"Hide the gold," Kir said quickly, rushing for the door to see who was there as the spell-light abruptly cut off and a loud thud with tallic clinks sounded behind him.
Sounds like the transmutation was successful...
"Hi, Professor!" It was Keiya, and next to her...
"Is everything alright?" Ann asked, her arms full with a plate of pizza.
"Ann~nd who is this?" Kir started to say Ann’s na before quickly turning to Keiya, hoping they didn’t pick up on his recognition of the girl from his hotown.
"This is Ann, my girlfriend."
"Pleasure to et you, uh, Ms. Thyestes." He looked down at the pizza, pretending to be surprised. "That slls quite delicious."
"Thank you! It’s called ’pizza...’ An old friend showed how to make it and I finally put together the recipe... We made it together."
"Were we interrupting a spell? May we co in?" Keiya asked, right before Nimfi popped out of her large purse and scrambled up to her shoulder.
"Squeak!"
Kir didn’t want to be rude, since they seed obviously here to thank him. But if he turned them away...
Suddenly Nifti jumped down and scurried into the house, startling Kordia.
"Nimfi?"
"Kordia?" Keiya called out.
Kir suppressed the urge to sigh, sparing a thought for Kiryu who was likely enjoying his predicant.
"Damn right I am." His other life replied.
"Please co in," Kir said, opening the door fully and stepping out of their way, careful of his tail.
At the table, Nimfi was making herself at ho rubbing her head on Kordia’s palm. The tablecloth was now a moderately charred, improvised bag that had been placed under the stairwell.
What was more concerning was the char pattern now etched onto the stone table. It was exactly what Kir wanted to avoid being seen, not that it would work without soone knowing exactly what to use...
As Keiya sat next to Kordia and Nimfi, Kir graciously offered to take the pizza over to the table, where he slid it on over the char marks, noting they weren’t coming out from simple contact.
"This slls delicious, Ann, thank you for bringing it," Kir said, before noticing it wasn’t cut. "I’ll get us so utensils and so plates."
He moved to the nearby kitchen - more of a kitchenette since the only refrigeration was an icebox ant for at.
In short order the table was set and Kir left the silverware for everyone to grab at their leisure, taking the largest knife for slicing.
"Oh, you don’t have to do that Professor," Ann said as soon as she saw him start to slice from the opposite end, bisecting the pizza into two half-circles.
"It’s absolutely fine," Kir said. "Would I be wrong in guessing this is ant to be an approved form of thanks?" He looked at Keiya, quirking a wolfish eyebrow through his glamour.
"The Chancellor gave permission to tell people a little of what happened since I won’t be hiding Nimfi anymore." Keiya said. "And we did want to thank you."
"That’s a strange way to cut it," Ann noted as Kir kept bisecting until the pizza was in eight equal slices.
"How have you been cutting it?" Kir asked.
"Oh, just squares. Except for the small ones."
"Blasphemy!" Kiryu sounded in Kir’s head.
"This seed the best way to ensure an even share," Kir said, then he reached forward and folded the crust slightly to pull a slice from its peers.
The cheese was just gooey enough to have partially rejoined - perhaps Ann had kept it warm with magic - and it stretched perfectly like mozzarella. He noted that the pizza had shredded at, garlic, purple pseudo-tomato sauce, an unfamiliar scent of spices, and little green flecks of sothing herby on the crust. Perhaps rosemary?
He wasted no ti chomping in as the girls started to copy his thod to take their own slices.
The at was juicy and succulent, a decadent and slightly fatty flavor dancing across his tongue. The onions added just a hint of crunch and the body of the cheese and bread ratio was perfect. A hand-tossed masterpiece that drew on the experiential mories he had of the food in his past life. Though he never rembered the circumstances, he rembered what good pizza tasted like, and this was good pizza.
He was half done in monts.
"This is actually pretty convenient," Keiya said, looking at how her slice stayed together. "You should tell the cooks about it."
"That’s a good idea!" Ann blew on her slice twice before taking a bite.
"Mm. What recipe did you use for this pizza?" Kir asked, finishing his crust and reaching for a second slice.
