Divinity Rescue Corps
107- Ghost Touch

Sure it might be cold, but my heart was thudding in my chest, standing there close enough to reach out and embrace.

“Fletcher,” she said, in her quiet and ethereal voice, “you must understand, this quest you embark on… it is costly for you. You must divert your resources away from the mission objective.”

It was like she’d slapped me. “What?”

Didn’t she want this? She had told me explicitly that she wanted to be touched, held. She couldn’t touch the living without damaging them, and she couldn’t touch other ghost aspect Nakamamon. This was literally what she had been craving.

“At every level you gain a finite amount of skill points, and to spend those on me alone is not something I can ask of you.”

“Oh, is that it? Pff!” I waved her off.

“Do not be so flippant,” she said, and here was the first time I’d ever heard the ghost aspect really come into her voice. The air grew still around her, and the tone of her voice shifted, deepened, and grew… distant. Like she was speaking to me from heaven, or more likely hell. “This mission you have embarked upon is of vital importance to my world. I will not have you throw that away on account of one such as me.” A number of arms appeared from behind her back, ghostly and floaty ones that didn’t visibly connect to her body, and they were all the Nakamamon fingers, thicker than human fingers and pointed, like claws.

The voice raked over my soul and caused me to shiver, but Stalwart came into play again, and I gained 7 levels of Fear Resistance for the moment. Paired with my Durability, I now had 14 levels. I could reasonably expect 4 successes from that, but I couldn’t be sure if that would be enough.

Durability Check: You do not have the associated skill for this check*. You are under the influence of the special ability Terrific. This fear power will force you to freeze in place or flee in terror. You may resist by spending 5 Durability Tokens. Would you like to resist?

Note: This is a contested check, and you may not pay a Token to retry.

Current Tokens: 7 Durability, 7 Free Tokens

*Note: Stalwart currently grants you a Fear Resistance at level 7.

The timer to react and choose to spend the Tokens or not wound down very quickly. Far quicker than any other ability.

Five was a stretch, but I could make it. Five Tokens was an unthinkable amount considering I needed them to work on healing the dead god.

There was no time.

I chose not to spend the Tokens.

Luckily, I got the Success! notification. I actually scored an unbelievable 7 successes out of 14. I’d never had a 50% success rate before and that was amazing in and of itself.

I stepped in closer, which certainly confused her. I’d just shrugged off her power even though I wasn’t a Bard or a Guardian. How could I have done so?

“Listen to me closely,” I told her. “You are now under orders never to use an ability against me, ever again. Or the remainder of the group, unless they’re a specific danger to anyone. Buffs are fine obviously, but that Terrify power right there is off limits. You’re a Guardian and you’re not guarding me from my class and skill choices, Chrysta. That’s the first order.”

She shrank back, as though I were the one being terrifying.

“Secondly, how I spend my points is not your concern. So far we’ve done pretty well handling the obstacles and objectives that land in our path. And I don’t want to brag, but our team objective is tied directly to me being a healer, and there’s only one Healer in this party.”

I could see she wanted to protest the point. If I put all my skill points towards the Healer class, I could be better! I could get through this Glumpdumpkin situation faster or with less chance of failure! And she wasn’t wrong, even though neither of us knew it definitively, but it wasn’t her job to make my decisions. It wasn’t her job to scaring me into making the decisions she considered the right ones.

I reached out and took Chrysta’s hand. She suddenly seemed very small and weak. Her body was typically substantial down to the hips, where her legs disappeared. Right now she disappeared up above where her belly button would be. She also had thick strands of hair-like stuff from her head, but they faded from view also. All the other hands and arms faded from view, and even the edges of her face went transparent. This was as close to tears as she could manage.

“You’re going to be okay,” I told her, speaking as gently and as reassuringly as I could.

“You should remove me from the team,” she whispered. “What I’ve done—”

“Is totally forgivable. You’ll survive this. We will move on from this.”

I pulled her into a hug, and she didn’t resist. We stood there together, me hugging onto Chrysta and feeling her waifish form completely for the first time. I’d increased my Adaptability, but I could sense it wasn’t going to be enough. My breath was already puffing out in a thick cloud of vapor. Whatever the skill did to my body, it also did something to my mind, and what it gave me was the knowledge that we weren’t quite there yet.

