Really Strange Stuff - Ch.23 - Downtime (Patreon)

=::= Bailey's PoV =::=

After becoming disciples of Chaos my girlfriends and I ended up spending the rest of the day experimenting with the new abilities Cassandra granted us.

I quickly figured out my gift let me do a whole lot more than just open doors. If there was a keyhole or combination lock I could control it just by giving it a little tap with one of my fingers. That meant I could unlock or lock almost anything, from padlocks to building entrances, from car doors to bank vaults.

And when it came to cars, I could start them up as easily as I could open the doors. I'd make a killing as a car thief, if I ever decided to turn to a life of crime. More importantly though, it meant I never needed to worry about losing my keys again, or getting accidentally locked out of the house.

Things were a little less straightforward when it came to electronic security like passwords and PINs. That's where the limitations Cassandra mentioned came into play, in terms of where the security was being validated. So I could gain access to just about anybody's phone or personal computer if I was able to touch it, but if I wanted to log on to my own bank account online then I still needed my user ID and password.

The reason for that in person limitation became very clear during my experimentation. If my gift worked remotely then I'd have become the most powerful hacker in the world. I'd have been able to access any computer or server or device, anywhere in the world, as long as it was connected to the internet and I could find a link to it.

That restriction made even more sense when it came to Serenity's gift. If her new talent worked over audio or video chat then every time we did a live stream then she'd have been able to affect anyone who happened to tune in. Or perhaps everyone, we already knew it wasn't limited to one person at a time.

That was another little surprise, realizing our abilities worked on each other. So I could access my girlfriends' phones or computers if I wanted to snoop, not that I'd ever do that. And Callie could tell if Serenity and I were telling the truth or not, although she promised she wouldn't use her gift on us or our families.

That was possible because we were all able to control whether or not our new talents were active at any given time. So Callie usually kept her internal lie-detector turned off, just like most of the time I wasn't a magical walking lock-pick.

An even bigger surprise came when we figured out Sere's power could do more than just make people calm or tense. Cassandra said her voice could 'soothe or arouse', and both of those words had multiple meanings. Which our tall hot dommy girlfriend put to excellent use with Callie and I, after the three of us were in bed that night.

And honestly, that was loads of fun for all three of us.

So overall the 'in person only' restriction made a lot of sense for both Serenity and myself, but it felt too limiting when it came to Callie's new talent. Her gift was a lot less dangerous than mine or Sere's, and it would have been much more useful if it worked during video chats or audio calls. The only reason I could think for Cassandra to give her the same limitations was to keep things fair.

Our cute calico girlfriend said she didn't care either way, she was just happy to be a disciple of Chaos and to have Cassandra's blessing and approval to start working on the new channel. I spoke with Serenity in private though, and the two of us agreed to pray to Chaos to get the restriction lifted from Callie's gift.

Speaking of our new channel, we began work on that shortly after Cassandra's visit. And along with everything else we had going on it meant the next few weeks quickly became some of the busiest we'd ever had. In fact it was probably the busiest month of my whole life.

Our goddess granted us our gifts in the first week of May, and just a few days after that we had the May live stream on the twelfth. Then I was hard at work preparing episode seven of the Council series ready for its publication date on the twenty-seventh, while my girlfriends were writing then filming episode eight. And in the middle of all that we had my twenty-sixth birthday, which meant dinner with my parents the night before the council episode dropped. And somewhere in there Cassandra answered my and Sere's prayers. She lifted the in-person limitation on Callie's gift, which allowed her to make use of it on voice calls or remote interviews.

On top of all that, my girlfriends and I were also hard at work trying to get our new Praise The Chaos channel off the ground. And considering we'd already been working pretty hard since all the way back in November, it really shouldn't have come as a surprise to any of us when we all started burning out in mid-June.

"And that brings us to the next case in the Council archives," Serenity told the camera, as we began recording the third re-take of the intro segment for next month's Council episode.

Callie nodded, "That's right Sere. This month we'll be looking at, uh..."

"Sorry," the calico sighed as her shoulders slumped and her ears drooped. "I've already forgotten what we're doing again. And um..."

After a slight hesitation she admitted, "I never thought I'd say this, but I don't really care anymore."

I stopped the recording and gave her a sad smile, "It's ok cutie, I get it."

"Same," Serenity frowned as she slumped back against the sofa. "Let's just wrap it up for now, ok? I'm feeling pretty much done for the day."

Neither Callie or I had a problem with that, and without another word the three of us shut down all the studio gear and turned off the lights. Then we trudged slowly up the stairs to our kitchen. We grabbed some drinks from the fridge, and finally ended up cuddling together on the sofa in the living-room.

After a sip of her cooler our calico girlfriend commented, "I don't even know what day it is anymore."

"It's Sunday," I responded.

"The eighteenth of June," Serenity added. She had a sip of her drink then announced, "We need a vacation. A real one, not just a few days off to visit family."

A moment later she decided, "I think we should take next month off. The whole month. We should go somewhere and try to unwind, do something fun."

Callie protested half-heartedly, "What about the July live stream? What about the next episode? And we're still trying to get content up on the PTC channel..."

"It'll all be there when we get back," the tall ravenette catgirl replied. "Our fans will understand Callie. Trust me."

I nodded slowly, "Serenity's right. We're burning ourselves out, if we keep pushing we're going to end up crashing completely. We need some time off, we need to recharge."

The cute little calico pouted a bit, then had another gulp or two of her drink. Finally she asked, "So where do you want to go for our vacation? And for that matter, can we even afford to take a whole month off?"

