Outrun - Chapter 472 - Short Shoe Shiro (Patreon)

I smoothly slid over the counter, though paused just shy of stepping into the red light spilling in from my window. “Sorry, dame, we’re all out of perfectly sized shoes.”

”But your Short Shoe Shiro…” A woman drawled slowly. She was a classy sort, made even classier by approaching at this time of night in a fine dress and even finer makeup. “I was informed you were the best.”

Fucking hell! I flinched. Everytime I heard that stupid ass nickname, it totally took me out of it. “We’re closed.”

“The Shoemaker played hard to get. Her intentions were unknown, clouded like the night sky. And yet, the dame across from her sparkled like the moonlight.” The Narrator spoke up once more in his annoying voice. “It seemed this night wasn’t quite over as she expected.”

”Surely we can work something out.” The classy woman let her fur cowl slide down her collarbone ever so slightly. “I’ll pay… extra.”

”Closed is closed, lady. I don’t make the rules.” I turned to the side and talked out into the empty air. “Seriously, though, I’m seriously getting sick of being called that. From now on, I won’t serve anyone who calls me Short Shoe Shiro.”

”Shiro spoke out into the room, seemingly calling out to another person. In the process, the master shoemaker only looked like a disadvantaged loon in front of her client.” 

| Comply with the Narrator. |

“Yeah, yeah. Can’t you say anything else, you broken record? Who’s side are you on anyway?” I sighed, and shook my head. I’d seen that message dozens of times in what felt like the weeks that I’d been working non stop. “And you, Narrator… can’t you ever shut up?”

For once, the Narrator didn’t have a rebuttal. Hopefully he was getting as tired of this as I was… or maybe not? No way an eidolon was playing a part like that, so it was definitely one of the interface generated NPCs just like all of my clients had been so far.

”Can’t you reconsider?” The woman bit her lip, and moisture filled her eyes. “I really am desperate.”

”Fine, fine…” I played along and started to make one more false identity. I had it down to a science, now. The hardest part was still coming up with names funnily enough. Once I had that, though, it was only a matter of spinning my thread and slipping supporting documents into the right places.

It was easy enough here where I just had to make the documents and pick where they went. Once I got out, I’d have to go bug Luna to plant the digital ones while Nightshade took care of physical copies. I wasn’t too worried about any of that, though. 

In a few hours, I carefully assembled a new shoe for the woman. Ignor Amicus. It was between that and Hugh Jasole for calling me by that stupid big name. Oh, right, and Ignor Amicus was illiterate, but made up for it with chrome. I even managed to get her set up with full doctor’s exams declaring her condition unsolvable by science. I didn’t have to go out of my way so much, but she was definitely welcome.

I swapped her out into a different set of clothes like she was just a middle-management corpo, and snapped a picture. With that picture, I carefully made her a fully functional ID for some corporation that didn’t exist in reality using a swiped ID that was laying around my workshop for some reason. It was simple enough to copy the RFID tracker and blend in my fake one until it was solid with the tech on hand.

”Here. Read through it all carefully, or don’t come whining to me if your shoe falls apart.” I tossed a dense stack of papers onto the table. An even denser stack of papers went into a mail crate off to the side. Since this was ultimately just a well made illusion, I didn’t have to actually plant it all myself.

“I really can’t thank you enough, darling.” The woman draped her cowl back over herself, and picked up the thick stack of papers. Ignor instantly started to glitch out and pixelate. After a moment, her condition spread down into the workshop all around me.

“Finally!” I let out a small whoop, though I couldn't help but feel a little sad. Not cause it was ending, ‘course. I was sad to see the workshop go. If I needed something, it just appeared. Where else could I get that kind of service? Ugh, I needed to make or buy all the machines I used, too…

— — —

I arrived at Nine Peaks with little fanfare. The Perk learning had gone a little longer than I thought. After waking up, I had to dive into a counseling session I was late for, and then rush back here to meetup with my kinetic instructor. Once I was out of here, though, I already made plans to meet up with Hope to bring down the purple pyromaniac.