Ann had to finish chewing, during which Kir took a bite of his. She swallowed. "Well, the cheese mix is mostly cow and ichneumon milk. I used a bit of pepper spice and rosemary on the crust. The sauce is blackrim with a hint of vinegar to cut down the sweetness, and the at is mutton."
The pepper got a bit lost, Kir thought to himself, before he realized the last thing he’d heard.
"Did... did you say mutton?" Kir looked at his slice and dropped it onto his place, a sense of disoriented revulsion filling him. It was like soone had grabbed his chest and was squeezing it. "I need... please excuse ..."
Kir got up shakily, not even thinking of where he was going as he left the house, turning into the alley next to it.
His breath started coming in ragged, his eyes swelled with tears.
What is wrong with ?
"You’re having a panic attack!" Kiryu yelled in Kir’s mind.
The clenching feeling finally reached Kir’s stomach and he threw up onto the shadowed cobblestones. The still-fresh flavor of the lamb pulled on his consciousness again, even as it was cut through with the acid of his stomach.
"First real pizza... why..." Kir voiced out loud.
"It’s not about the pizza, idiot," Kiryu said.
"I know."
He thought he was better. That he had a relationship with his loss that didn’t inhibit him. He didn’t think...
"Didn’t think sothing so small could set you off? I got like that too a few tis."
"What do you know?" Kir rasped around a fresh roil of his esophagus. "You tell nothing about who you are. You’ve been watching all my life and you don’t trust . You parasite."
An elven man with a vase full of roses was at the other end of the alley, and he hurried into Stella’s atelier at the sight of Kir talking to himself.
" I know what you’re feeling now from experience. I hate feeling it through you. I know what it’s like to lose soone..."
"Who did you lose? Was it on that space station of yours? The one with the na of a god?" Kir had small flashes of Kiryu’s mories in the past. Sotis in dreams. One such dream showed him a massive space station, with AIDAEB written across its do. Aidaeb was the na of the world’s creator god. Of course, Kiryu had refused to answer Kir’s questions or thoughts on the matter.
"No. Well before that. I had a... colleague. We were involved, like you and Rain. Only they were... more political than . It got them in trouble, then it got them killed... And then I found out the people who employed wouldn’t just let them die."
"What were they like?" Kir pushed himself off of the wall and started walking to the front of the house. He needed to go... sowhere...
"One minute. Company."
"Kir?" Kordia’s voice whispered from the closed door. "Are you alright?"
"Just... feeling unwell... please tell Ann it has nothing to do with her. And that I’m grateful."
"Are you going sowhere?"
"I don’t... maybe the Academy."
"The nurses will have sothing for illness," Kordia nodded her head. "Maybe so arrowroot tinct-"
"I’m not... not ill," Kir said, wiping his eyes. "I just... I think I need to visit Noir. Alone."
Kordia tensed. Understanding began to dawn in her golden eyes, and she nodded. "I think I understand. Will you talk to afterward?"
"I will," Kir said. "I promise." He sniffed heavily.
Kordia extended her arms and Kir accepted a hug from her, not caring one bit if anyone saw.
Then he turned his steps along the main street toward the Academy.
"Ready for a story, Kid?" Kiryu asked after a couple of minutes.
"Go ahead," Kir muttered out loud. His thoughts were such a jumble he simply followed whichever reaction he felt first to communicate with Kiryu. It felt better to just listen to Kiryu and answer than to think about his ongoing panic-attack.
"You asked what they were like... they were a firebrand. We t and worked on AIDAEB back when it was all theoretical. The Advanced Inter-Dinsional Artificial Exogenesis Base. A fancy way of saying we wanted to fuck with black holes and find out."
"Find out what?" Kir asked. "I thought cosmogenesis was considered an impossible theory."
"Not when the ti the damn thing got built. What we did, Luda, Aiko and , changed the whole aning of that word... at least to the people who were in on the project. The people who wanted their own new worlds to escape the hell they made of Earth."
"Did you succeed?"
"Think about it, Kid. Where are you right now?"
"Another world?"
"Another universe."
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