Eric and Adrian pushed their way deeper into the crowd, weaving through bodies packed too close together to move quickly, shoulders brushing shoulders, elbows catching on strangers who didn't so much as glance up. More than once Adrian nearly lost track of Eric entirely, swallowed by some sudden surge of the crowd, only for the thin pink tether between them to go taut and yank him gently back on course before panic could fully set in.
"So are we meeting someone else?" Adrian finally managed, once they'd carved out enough breathing room to actually speak without shouting.
"A friend of mine," Eric said, not slowing his pace. "Sent word through the Meditation Aura for him to meet us at Visie's place. Fair warning, he's a bit much. Says whatever comes into his head, no filter whatsoever. Don't take anything he says too seriously."
Adrian filed that away, though it did little to settle the growing knot of unease sitting in his stomach. He glanced sideways at the passing stalls, the strange faces, the impossible goods stacked on every shelf, and something else finally clawed its way to the front of his thoughts.
"Wait," he said slowly. "So anyone can come here? As long as they've got this Meditation Aura thing?"
"Anyone."
"Even, like—" Adrian's voice dropped instinctively lower, glancing around as though the words themselves might summon something. "Criminals? Murderers? Actual serial killers walking around buying rings next to me right now?"
"Technically, yes."
A cold prickle crawled up Adrian's spine, and he found himself suddenly hyperaware of every hooded figure passing within arm's reach, every set of eyes he couldn't quite see behind fabric and shadow. His grip tightened unconsciously around the thin tether linking him to Eric.
"That's, uh." He swallowed. "That's not great. Shouldn't this place be, I don't know, a total warzone then? Crime capital of the universe?"
"It would be," Eric said, "if it weren't for the fact that this particular layer falls under Lumenia's official protection. There are patrols, Aura users on constant rotation, watching. Anyone causing real trouble gets flagged fast, and if things escalate past what the patrol can handle, they've got backup they can call in stronger Aura users, ready to step in." He glanced sideways at Adrian, something faintly reassuring in his expression. "As long as you're not doing anything worth noticing, nobody here has any reason to bother you."
That did little to fully unknot the tension sitting in Adrian's chest, though he decided against saying so, filing the fear away instead alongside the growing pile of other things he wasn't ready to fully process yet. He kept quiet through the rest of the walk, saving whatever questions remained for whenever they finally reached somewhere he could actually breathe.
After several more turns, left, then right, then left again, down passages that all looked identical to Adrian's untrained eye, they arrived in front of a tent built from heavy black cloth, tucked into a corner of the market noticeably emptier than everywhere else they'd passed through. No crowd here. No noise. Just quiet, and shadow, and the faint, distant hum of the market continuing without them somewhere behind.
Eric reached out and pushed the cloth aside, stepping through. Adrian followed a half-second later, ducking beneath the fabric himself.
Inside, the darkness swallowed him almost completely, thick and disorienting after the lamp-lit chaos of the market outside. He blinked hard, waiting for his eyes to adjust, catching only vague shapes in the gloom. A sweet, heavy scent hung in the air, incense smoke curling somewhere nearby, and despite everything, despite the fear still sitting cold in his chest, something about the smell eased the tension in his shoulders almost immediately, some strange, artificial calm settling over him that he hadn't asked for and didn't entirely trust.
Then something tapped his shoulder.
He spun instantly, heart lurching, eyes straining against the dark to find whoever had touched him.
Nothing. No one there at all.
"Haha, he fell for it."
A flame flickered to life along the ceiling of the tent, catching on some hidden wick, and light spilled down across the space at last. Adrian turned toward the voice, and whatever he'd braced himself for, it wasn't this.
A round table sat in the middle of the tent, draped in black cloth, a crystal ball perched at its center, pulsing faintly with soft white light. Two women sat on either side of it, and Adrian's brain, still reeling from everything else today, simply short-circuited entirely at the sight of the one closer to him.
