They made their way onto the ship with no problem. As predicted, ticket checks for this side were basically non-existent. John couldn’t imagine that the amount of times people had gotten on the island on their own and were then in need to take the ferry back went above once every ten years.

“Can I just say,” Rave said, hands hidden in giant mittens hidden inside the armpits of her enormous jacket, “that I feel weird about how my whole life is suddenly centred around boats?” She shivered, pressing herself tighter against John on the bench (the inside had already been packed with people) as the cold winds blew over the water, her brown hair waving in the winds. With a smile, he looked at the pink layering of clothes against the cold that his girlfriend turned into when exposed to anything approaching the freezing point.

He himself had put a simple jacket over his usual suit. Eliza was wearing a trench coat, yoga pants and her scarf, which gave her black hair and brown eyes to keep her from standing out. Aclysia, running around as another raven-haired girl herself, also went with the plain outfit they had bought back in Cologne, a grey sweater under a black coat and once more yoga pants. They just knew that he loved them. Last of the line-up was Metra, who was leaning with her back against the railing on her lonesome, clothed in a thin jacket, a sweater underneath and yet another pair of yoga pants. Nia, in the meantime, was wearing her usual outfit.

It was march, but the winter stuck around like it liked to do. The astronomical start of spring wasn’t far off though. Just another 10 days.

“I mean,” Rave continued on as their destination came closer and closer, “we take a boat to get over here, we live on a boat, the only way to get of our current home is a boat. All of it is boats.”

“You would have experienced more motorboating in the past if you had bigger breasts,” John joked and got himself an elbow rammed into his ribs. “Worth it,” he wheezed, much to the laughter of some high school kids close to them. Kids, out of John’s mouth, sounded weird, he himself being not far from their age. He felt like his experiences (and Stats) gave him seniority in life though. The ship lost speed and drew closer to the pier. “Really though, I get where you are coming from, but this should be the only trip we have to make.”

They got off the boat and then quickly distanced themselves before anything could spring a surprise control on them. That was almost exclusively because of John’s mild paranoia. They quickly passed by a hall in the distance, either an old train station or a rebuilding of such, used as a railroad museum. They turned left, walked over a bridge, then down the shore until they came by another bridge that would have led them to one of the three points that John could put the teleporter endpoint at, Ellis Island.

As the gate in front of the bridge quickly indicated, they wouldn’t be able to go about this quite like they wanted. “Excuse me,” John said, knocking on the glass of what he assumed to be an inspector’s booth. The guy inside looked like his only want in life was to finish watching the episode of whatever was reflected in his eyes from the screen of his smartphone and then take a bus home to watch another episode of the same show on the biggest television that fit into his small apartment. As such, he had a go to response, which was pointing at a sign glued to the inside of the window.

John didn’t appreciate that, and if this wouldn’t have been a regular dude, he maybe would have smashed the window, grabbed him by the collar and asked him in a dangerously nice voice to speak up and act respectfully while doing his job. But that idea was whispered to him by Siena, so that was probably a bad idea.

Instead, he read the sign with the composure of a reasonable person, a persona he continued to cling to because it was keeping him sane and didn’t cause people around him to have a bad day. ‘Bridge is for personnel only, public access through the ferry.’

“Who came up with that system?” John asked out loud.

“I don’t fucking know, but I am not following that dumbass shit,” Eliza said and raised her arm, creating an Illusion Barrier. That was indeed the better idea than walking back to where they came from and waiting for the next ferry. “There, now we can walk our perfect little asses and whatever the fuck Rave has that is better than that, angelic or some mythological shit like that, there!” she exclaimed and jumped over the lowered gate.

They reached the acclaimed hospital after recreating the barrier once (it just hadn’t been long enough), only for John to find out something that he could have easily googled over the past two weeks. “It’s closed… this is a museum.”

“Yup,” Rave commented and squinted her eyes. “Don’t think that’s a thing the Apothecaries care about though.” Raising her hand, she pointed at one of those doors that were basically invisible, although saying they were forcefully unimportant to they eye would have been a more accurate way to put it, that led into Illusion Barriers.

“Seems that way… well, we are already here, so might as well,” John decided to check out whatever thing was set up here. Information never hurt anybody.

The building complex was brimming with business. Alchemists, biomancers and mechanics all went about their individual businesses in repairing, improving or just experimenting on their (sometimes unwilling) patients inside these walls. John had never paid too much attention to the Apothecaries, as he had very little to do with them, but now that he thought about it, a medical organization that operated under no moral code was pretty creepy. They had worked under Romulus with ethics though, so it seemed they respected the law of the land. Which was why John wasn’t surprised that he saw a whole bunch of crazy scientists with such things as biomechanical spider legs skulk around this place.

There was no better land for those kinds of people than the kind that had no real rules. Too bad for them that the USA wouldn’t qualify for that once he was through. Although they would still be free to ask for volunteers; John had no intention of blocking research if people willingly went into it as subjects.

“Want an extra arm? I could grow one or stitch one on!” an old man with only three teeth and splattering saliva everywhere while talking suddenly was right in his face.

