Zavier sat in the bathtub, warm water up to his waist. He had the tub drain cracked to allow a constant, slow drain, and had adjusted the water to fill the tub at the same speed that it drained. He needed the water crystal clear for what was coming next so had balanced the filling and draining to ensure it stayed that way.
He glanced at the party chat, confirming the twins were hunting with Maisy while Tess was out with his chain, filling it with as much energy as she could. Satisfied, he nodded to himself and turned off his health displays. He hoped they would stay absorbed in their tasks, too preoccupied to notice. His heart raced as he eyed the implements on the closed toilet seat: healing pills, a tube of liquid with a rollerball top reminiscent of old-school deodorants, a full-health injector, and a box knife with a fresh blade.
He picked up the rollerball tube, marveling at it. After the zoo Zavier had visited the Bouchards, bringing them a host of supplies along with the filled rods Madison had requested. Seated at the table with Owen and Chloe, Zavier pulled out the bags of butterflies. He gently handed one to Chloe, recounting their experience in the butterfly enclosure.
Zavier nearly leapt across the table as Chloe opened the bag and slid her arm inside, but she stopped him with an upraised hand. "It's okay, I'll be fine. I have a skill that allows me to safely absorb chemicals and monitor their reactions within my body. It helps me create better and more effective potions."
She paused, her eyebrows scrunching as the butterflies landed on her skin. "Interesting," she said. "They've merged with my skin, not using proboscises as expected. Instead, they're merging their bodies with mine on a cellular level through their feet, directly injecting chemicals and bypassing pain sensors."
Zavier's eyes widened, and he looked at Owen in alarm. Owen waved off his concern. "She'll be fine, don't worry."
Chloe continued her explanation with the professional detachment of a forensic pathologist reading autopsy results. "The anesthetic powder in their wings makes it impossible to feel even the beat of their wings. The powder is magically absorbed into the skin, traveling rapidly to the brain and releasing serotonin, dopamine, endorphins, and oxytocin, creating a state of relaxation. Wow, that's quite a combo. I bet you felt amazing covered in them. Oh, I see. Melatonin is being released now - if I weren't focusing, I'd be drifting off to sleep."
Her eyes widened with an unusual amount of surprise. "Oh! Once they sensed the melatonin, they reversed, like mosquitoes after injecting blood thinners. They're absorbing my life energy - about 1% per 10 butterflies per minute for someone my size and level. Trivial in small doses, but if you were drugged, dreaming happily, and covered in hundreds of these, they'd be deadly."
She gently shook them off, carefully pulling her hand out of the bag without harming any. "What do you want for them?"
Zavier smiled, waving at the beast cores, rods, and random items they'd picked up but didn't need. "Let's not get too transactional, we're friends. You can have the butterflies and I can't wait to see what you create from them. But I do have a request, if you can swing it. I'm not sure if it's possible, but after experiencing their effects I thought of something that might be really useful for my attempts at learning a new skill."
Zavier came back to the present and uncapped the roller ball. He ran it over his forearm and hand, smiling as they went numb immediately. He could still move them and seemed to have full range of motion with his fingers and hand, he just couldn't feel them at all. No sensation while touching them, no feedback from the limbs that he'd hit something or that the limbs were working. It was the perfect anesthesia without any loss of mobility and function. Exactly what he needed.
He set the container down carefully, not wanting to spill a single drop of it, and picked up the box cutter. He tested the point against his palm, tensing as it punctured the pad of his thumb and deep red started to well from it, then relaxed as he realized he felt nothing. His smile was victorious as he got to work flaying the skin and muscle off his hand, the rivers of blood disappearing down the drain in a beautiful swirl.
Hours later Zavier stood up on shaky legs, closing the lid on the empty container of healing pills. He rinsed off in the shower to get the last of the blood off, toweled dry as quickly as he could, then hid the injector and numbing bottle under the bathroom sink behind the bottom drawer. No one looked under the sink anyway, and if they did they'd never think to look at the space behind the drawer.
With that done he made his way to the couch, his legs weak and his left side feeling… weird. That was the only way he could describe it. He'd spent hours dissecting each individual finger, then the palm of his hand, then his forearm, then left bicep. He'd gone through each with slow, methodical precision, uncovering the limbs layer by layer. He'd skimmed some medical diagrams before this and had a pretty good idea of what to expect, but there was no substitute for practical experience. He'd burned through half of his pills just working through his hand, taking one every time he dipped below 75%. He was worried he'd go through them too quickly so had let his health drop further, only taking pills when he dipped below 50%. He'd almost blacked out when he'd removed the bicep muscle from the bone - it hadn't occurred to him that just because he couldn't feel the pain that didn't mean it wasn't traumatizing his body.
His health dropped from just above 50% to under 20% in an instant and he frantically tossed a pill in his mouth, waiting to swallow until he'd positioned his bicep back in place. He didn't know what would happen if he swallowed the pill while half of his muscle was disconnected, but he doubted it'd be good. With that done he finished off the pills and sighed with relief that his health ticked back up to full and his arm and hand seemed to look normal.