One of the other Greater Sprites I hadn’t met yet was waiting for me, and guided me up to the central pavilion in the middle of Nine Peaks. Along the way, I was assaulted by a pack of kits that caught the scent of the goodies I had stuffed in my backpack. Going out in a ball of fur and yips definitely wasn’t how I thought I’d nearly die.

Speaking of wild kits, the foxes all over Nine Peaks were rushing around like everyone was incredibly busy. It was like they were all preparing for some big festival or something? It had the same vibe, anyway.

As soon as I stepped into the place, Fox called out to me with bright eyes. “Hi, hiii~ Shiro!”

”Fox… you’re looking good.” It wasn’t just an empty pleasantry. She was… brighter, almost? Her silver fur looked more luxurious, and her presence seemed to fill the space more. 

“Y-you noticed?” Her five tails swished excitedly around her while the fifth dropped in front of her snout coyly like she was a bashful maiden. “T-thank you, S-Shiro. Oh! What do you think of the maid tokens?!”

“They’re pretty convenient.” I wish I had more of them, even. Sprites were just so useful… it was a shame I kept using them for alternative purposes then cleaning. Speaking of, I pulled my backpack off. It was a cheap throw away one instead of my normal one. “I, uh, I brought this for the sprite I got voided last time.”

”At least you have a heart.” Fox let out a sharp yip, and the space right in front of me distorted. A fox dressed in a maid outfit tumbled through the rift with wide eyes. “Here she is!”

“Yip?” The fox sprite looked around in confusion for a moment, and then bowed low. The dress of her outfit fell forward over her head, totally covering her. She instantly panicked, and lost her footing.

“Pfft.” I broke into a soft laugh, and helped her untangle herself. A lot of the foxes looked the same, but she was definitely the one from last time. I pulled my bag off, and held it out to her. “Here. As an apology for last time.”

The sprite shook her head like she couldn’t possibly accept—then the scent of prime steak wafted through the thin fabric of the bag. Without further prompting, she greedily snatched it away from me like it was a treasure. 

I’d stuffed the bag absolutely full of everything the sprite could want. Top class steaks, shiny trinkets, a couple watches I swiped casually on the street, and even a bunch of candy. Hopefully it would make up for last time?

“You never bring me any gifts.” Fox pouted on the throne, and glared at the fox maid like she was the problem. The sprite just ducked her head, though held onto the backpack with firm determination. 

“… do you want me to bring you gifts?” I asked back hesitantly.

”Oh! What a great idea!” Her tails instantly started to wag, and she got a far off look in her eyes. “You really are my favorite, Shiro!”

Message received. I wasn’t sure what an eidolon would want, but… maybe I could hand craft her a blanket or something? Gifts made by hand meant a lot more than cheap stuff any once could buy at the store, didn’t they?

“Hey, what was up with that last Perk I got?” Even at a glance, it was over the top on the realism front. I had realistic learning spaces in the past naturally, but most of the time the interface gave me bare bones stuff to work with.

“Did you not like it?” Fox looked a little disappointed.

“It was fine. Just wondering why it was different?” If it was just one or two things, I would’ve shacked it up as just the Perk’s unique process. It was different in a lot of ways, though.

“Oh, well… Elephant’s idea, really. We, uh, we noticed our methods tended to leave some latent mental issues in our Scions.” She avoided my eyes like she didn’t just tell me I had mental issues. “S-so, we’re always trying to improve. Y-you know how it is.”

And that improvement was adding a Narrator and a bunch of lifelike NPCs? That… wasn’t a terrible idea. Being stuck alone without anyone to talk to for long times was a little crushing. It almost invoked… what did my counselor call it? Anti-social tendencies?

Not that I had those, ‘course. I was a perfectly fine and well-adjusted person. Even if the Narrator got annoying quick, I did feel a little less drained mentally than I usually did after learning a new Perk, though. Being less drained meant I could start up the next thing quicker, so it was a net gain.

We chatted back and forth about it for a bit longer before I shifted the subject. “You’re really pretty today, Fox.”

“Oh stawp.” Her tails wagged erratically, and two of them covered up her face.