"We could do a road trip?" I suggested. "Stay in cheap motels maybe? Or we could even try camping, if the weather's nice. I don't know where we'd go, but there's loads of options."

"Hmm," Serenity looked thoughtful, but she didn't chime in with any suggestions right away.

In fact all three of us were quiet for a bit after that, just sipping our drinks as we thought about the prospect of a whole month of vacation time. On the one hand it would be nice to have some serious down-time, considering how hard we'd been pushing ourselves. But on the other hand, money was going to be a concern. We were still paying off all the new AV equipment we got back in February and March, and a fancy vacation that ran our credit cards up to their limits would just put us even further behind.

Even if we stuck to cheap motels or campgrounds like I suggested, those still cost money and that would add up. Then we'd also have the cost of gas, plus the expense of eating in restaurants if we didn't have facilities to prepare our own meals. And all that was based on the idea of going anywhere at all, assuming we could come up with and agree on a destination.

Then again I knew if we just tried to take time off while staying home, it wouldn't work. We'd get bored, and we'd end up back in the studio again. Maybe we'd take it easy for a few days or a week, but it wouldn't be long before we forgot we were supposed to be having some downtime.

"What did you two think of that little ghost-hunt we did back in December?" Serenity asked, breaking the silence after a few minutes. "Did you enjoy that?"

Callie shrugged, "Sure? It was a fun little trip. Why, are you thinking of heading back that way again?"

I added, "We couldn't afford to stay in that hotel for a week, let alone a month. That room was expensive."

The tall hot ravenette shook her head, "I wasn't thinking of going back there specifically. But I was thinking maybe it'd be fun to visit some other paranormal places? Haunted locations or cryptid hotspots, that sort of thing? There's dozens if not hundreds of places across the country like that. Maybe we could pick a few, then take our time touring around on a road trip."

"Wasn't the idea to take a vacation?" I asked as I tilted my head and arched an eyebrow. Then my ears folded back and I added, "You know location work can be even more stressful than working out of the studio."

Serenity shook her head, "I'm not talking about doing live-streams on the road. I'm not even talking about doing full-on investigations. I was thinking we could just be tourists. I'm sure we'll have some cameras with us, but we don't need to drag the entire studio set-up along. We'll have our phones and our personal cameras, that's enough. Hell we don't even have to get a show out of it. Just do it for fun."

"Do you have any places in mind?" Callie asked.

Sere shrugged, "Nothing specific, but like I said there's loads of options."

"Ok there's one place that comes to mind," she admitted a moment later. "Have you ever heard of the Kentucky Goblins? There was a case back in the fifties where a family fought off a bunch of little green men who were trying to get into their home."

I frowned as I adjusted my glasses, "Wasn't that more of an alien thing? Extraterrestrials, not cryptids."

"That's what they said," Callie responded, "But the fifties was when the whole UFO sightings and abductions craze got started. I'm sure for a while there, everything strange or unexplained was automatically assumed to be from outer space? But I seem to recall some folks suggested the goblins were subterranean creatures that came out of some nearby caves, rather than aliens from outer space."

Serenity smiled, "Exactly. And that's what I was thinking. We could visit the Mammoth Cave System, do the normal tourist stuff, then maybe poke around off the beaten trail and see if we can find where the actual goblin sightings happened. I'm not saying we start hunting for little green men, just tour the places they've been reported."

"There's loads of stuff like that," she continued. "If we wanted to go further east there's the Jersey Devil sightings, or the Dover Demon out in Massachusetts. Another famous case was the Mothman sightings in West Virginia. Then there's lizard men in South Carolina, bog creatures in Arkansas, monsters in Mississippi, the list goes on."

My ears folded back as I teased, "I can't believe you left out the Sasquatch. That has to be the single most famous cryptid in North America."

Callie shook her head, "There's an entire industry that's grown up around searching for Bigfoot. People spend their entire careers working on that. Sort of like aliens out in Nevada?"

"Which is why I didn't mention it," Sere agreed. "It's way too mainstream for us."

"I know. That's why I was only teasing," I said as I rolled my eyes.

My expression got serious again as I asked, "So have we already decided we're taking all of July off? How do you want to handle that with our schedule and our supporters? That means cancelling the July live-stream, and postponing episode nine of the Council series until August."

That led to a brief discussion, but by the time all three of us had finished our drinks we'd come to an agreement.

"So we'll record a short message to our viewers announcing that we're taking a break," Serenity summed it up. "We can add that on to the end of the next Council episode, so everyone sees it when we post that on Saturday. We can also upload the announcement on its own as a stand-alone thing."

Callie added, "And we'll post announcements on our social media, and direct to our supporters through the next newsletter."

I continued, "Then we do what we can during the last week of June, but don't push ourselves too hard. We'll also need to do some packing, maybe get the car tuned up, and possibly buy some camping gear. Then Friday June thirtieth, we hit the road as soon as we're all up."

Serenity nodded, "Our first stop will be in Kentucky, but after that who knows? We'll just follow whatever catches our interest."

"And Monday July thirty-first we're back home again. Hopefully rested and refreshed and ready to get back at it," Callie concluded.

My ears perked up and my tail started wagging as I added, "Which means we get to celebrate your birthday on the road, cutie. Maybe think about that? If there's anywhere special you want to be or something you want to do, we can try to make sure it happens for the thirteenth."

Our calico's cheeks coloured slightly but she smiled, "Alright Bails, I'll keep that in mind."