep breath before letting it out. “On the one hand that absolutely terrifies me, but on the other… I really want to find out what that looks like here.”

  Despite still being a bit miffed, he still decided to offer the fact that, “I also know a Malcontent who’d do me a solid?”

  “Of course you do…” Artemis inhaled again before exhaling and shaking her head. “No, as many… interesting possibilities as I can come up with. We should only involve the people that will actually help us reach the goal of whatever we’re building?”

  “And what is the goal of what we’re building?” He asked.

  “Well, that depends on if we’re building one of your cuts or Audrey’s.” Artemis admitted. “After all, I think you two have very different ideas of what you’d want out of all of this.”

  “True.” He nodded, before wondering. “What if… we were to use both of my cuts for a project? I mean that would give us twice as much space to work with, right?”

  Artemis considered it for a moment before shaking her head. “It would, but it would also mean whatever we build in that case would be conceptually a singular object. Which depending on what you’re going for could be useful, but it would be locking you in a single ‘Artifact’ in place of two.”

  “Yeah, I can see why that might bite me… unless we can make something that’s both an offense and defense like with Val’s Demonic Guard’s damage absorption and reflection?” He wondered.

  The other teen’s face twisted a bit. “That… feels a little same-y. Which again would be wasting a lot of the research potential here. While I wouldn’t love it, I’d still prefer to use both cuts on a single new thing rather than repeating something we’ve done just… bigger.”

  “Fair enough.” He knew a big part of the reason that she was helping him was for the sake of the ‘research’ as it were. “In that case we need to figure out what we can do with it that’ll be new and interesting?”

  “Well, what do you want to use your cut for?” Artemis asked. “That’s the core goal of what we’ll be working on for you after all.”

  He was aware how his first response of (murder the Horror) would be taken, and so took a second to think of a valid excuse, namely, “I’ve been invited to a fight tournament by Tru Grit. I really want to win my fight.” (Which is true. I do want to win my fight against him and the Horror.)

  Artemis blinked before tilting her head. “So, you got into one of his higher ranking fights then? Otherwise I can tell you this is overkill.”

  “Uh, yeah… He saw me and Val’s fight and… invited me to one of his tournaments.” He tried to vaguely explain.

  “Yeah, he invited Val to one too… No idea if it’s the same one as you but…” Artemis shrugged. “Eh, we’re giving her a cut so whatever we give you isn’t giving you too big of an edge.”

  “Right…” He drawled, not really caring about that but still noting it down. “Either way though, the tournament is probably going to have some powerhouses so I need something that can help me there.”

  “The question is if you need something offensive or defensive then.” The other Hunter pointed out. “Which do you think is your bigger weakness?”

  He considered his fights both with the Scarecrow, the Horror, and even the Beast of Blackwell, “It varies a bit… I mean I can deal damage and avoid getting hit but… The damage is caused more by tricks and traps, while if I take one solid blow I’m out until Pix heals me.”

  “So that gives you… three options then.” Artemis figured. “We can make you something that can actually hurt the Scarecrow. Something that lets you handle him if he actually gets you. Or we can lean into your ‘tricks and traps’ to make you even more annoying for Val to deal with.”

  That brought him up a bit short. “I thought you didn’t want to give me an unfair advantage against Val?”

  “I don’t… but do want to make her angry.” The other teen admitted.

  “Why?” He couldn’t help but frown.

  Artemis refused to meet his eyes as she answered “Reasons…” a touch of color to her face.

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  A/N: Okay, so few things to note:

  -You can spend both of your cuts on a single project and make it stronger but it will be a single project. So if you want a mix of things you’re going to have to finagle it a bit.

  -We will not be making a second/superior Demonic Guard here. (Not to say we can’t have our own gauntlet just no Royal Guard.)

  -Project concepts this time will be based on who you invite to help. While still retaining the core options of (Horror, Seal, Minion, Duplication, Shadows).

  --I will provide hints on who is best to recruit for what direction depending on your below choices next chapter. (Which may be a touch short.)

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