A Gamer's Guide 459 (Patreon)

“Huh? Whoa, really? Hey, cool! Don’t let me stop you, man!”

And he doesn’t! Like a loosened arrow, he flies from the floor, rummaging through his things and items until he’s got paper and pen prepared, all on the floor, where he sits hunched on his knees, scribbling furiously. His mind is swarming with elaborate ideas and which pose and which exact part of what just happened to draw, and from what perspective, and no no no derivative already done too similar to Ascent of Nyrnus wrong expression wrong everything wrong… He freezes, there on the floor, halfway through a cool-looking sketch of me holding his face. When he looks over his shoulder, he finds me, hunched over him, close at hand, smiling.

Wrong. Wrong. YOU’RE wrong.

“I am, aren’t I?” I say. And it’s so fun, because even though Buccina thinking this threw me into a spiral, now, I’m totally fine! I don’t even feel like killing him in the slightest. Yay!

I NEED you to be right. I need. I. I can’t do this. I NEED to know what you really look like. The true Kitty. Beneath it all. Please. Your projection—it’s a mockery. I hate it! I hate it with all my heart! I hate it with my chest! All of me hates it hates it hates it I could—no, no, mustn’t… Not hurt. But I hate it!!

“You do, huh?” And I love it, because I can feel it. This close to him, I can practically taste the way his heart oozes with loathing. It’s thick in the air. I don’t think I’ve ever felt anything like it. He hates the way I look with more passion than I’ve ever felt. And it’s delicious. I wish I could bathe in his hatred. Plunge into it. Soak it all up and roll around like a pig in it. 

…But it’s miserable. I can’t let him stay like this. Sure, it’s intoxicating for me, but to him… It’s sheer agony. 

PLEASE. YOU MUST LET ME SEE YOU. YOUR REAL SELF.

“I can’t,” I say. “Didn’t Gecko tell you? You can only see me if you truly hope for it; if my true self is the one person you hope most to see in the world. And, sure, you’re really passionate about this, but… It’s practically impossible.”

He raises his upper body from the floor. On his knees, he shuffles over to me, and with all the desperation of a sinner clutching onto the robe of their priest, he grabs a hold of my clothes, knuckles tightened into whiteness, pupils quivering. PLEASE. I MUST.

I look down at him. “I don’t think you should. If you don’t see me, I’ll probably kill you. I like you, we’re friends, but Gecko’s not close. She wouldn’t have time to stop me. Wouldn’t be a painless death, but it would be pointless.”

He inches closer, grabbing bundles of cloth, panting up at me. 

I MUST. NO MATTER WHAT, I MUST. IF MY HEART IS SO WEAK THAT I DO NOT SEE YOU, THEN BEING STRUCK DOWN WILL BE MY PENANCE. I WILL NOT FAULT YOU FOR ANYTHING YOU DO.

I cock my head at him. “Hmm. Well, alright then. But if you do see me… then I won’t let you go. I’d want you close to me all the time. I wouldn’t demand it or anything, but if you see me, and then refuse to be my friend… Refuse to talk to me as you do now…”

I WILL DO IT

I WILL TALK TO YOU LIKE THIS FOREVER

LET ME BE AT YOUR SIDE FOREVER

ANYTHING TO SEE YOUR TRUE FORM

I look into his mad, mad eyes. Hmm. He really is a freak like me, isn’t he…?

I smile. “Okay, then! If you die, I’m sorry, but it was nice to know you. And if you live—we’ll take that then. Here we go!” In three, two, one… 

I turn off the projection. Sink or swim time. It’d be a shame if Myrt died, but it’s what he wanted so it’s fine. Right. Now, let’s see the results…

Myrt’s looking up at me. Tears pool in his eyes. Hands start to tremble. Pretty standard reaction so far. I do wonder how, exactly, he dies. Gecko usually doesn’t tell me the exact method, but from what I could infer, it’s some sort of instant corpseification. Hmm. I hope this guy isn’t too important to the functioning of the city, or else Gecko might get mad at me. 

