[X] Yeah.
-[X] What if she/I get hungry?
-[X] Any particular buttons I shouldn't press?
“Just a few,” you say, “fairly important things I'd think as well. First, what's the plan if either of us gets hungry?” you ask.
“There's a storage room in the basement near Flan's room where some pre-made food is kept for instances like that. It's stocked more for snacks than actual meals though. Sakuya hand delivers meals down three times a day, when everyone else is getting ready to eat as well,” Remilia says, “in fact, Sakuya will likely come down at some point to ask about your meals. If you get hungry before that, just tell Flan, she'll take any excuse to snack.”
“Sounds fine then,” you reply, “the only other real question is what I can do to ensure I don't piss her off or get on her bad side. Any particular buttons I shouldn't push?” you ask your final question. Remilia smiles.
“Well, since you are so concerned with your survival, I suppose I could give you a few pointers,” Remilia teases, “first, don't ever assume she's stupid and try to talk down to her. She's actually quite intelligent, but because of her mental state, she's never been able to get a proper education. Of course, this might be a non-issue in the first place, as I doubt you even have any knowledge of similar subjects.”
“Probably not,” you respond.
“Second, if she does become super focused on something, be it a task, puzzle or book, she hates having her concentration broken. It's best to find something to amuse yourself with in the meantime until she loses focus,” Remilia delivers the second point.
“That's my main tactic,” Meiling chips in, “when I run out of things to talk about with her or she's not interested in practicing Tai Chi Chuan with me, I try to inspire one of her past times.”
“Lastly, don't speak ill of me, or the Scarlet family. This should be common sense, and I doubt that you'd do something so foolish, but it's worth mentioning in case you try to talk bad about me to my little sister,” Remilia adds a third point, “thankfully, if you're stupid enough to do such a thing, you won't waste anyone's time with your death, since there will not be anything to claim.”
“Right, so that's all I need to be concerned about?” you ask, for certainty's sake.
“Aside from the things I've told you before, being respectful and subservient, not resisting her plans for entertainment and generally doing anything to keep her from becoming overly angry or otherwise upset. If she seems to lapse into a bad mood, ask her if it's your fault if you were doing something. She'll usually give you a chance to apologize if it is,” Remilia says, and gestures back towards the door, “now, are you ready?”
“I feel it,” you reply with a nod.
“Alright, have fun and be nice to my sister. I'll want you back up here with me when the gallery proper starts, so I'll send Meiling down to get you when it's time for you to return, otherwise you'd be down there all day,” Remilia says, “now get down there.”
“Right then,” you say, turning back to the stairs and heading down. Once again in the darkness, you make your way to the hall and start your trip back to Flandre's room. Given how noisy the shambling zombies had been earlier with their scraping feet and rasping groans, with the undead apparently in a collective idle state, the entire basement is silent aside from the echo of your shoes on the stone. You actually feel a little tense, as if you're expecting an attack. Having a sword in your hand would probably calm you down a bit, but that would be pointless in a place with no real threats. At least, no threats that would be threatened by a sword. You remember Flandre's claims of a 'surprise' waiting for you when you return, and decide to occupy your mind with that instead. Given how she was talking before, her sexual rantings, you find yourself gravitating towards such ideas. While you'd dismiss the idea as just an idle wish, you can't really discount it either. You're not familiar enough with Flandre to make such calls on her actions in either direction. The most you can do is hope you are right, at the very least, if only for your own pleasure.
You come to the intersection and turn towards the lighted door. Upon reaching it, you pull open the door and see Flandre sitting on the edge of her bed, staring at the ceiling idly.
“I'm back,” you say. Flandre slowly looks down from the ceiling and fixes her eyes on you, then grins a bit.
“Welcome back New Mister Devil,” she says. You look around a bit, a little curious if something's been changed you should be aware of. Since you were obviously wrong about the surprise, you don't know what else to expect. Of course, you don't see anything too unusual, considering you're not exactly wholly sure what is supposed to be normal or not. Flandre seems to be smiling about something though. Suppose there's no harm in asking...
“So, you said something about a surprise?” you ask, taking a step into the room. Flandre's eyes dart to your feet, and you stop, looking down at them yourself. You don't see anything out of place, and when you look up, Flandre is standing not more than a few feet away. She throws her hands out to the side, bends her knees, and you expect to be tackled or pounced on, but she does nothing but hold the position for a second, with a much wider smile than before.
“Nothing,” she says, dropping her arms and standing up straight, “nothing but the surprising amount of tension built up inside of you expecting something you can't predict.” You can only manage to stare dumbfounded for a second. She's made a total fool out of you, and a smile slowly comes to your face as well, followed by a chuckle.
