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“Try to sit still for twenty more minutes,” Porrim says. “Stop itching.”
Your name is Latula Pyrope, and you are sitting with candy-red fingers in a hive not your own. Her hands are red, too, but she peels off the plastic gloves between the dye and her skin and tosses them in the trash while you're sneaking another scratch. She frowns at you.
Porrim Maryam is seven sweeps old and has dark green hair almost to her chin. She has four piercings in the same ear and one in her lip and a tattoo on the outside of her thigh that she did herself. She showed it to you once. She is the coolest person you have ever met, and she kicks your ass at A Console Program In Which The Player Assumes The Role Of First Person Protagonist, Equipped With Automatic Firearms, And Aims To Defend And/Or Attack A Source Of.....Featuring Mammalian And Insectoid Aliens, An Eventually Traitorous Robot Assistant...Beginning With A Tutorial Of Approximately Thirty Minutes, Following Which The Player's Commanding Officer Orders Action On The Part Of The Vessel's Inhabitants.... and so on. She has also kissed Meulin, with tongue, and Meulin claimed to you in private that it was the hottest fifteen minutes of her life.
You are also seven sweeps old, but you feel about five.
Your temple is itching immensely, and you're only dying your bangs. You can't imagine how she survived the coloration of her entire head.
“You know who would look good in this?” You say, “TA. If we could get him to sit down long enough to bleach and tone it, that would be cool too. I bet he'd love it. We made matching shirts when we thought we were gonna be in teams, and those were red too. Mostly because CG thinks he's the head honcho. It's a pretty sweet color when he's not bleeding it.”
Porrim glances first at you and then her phone, just barely, and your lungs and stomach sink away. You chew on the inside of your cheek and scratch at your palm instead of your head. Her alarm goes off, and you lean back against the sink.
Her chest is in your face as she rinses your hair and lathers shampoo in, and when she has you turn around so your bangs can get the most of the treatment, the inside of her arm against your shoulder is warm through your whole chest. With the fingers in your scalp, you don't immediately realize she is talking to you.
“I could use your help, if you have time. My lusus says that this planet's quest goes more smoothly with a collaborative effort.”
“Um, yeah,” you say. “Sounds cool, I'm not doing anything. Not today at least. Dunno what I have left to collect. Definitely have time.”
“Good,” she saids, and lets your head unbow.
Her sprite is waiting for you both outside, hovering slowly. It looks like a huge, oblong skull, with dozens of wispy aborted legs down part of its tail. It glides over to you, and Porrim raises a hand in greeting. The lusus smiles.
Come to think of it, you haven't yet seen a sprite frown.
“You have a quest,” she says to Porrim, and Porrim says, “I know.”
“You cannot achieve your full potential as heroes and sow the seeds of your victory without isolating the correct genetic code from which a new universe will be born! I do believe in you Porrim because you are a lovely daughter of mine.”
“Funny that responsibility fell to me, of all people, naturally,” says Porrim, her teeth clicking on the consonants, and you can't tell whether she's angry with her lusussprite but the guide continues to beam at her. She looks at you, as if for affirmation, and you shrug and half-smile.
She gives you the same look hours later. It's after you've pursued a frog along a mossy platform, glasses fogging up for the umpteenth time. The frog is as big as your foot and grey with bright yellow stripes on its back, and its toes glow faintly in the shade of higher ledges. You've taken out an imp that was gunning for it with your blade and are checking your messages while closing the remaining distance when your leg goes out from under you and you find yourself scrambling for a grip. Your fingers, still magenta at the tips, scrape at all the spongy growth they can reach, but there's nothing to hold on to, and you can feel the bottom drop out of your chest when your lower body's momentum finally tips you over the side.
Landing hard on your ass a platform down with a yell, all you can see of the frog is its luminous feet as it hops further away. Porrim's upon you in moments, checking for injury.
“Would you take this seriously?” she snaps, when you pause to answer a text after describing the frog that had lead you astray. “This quest is important for all of us.”
“Calm down,” you say, typing out a response, and she grabs your computer out of your hand.
“Focus, Latula!” she says.
“Why do you always gotta be such a buzzkill?” You say, taking back your device. “It's like, I can't talk about anything around you, can't take a message, can't grab a frog without making it a royal freakin' hunt. You gotta chill the hell out.”
“I think I can handle my own planet from here on,” Porrim says, and climbs back up the next ledge.
You stand up, and you're gonna walk away, but you get the better of you and you turn around and you're like, “No, I said I'd help you and that's what I'm gonna do, dude, no matter how exhausting you make it.”
“What would really be exhausting is putting a little effort into progressing in this game,” she shouts back, “but you're too busy in the Land of Ramps and Kickflips to even try. And you know what,” she continues, interrupting your exclamation, “That is quite alright. No one else is taking this game seriously. Why should I?”
You've always been good at absconding to scorn. You're pretty much the best there is at knowing when to leave.
***
You see one another next five weeks later, on Kankri's planet. Porrim's roots are showing black against her mossy hair and you play it cool and compliment Kankri's 1-shirt. It's a MUTANT PRIDE shirt that he probably got off of Zazzle and he stops badmouthing TC long enough to tell you he customized it himself. NULL THE CULL is written across his chest in black marker. You offer him a fistbump for being gutsy and revolutionary and all that and he smiles this smug smile with no teeth showing and his knuckles are soft on yours.
Fist still raised, you offer it to the other member of your party, and she rolls her eyes and returns the gesture. She's not smiling, but her eyes are friendly at the corners.
You've never been terribly good at apologies.
That evening you confirm Meulin's claims, tongue-deep in Maryam's lips when she presses you against the wall and your horns bump into Kankri's DVD shelf. Her lip ring clinks against your bottom teeth twice before you try sucking on it and she shivers when you bite down, lightly, on the inside of her mouth.
In vengeance she has you trembling half an hour later, on her knees with her mouth at work, and you leave nail-pricks on her shoulders and bite-marks on your inner cheek.
“You make me so angry,” she says into your shoulder, next, when up in and onto you and you're exploring with your hands sliding between your two bodies.
“Yeah,” you say, because you know it'll piss her off, and your hormones are out of control. “I sure do.”
***
A second night never comes and you don't know what you did but you fall through the gate to her planet and storm up to her front step with every intention of finding out. It's Aranea who answers, lipstick smudged and t-shirt on inside out, and you leave again before Porrim reaches the door.
She finds you wrestling a shimmery green frog into your sylladex, and you punch her in the mouth. You shout at her until your voice scratches at its upper edges, and she doesn't shout back, just murmurs “Ssshhh” against your cheek and holds your hands gently until you stop snarling. You hug her tight and she holds you back.
You stop asking after her conquests.