Drat. Not the team member.

After a good thirty seconds, I started getting the warning that I was taking damage. Chrysta must have gotten this as well.

The first test attempt failed. Hugging did not count as sexual contact and activate the level of Pheromones. Neither was Adaptability up to the task.

Fiddlesticks.

“It will work if we kiss,” I told her.

“I… Fletcher, can you be certain—”

I leaned forward, but only close enough to get her to bridge the last half inch. The words died in her throat and she kissed me.

There. Freezing cold lips warmed. The damage slowed to a trickle. Adaptability began working again, making me more ghostly, and Pheromones made her more alive. She stared down at herself for a moment in awe, then at me, then at my hands, which were on her waist.

“Sit with me,” she said, and sat on the ridge. It felt very close to what I’d call a cliff.

We sat and watched the waning light of day, with my arm wrapped around her waist. We kissed periodically, several more times, whenever Adaptability and Pheromones started wearing off, and had me taking damage again.

The skills and the knowledge inside those skills told me not yet. My level wasn’t high enough yet to either manifest me as a ghost, protect me from the ice damage, or turn her human enough to stop those from being a problem. It wasn’t far, but it also wasn’t yet.

“I love what we do,” she told me, breathing freezing air into my mouth after a kiss. She rubbed my hand where it ran up and down her slim body, and leaned against me.

“I wish it went faster,” I told her. “The townsfolk are asleep, the refugees are getting restless, and it seems like we’re just sitting here.”

She kissed me again.

“You have already healed almost a dozen gods trapped in town,” she whispered, and slid my hand so it covered her breast. “You have worked to heal Jacoby’s people.”

It was true; making health and mana potions every day took time out of my mornings.

“Even if we get this guy put back together,” I started.

“You feel unworthy of the enormity of the task at hand,” she said.

“Yeah.”

In response her lips met mine again. The cold receded. The calming aura of being dead stole over me, as Adaptability tried to make me compatible with Chrysta.

“You have already advanced far,” she breathed. “You will need the experience. There can be no rushing this task, Fletcher.”

She kissed me again, and slipped her tongue in. I responded, even though I was taking damage. Massaging her breast, sliding my other hand over her thigh, making out. It felt wrong, like we shouldn’t be doing this. We were coworkers. She was a fracking ghost. But the wrongness also lit me up from within.

“We will bridge this divide,” she said. “Conquer this task. Together.”

Her eyes flew wide when she realized I’d taken damage from the kissing. She stood and floated away, only to return when I called out.

“We shouldn’t,” she said, but I took her hands. She darted forward and kissed me, once more making sure I wouldn’t take damage from being in contact with her. “That will be the latest time. My job is to keep you safe, not endanger your life. And your job is to focus on the mission, slow as it might feel.”

I pulled away but held her by the hands. “Chrysta, one part of my mission is to ensure the comfort, health and happiness of the people on my team. It’s not part of the mission directives, but I’m making it my priority.”

She smiled a wan smile. “I am already in your debt. You have already done an immeasurable service to me and my kind. If we are to live as ghosts, I would be overjoyed for you to be in contact with the others.”

Her smile warmed, and the rest of her body became more solid-looking. She even materialized down below the hips, as she had done in Slinktrickle.

“I will refrain from using the words ‘insist’ and ‘must’ toward you, Fletcher. Please understand though that I do not feel worthy of being your priority. If I may entreat you, or beg, it would be to beg for you to enhance your healing abilities.”

And here, Chrysta dropped to her knees. Her thighs and knees materialized, and she fell to the ground, not letting go of my hands. For a being that had appeared utterly terrifying not five minutes ago, she now had a pitiable vulnerability to her.

“Think on this,” she said, and looked away.

“You don’t want the daily hugs I have planned for you?”

She looked away, and did what I could only assume was the ghost version of a blush. Her whole body went mostly transparent, save for her cheeks, her ears, the sides of her neck, and the tops of her breasts. The barest outline remained.

I gently touched her chin, and urged her to get up. “Maybe one day soon… a kiss?”

