Nobody in school could resist them, not since high school together. Those that could resist one inevitably fell to one of the others. Not Justin. Justin's gloom was as impenetrable as a wall of titanium. If they wanted to see him looking happy, it had to be when he was faking it for customer service at work. And what a look! All three of them had spent the occasional sleepless night following late-night caffeine as they came to get a good eye full.
The new girl presented several problems. First off, she stole a hunk. Second off, she showed the three of them up by doing what they couldn't. Everyone at school know what was up, at least everyone who mattered, which made this particular loss of standing intolerable. The only person who could get away with that was Jennifer, and that was only because she was the Queen Bee.
The three made a decision, then. Find the blue girl, find out everything about her, and how she did it. Just... not tonight. Too much alcohol and too little sleep to let that go smoothly.
As the moon made its lazy way across the sky, the world buzzed in the way that only late Friday evenings did... or early Saturday mornings, really. Neither Abbey nor Justin paid it any mind. They cuddled close together on that tiny bed, and they dreamed.
In Abbey's mind, the Marid strode through the halls of a university arranged very much unlike the one she was currently sleeping in. A single enormous building, the one that had not been destroyed in the days following the Change, housing those students and faculty who wanted to cling to what was normal. Classes continued, even if much smaller. The departments condensed, the student body shuffled. As an almost-literal war was fought outside their windows, they lowered the blinds and did their best to ignore the sounds of monsters and mayhem. She ducked into a room on autopilot, a class she could not specifically remember, one of the very few non-Human students who stayed and the only one whose natural form was outside of Human norms by any significant margin.
Her pocket had her Coin in it, safe only in obscurity. All the students knew she carried it, even before the Change, but even more now that the person who gave it had passed away in early attacks. Nobody knew if it was a monster or a monstrous person. They just knew her memories were bound in it, and respected it. After all, almost every one of them had a similar story. This day would prove, though, that people were people, and not everyone in that place was willing to play on the same team no matter what was going on outside. Perhaps especially knowing it. An indeterminate amount of time later, when the soul-weary professor let them go, her pocket did not clink the same way.
Panic gripped her in that dream, in that memory. A sudden metallic ping, a coin being flipped. A boy, cruel glint in his eye accompanying the cruel words on his lips. The others were not here to see, they'd left to find a place to forget. Demands, blackmail. If the blue woman wanted her father's coin back, she'd do anything he told her. How little he knew. She desperately agreed to anything he said. No matter how humiliating.
And then the fatal words. He spoke a wish. A little thing, a trivial thing, one well within her power to give. It was enough to let him know he could. His second wish had more thought put into it, a way to make his life at school much easier, but it took much more power from her. The boy found his papers ahead of the curve, teachers willing to overlook mistakes and casual cruelty. Before too long, he got greedy. Wished for riches, and nearly killed both himself and Abbey in doing so.
She learned not to trust after getting her coin back. To be more secure about its safety. That wouldn't keep it from being taken, found, or lost several times more. It was like it was enchanted, meant to get into people's hands, to compel them to make a Wish. It was all Abbey could do to guide them, to emphasize the limits of what she could do so that the ones making the Wishes wouldn't accidentally kill themselves or her. Not to say it didn't come close.
But now... Justin. His first wish, the one he made unknowingly like most of the others, the one that she had learned represented his deepest core? She wasn't sure how he phrased it, but it had tied them together. In those phantom hallways, she ran from room to room, from fear to fear, but she found herself running beside him. Not away from him. Those phantoms looked at her with avarice in their hearts, but could not touch her. Could not take her Coin. It was his, at least for now.
The fear returned, as he was followed by two trailing wisps of blackness. Two more Wishes. He had two more choices to make, possibly of world-changing importance... and once he made them, she wouldn't be under his protection again. She didn't know which thought terrified her more, as she closed her eyes and ran. His footsteps were still beside her, pounding forward towards the veiled future.
Her eyes fluttered open briefly. Her heart pounding like her fading memory of those frantic footsteps. His arm around her, holding her close. His breathing steady, his heartbeat smoothly lulling her back to more innocent dreams. Snuggling close, her eyes closed, and she fell back to sleep.
