ALL NOVEL 4 – Slime Form
Aono hesitated about just grabbing Slime Form right off. She had other options for abilities that she could take. Like this Slime Wave one. That would give her some nice area effect. She could pick Slime Aura, which would boost herself and all nearby slimes. Or she could choose...
She was kidding herself, wasn't she? Abilities with higher level requirements were generally pretty good. There were advantages to having a freely shape-able body. And she could be her own ideal vision of Aono whenever she wanted.
Somehow that last one terrified her. What did it mean to be Aono? She was using to thinking of herself as Gara most of the time, only permitting herself a hour or two being Aono in the privacy of her home. Yet, even now she was thinking of herself as Aono and she wasn't even in the privacy of her home. She wasn't even wearing her magic makeup, or a cute skirt. She should... She... didn't want to keep forcing herself to be Gara.
Somehow all of her will to be Gara had gone. It hadn't been something she'd chosen. It was what other people wanted her to be. She never really wanted to be Gara. She had always hated it. She hadn't had a name back then for who she really was, or any understanding of what her feelings about it were. So why was she so afraid of being Aono?
A harsh light, burning all that is impure. A voice, saddened and sober. "I'm doing this for your own good. Discard your impure desires. You are perfect as you are. There is no need to desire to be anything else. PURITY has a plan for you, and true joy lies in fulfilling that plan, not straying from it. You will see. It might seem hard to be pure. To reject the whispering of Chaos and its minions, the Primordials and the monsters. But when you have driven such temptations off... That is when you will know true peace. True purity."
The light hurt and hurt. The only way to stop it... was to be what they wanted her to be. No. What they wanted him to be.
She realized she was shuddering, tears running down her face from the memory. Already muscular arms were wrapping around her and Sardu's voice was saying something she didn't quite catch. Aono grabbed onto that lifeline, nestling into the hug. She noticed that Sardu had an awkward expression. "Uh," Sardu said, "I don't know what to say. You must've gone through something bad just now, Princess."
The absurdity of being called Princess right in this moment, with Aono looking like she did now without her makeup, was just too much. She broke into laughter, still crying. "I don't particularly look like a princess, do I?"
"Eh." Sardu shrugged as Aono's laughter slowly faded. "What you look like doesn't matter. A princess is a princess."
Aono shook her head with a pained smile. "I'm not exactly royal."
Sardu stepped away to execute a sweeping bow. "Ah! But true royalty is those with a royal heart! ...Why did I just get a blessing from COMEDY?"
"Don't mind them, COMEDY has a strange sense of timing." Aono drew in a deep breath. "I'm going to tell you something, okay? It's gonna be a bit of a long story."
"Sure! I'll shut up and listen!" Then Sardu made a gesture of sewing her mouth shut.
Aono nodded. "There's two things I'd like you to know. One, I grew up in the Pure Kingdom. Wait, you already knew that, didn't you?"
Sardu nodded, still holding her lips shut. What.
Aono said, "Okay, that's relevant to the second thing. Growing up, I wanted to be a girl. Or was I a girl all along? Um. Forget that. Point is, I wanted to join the same rituals as the other girls, you know? Celebrate Purity day and stuff with them."
Sardu gestured to indicate her understanding. It was then that Aono realized Sardu was absolutely serious about staying silent for the whole tale.
"Um, then the Pure Guide, you know, the one whose job it is to tell PURITY's will and stuff. He told me to sit with the boys. We had to sit separately, see, the girls and the boys and those not fitting easily into either. Three groups. Not to mix during the ritual. Each group had its own part to play." Aono drew a halting breath.
She continued, "I insisted I was a girl. And then he took me aside and explained some things to me, how those thoughts came from Chaos and corruption."
That got an angry gesture from Sardu, who was steadfastly refusing to say anything.
Aono sighed. "I mean, I know now Chaos doesn't work like that. It just randomly injects chaos stuff into the world and the System makes that make sense. Turns then into Folk and Wild and Monsters and just things. But to us, Chaos was a thinking, malevolent thing, constantly trying to corrupt us and make us impure. That was what we knew, what we were taught. And... the Pure Guide was concerned this might have happened to me."
Now Sardu had a concerned look.
This was where Aono hesitated. "And he... he took the Light of Purity and poured it into me. Made me associate any girl thoughts with pain and judgment and danger."
Sardu was clearly struggling not to say anything, her eyes full of rage.
Aono shook her head. "Um, but I didn't want to lose that part of me, so I took all the girl stuff and... hid it. I decided to be a boy for them and... I apparently developed the Forced Persona, shielding myself behind Gara. Finding nothing, no... 'corruption' to to burn, the Light of Purity stopped burning me. And the Pure Guide nodded with approval and led me back."
At this point, Sardu was both clenching her hands and looking concerned.
"As I grew up, I realized I had a deep anger. A grudge. Against that Pure Guide. Against the Light of Purity. Against PURITY herself. I... rather than acting on that and likely getting myself killed, I left. It wasn't easy, I took what I could and swam across a river known for sweeping away the corpses of those who had chosen to desert the Land of Purity. And I went as far as the money I took with me could take me, and I ended up here. With all you folks. And that's the end." Aono looked to Sardu.
Who just said, "Excuse me, Princess. I'm going to find a rock well away from you and punch it as hard as I can."
Aono could only watch with bemusement as Sardu walked away and shattered a rock the size of her torso. Her fist went right through into the ground and she pulled it back out covered with dirt and rock dust. A drop of blood was running down her head where a very small bit of rock shrapnel had struck. Then she walked back and exhaled. "Okay! I feel better. Why don't you try it too? Slime melts things, right? Melt a rock or something?"
Aono just chuckled. "No, seeing you do it already made me feel a bit better. Thanks for, um, being supportive."
Sardu just nodded. "Sure thing, Princess."
"Gods, are you trying to make me blush with all that Princess stuff?" It was still kinda embarrassing to Aono, but not in a bad way.
Sardu crossed her arms. "No, I've just decided your nickname is Princess. Now, are you okay to finish this patrol and return to Tusks to report?"
"I'm not finished picking my ability. Um, but I already know what I want." With that, Aono made the decision and the System followed suit, granting her Slime Form. She still felt hesitation, but if it was Sardu, it would probably be okay. Aono said, "I'm going to show you Aono. The real one."
Her body begin to glimmer, becoming translucent, a slimy replica of her current form, of Gara. Then the shape changed, parts growing while others shrunk. It took a fair while to get the look to be what she wanted, to be what she imagined Aono as looking like. But when she reached it, it was perfection. Perfection that she knew she could easily recall, since she had fixed the shape in her mind and the System had registered it as her default slime form.
Sardu applauded as tears, happy ones this time, filled Aono's eyes.
"You sure you aren't staying as Aono?" Sardu asked.
Aono nodded. "Yeah. It's enough for now, just being able to take that form. I think... I'll tell people. But not right now."
They had completed their patrol, which was uneventful except for a couple of level 1 monster sheep with more teeth than could fit in their mouths, which Sardu simply pulped with one punch each.
The report was similarly uneventful, with them filling out the details on a slate board left for that very purpose and leaving it on Head's desk for him to read later. Then it was just a matter of returning home to eat dinner.
"That's it, then. Later, Princess." Sardu waved.
"You too." Aono headed toward her own house, thinking that it would take quite a while to sleep come night. A lot had happened this day and she had a lot to process emotion-wise. Also a bed to figure out how to slime-proof.