“I suppose you got me with that,” you admit, loosening up a bit. Flandre lets out a short, high-pitched laugh.
“Though, now that's done...” Flandre trails off, “I didn't think of anything to do afterwards.”
“Well, that's a pretty easy problem, really,” you say, “what do you like to do?”
“I like a lot of things,” Flandre says, pepping up a bit, “I like reading, even though that can be a little boring at times and some of the newer books we get are more pictures than words so they don't last all that long, it's still pretty fun at times. I'd like to try writing a book myself sometimes, but I can't even think of something I'd like to write about. I could write a book about vampires, but that would just end up silly, since I am a vampire and I would just be writing about other vampires, but I guess that would be good for realism...” Flandre enters rant mode. She continues on talking about writing ideas, fantasy epics, murder mysteries, cheesy romance, all sorts. In the mean time, you make your way to a chair near her bed, as Flandre sits down on the bed itself. You're trying to keep in mind not to interrupt her needlessly, though after a few minutes of rambling that seems like it could go on forever, you're starting to wonder if she'll ever stop. As it is now, she's detailing another idea, a story about a young man that discovers he's a reincarnation of an ancient evil, and his quest inside a magical castle sealed inside an eclipse. “I don't know if a story like that has ever been written though, but I think if it was, I would have heard about it. I think it would be a great adventure series, but I can't really be sure if people would want to read it. What do you think?” Flandre asks, finally taking a break to ask a question.
“I'm not really much of a reader, I'm afraid,” you respond, “I was more busy killing foes and organizing forces.” Flandre huffs in annoyance.
“I suppose this is what I get for talking about literature with an unread devil,” Flandre complains, “I thought you were Patchouli's servant? You haven't even taken a glimpse at any of the books in the library of hers?” Ah, right, you never explained the whole situation to Flandre.
“Actually, you see, there's a bit of a problem with that,” you say.
“You probably can't read, huh?” Flandre cuts in, and you shake your head. You're just a tiny bit annoyed at the surprised expression on Flandre's face.
“I can read, it's just that Patchouli mad a mistake, and now all her books are locked away in my mind, and only I can access them,” you say. Flandre doesn't react much at first, simply cocking a brow as she seems to process the information.
“But you don't have any idea about books?” she asks.
“I've only read some of the primers on magic and some other basic things. I can access the library in a dreamworld accessible with magic, I'm still trying to learn how to consciously recall information without needing to fall asleep, but it's a pain,” you say.
“I guess that's why you've called yourself Voile, huh?” Flandre asks. You're about to admit she's right when you realize that she shouldn't know that, as you don't recall ever actually telling her what you call yourself. Flandre simply grins at your apparent surprise.
“I'm curious how you knew that name without me telling you,” you admit, but Flandre simply giggles and looks away.
“It's a secret,” she says, and flops on her side with a sigh.
“Well then, what else do you like?” you ask, hoping to get more information out of her to help you formulate a plan. She spent quite a while talking about books and writing, so maybe each interest will pass time.
“I like art too, but Remi's holding a gallery, and if I think about it I'll want to go up there, but I don't want to cause problems,” Flandre says, sounding a little irritated. “I like eating, but I'm not hungry right now. Last time I played doctor, a bunch of angry pitchforks and torches showed up calling for blood. I gave them some, but they got angrier,” she pauses, smiling a bit to herself, “I guess it just wasn't their type.”
“Doctor?” you ask, curious as to what she meant, though you feel you could probably guess. Flandre sits up again.
“Did you see the old room at the end of the hall near the prison?” Flandre asks. She must be talking about the torture chamber looking place. You nod. “I used to take people there and slice them up to see how they worked on the inside, what a living human heart felt like when you squeeze it, things to basically sate my curiosity in my prey. I never got to play too long though, since being cut apart is something that kills humans pretty easily,” Flandre comments with a slight chuckle, “though they were so varied going in there. Some would cry and scream, others would swear revenge and threaten my life, others would just mutter to themselves and pray. I once cut open a pregnant lady to see what a baby looked like, but it was so ugly! I can't believe I looked like that once when I'm so cute now!” she exclaims, taking a moment to cradle her head in her hands. You'd be inclined to agree as well, with a slight smirk.
“I didn't think I'd ever hear someone as close to human as you are speaking so cheerfully about torture and murder,” you remark, and Flandre seems to accept that as praise.
“I'm a curious girl with the passion for science and the lack of manners to never have learned not to play with my food,” she quips, then giggles at her own joke. You actually chuckle a bit too.
“Any other interests?” you ask. Flandre leans back a bit and takes a moment to think.