Her hair fell in a long, smooth cascade of deep purple, spilling past her waist in a way that looked almost unfairly perfect. She turned toward him, and her eyes met his, wide and bright, purple like her hair, holding a kind of open, unguarded innocence that felt entirely at odds with the mischievous curve of her mouth. Her lips were full, faintly glossed, curled into a playful smile that did something genuinely unfair to Adrian's heart rate. She wore a fitted purple bodysuit beneath a dark hood, no makeup anywhere on her face, and somehow needing none at all.
Adrian did not breathe for what felt like a genuinely dangerous length of time.
It took him several long seconds to notice the small purple bubble drifting lazily above her left shoulder, and only slightly longer to remember something important currently colliding with the very pretty woman sitting directly in front of him.
Wait. Didn't Eric say his friend was a guy?
He turned, already halfway through forming the question, only for Eric to beat him to it entirely, addressing the gorgeous stranger with all the weary patience of someone who had done this exact thing more times than he cared to count.
"Max. Turn back already."
Adrian's brain rebooted with an audible internal record scratch.
...Max? THAT'S Max? That's a girl's name attached to the single most feminine human being I have ever laid eyes on in my entire life, and Eric is just casually calling her Max like this is normal. Is this normal? Wait, does she perhaps have—
His internal spiral was mercifully cut short.
"You're right," the woman said, voice bright and unbothered, stretching lazily. "I've had my fun."
The bubble at her shoulder dissolved back into her skin, and immediately steam began rising off her entire body, faint and hissing, her skin flushing a light shade of red as the transformation took hold. Her long purple hair shortened rapidly, texture roughening from silk into something coarser, shorter, undeniably masculine. Her wide, doe-like eyes narrowed, sharpened, losing every trace of softness they'd carried a moment ago. Her curves flattened. Shoulders broadened. In the span of about four seconds, the devastatingly gorgeous woman Adrian had been quietly falling in love with simply ceased to exist, replaced by a tall, lean, unmistakably male stranger sitting in her exact spot at the table.
Adrian's jaw dropped somewhere around his knees.
"...I have so many questions," he said faintly.
Eric, for his part, looked less shocked and more like a man watching a familiar disaster unfold exactly as predicted, pinching the bridge of his nose with a long-suffering sigh.
Max stood, stretched properly this time, and crossed the tent with an easy grin, extending a hand toward Adrian. "Hey there. Sorry about that; couldn't resist, you should've seen your face. Name's Max Water Charles. Quantum Pathway, Property Aura, Lysi Nova rank, same as this sourpuss over here." He jerked a thumb toward Eric without looking. "You must be Adrian. Come on, sit, let's get you caught up."
Adrian shook his hand automatically, still staring, brain still very much not caught up with the rest of him.
"You," he said slowly, "were a whole different person two seconds ago."
"Yep."
"With, like. Hair. And a chest. And a whole vibe."
"Yep."
"I had a whole crush arc in the span of about eleven seconds, and you just—" Adrian gestured vaguely at Max's entire current form. "Undid it."
Max grinned wider. "That's usually how it goes, yeah."
Eric, still pinching the bridge of his nose, muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like "every single time," and gestured toward the empty seats at the table with the flat, resigned expression of a man who had long since given up trying to prevent this exact scene from happening.
Adrian shook Max's hand, still trembling faintly, his eyes darting up to properly take in just how tall this man actually was, matching Eric almost exactly, though everything else about him felt like the polar opposite. Where Eric radiated cool, unreadable calm, Max practically glowed with easy, infectious warmth, his grin the kind that made a person feel instantly, inexplicably safe.
Which made the question currently occupying roughly ninety percent of Adrian's brain feel deeply, deeply inappropriate.
Does he. When he's a woman. Does he have—
He physically shook his head to dislodge the thought, mortified at himself, and thankfully Max chose that exact moment to gesture him toward a chair on the right side of the table, directly across from Eric's seat.
Adrian sat, grateful for the distraction, and immediately found something else demanding his attention. A second woman sat quietly on his right, hood still drawn up over her face, saying nothing this entire time. The only visible part of her was her mouth, lips painted a striking black, and that alone had been more than enough to convince Adrian, before tonight's events, that she was almost certainly beautiful.
