What is her deal anyway? Djoser asked. Is she a sideliner or something? Maybe a product? There’s something off about her.
D_Light knew what Djoser meant. She doesn’t have the markings of a product. So, yeah, my best guess is she’s a sideliner, but she hasn’t said anything.
Have you asked her? Djoser asked.
Of course, replied D_Light, but I think she’s been a demon for a while, so she’s learned to not blather.
Lyra nodded and took a deep breath. We don’t have time to explore her life history right now. We need to get going before the Authority catches up. We can learn more about her on the road. If something doesn’t jive, we ditch her, no problem. Besides, if at the end of this game we can’t fix her demon status, you know…
We can turn her in for the bounty, Djoser said with a satisfied smirk on his face.
Lyra shrugged. For the record, you said it, not me.
“Okay, enough of this,” Lyra said out loud. She walked quickly up to Lily. “So, little demon, would you like to join us?” She extended a hand as though she expected Lily to kiss it.
Lily did not. Instead, she inspected Lyra’s hand as though measuring the character of the stranger based on her finger length. “I don’t see why-”
Lyra cut her off. “Thanks to our association with you, we are all demons and now share the bond of being pursued. If we work together, we have the best chance of eluding our hunters. You have been a demon for a while, right? Surely you can help us.”
Lily returned an uncertain look.
Lyra laughed. “Look, let me start off by helping you. I have a present.” Lyra fumbled about in her travel pack for a moment and pulled out a shimmering one-piece skinsuit.
“This was supposed to be a spare, but you look like you’re about my size.” Lyra’s voice betrayed a hint of disappointment at this observation. “Put it on. I already have a pattern for you to wear that will disguise your face and hair, and best of all, you’ll look fabulous!”
Lily smiled and graciously accepted the garment. She quickly found the hidden zipper in the back, looked inside the suit as though expecting to find it lined with scorpions, and then smiled and curtsied to Lyra. “Excuse me while I change,” she said, running off to conceal herself behind a solid clump of foliage.
Djoser leaned over to Amanda and quietly said, “Looks like she has seen a skinsuit before. Maybe she’s not such a primitive after all.”
Amanda did not smile at her master’s joke, but that was not surprising to D_Light, who doubted the product had any sense of humor at all.
Lyra sighed as she watched Lily retreat. She then tugged at something on the back of her collar. With this, Lyra’s head and face briefly shimmered and then transformed. Her long hair shortened into a jet-black bob, her face rounded, the corners of her eyes narrowed, and her lips thinned. She now appeared to be from the Japanese bloodline. The device that disguised her head and face was called a veil, which consisted of countless nanotubes of fiber optic wires so thin as to be individually invisible; however, collectively they created an ever so subtle shimmering appearance when not activated. The glass tubes were highly flexible, but they held the shape of petals curving up from the collar of her skinsuit, encasing her head like a closed tulip. With a veil on, one could project an illusion of just about any face and head imaginable-or at least whatever an illusionist could program.
Lyra’s clothing changed also. She now wore a loose-fitting silken blouse and pants. The microspeakers embedded in her skinsuit did an excellent job of simulating the sound of swishing fabric as she walked. Lyra smiled, showing fangs similar to Amanda’s, and then she twisted and crouched down into a traditional kung fu fighting stance. “Who wants some?” she asked.
Djoser applauded and called out, “I think I just pissed myself!”
Amanda watched Lyra intently and ran her real fangs over her lower lip.
A pretty woman appearing to be of Middle Eastern descent emerged from behind the trees. She wore a shawl that would have been a traditional Muslim shawl had it not been streaked with a seemingly infinite number of colors that pulsed and shifted. The shawl was semitransparent, making visible a hint of her well-fitting skinsuit beneath it.
Lyra smiled at her. “You look perfect, Lily. PeePee, show her how she looks.” Lyra’s ferret familiar dutifully opened its jaws and projected a hologram of Lily so she could see herself.
D_Light had forgotten that Lily had no familiar of her own and therefore had no way of seeing what she looked like to other people. He took it for granted that he could see how he looked anytime by having Smorgeous view him from the familiar’s perspective and send him the video feed. This was so routine, in fact, that D_Light never even had to tell his familiar to do it. D_Light would just have to wonder how he looked, and there he was.
Lily looked pleased with her appearance as she hopped about in a circle while watching herself. The motion did not cause any distortion in her image. The veil did a good job of compensating for gravity and movement. High-quality veils never distorted, except with the most violent motion.
D_Light looked over to see that Djoser had engaged his suit now. He resembled an ancient Victorian era gentleman, complete with a tall top hat. His face had changed from a man of roughly Indian descent to one of a darker African ancestry.
“You guys want to blend in, right? Why not choose a more common look?” D_Light was referring to the pandectic racial features of most contemporaries-skin that was a very dark tan, almost black, with relatively angular facial features close to that of a Caucasian.
“What’s the use of playing a game if you can’t have some fun?” Lyra shrugged. “Oh, we did some shopping on the way here and got you a veil too.”
D_Light laughed. “Let me guess, a greased-up albino in a G-string.” Not that it mattered. D_Light knew he could just select a design of his own choosing from his virtual closet.
Lyra walked around and up behind D_Light, whispering near his ear, “Close.” She unsnapped his collar and replaced it with the one embedded with a veil.
D_Light almost thought he could hear a low whistle as the nanothreads overhead scanned his face. With the momentary scanning complete, D_Light became a little girl. More precisely, he was a six foot one inch girl with the infantile facial features of a child no older than three. He wore a pink leotard, a large bow in his long blond hair, and frilly pink dancing shoes. D_Light chuckled as Djoser nearly busted a gut laughing.
Lyra frowned. “Oh, not funny! Not funny at all! Okay, I’ll change you fast before this is imprinted upon my psyche.”
Presently, D_Light’s body and face blurred and focused back in, displaying a Victorian like Djoser.
“I say, spot on!” D_Light did his best to mimic a British accent to accompany his new look. The country of England, like most countries, no longer had any real identity, but the accent still belonged to a few and, more importantly, remained part of entertainment culture.
“So now that we all look fabulous, where shall we go?” Lyra asked with enthusiasm. “We don’t have a quest yet, but our handsome couple here,” she said, pointing one index finger at Lily and the other at D_Light, “is surely being chased down by Soul knows what.”
D_Light nodded and added, “They’ll be using sniffer bots to find us. That’s what was chasing us at the spanker ghetto.”
“Righty-o! No one will be able to ID us with an image grok, but we’re still vulnerable to sniffers,” Djoser said with his own poor imitation of a British accent.
“Actually, not all scanners scan visual appearances, you know, not all scan light,” Lyra said. “Some use seismographic scanning, which draws our physical features and contours. The light illusion created by the suits we’re wearing will not fool these types of scanners.” Lyra smiled and added, “I did my research on my way here.”