“I like puzzles sometimes, but they're either way too hard to way way too easy,” she says, thinking some more, “I like music, but my instruments all wore out and they're really hard to replace, plus getting new music to play is even harder.” She pauses. “Sometimes when I'm really bored, I play with myself too.” Now, there's an admission. You can't help yourself from grinning a bit.
“Is that right,” you say, wondering if maybe you could direct her down that path. Flandre nods and sits forward, then closes her eyes. After a second, she seems to blur, and then splits into two forms, and then splits yet again into four. All four open their eyes simultaneously, though only one speaks
“I can do things like this, and then I can entertain myself pretty easily,” a Flandre says, and you realize you're not entirely sure which one is the 'real' one, if there's even a difference.
“Is this magic or something?” you ask, looking between the four identical copies. Two of them smile, one looks off in another direction, and the last one flops back on the bed and rolls off to the side.
“It's kind of like a special technique, not really magic, just something I can do,” one of the two smiling Flandres says, looking at the other.
“It's a bit difficult though,” the other smiler says on her own, “because it splits my mind up too, and I can't really wholly control what they all do.” As if on cue the on staring off into space leaves the bed, wanders over to a small bookshelf and pulls out a thick book.
“Ah, I wanted to read that,” the laying Flandre says quietly, rolling over onto her other side and looking at the reading one taking a seat across the room.
“It's kind of like having three other sisters, except I can see and feel everything they can,” one of the two smilers says.
“Which makes it especially nice when my selves play with themselves,” the other smiler says, sliding over a bit and leaning into the other, wrapping an arm around her 'twin' and placing one hand on her waist, another on her chest. The 'victim' shrinks a bit from the approach, but doesn't try to escape. The other two look up at the pair as well.
“Not right now,” the victim whines a bit, which makes the 'attacker' Flandre giggle slightly, and then run her hand across the victims chest.
“Why not put on a show?” the attacker asks. While you're intrigued by the idea, you're also interested in the unique behaviour between the four. Given how forward Flandre was about sexuality before, seeing one of these 'clones' resist such things from another who is just as forward about it, you're guessing that each of the copies embodies an aspect of Flandre's mind. The 'attacker' does relent however, sitting back up straight to the relief of the victim.
“Seems like a pretty impressive ability,” you say. Flandre grins with pride, and then blurs again. The four forms slide back together, and Flandre is left sitting on her bed, still holding the book another had picked up across the room.
“It's kind of hard to focus on so many things at once though,” Flandre says, “it makes my head hurt if I keep it up too long.” Flandre glances back down at the book in her lap, still open. She seems to get quickly caught back up in reading where she left off. Seems she's managed to start entertaining herself all on her own, which just leaves you needing to fill time.
“Are you going to read that book?” you ask, and Flandre looks up with a bit of surprise.
“Oh, yes, sorry, I just got distracted, because I'd started reading it while I was still talking to you before recombining, it kind of merges everything together,” Flandre apologizes slightly, a bit of a shift from how she was talking before. You imagine that it's due to whatever traits the 'reader personality' has taking the lead.
“Then, I think I'll check out one of these books too, if you don't mind,” you say, standing up from your chair. Flandre's already gone back to the book, and only offers a slight acknowledgment as you walk over to the shelves. You have no idea what these books are in the first place, and the titles don't really explain much. You grab a fairly thin one and take it to the nearby chair, sitting down. You take a shot at reading for once.
As you expected, you have a bit of a hard time getting into it. Reading through page after page of words isn't really all that stimulating, and the story itself doesn't help much. From what you've read, it's dealing with some kind of mystery, but so far the main character just seems to be chasing around information. You look away from the book for a bit to see that Flandre's laid back on her side, facing away from you. She's changing position fairly often, and eventually rolls over onto her other side. She's still focused on the book, though you can see she's caressing her own chest. After a few seconds, she sighs and sets the book aside.
“Having a good time?” you ask, smirking a bit.
“It's so distracting,” Flandre whines, rolling partially onto her back, “I shouldn't have messed around with myself when I split, because now I'm all sensitive. My nipples rub against my clothes when I breathe and it just distracts me more, and on top of it, this book is a romance novel.” Flandre pushes herself up and sits on her knees, smiling now too. “Of course, I could easily solve the problem, but I don't really like being watched,” she admits, and starts squirming a bit, placing her hands on her legs. She seems pretty eager to get at it, so you wonder whether or not you should take a risk to 'help' her. She hasn't exactly asked, and Remilia had made it clear she'd prefer you not to, but it's still on your call.
[] She hasn't directly asked you, so no.
[] You could offer your assistance.
-[] Just a hand is fine.
-[] Give her the whole thing.
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>>42887 Hypersexuality is a noted symptom of some manic disorders.