Her fur looked so soft. I almost wanted to reach out and pat her head. Hmm… if I turned into my sprite form, she’d probably be happy if I rubbed up against her. “You look quite radiant, even.”

Her eyes narrowed on me, though the happiness n her face did’t fade. “What do you want?”

”Oh, nothing, nothing.” Caught red-handed. I tried to laugh it off. “You, uh, you remember when we talked about me being able to cast magic?”

”You’re finally ready to learn?!” She jumped to her paws with a dopey grin on her vulpine face. “Hehehe, I get to teach the Scion magic? Serves you old fellows right.”

She was definitely going to rub this in the face of the other eidolons, wasn’t she? “I have the kinetic training, but after—“

”Let’s do it now! He’s just a human. It won’t kill that guy to wait a little longer for you.” She hopped off the throne and danced around me like an over-excited kit. “C’mon! Go go, Fox Shiro!”

“I-is that really okay?” It might actually kill him if we made him wait. Aether Poisoning was a very serious thing.

”Meh. I’ll double his pay, and he’ll suck it up like a good boy.” Her eyes practically sparkled with delight. “Shiro, use transform!”

I hesitated a moment longer, and then summoned out Fox’s Fluffy Cloak. The moment the silver fabric fell over my frame, I shrank into my tiny fox form. I only had a moment before Fox practically bowled me over. 

Two of her tails wrapped mine with a third patted me on the head. “Hehe. Good girl! Finally coming to learn from me. Where should we start?”

”Yip!” I let out a short bark, and shook my head. Learning how to cast their translation spell would be a nice start. It’d make this form not so difficult to use.

”Ugh, that’s high tier magic, Shiro. You can’t run before you can crawl.” Her expression froze as my tail drooped. “H-how about Lesser Illusion instead? Here, follow along with me!”

Fox’s teaching method was pretty simple—brute force. She forced the aetherial energies all around us through my body into a complex pattern. I thought it might hurt, but it felt oddly pleasant to have so much power fed into me. Almost like a lesser version of my Kinetic ability absorbing lightning?

The way she was trying to cast magic was so interesting to me, too. Unlike Adepts that had to use runes as a medium, sprites seemed to be able to just directly weave the raw energy of the Aether into shape for their magic. It made the stuff Adepts used look like a poor imitation. It was like the difference between a 3-year-old scratching out words slowly, and an adult smoothly writing out an essay. 

For what felt like hours, she cast Lesser Illusion through me again and again to no effect. Was this really how Sprites learned magic? “Yip-yip?”

“Aha, this is how Bear taught me!” She said that with an odd amount of pride. Her tails drooped low after a moment. “Why isn’t this working, though? It should be working.”

”Yip, yip…” I tried to follow along with her, I really did. I could feel the energy… I just couldn’t control it in the slightest. It was an incredibly aggravating situation. No matter how hard I reached, I couldn’t even get it to move.

”Why isn’t this working?” After a while, Fox noticed the problem too. “Am I a bad teacher? No, no, you must be the problem.”

“…” I stared up at her with dead eyes. Are you calling me dysfunctional?

One of her tails patted my head, and she avoided my eyes. “W-what I meant is that you feel like a Magus! Heh, right. You can connect to and channel the Aether, but you can’t control it at all. Why… hmm…”

”Yip?” A low whine left me. So I couldn’t cast magic? Did she lie to me back then? Disappointment filled me. I was so against magic, and now that I finally tried to learn it, I couldn’t.

“H-hey, don’t cry, Shiro. It’s okay. We’ll figure something out.” She talked in a soothing tone like I was about to break down in tears. 

I just stared up at her blankly. I was disappointed, but not about to break down. “Yip?”

”Oh, right! Why don’t you go to your Kinetic lessons?” The eidolon responsibly pushed the matter to the side. She patted my head lightly, and rubbed up against me as if to calm me down. “I’ll go talk to Bear about this. He’s smart, so he might know, yip.”

”… yip…” I shook my head softly.

”Cheer up! You’re the first human to ever have a connection to the Aether established after birth, so there’s bound to be some problems.” She cast the universal translate spell over me, and tugged on my tail with her own. “C’mon, I’ll walk you to class!”