"Io isn't a doctor," she scoffed slightly. "I just taught him how to do a few things. That's all."
"Why would he use it against you, though?"
Wizah sat back momentarily. "In the end, Io and I want different things. Although we're siblings, we're also different people with different priorities and desires."
Uari hummed in acknowledgement.
"I've made my peace with being here, in this universe. I've re-built my practice somewhat, and I can sort of see patients even without a license." She marked the word 'see' with air quotes. "But Io's different, I guess. He wants to go back by any means. I don't know if you remember, but he's kind of a follower of yours."
"I don't...really care to explore that vein of history." He gulped in slight trepidation. "But still. You're his sister."
"I know him well enough to also know that he'll destroy anything that gets in his way, sister or not. You'll see."
Before he could ask what she meant by that, the tell-tale sounds of multiple people appeared outside Wizah's clinic. Their presences had appeared near-suddenly and were characteristic of what he had sensed before when Glasses teleported. "I didn't know Gla—Temmy could mass-teleport people," he hissed at Wizah accusingly, and she ignored him. He fantasised briefly about knocking the smug smirk on her face off with a punch.
This time, it was Wizah who grabbed his arm. She pulled open the drawer on the bottom left of her Interface table. Uari was phenomenally unsurprised to see that instead of a drawer, it led into a small, dark, drop-down area. As quietly as he could, he shimmied himself down the chute and landed on his feet. Wizah followed ungracefully, landing on top of him and causing them both to end up in an unhappy heap. "Pull it closed!"
He scrambled to stand, then reached up and pulled the drawer closed with a handle attached on the inside, plunging them into complete darkness as the first sounds of forced entry made their way into the clinic. "C'mon."
Uari heard the sounds of cloth against concrete and realised Wizah was moving. "Why didn't we put any lights in here?"
"Active lustre charge or discharge can be detected," was the soft and surprising murmur. "It's kind of a long journey, so bear with it."
They crawled through the tiny concrete chute as quickly as they could, and Uari marvelled that Wizah had managed to install it at all. "Will anyone else be able to detect us down here?"
"Hmm? They can track the lustre but we're not using any right now like I said."
"No, like, can they sense our presence?"
"Uari, what—you know what, it's probably just your abilities or whatever."
"You mean to tell me no one else can actually sense presence."
"Yeah, and before you ask me any more, I don't know anything about your abilities. You and Ghost kept real quiet about that. Maybe your ability is Sense Presence or some shit."
Uari supposed it wasn't that bad of a deal. It had helped him out of a few pinches, including in his first fight with Temmy.
They continued to crawl along in blissful silence for the better part of what seemed like an hour. Uari had interjected once to ask how long the passage was and had received no reply from the suffering woman in front of him, and so did not attempt to ask again.
When they emerged, it was from another drawer, in a building on the outskirts of Gildest. They had a bit more trouble this time because Wizah hadn't had the foresight to install an aid to help them climb out. He had let her climb onto his shoulder instead and then pushed her past the edge of the drawer. She shrieked as she toppled onto the floor above and had refused to help him out after that, leaving him behind to do other unspecified things.
When she returned freshly showered, he had already climbed out of the hole on his own, since he still had his subspace storage and everything, after all. The room was, in fact, her room, and several cans of Lightspeed still littered the floor. There was a simple bed in the corner of the room, as well as a table with stuff strewn all over it.
A single, solitary stuffed toy sat on a chair, looking worn out. It was a stuffed bacterium he couldn't identify, but it was very cute. He had grinned at it.
While he waited, he had cleaned up the room for her and was now seated at the low table in the middle of the room, demurely sipping tea from the tea set he had produced from his subspace storage.
The stuffed toy sat across from him, with a teacup of its own.
Wizah had halted when she'd opened the door. Her eyes swept through the room, noting how her stuff was mostly untouched save for the freshly-tied floor and bed. They landed on the stuffed bacterium toy smiling at Uari from the other side of the table. "If you think I'm going to be embarrassed by that, you're wrong."
"Damn," his scowl was in full contrast to the demure image of the tea set, but disappeared quickly as she sat across from him, hugging the bacterium and drinking tea. "You're not afraid I'm going to poison that?"
"Hah? You really think it's only my teeth that look like this?" She made a show of smiling for him.
In his mind, Uari renamed her ability from 'Teeth' to 'Metal Body' but said nothing else otherwise.
"Where were we?"
"Can I at least take a shower first?"
He had blurted out his request at the same time as she had asked her question, and Wizah raised her eyebrows, taking in his filthy, desperate countenance despite the seemingly-calm nature of the setup he had provided.
"Fine, but you'd better hurry up."
Uari gave a whoop, and made his way to the bathroom attached to her small room. Although she lived alone, her bathroom was well-furnished and he had the pleasure of using every possible product he could identify in the shower on himself.
When he emerged, Wizah told him to cough up the cost of his usage of her stuff. Then, they settled down again to finish their discussion.