In his head was something vastly different. He lay on a table face up, as cherry red hands traveled his body. A Succubus he had through the shop every now and then who turned heads every time she came, deeply massaging him. Another of her was feeding him indeterminate delicacies, another whispering praise into his ear. The lingering pain in his torso and legs was being gently worked away, the promise of delights without compare and wealth beyond imagining flowing through his head.
That seductive voice told him even more. He had the power, now. He could choose. He could have whatever he wanted. The blue woman was meaningless. A means to an end. With the decision to sacrifice her, all that he was imagining could become reality. So what if he needed to recover a bit? He'd live even if she didn't, some short-term pain to gain the world. He merely had to pick from his various options of how he wanted to do it.
That gave him pause. Where the line was drawn in his head between who he was and who the Wish was making him wasn't clear to him, but there were a few certainties. Number one, Abbey was a person, a precious and wonderful person who deserved to be considered for herself. Not just as a tool, a stepping stone to glory. Two, sacrificing anyone like that was evil, and he was better than that even on his lowest days. Three...
Well, no matter where the line between before and after the Wish was? He loved her. He didn't want to even consider a world without her. Money, women, power, all of it was meaningless. He could own the world, and it would be an empty thing. Soulless, a caricature. In the dream, he sat up. Stood up. Stepped away from the seductive hands, from the whispers, the wealth, the status. Walked away from it. Began to run. If such was meant to be, he'd find it, but he'd find it the right way. Through his own works and his own hands, on his own terms and for his own reasons.
Away he ran, away from the red, towards the blue.
His eyes fluttered open briefly. His heart pounding like his fading memory of those frantic footsteps. Her arm around him, holding him close. Her breathing steady, her heartbeat smoothly lulling him back to more innocent dreams. Snuggling close, his eyes closed, and he fell back to sleep.
It would not be the end of the night. As they dreamed in each other's arms, tendrils of magic began to reach out from Abbey's gently smiling form. One sought Justin, holding his metaphysical hand, drawing from his own untapped mana. With that little boost, she could reach out just that bit more. Into the ceiling went one wisp, finding and plugging a plumbing leak that had just been starting, hidden between the floors. A different one made its way along the wiring of the building that had once been hastily renovated, smoothing out rough patches and rougher connections.
More still infused the walls, buffering and insulating them far more effectively than their peers. Soundproofing, too, and the simple blinds becoming significantly more effective at their job than the manufacturer ever intended. The mana spent, the wisps returned to the sleeping forms, residuals returning to their owners.
One wisp remained. Within the walls, aided by the others, it began to trace a rectangle. It carried an idea, one of space and privacy. It was not going to complete the work, but it would do its best. Those that came after it would be able to continue things. How long the unconscious working would take, none knew nor cared. It was, however, exactly what the two wanted. Needed, really. As the first rays of the dawn's light emerged, stopped for now by the latest enhancements to the room, that last mote of power met the end of its capabilities and dissolved.
Some hours later, Justin awoke with an unexpected headache. Like so many others, he had never really used his Class much. Sure, he experimented a bit, got Level two plus a tiny bit more, but he hadn't really pushed it. Shaper really didn't fit him, or his idea of creativity and art. As a result, though, he had never in the five years since the Change had never had a Status headache. For example, the one presently resulting from his empty mana pool that was trying to split his skull in half.
He stumbled painfully over to the sink and reached for painkillers and a cup. His reflexes from before the Wish thankfully still worked, since he had suffered through more than one with different sources. One from a truly epic hangover on the morning after his twenty-first birthday, more than he could count from an abusive relationship with energy drinks.
The first thing to get through to his awareness was how different the water tasted. It was... softer, smoother, less laden with harsh minerals common to reclaimed seawater. It was just better. As he reached for the tap to turn it back off, he noticed the sound, too. Or, rather, the lack of it. The tap was barely making a hiss, not the sharp roar he was used to hearing. Used to suffering through, when it came to being in a state like this.
