Stanley spent the entire morning sifting through several hours worth of captured gameplay footage to edit. It was the kind of necessary yet mind-numbing work he'd usually pawn off to Kendall but in this instance he needed the distraction. The reason for that made itself known through his phone's alarm and upon reading the reminder the calm he accumulated began to melt away.
Taking a breath Stanley shut off the alarm, set the PC to sleep and pushed away from the desk. He got to his feet and yawned before stretching until he heard the satisfying pop of his joints. Leaving his room he made his way to the living room and found his sister lying on the couch with her forearm slung over her eyes.
'Is she awake?'
Because she's not breathing, so he couldn't tell.
"Are you awake?"
"Ugh" came the response.
"You sound like how you look," he paused before adding "dead."
In response she moved her arm to glare at him with pale crimson eyes. The look on her face caused the dam of his self-restraint to break, and he ended up bursting in laughter at her expense. That lasted about as long as it took for a pillow to slam into his face, causing him to stumble from the force of impact.
"What do you want?"
Stanley scowled at being hit but calmed himself to answer her question.
"Just curious what you're doing out here. I usually don't see you until later."
"Ez wants me to take an early break, so here I am," she gestured to herself on the couch before plopping her arms back down.
"Uh-huh, and where is Ez?"
"She's busy putting the finishing touches on your present. By the way she said your lunch is in the microwave. That's all I've got for you, go away now."
With her piece said Natalie went back to resting while ignoring his presence. Stanley decided to leave her alone but not before throwing the pillow on the resting bitch's face eliciting a yelp and a growl from her.
"You dick!"
Stanley cackled to himself as he fled upstairs away from his sibling and any reprisals heading his way.
…
Natalie would have chased after him but she decided against it.
'I'll kill him later.'
Natalie kind of regretted pointing out Stan's upcoming birthday to Ezraphel but in her defense this was something the Lilim should have already been privy to. How was she supposed to know her brother was dumb enough not to mention something so basic while in a relationship for nearly a year? And how the hell did Ezraphel not know about it? That was a major oversight for someone who is supposed to be obsessed with the man. She wouldn't blame Ezraphel however, because at the end of the day it was all Stan's fault.
Now Natalie was co-opted into helping her with preparing a gift for him.
'But wasn't that the point?' She could hear an unknown voice chirp out from the corners of her mind.
'Yes technically' she would answer, 'but I thought I would just be advising her on what to get him not that.'
Well her would-be advice was unneeded because the Lilim knew exactly what she wanted to gift Stan for his birthday. Initially Natalie was happy for her and a bit perplexed since apparently her help was still needed. The freshly turned Wight didn't know what she could do to help since Ezraphel was magic and could theoretically conjure up anything with the literal snap of her fingers. Natalie imagined that even with only a few days Ezraphel had plenty of time to prepare a gift.
Unfortunately, Natalie underestimated Ezraphel's Sigma Mamono Grindset.
"For what kind of wife would I be if my gift were so paltry as to be conjured in such a way?"
Ezraphel didn't actually say that but Natalie could definitely imagine her saying it.
So what was this gift in question?
It was definitely something that could be called a grand undertaking as the Lilim herself described. Natalie didn't see all of it, but as for what she was allowed to witness, all she could say was never underestimate the imagination of a woman who is very motivated and determined to give her husband in all but name a unique birthday experience he would not soon forget.
Now the good news was that Ezraphel was already working on this for several months already. It was one of several side projects she worked on in her spare time. Not something that could be created (even in part) by a simple snap of her fingers but rather requiring meticulous and continuous applications of magical enchantments.
This is where Natalie came in because while Ezraphel could certainly finish this on her own even in the time constraint it was a perfect opportunity to introduce the Wight to enchanting. Something she would have to learn and master in order to cast and maintain a human guise. It goes without saying that it doesn't hurt to have an extra set of hands to help condense the workload.
Needless to say Natalie had her work cut out for her.
The situation was made even worse since the deal Ezraphel forced upon her to impress her in time for Stan's birthday in order to get the privilege of learning 'non-essential' spells was still on. You'd think with the importance placed on this project Natalie would have plenty of opportunities to do that even if she was merely acting as an assistant, right?
Wrong!
Despite doing her due diligence of teaching her how to do enchantments Ezraphel placed the majority of her attention on completing the project itself. As for Natalie whenever she wasn't memorizing the Lilim's words of wisdom, she was applying what she learned under the apathetic gaze of G-A.
Who is 'G-A'?"
'G-A', otherwise known as Golem-A, is a magical automaton Ezraphel created as part of an Easter celebration project for Stan. Apparently she accidentally gave it sentience and not wanting to kill a sentient entity kept her a secret from Stan.
The worst part of that sentence was Ezraphel giving an answer to Natalie's first question of how one accidentally gives sentience to something in a way that actually made sense to her.
Anyway, despite not being able to utilize magic, G-A was familiar enough with it to guide Natalie through the process. Natalie was somewhat grateful to the fact that G-A was a mute because whatever she used to communicate without uttering a single word conversely made her easier to understand as she directly conveyed intent in a way for Natalie to understand. The fact that G-A ended up being a taskmaster and bane of her existence was something Natalie was not so grateful for.
Over the course of the past few days Natalie has had several questions about her new body answered for better or worse. For instance, it is possible for her to experience fatigue through the overuse of mana. Guess what she's been doing for the couple of days? Not only was she doing the only activity that would successfully induce fatigue but G-A was seemingly exploiting that loophole for maximum effect.