“YES!” he cries, with his actual voice, leaping to his feet and grabbing me by the arms. He’s looking right at my face. “Yes, this is it! This is the face I’ve been seeking! The true face of Kitty, the god of hope!!” He laugh-shrieks, hops around the room for a bit, and then grabs me again before kissing me twice, right on the lips. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you! Finally, I can draw properly! This is the greatest day of my life!”

Then he continues bounding around across the floor for a minute or so before stopping abruptly. He stoops down to grab the sketch from before, and then holds it up in front of his face, aligning it with where I stand. “No!” he says. “Foul, foul thing!” And then he tears it all up, even though I thought it looked quite nice. “This, we cannot have. Stand still, you! And do… do… like this,” he says, holding out his arms towards me, as though he’s about to cup my face with them. “Yes? Do this.”

“Um,” I say, because I don’t know what else to say. I really thought he’d be dead by now. “Okay?” I hold out my arms towards him. He makes a face as though I just called his mother some choice words. 

“No! No, no, no, no! Your face is all wrong!”

“But this is literally—”

“Not like that! You look bored, tired, but when you did it, you were alive, coy, like a… a… triumphant mistress! You must recreate that face. You must. And I…” He looks around the room, head whipping back and forth. “Where is my easel? I need my—blast it, blast it all!”

Oh, yeah, now that I think about it, Gecko’s been waiting for a while, hasn’t she…? “I’ll go get it,” I say, heading to the door. I open it just in time to find Gecko getting chewed out by Maggie. In a flash, faster than she could notice anything, I’ve got the projecting turned back on. “Um, Gecko? Sorry if this is a bad time, but could I have the easel and stuff? Myrt wants to paint me, I think…”

“Ah, uh,” Gecko’s eyes hop between me and Maggie’s confused face for a moment before landing on me. “Sure thing, Kitty! But, um, I’m kind of… Well, see, with all the hubbub of you finally returning, I sort of forgot I was supposed to have a meeting with the arch-judge of Nudemkurg today… It’s kind of a really big deal actually, and it’s in, oh, fifteen minutes, so I was wondering if…”

“Hey, that’s perfect! That’ll give Myrt plenty of time to paint me, and you can finish your whole thing without having to worry about what I’m up to. Win-win!”

“Huh? Whoa, hey, I suppose it is! Gosh, gotta love when everything works out. Okay, here’s the easel and stuff, and… Glad everything’s going well? Good luck with the painting!”

“I’m not the one who’ll need it, but thanks!” I say, closing the door again, trying not to think about the sheer confusion with which Maggie was looking at me. “Myrt, buddy, I got the—”

Faster than I can comprehend what’s going on, he snatches the items out of my hands, sets everything up, and physically drags me over to where he wants me to stand. “Here,” he says. “Arms stretched out. Coy face. You are a god holding the face of your most ardent believer, to whom you are both master, and yet, inexplicably, servant, through the odd relationship of artist and muse. I am yours, you are mine. Yes? Yes?”

“Yes,” I parrot, trying to copy the expression he’s pulling off. “Something like this?”

“YES! Yes, exactly, now hold that before the vision leaves my mind!” 

I try, I certainly do, but after a few minutes, it starts to become not only increasingly difficult, but also just a bit boring. Myrt is extremely focused on his painting, which I of course can’t fault him for, but it also means there’s nothing super fun going on in his head either. All he’s got in there is a near-complete mental scan of exactly how I look, all details included.

…Hey, wait a minute. Can’t I use this for my projection??

Hmm. But I’d need a more complete taste of his brain to really get exactly what he’s seeing, and for Mindscan XO to work, I need to be holding their heads in my hands… 

I look down at my arms, still held out like I’m about to cup his face. I look over at where Myrt stands, brow furrowed, chewing the end of his paintbrush in contemplation. He won’t notice, I’m sure.

