LTSV - Harbingers of Change - 43 (Patreon)

"Darling," Adra finally found his voice. "The spell paint is gone."

The breath caught in Mira's throat as she realized that, yes, he was right. Her skin? Was clear. There was no paint showing in the mirror, no caustic scarring, or anything else other than her own unmarked body.

She cast a spell (a little nonsense cantrip that created butterflies out of light) and the System didn't activate. The spell formulae flowed smoothly from her mind and into reality as a cloud of butterflies burst into the air around her. The System didn't log the spell. It didn't throttle her output.

Mira called for Penny and twenty Pennies appeared, tumbling into her space like startled kittens. They converged on her, sensing her soul within an unfamiliar body that needed re-inspection.

She couldn't help the delighted smile on her face as she turned to Adra. "Look!" she gasped, delighted. Her body was healthy! Nothing was controlling her access to her own powers! She could do anything she wanted! "No more restrictions!"

Abruptly, she realized that was more true than she'd ever quite realized.

Ever since her previous life, she'd been operating under some kind of handicap. It had been her health when she was Violet. This time—this time it had been her fundamental civil rights being taken away.

Her smile faded and her gaze dipped, turning inward.

"No more… restrictions…"

Her head snapped up. "Have they been deliberately nerfing me!?" she shrieked, turned to Adra for answers he surely did not have. "The seizures! The conservatorship! Was that the Goddess adjusting the difficulty levels in her own game?

Adra held up his hands, looking confused. "I may be inadequately prepared to discuss this using that particular metaphor. Darling, are you alright?"

She forced herself to calm down. It was easier than she would have predicted with multiple Pennies cuddling close around her to shield her nudity. "Yes. Yes, I'm fine. I just made a connection that I hadn't before. Apparently, the Veiled Goddess thinks I haven't been getting enough challenge in these past few lives and so she decided to change it. No wonder the class I received from the System seemed to be more focused on throttling down my magical output than actually empowering me."

Adra made a little 'ah' of understanding. He looked thoughtful and then nodded. "I suppose it would be a very boring story if you could just mow down anyone who interfered with your goals."

She grimaced. "I'm already hampered by morals and empathy. What more could they want from me?"

"As enchanting as this sight is," Adra interjected. "Perhaps we should find you some clothes? The newspapers still send camera drones into this neighborhood sometimes."

Ugh. He was right. The last trouble Mira wanted to add to her already-existing pile of them was someone leaking a nude of her.

She turned and went looking for her clothes, still wrapped in clingy semi-translucent ghost drakes. "Let's see what I have in the closet that will fit."

The first thing Mira discovered, upon trying to get dressed, was that she was now significantly shorter than she had been that morning. Her clothes, which had started to get a little tight thanks to Bryn's bulking shakes, now fit her like a circus tent.

"We will send someone to the store on your behalf," Adra promised her as he helped her cuff the sleeves of what had originally been meant as a mini-skirt length shirt dress. At present, the hemline hit her just above her knee.

He was being even more handsy than usual and she didn't mind. It was grounding.

She was at odds with herself about this sudden change. On the one hand, she'd missed her original body. She liked it the best of all her bodies because it felt like home. On the other hand, she'd been using her identity as Samira and she would probably need to be Samira again.

Also, she had no idea how the rest of her party would react to being told that their Archmage had gone to live on a farm or something.

She only had so much time before one of them showed up and realized the door was locked.

As she thought that, she heard the front door knob rattle and her phone pinged with a text a few seconds later. It was from Cece.

[CN: Mira? I heard weird noises coming from your level through the floor. Are you alright?]

Mira turned to stare at Adra and held the phone up so that he could see the screen. "Is there something you would like to tell me, dear?"

He dodged her gaze and could not have looked shiftier if he'd tried. "Your other body vanished before your new one reappeared on the other side of the room a few feet off the floor. I caught you before you fell, but—you did not start to breath right away. I thought something had gone wrong and we'd ended this Cycle early. That, combined with the face you'd been given…I—may not have been handling it as well as I could."

No, that would have been an emotionally devastating experience for him. Mira gave him a brief hug, but returned her attention to the problem of Cece. "I may need you to distract her, while I think of something to do. She's not expecting to see this face and—!!"

She broke off abruptly as a System window spawned in her face.

[Would you like to switch accounts? Y/N]

"You're joking…" she wheezed and indicated the 'yes' button.

There was another whoosh, but she didn't lose unconsciousness or move anywhere. She was just taller all of a sudden. What's more, she was wearing her clothes from that morning. She looked down and did a turn, but there were no more changes. She was in her Samira body once again.

