... by the toothbrush.

I stepped to the side to avoid a collision with the flaming slime. It didn’t change its course and hit the wall with a splash. Bits and piece of burning ooze fell all around it. If we did nothing, it was just a matter of minutes before the wooden floor would turn into a sea of flames.

A brief thought to grab as many things as possible and run away tried to establish itself in my brain, but it was completely obliterated by two other things. One of them was the fear of losing the last bastion of safety and the other was the sight of the girl frozen in place who was still holding the makeshift flamethrower.

*Kshhhh* “Vio!” *Kshhhh* “Water!” *Kshhhh*

Each second was precious and fortunately, one yell was enough to spur her into action. With haste, she ran to the kitchen while I checked if the slime reacted to my voice or not. It didn’t, but the foamy trail it had left on the floor caught fire.

A realization hit me. If this thing was similar to a grease fire, adding water to it would cook us alive.

*Kshhhh* “WAIT!” *Kshhhh*

I started running toward the kitchen and, with no time to explain, intercepted the full pot from Violet who was already rushing in the opposite direction. Some of its content spilled out but it mostly ended soaked into our clothes.

*Sshhhh* “WHAT THE FUCK?!” *Sshhhh*

She screamed angrily, not understanding the reason behind the contradicting orders.

I paid her no attention, scooped some water into my hand and splashed it from a distance on the burning immobile slime. There was no violent reaction, it was safe to extinguish it with water. The rest of the pot content was used to put out the quickly growing fire on the black trail.

*Kshhhh* “Plug the sink!” *Kshhhh* “Turn water max!” *Kshhhh* “Fill all pots!” *Kshhhh*

*Sshhhh* “Wha-?!” *Sshhhh*

I pushed the utterly confused little sister towards the kitchen, moving right after her. We only had a minute or two left before the situation would become irreversible. Seeing that she wasn’t following my orders I yelled exactly the same thing straight into her mask covered face:

*Kshhhh* “Plug the sink!” *Kshhhh* “Turn water max!” *Kshhhh* “Fill all pots!” *Kshhhh*

It worked, Vio restarted her activity and I also didn’t waste more time. There were three bottles of cola in the kitchen, in my eyes they looked like a fairly good substitute for a fire extinguisher.

I tossed two back into the room, grabbed the remaining one, shook it hard on the way to the fire and, with my thumb increasing the strength of the carbonated stream, started extinguishing. As soon as it ran out of power, I let the rest of its content to spill freely on the floor and picked up the second one.

There was a lot of smoke in the room, but for now, we were still safe due to the gas masks. However, since they couldn’t produce oxygen out of nothing it was only a temporary stopgap measure.

When I was about to use the third bottle Vio came carrying a big pot full of water, emptied it and went back for more. Additionally, there was a new source of water slowly encroaching on the living room floor from the kitchen’s direction.

Two minutes later, the situation was back under control.

In the end, the thing that allowed us to win this struggle was the fact that the slime had been rather small and it had burned out right after the first attack. Moreover, except for the wooden floor, there were no other sources of fuel within the range of fire.

Fucking Yuni, for the money I gave him he should have explained this shit to me properly.

I went to open the window to ventilate the flat.

*Sshhhh* “Flooded floor.” *Sshhhh* “Charred floor.” *Sshhhh* “Dissolved floor.” *Sshhhh*

*Kshhhh* “At least we have avoided” *Kshhhh* “‘the floor is lava’ scenario.” *Kshhhh* “But I saw a few sausages lying around.” *Kshhhh*

*Sshhhh* “First pot of water” *Sshhhh* “was our dinner.” *Sshhhh* “Help me get this mask off.” *Sshhhh*

*Kshhhh* “Sure, but let’s move to your room.” *Kshhhh* “The fumes from a burning slime” *Kshhhh* “may be toxic.” *Kshhhh*

*Sshhhh* “We leave it like that?” *Sshhhh*

*Kshhhh* “Do you feel like cleaning?” *Kshhhh*

*Sshhhh* “Fuck it.” *Sshhhh*

*Kshhhh* “Exactly.” *Kshhhh*

After reaching her room, we removed our masks and winter clothes. A lot of adrenaline was still coursing through my body and she didn’t look much better with sweat covered red face and accelerated breathing.

I might have run away if I were alone. If I did that, right now I would be looking at the blazing inferno of my flat.

Vio evidently wanted to say something but waited for my move. I sat on the floor with my back to the wall and started the long-awaited explanation.

I started the story from the moment when I had woken up in this body last Friday. As many details as possible were included so we could become the perfect trustworthy equals.

“How did you die?” She asked curiously.

“Suicide after my mother died.” I answered calmly.

I told her the details of how I went out shopping, met Aura and everything that had happened between the two of us that day.