I take one tiny step towards him. No notice. Hehehe.

Slowly, over the course of fifteen minutes or so, I scootch closer to him, inch by inch, until I’m standing right in front of him, bent over the easel, my fingers just shy of grabbing his head. And he still hasn’t noticed! What a guy! This close, however, I can really see what he’s painting. He hasn’t finished it or anything, but it’s very clearly done from his own point of view, getting his face cupped, my form looming over him, haloed by the light from the window…

I grab his head. His whole body jerks in fear and surprise, eyes darting up to find me, smirking at him. “Hehe.”

“...Kitty?”

“Stay still,” I say. “I’m just going to…” I scan his brain. A million images of me flood my brain. Me in every position and situation anyone could ever imagine. Me as a beggar, me as a king. Me in the gutter and me in the stars. Eternal rows of thoughts and images and visions of me, me, me, all with my face, my hair, my body. But there’s something else too. Interspersed with the infinity of me, little blips between them, no more than pinheads in the stars, are flashes of his daily life. The things that happen between painting me, thinking about me. So unimportant that they barely exist.

But they are there, and without really thinking about it, I delve into them. 

Please, oh Hopeful One, if I could only see his divine hopeship for a single moment—

I’m sorry, Myrt, but he can’t take any visits at all right now. Not even his closest friends are capable of seeing him as he is now. To do so would be death. 

Despair. Agony. Endless highs and endless lows. 

Certainly, Myrt, I have no objections to your remaining. However, I hope you will find something more productive to do for His Divine Hopeship than to simply doodle Him in your room all day. There is a city to be fed, after all.

Days in isolation. Nights of me on parade in his head. Around and around it goes. 

I can even see deeper. Farther behind. A month back, two months back, to before he ever saw me, to when the god of hope was only a vague figure in his head, shaped like a dangly thing with goblin ears. A dreadful time when his heart only beat when the bullets were flying and he thought he might die. A dull boring life he wouldn’t miss when in the after.

But it changed. There’s a flash of light, and all of a sudden his whole mind is in blossoms and blooms, all concentrated around the spectacular image of my form and face. Which is a pretty ordinary face, mind you. Like, I look fairly normal, I think. Sure, my hair’s white and so are my pupils, but I’m still a standard-issue human being. But, hey, who am I to tell Myrt who to devote his entire life to painting? 

Nodding to myself, I grab his mental image of me wholesale, and without letting it fade whatsoever, I create a special circumstance dependency, copying Myrt’s memory perfectly as it is at this very moment, and then add it to the projection miracle. This way, even if he changes his mind, has his brain wiped, or even dies, the dependency will remain disconnected from him, allowing me to use it forever! Yayy!

With that done and over with, I can return to the present, finding Myrt, still in my hands, but furiously stretching his arms and neck so that he can keep painting even though I’m holding him. Silly! 

“Hey, Myrt?” I ask, patting him on the cheek.

“Nggh. Yes?”

“We’re friends now, right?”

He holds his tongue. He doesn’t dare to say it. But his heart is too vocal to be contained. YES ABSOLUTELY

I grin. “That’s what I thought! In that case…” I draw him into my arms. He’s much smaller than me, so I have to hunch down a lot to hold him properly, and he can’t really hug me back since he’s holding his paintbrush and palette. “Thank you, Myrt. I don’t think you understand how much it means to me, to see my own face again. I wish I’d known you were out here, just beyond the door. But I won’t let myself be too sad about it, because I’m happy right now, right where I am, right here with you. You’ve made me very, very happy Myrt. Because of you who are in your heart. And I hope, in the weeks, months, maybe even years to come, we’ll be able to spend lots of time together, and you’ll be able to draw and paint me however much you want.”

His body begins to tremble. “Yes,” he whimpers. “Yes, I would like that, too.”

“Good. I’ll look forward to it, Myrt.”