Her eyes widened, and she disappeared entirely.

“Fletcher,” a whisper drifted toward me. “I… I would like that very much.”

We could try today, I wanted to tell her, but I knew the moment had passed. With my next level up at the very latest, and hopefully sooner than that.

***

While the girls spent time asking my mother how difficult it was to take up knitting, and how difficult it was to handle chemo, and how difficult it was to raise a hellion like her son, I formulated a plan for how to handle telling my very sharp mother what happened further into the story.

“Don’t encourage her!” I called.

“He was a real handful,” my mother said. “You’ve never heard a baby cry so much in your life.”

“Oh, haha,” I called. “You think I won’t pelt you with burger wrappers just because you’re my mother? Think again.”

My mom leaned towards Cinzy, who was presently driving. “And the spit ups. You’ll never believe the rainbow of colors he vomited up when he was just a baby.”

Laughter erupted.

She then ducked as a burger wrapper flew at her head. I was foiled on the next few throws by Ivy and Isabelle blocking me, the jerks. And then Cinzy was telling me she would turn this van around, young man, and the full oddity of what I was doing struck me hard.

I was in a van with my mother and five women I’d had sex with—and was still having sex with—on the regular. I was already the luckiest man on the planet, regardless of whether or not I could save my mother.

Everybody was having a nice laugh at my expense, which was fine. I was no longer that baby. The last time I’d thrown up… was alcohol-induced.

Same puking, different bottle.

I chuckled.

“What’s that laugh for?” Isabelle asked.

“I was thinking about puke,” I said.

***

Heading over to camp, I quickly located Drat and manifested the Prismatic Apparel.

“I’m gonna go out on a limb and say we’re going to spend a significant amount of time finding and collecting these pieces. This is yours until such time as we’ve got them all.”

Drat’s face twitched, and I got the distinct impression he wanted to ask me about my female companions, and whether I’d given the yellow Nakamamon in town what I’d been giving the others on the regular.

I had to assume Drat knew my secrets, at least some of them, because that was kind of his thing. The xp triggers for Rogues pretty much entailed finding all hidden information and objects, so he was motivated to sneak around and eavesdrop. They also dealt with being deceptive.

“Oh, hey,” I told him. “I need whatever pertinent information you have regarding the mission, regularly, and that’s an order.” I held up a hand. “Wait…” I tried to think of anything that might also cover another Blake situation, but I figured the Blake situation fell under ‘disrupting the main mission’ then he would be given xp for letting me know if anything like that ever happened again. However… “Oh, I also order you not to withhold information from me regarding the mission, and not to lie to me outright regarding mission-specific information. Does that cover it?”

He pouted a bit, then brightened. “Actually that frees me up to stop holding out, which… fork you very much, expedition leader.”

I narrowed my eyes, trying to figure out how serious he was. His sense of humor was so dang dry. I decided he was joking by the twitch on one of his lips… it might have been a smile.

“You’re going to need a new pair of tongs each time we need to handle the material.” I showed him the tongs I’d used, and how the grabber parts had already blackened with exposure to the divine. They might survive another use, but they might not.

“And what makes you so sure I’m going to be handling the material, as you call it?”

I stared at him.

“I’m not touching the stuff, gloves or tongs or no. Just not happening.”

I cursed inwardly, but schooled my expression. It was a continual and marvelous tight rope walk every time I interacted with Drat, where the drop off was a murky abyss I hadn’t yet seen and didn’t care to. Why did this person keep me on my toes like this? Why couldn’t he be eager to please and joyful every time he got it right like Alan?

“You’ll need Larelle or myself with you any time you find material, then,” I told him. “I’d like to get it all rounded up as soon as possible.”

“Is there anything else, Expedition Leader?”

“Nope, that’s it,” I said. “XP for information the class route, and the orders route. XP for keeping it from me… you’re covered either way.”

“Joy.” He rolled his eyes, which was about as expressive as he got. He tended to display disapproval much more harshly than a simple eye roll.

I thought that he might be legitimately happy, to be honest. This freed him up not to be a dick, when his class tried to get that to be a thing at all times.

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