“No thank you,” John exclaimed, gently pushing him away by the shoulder. When that didn’t work, he added his left to the man’s face and shoved more firmly. When THAT got his palm licked by a tongue that felt like the taste buds had mutated into tiny hooks, his patience was replaced by a creeped-out shiver, Purgatory activated and he slammed the man into the ground.

A group of assistants wordlessly came with a stretcher, put the old man on there and rammed a giant syringe into his neck as they rolled him off. John let them. With trembling hands, Eliza reached out to him. “Can we get out of this fucking place?” she laughed in a nervous shrill. “I don’t like this, I don’t like this at all, I don’t like this, I don’t fucking want to be- “ A loud scream echoed through the whole building. The personnel chatted over their coffee, as if the sound wasn’t sticking around for a disgusting amount of time. Eliza held her ears closed, eyes glazing over as she was going into some state of shock.

John firmly wrapped her in his arms, glaring daggers at everyone else trying to strike up a ‘conversation’, and they went right back out the entrance they had just came in through. “I will definitely go clean that place up eventually,” he muttered as he was rubbing Eliza’s back until she calmed down.

“Haven’t had one of those in a while,” she growled once her trembling had mostly stopped. She took a cup of hot chocolate that Aclysia bought from a nearby souvenir shop and began sipping. That helped a lot as they sat on the bench, back to the buildings they had only shortly visited. “Fucking hate panic attacks like that.”

A gust of cold wind travelled over them and suddenly stopped.

“YOU!” a voice cried out with the fury of a slightly damaged individual. They turned around to see someone with the appearance of something like a stressed out and overly young Nikola Tesla stumble towards them from the hospital. His arm was raised, pointing at something above John. “SHOW YOURSELF! I can feel your chattering presence!”

Okay, that immediately clarified who was being talked about.

‘Get out there, Sylph!’ Salamander shouted at her sister.

‘Whaaaat? He looks mad, nobody is ever mad at me, he can’t mean me?’

“I can hear you @TheBaereeze69!”

“Oh my mom, you know my Airter name? Do you like my stuff? How did you like yesterday’s picture? Are you a follower of mine?”

“Oh, much, much more than that!” the man growled. “My name is Ralyks, the Effing Ralyks, and I am a shaman. I was born with a natural ability to commune with the elements… in other words I am hooked up into the elenet… AND YOUR CONSTANT SPAMMING IS GETTING ON MY NERVES! I was able to ignore you when you were half the world away, but the last two weeks were torture, TORTURE I TELL YOU!”

“Audible gasp, I don’t spam! I fervently create more words, as I should, they are good words, the best words!” Sylph puffed up her cheeks.

“No, they are not, improve your quality, less quantity! Your photo series about gummy bears was quite a wall. Which reminds me that I feel very bad for Marvin!”

“I miss him too,” Sylph sniffed, the two enemies putting their difference aside to tell their favourite Marvin stories for a minute.

“What are we watching?” Rave whispered towards the other four people that were out of this conversation.

“I have no fucking clue,” Eliza answered with an unnervingly wide grin on her face; at least this was providing her with the entertainment she needed to get over the rest of her shock.

“It is entertaining though,” Metra chimed in.

“Sylph does talk a lot,” Nia provided the greatest of insights.

“AND YOUUUU!” Ralyks then suddenly continued. “Salamander from flamebook.”

“What?” Salamander also materialized, the short-haired flaming redhead crossing her arms under her bountiful chest, pronouncing the enormous cleavage peeking out between the bra.

“Stop complaining that much, for fuck’s sake, it’s like you are addicted to outrage! Also what the hell were you thinking with that Lorylim action? I got a headache from the aftershocks so bad I had to be put in the hospital for the last… 17 days!”

“Oh, wow,” Salamander blinked. “THAT I didn’t want.”

“No, no you didn’t, but you basically asked for it,” Ralyks drily stated. “Also tell Undine that she is a good goo girl but she also fucked up. I know she won’t come out. Oh, and Gnome, you can hear me, stop being that fucking shy. Do you know how often I read about you on Airter and flamebook? It’s like everyone around you wants you to assert yourself but you just go Uwuwuwuwu.”

John could see, before his mental eye, the stone elemental taking the end of her pigtails and pushing them together in an embarrassed manner.

“And Siena… stop being such a massive bitch, lest I arm a mob with pitchforks to turn against you!”

‘Let me kill him,’ the nightmare elemental asked sweetly, ‘and this whole tirade ends immediately.’

‘Pretty sure he is done,’ John stated.

‘Yes, with life, once I get to him.’

“One last thing,” Ralyks said snapping with both of his hands and making double guns at the ground, where an open-mouthed Stirwin was looking like he was witnessing something amazing. Ralyks clicked his tongue and said, “You are fine, celestial devourer, you have a nice day. Ralyks done and out! Going to go to Texas or somewhere I won’t be in receiving range of Sylph.” The man left the barrier.

“That was a certainly… unique guy,” John blinked.