She fumbled her phone as Adra gawked.

[SM: Yes, I was just taking a nap. I'll come let you in.]

"I'm sorry, love," she whispered as she pecked his cheek on her way past. There certainly was something nice about being able to do that easily. "We'll talk about this later tonight. I don't want them getting suspicious about what goes on in here. They're already paranoid enough."

He grumbled, but retreated into the shadows to stash his body elsewhere.

Cece was standing in the hallway looking anxious when Mira answered the door. "What happened?" she asked. "I heard a huge boom and sounds like grating metal."

Wow. Adra must have reacted very badly when he realized she wasn't breathing.

"I think I must have slept through it," Mira said, gesturing her in.

"Really?" Cece asked, accepting the invitation. "I thought I saw black shapes on the wall in the elevator on my way up."

Crap. Mira tried to think of ways to divert her suspicions. "Are you sure it was my unit the noise was coming from?"

Cece just nodded. She seemed to be glancing around the living room, looking for clues. "My unit is directly under yours. I hear you and Mr. Dietrich walking around at night sometimes, if its quiet. I did an inspection on the ceiling, but it didn't give me any clues about what happened. Could you check with your upgraded version? I'm worried there was damage to the floor joists or something."

So, that was how Mira lost the rest of her afternoon; helping Cece chase non-existent structural damage to the building. It wasn't the worst fate.

The worst fate was came after she called a meeting later that evening with her demonic lady assistants, plus Syrith, who knew just enough of what had happened that afternoon to want in on Mira's explanation.

She opened the meeting by changing her 'account' in front of all three of them. She'd confirmed with Adra that the System now tagged her as [Dark Queen Alanamira the First, co-rule of the Demon Realm].

Soneares was the first one to find her voice. "This opens so many opportunities for the lawsuit," she breathed.

Mira smiled smugly and said, "I know. Do you think you can work with this?" as she turned in a little circle, letting her long hair twist gently around her feet as she did.

"My lady, there's nothing I can't work with," Soneares promised. "I don't think you would even have to rely on the System to verify your identity. You look exactly like your state portrait and all the statues. There's one of you and Lord Adramalak in front of all our embassies in the Triumvirate."

Mira frowned. "There are statues?"

Not more public artworks. She was so happy to have her own body back, but not at the expense of that.

"They are different than what you are picturing," Syrith interceded sympathetically when Soneares looked confused. "The state portrait was painted by a Wise One who you knew personally, Baalath, who now serves on the Grand Council at home. All the statues we erect were based off his references. The likenesses are very good and the compositions are respectful."

Knowing that did ease Mira's feelings somewhat.

"The only problem that I can foresee…," Soneares continued. "…is that both Lady Alanamira and Miss Samira will both be required to appear at the mediation session. The courts here might allow a protected individual to be excluded from the trial, but that may not fly under Triumvirate law. I can get started with a petition to allow 'Samira' to sit out of the session, but I've since learned that the Triumvirate Representative for San Aurelio is an elf and this sort of case law almost always involves children in their territories. It's standard practice for the child to be presented to the court and Elven judges have been known to send out armed search parties if the child cannot be produced. If that happens, the court almost always takes the child away from both the guardians in question and rehomes them on a different planet."

"Her Grace is not a child," Syrith countered.

"I'm not sure twenty-eight is an age that an elderly elf will recognize as adulthood," Soneares pointed out. "Plus, her history is concerning. We already had to submit the results of our investigation to the representative's embassy just to get the mediation session approved. Even if she isn't a child, she has been consistently endangered by her supposed caregivers. This is to say nothing of her status as an Archmage. The representative won't be in any mood to for shenanigans from either side of this dispute. We need to present a compelling case that leaving her in the care of the demons is better than relocating her off-planet to somewhere with better civil protections for her. Showing that we understand the rules of this mediation and are following them appropriately will be crucial to winning the representative over."

"That is a problem," Morwen agreed.

"Perhaps not," Mira countered. She'd been thinking about this all day while chasing down non-existent building damage with Cece.

It was entirely possible that they were overthinking this problem.

"System?" she said, addressing the ceiling. "I have a question that needs clarification."

After a moment, a System window opened in front of her.

[Statement: Awaiting Query.]

Mira smiled. "How many distinct legal entities are standing in this room? Please name them."

Note: I swear, THIS chapter is what made me seriously start thinking about changing the title of this installment to 'The Two Body Problem'.