Something was off though and he couldn't place it. Chloe didn't know how long it would take for the butterfly's numbing effects to wear off, or even if he needed to go to sleep or take melatonin for it to happen, but Zavier didn't think the oddness he was feeling was from that. His best guess was that having your entire limb dissected, flayed, healed, then flayed again in a few hours was just too much trauma for even The System to handle. Or maybe Chloe needed to make stronger pills. He'd have to talk with her about that.
Just as he flopped onto the couch he heard the front door open and the excited voices of the twins followed by the dusky voice of Tess. They all looked dirty and battered but bore huge smiles of a night of successful hunting. The twins rushed to him, Luna plopping down on his legs and Cass sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of him. He looked past their rush of words to a smiling Tess. She thumbed down the hall then pointed at the twins and gave him a quizzical thumbs-up that silently asked 'I'm about to take a shower, you got this?'
He gave a tired thumbs up and realized he was starting to get feeling back in that hand. She smiled and he turned to listen to the kids recount every minute of their night with Maisy, told twice and with the enthusiasm of each one not wanting to leave a single detail out.
Zavier startled awake with a snort, not realizing that he'd fallen asleep at some point in the kids' retelling of their evening. Tess walked in, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel and leaning down to kiss him on the forehead.
"Hey Sleepyhead," she said. "You seemed tired so I didn't want to wake you. I made dinner - hope you're in the mood for canned green bean casserole. We're running low on food so we're going to have to do something about that soon."
"Ugh," he said, swinging his legs off the couch and rubbing his head.
She gave him a sympathetic look. "Up late worrying about us out?"
He just nodded his head, not wanting to meet her eyes. He'd never been able to lie to her and he didn't want her to see the lie behind his expression.
"I noticed you cut off your feed just after we left."
His heart jumped in his chest and he felt his throat close up, but Tess just reached down and cupped his face with her hands, leaning in for a kiss. "I'm so proud of you, Honey! You trusted us to be okay. That's a big step and I just want you to know that I recognize that it couldn't have been easy on you. Thank you."
He kissed her again, squeezing his eyes shut against his shame.
The weeks passed with much the same routine. The twins were approaching level 10 and Tess had reached 12. He'd been to the Bouchard's a few more times for healing pill refills, but his credit was running out. Every night he had been in the tub dissecting a different part of him and every night was the same result. He could tell he was on the verge of a skill but didn't know what it took to push it over the edge.
Tonight would be different. Tonight it was hell or high water time and he was going to crack the code on how the human body worked. He was out of pills and was using the last of the numbing liquid, although he doubted it would be enough for what he had planned.
His family was out hunting as a group tonight. They had begged him to come but he waved away their pleading with excuses of having research to do. Tess had given him an odd look but relented, kissing him and telling him not to go too deep down any rabbit holes.
"You obsess, Z," she'd said. "You need to get out of the house and level."
"I'm holding you back," he'd replied. "I need to find other ways to get stronger."
He could tell she'd wanted to say more but didn't want to have an argument before they went on a hunt.
"We'll talk about it when we get back, okay?" The look of tenderness in her eyes almost made him reveal everything. The urge to tell her all about his experiments wouldn't stop bouncing around in his head. He'd wanted to tell her that he was on the verge of something and just needed a little more of a push.
But he'd chickened out. She'd heard every one of his hairbrained schemes and plans over the years and he didn't want to do that to her this time. This time he would show her the results. All's well that ends well, he'd said to himself as they had left him in the silent house.
He sat in the tub again, this time with the water barely to his hips. The two areas he hadn't explored yet were his head, and he was not going to fuck with that, and his torso. If someone took a slash to the gut or a bullet to the chest he needed to know what everything was supposed to look like. He'd been surprised when he found out that his liver was actually closer to his ribcage than his hips, and that realization demonstrated just how little he knew about the inner workings of the human torso. He knew what the organs were and what they did, he just didn't know how they'd actually look when a torso was hanging open or where they were located in the body cavity.
Tonight he'd learn.
He'd rubbed the last of the numbing liquid across the entire front of his stomach and chest but could tell it wasn't going to be enough. With his limbs he'd had thick muscle for the liquid to absorb into, but it wasn't having the same effect on his organs. He had four pills left and the injector. He knew he'd need them all before the night was over.
He took a deep, steadying breath and leaned back, mirror in one hand and kitchen knife in the other. The instant he pulled the skin away from his stomach, exposing his intestines, he knew he'd made a mistake. His intestines slopped out of him like wet worms from a plastic bag and his health plummeted to under 20% in an instant. He dropped the knife and reached for the injector but his shaky hand sent it skittering across the toilet seat to clatter to the ground on the other side.
With the last moments of clarity he sent a message to Tess before the darkness took him.
"I'm sorry. I love you."