Now, though, he wasn't convinced of anything.
Nope, he thought grimly. Not falling for it twice. For all I know, she's secretly a seventy-year-old man under there. Or a raccoon. I have no baseline anymore. None.
"Visie, take your hood off," Max said, kicking his feet up onto the table and lacing his fingers behind his head, entirely unbothered. Beside him, Eric had gone almost eerily quiet; none of Mike Jackson's warmth or charm was left anywhere in his expression now, just cool, patient silence.
The hooded woman lifted a hand and drew her hood back.
Adrian braced himself. Eight eyes. A mouth where a nose should be. Scales. Anything. He was ready.
What he got instead was, once again, simply a beautiful woman, and he immediately felt both relieved and deeply betrayed by his own expectations.
Visie had a striking, mature sort of beauty, sharp black eyes framed by dark, precise eyeliner, black eyeshadow blended just enough to give her whole look an elegant, gothic edge, her lips painted that same deep black he'd already noticed. Her hair fell straight and dark past her shoulders, smooth and glossy under the tent's low light. She wore a black gown beneath the hood, the neckline cut low enough that Adrian had to consciously, deliberately keep his eyes fixed somewhere above her collarbone. Her figure was every bit as striking as the rest of her.
She turned her head toward him, taking in, with faint amusement, the fact that he was already blushing furiously and doing an admirable job of not looking directly at her.
Adrian met her eyes with grim, unwavering determination, treating the moment with the seriousness of a man defusing a bomb.
Absolutely not falling for it this time, he thought. What if she's a man too? What if EVERYONE here is secretly a man? What if I'M secretly—no. No, focus. Eyes up. Stay strong, Adrian.
Eric caught the flicker of doubt still lingering behind Adrian's eyes and cut in before it could spiral further. "You don't need to worry. Visie is a woman. She's not Beauty Pathway, and she's not using a relic either."
Adrian let out a long, dramatic breath of relief, sagging slightly in his seat. "Thank god. My brain genuinely could not have handled a third one."
Max let out a short laugh at that, shaking his head.
Visie turned her head toward him fully now, studying him with open, unhurried curiosity, and Adrian felt his ears go warm almost instantly under the weight of her attention. He suddenly became very aware of exactly how rumpled his shirt was, how his hair probably looked after everything he'd been dragged through today, and he had absolutely no way to fix any of it right now.
"Hello, Adrian," she said, her voice smooth and faintly amused. "I'm Visie. A seer, working out of this tent. Mind Pathway, Connection Aura, Lysi Nova, same as these two." She tilted her head slightly. "I hear your lessons got interrupted earlier."
"Yeah, uh." Adrian cleared his throat, eyes fixed very deliberately on a point somewhere just past her left ear. "Someone was following us. Kind of a whole thing."
"So I heard." A faint smile tugged at her mouth, and she leaned forward slightly, resting her chin on one hand, watching him with obvious enjoyment. "You don't need to be so shy, little boy. It's alright. Look at me properly."
Do not, Adrian thought, with the grim resolve of a man staring down an oncoming train. Do not look south. Eyes stay north. Your mother raised you better than this. Your mother is not here right now, but she would KNOW, somehow; she always knows.
"Haha," he managed weakly instead, looking firmly down at his own hands.
Eric exhaled through his nose, unimpressed, and shot Max a pointed look.
Max got the message immediately. He straightened up, dropping his feet off the table, and reached over to rest his left hand on Adrian's shoulder. A faint stream of purple liquid slipped from his palm and sank into Adrian's skin, and a moment later a small, cherry-red bubble drifted up and out of Adrian's other shoulder, dissolving quietly into the air above him.
The effect was immediate. The heat in Adrian's face vanished entirely, along with the tight, fluttery knot that had been sitting somewhere behind his ribs since the moment he'd first walked into this tent. He blinked, genuinely startled by how calm he suddenly felt, how effortless it was now to just look Visie directly in the eyes without a single flicker of anything.
