It took them roughly another half hour to get together all the necessary components for their little office cookout, the entire time Seth's stomach was growling in complaint that he wasn't going fast enough. It seems that a diet of marble sized Soul Cores and a single morning coffee wasn't enough to sustain him for the entire day, especially after all that intense exercise. Who would have ever thought that?
Chastising himself for his dreadful life habits, he gathered up the materials needed for a small fire. The best he could do was bundles of paper, pencils to act as wood and a trashcan to contain it all with. With everything else made of metal, plastic or other useless materials to a campfire, it really was the best. It was almost as if the office planners didn't expect people to be fighting for survival inside their monoliths to capitalism. Clearly a serious oversight.
Once he had collected his meagre kindling supplies, Seth brought it back to their makeshift campsite. It was, naturally, the sanctuary of every office space, or even every place of employment in existence. The bathroom. The place where everyone, even if they didn't admit it, went to have a few minutes of peace, or even more minutes for the slackers.
It was especially good because, with the amount of smokers within companies like this, they had decided it was better to install a small window for ventilation rather than an area all for the chimney lunged. Luckily, it meant that they wouldn't choke to death on their own campfire smoke, which would be an unfortunate way to go in a world of monsters and magic.
Seth made his way into their sanitary sanctuary and started to set up the campfire, he had Coal leaning up against the door, preventing anyone from entering without permission. Whilst he was collecting his kindling, Cynthia had been busy consoling a trembling woman they had found hiding in one of the bathroom stalls.
As it turns out, she had spent the entire time locked in here. She didn't aberrate, but she didn't evolve either. The voice, Mother as Angel called it, had simply informed her that her stats were too average to invoke the mutation, so she was left a normal defenceless human, In fairness, that was only the tiniest step down from how Seth himself started.
But unlike him, she hadn't been forced into multiple life or death battles that helped push him to survive. Instead she was trapped in solitude, forced to listen to the sounds of people screaming and dying as she held her breath and hoped that she wouldn't be next.
In fact, the poor girl had no idea what was even going on and got a dreadful fright when she saw the likes of Cynthia and Coal. One bearing resemblance to a classic monster and the other the puppeteered corpse of a former monster, so it was understandable why she was afraid.
It was only now, after Cynthia spent time consoling her, that she had calmed down. Now she was laying with her head in Cynthia's lap, sleeping soundly. Seth looked at her with slight pity in his eyes and couldn't help but ask,
"Did you ever get her name?"
"Amy, short for Amanda. That's about all I could get out of her other than 'Please don't eat me.' She's only just stopped trembling. I… I didn't think that there would be people like this. People without powers, left to fend for themselves."
As she spoke, Cynthia softly stroked the girl's long, auburn hair. It was always difficult to read certain expressions on her detailess face. One's like anger and happiness were easy, but more complex and subtle ones were lost. Yet Seth could guess, by the way she was playing with the hair or gently stroking her arm, Longing.
"How did it feel, you know, changing like that. If you don't mind me asking…"
Cynthia couldn't help but chuckle softly at his question, moving her gaze away from the girl and back to her companion who had just managed to make a viable fire and was now starting to pluck the feathers from the bird carcass.
"That obvious, huh?"
She tilted her head, looking up at the ceiling as she thought back to that fateful moment.
"It was… strangely peaceful. I mean it was painful at first, a pain deep in my chest like something was trying to tear itself out. And when I saw what I was becoming, I was absolutely terrified.
But… Do you know that feeling where you are sitting in a hot bath, and you simply lay your head back. You start to lose sense of where your body ends and the water begins as you just float there? It felt like that, like I completely lost myself and became one with the bath. Even now, I have to focus on keeping myself as… me. You don't realise how much of your body you overlook until your very form relies on it."
As she spoke, she raised her hand and gazed at it. Throughout the entire speech, her hand was slowly losing its form, beginning to melt like Ice cream on a hot summer day, until it suddenly snapped back into place like nothing was ever wrong.
"What about you Silver, what does it feel like when you're doing your thing with him?"
Using her reformed arm she gestured to Coal before going back to absentmindedly caressing the sleeping girls hair, seemingly a comfort for both of them.
Seth glanced over his shoulder at Coal subconsciously, making Coal stare back at him. He locked eyes with the puppet for a few moments before going back to focusing on his task,
"Have you ever tried to rub your stomach and pat your head? It's like that, but you have two of everything and you also need to remember which head you need to pat, which set of hands you need to do it with. It's… exhausting to say the least, but maybe when I get more practice or increase my stats it will be easier. Who knows, maybe one day I'll be at the head of my own army."
He laughed and shook his head, he could barely manage himself and the one puppet. An army was a nice dream, but he was pretty sure that it would overload his mind. He finished preparing the bird, stuck a fork from the break room on either side of it as a makeshift spit, and placed it over the fire.
***
A few hours later, Seth was laying back and trying to get some rest while Cynthia kept watch. Amy had woken up by now and was still, somehow, nibbling away at the half of the bird she had been given. Taking the words smallest bites and flinching every time the voice in her head spoke to inform her of her stat increases.
Seth himself had gained a small amount of stats from the morsel, this time in the biological stat. Unfortunately, due to either its size or something else, he only gained a single point. He still wasn't sure if this was a lot, nor what the limit was. Only time would tell.
Sleep itself, on the other hand, was rather difficult to achieve when you had two sets of eyes and a consciousness permanently split between the two. But he eventually felt like he was getting close to managing it through pure exhaustion, his body teetering on the edge of falling asleep while a small part of his mind stayed active in Coal.
But unfortunately, before he could fall into a deep sleep, he was rudely awakened by a familiar voice blaring inside his head.
[ERROR! ERROR! Something has gone wrong! This should not be happening! ERROR! ERROR!]
Seth shot up, clutching his head as Angel screamed its warning message over and over, he could almost hear a panicked and hysterical tone in its voice. Beside him, Cynthia and Amy were wincing in pain as their own mysterious voices screamed at them. Even Coal wasn't safe, clutching his head in the same way as Seth as it was a deeply instinctual feeling that he projected onto his puppet.
Before he even had a chance to ask what was wrong, an invisible wave blasted through all of them. The building trembled and swayed, like they were in the middle of an earthquake, before all the lights suddenly flickered and cut out. The only thing left lighting the room was the smouldering embers of their trashcan campfire.