She knew that wasn't the point, but damn if it didn't feel like that sometimes. Now Natalie can say without a shadow of a doubt that mana exhaustion was gunning for the top of the most awful feelings of her life. The worst part about it is that Natalie was very well aware that her contributions to the project amounted to grunt work whose failure to complete adequately can be easily fixed by Ezraphel or overlooked entirely.
'Ugh, at least I'm getting something out of it.'
Even if she wasn't making any major contributions to the project or impressing Ezraphel with her work, she was still learning enchantment and applying it practical. So in all despite the awful feeling of mana exhaustion she still progressed in her magical studies. She was now able to make herself look human. Not how she was when she was actually human but how she would look with the changes brought on by her transformation.
That wasn't even the Wight vanity speaking either. Why would she ever go back to looking like a post-botched chemotherapy patient and struggling leukemia victim? Besides, it's better and more efficient at her level to just slap on a human illusion guise over her Wight form. It amounted to making her skin less corpse-like and changing her eye color. The hardest part was dampening her natural Mamono allure effect.
Ezraphel found the disguise passable but needed more work since the point was to blend in with the average human and even a humanized version of her current (Wight) appearance without the supernatural allure was very much not 'average' by any metric. Stan echoed the sentiments in his own boorish way by stating her disguise looked as if she got the Kardashian treatment. That is, a decade worth of plastic surgeries, beauty product applications, and the real world application of someone running her old self through extensive editing software to achieve a false beauty standard.
… Natalie actually didn't mind either of their critiques, backhanded as the latter one was. How could any woman be mad at someone saying that you looked too good to be true?
Amusing as the thought was she conceded the point for posterity's sake since as Ezraphel pointed out she would receive unwanted attention if she went out like this. Although with how long she's spent in the house Natalie was almost willing to take that chance just to go outside. As fun as hanging out in Ezraphel's pocket dimension fiddling with magic is the novelty has worn off. With her only seeing the same faces for so long she wanted, she needed to go outside and touch earth-grown grass.
"Maybe tomorrow," Natalie grumbled from her place on the couch.
The project was in its final stages right now and Ezraphel had no more excuse for Natalie's paltry assistance so the Wight was given the rest of the day to relax.
And she did just that.
*Sniff* *Sniff*
That is until the familiar scent of expensive cologne caught her attention.
"…!"
Mild surprise and curiosity had Natalie sitting up in mild confusion before investigating. What she found was her brother coming from up the stairs dressed up with his hair combed and looking like he was about to go on a date. Except Ezraphel was still in her own realm working on his gift, so...
'What the fuck?'
What she actually said, however, was "hey Stan."
For his part Stanley froze at Natalie's sudden intrusion looking surprised before catching himself and schooling his expression
"Thought you were resting?" he grunted resuming his way down the stairs.
"I smelled a disturbance" she quipped and she saw him grimace.
'Looks like Ezraphel's trained him well' she thought
"You going out?"
"Obviously."
"Where to?"
"None of your business."
He made his way to the door connecting to the garage and Natalie almost scoffed at the action, as if she was going to just let him walk away.
"Whoa there," she said, cutting off his path much to his annoyance "you have to give me something more than that. Unless you expect me to believe you usually go out for a stroll dressed like that?"
"I'm going to a meeting" he retorted shouldering past her.
"Must be some meeting" Natalie muttered following behind him into the garage "mind if I tag along?"
"Why?"
"Because I want to go outside and you're providing the perfect excuse" she punctuated this by casting her illusion spell to appear human.
He gave her a once over "can you even hold that illusion spell?"
"You let me worry about that?"
"No I think I'll worry about that. At least dress better if you're going out."
Natalie looked down at herself and cringed. Clearly she didn't think this through because there was no way she was going to let her debut outside as a new woman be wearing an old t-shirt and cargo pants.
"Fuck, okay I'm going to change" she paused giving the shorter man look "will you wait for me?"
Stanley stared at her for a moment before the automatic garage door began opening to which he finally spoke.
"What do you think?"
Natalie scowled before making a swipe at his car keys to which Stanley easily leaned out of her reach.
With his expression bored he shook his head at her "you're so predictable."
"Tch" Natalie clicked her tongue in annoyance "whatever."
Just then his phone started ringing causing him to fish it out and curse when he saw whoever it was.
Natalie raised a brow seeing him hastily enter the car but before the door closed she caught the words that came out of his mouth.
"Hey mom"
'What!?'
Natalie was at the side of the door just as he turned the engine on engaging the automatic locks preventing her from opening the door.
"No I didn't forget, something came up but I'm on my way right now" he continued speaking while ignoring Natalie who was pressed up against the window.
"What the fuck?" she mouthed.
"Okay" he answered before pausing taking an uncertain glance at Natalie before continuing "love you too."
That got a grin out of the Wight which transitioned into full on laughter "hahahah-oh that is precious~"
"Shut up!"
She paused to see him glaring at her though the effect was rendered all but useless with his cheeks slightly flushed causing her to laugh even more.
Stanley growled but didn't say another word as he began to drive out.
"Have fun with your meeting~" she called out as he drove away activating the automatic doors.
As she waved at him the last thing she saw before the garage doors closed was him flipping her off to which she chuckled.