"Wait." He turned to Max, eyes wide. "What did you just do? What is that? That's actually incredible. I feel completely normal. How does that even work?"
Eric leaned back slightly, considering how to explain it in a way that wouldn't just add to the pile of confusion Adrian was already carrying. "Max's ability is genuinely one of the more complicated ones you'll come across, but I'll try to keep it simple. At Lysi Nova, he can pull a property out of any object or person, and it takes the form of a bubble. He calls the whole process Editing. He can hold five of these bubbles at once, and if he ever pulls a sixth, the oldest one automatically snaps back to wherever it came from."
"So he just... took your manliness out and stuck it in a bubble," Adrian said slowly, working through it. "Like a video game inventory."
Max grinned. "Basically, yeah."
"That's so cool. What happens if you break one, though? Like, if I punched it or something?"
"Don't," Eric said flatly, before Max could answer. "Whatever property's inside acts on whoever broke it, immediately, and at double the original force. You do not want to find out what that looks like firsthand."
Adrian's hand, which had been drifting curiously toward the space above Max's shoulder where the bubble had briefly floated earlier, froze mid-air and slowly retreated back into his lap. "Noted. Extremely noted."
"Can he use it on himself?" Adrian asked next, glancing at Max.
"He can," Eric said. "He calls that version Self-Edit. The same basic principles are applied here, except he's pulling properties from his own body instead of someone else's, and using the change to get some kind of result. It gets stranger, though. He's not limited to pulling out things he actually has. He can also pull out the property of not being able to do something."
Adrian blinked. "Wait, that doesn't make sense. How do you take out something you don't have?"
"Don't overthink it too hard right now," Eric said, a faint note of amusement creeping into his voice. "What you saw earlier- him turning into a woman and back- that was him pulling out his property of being male temporarily. He had to put that bubble back to return to normal. If he pulled out his property of not being able to change gender instead, he'd be able to shift back and forth freely, no bubble required."
"So there's, like, a difference between borrowing a change and just... unlocking the ability to change permanently."
"Exactly that."
Adrian sat with it for a moment, turning the whole concept over slowly, clearly trying to map out every strange implication branching off from it. "Okay, but what if you pulled out someone else's property of, I don't know, needing to breathe? Could you just—"
"We are not doing hypotheticals about murder on day one," Eric said.
"I wasn't gonna say murder!"
"You were absolutely gonna say murder."
"I was gonna say... a fun prank," Adrian said, entirely unconvincingly.
Max burst out laughing, loud enough that Visie's mouth twitched into a small smile of her own from across the table. "I like him," Max said, still grinning, nudging Eric with an elbow. "Can we keep him?"
"He's not a pet," Eric said, though something in his tone had softened considerably since the start of the conversation.
Adrian looked between the three of them, something warm and unfamiliar settling in his chest despite everything strange and overwhelming about the day. A few hours ago he'd been eating lunch alone at his usual restaurant, same as every other day of his life. Now he was sitting in a tent in another dimension, having just made friends with a shapeshifting man, a gothic seer, and whatever exactly Eric was, discussing hypothetical murder-adjacent superpowers like it was completely normal Tuesday conversation.
It didn't feel entirely real yet. He suspected it might not feel entirely real for a while.
But it didn't feel bad either.
"You have such a genuinely broken power," Adrian said finally, shaking his head at Max with something like envy. "I'm insanely jealous."
"Everyone always says that," Max said, stretching his arms overhead with obvious satisfaction. "It's a great power. Also a nightmare to explain to new people, so credit to you for keeping up."
Adrian laughed, actually laughed, the first real, unguarded sound he'd made since this whole impossible day had started. Something about the moment settled between the two of them quietly, unremarkably, the kind of small, easy connection that didn't announce itself as anything important yet.
It would become something, eventually. Neither of them had any way of knowing that yet.
For now, there were still basics left to cover, and the night, however strange it had already been, was far from over.