“So that silver girl was responsible for killing my brother with her strange power...” She said in a voice soaked with complex feelings.

“That… just listen for now.” I answered evasively.

I told her how I went out in the evening, met Adam near the vending machine and quoted parts of our conversation.

“You’re saying that he is a heavily retarded guy with a limited brain capacity…” She commented suspiciously.

“Trust me on this one.” I added, trying to show her his true essence.

“Yeah, and we will have another fireball incident.” She commented sharply.

It didn’t work.

The transition from the first to the second day was all about breaking into the flat, followed by the description of Silvie’s contract scam. There were no questions from Violet’s side, as she was busy thinking about my words. I skipped the message accident and moved on to everything that had happened before my first visit in Votroadan dimension, including the note in the tube, calling Adam’s phone and Aura in the snow.

“Black square used as a ticket… I saw something like that.” She added an offhand remark.

“Where? Tell me all about it.” I asked impatiently.

“One of the walls in Viktoria’s black bedroom is covered with tens of such squares.” She answered fairly surprised.

This was a precious piece of information worthy of remembering as a priority.

The next part would be about my first visit in the Votroadan domain. However, I recalled that telling her too much may negatively affect her own challenge mode and I was wondering if it should be delivered heavily censored.

“Do you want some tea?” I asked, trying to buy some time.

“Yes please, I’m perched.” She answered lying on the bed.

After carefully smelling the air and making some big steps to avoid the unpleasant floor, I made us a jug full of mint tea.

After a lot of wavering between telling her a heavily downplayed version of the things concerning mana spots and simply stating all I knew, a decision was made to tell Violet everything. The main reason behind it was that if I were in her position I would simply want to know, but I had to warn her first.

“Violet, if I were to tell you something really important, but also dangerous, a thing that could change your life forever, would you still want to know it? Keep in mind that not knowing it should reduce the risk-” I started asking.

“Just tell me, I don’t want to ever again be at risk of burning alive without ever knowing why.” She interrupted, full of conviction.

I gave her a cup of tea and told every single thing about mana spots, demons, challenges, challenge modes, Three Answer, Three Choices, Triple the Disaster and Viktoria’s luck, Aura’s power, Adam’s power, mana infused items and explained the rest together with her numerous questions that were popping one after the other.

‘You can die.’ and ‘It’s dangerous.’ I repeated these two sentences many times.

“So, with a ticket, a mana spot and after surviving inside, I can get a power of my own?” She asked fascinated by my story.

It looked that convincing her to become an esper wouldn’t be hard. There was a slight pang of guilt involved, but overall I was happy at the perspective of obtaining my first team member.

I told her the rest of the day two events, involving my return, Rora’s pet proposal and conversation with Adam.

“The red fog girl sounds a bit like Viktoria, just a way more insecure.” She commented, thankfully avoiding the painful pet topic.

“Wait till I tell you what happened to her later.” I answered with a slight grin.

I told her about the Sunday, it was quickly done as we had spent it mostly together. The only things worth mentioning were the results of my Three Answers from that day.

“That café is still on my target list, don’t forget about it.” She added with a smile.

“Don’t worry, we will for sure return there in the future, but this time you will be paying.” I added with a bigger smile.

I told her all about the faked kidnapping accident, TET, the Seal, basic rules of esper community, some things I learned later and mentioned my meeting with Yuni since it was revolving around similar topics.

“You’ve got two more of those firebombs?!” She exclaimed slightly nervous.

“I think that it’s safe if you use it when you’re alone. The slime has only reacted to me because I wasn’t its summoner. Not to mention that we were the ones who set it on fire.” I tried to stave off her anxiety.

I told her everything that had happened on Monday, including disappearing door, Viktoria and her fight with Adam, the story behind the knife and the blackish mark on the wall, the aftermath of their fight and my late night cemetery visit with Aura.

“I feel that Adam guy pain. I think it was around two or three years ago when everything I tried stopped being effective. Still, with his power, he’s not any better. Those two are clearly cheating.” She said indignantly.

“What stopped being effective?” I asked, but there was no real need for it as the answer could be easily deducted from my second set of memories.

“Almost everything, slingshot, darts, wet rags, sponges, buckets full of dung and so on. Either one of her zombies took the bullet for her or it missed. The only time something worked was when I had sneaked into Viktoria’s black bedroom and released a jar full of ants and a little spider or two on her bed…” She said the last part with a heavily regretful tone of voice, yet there was a tinge of an accomplishment mixed within.

I told her the game-changing events of my second visit in the Votroadan dimension, but not everything, the geas was kept secret. Afterward, was the part about retrieving the DOLL from its grave.

“That’s good, very good, I wouldn’t want to be a sister of a dog-nii-chan or maybe… want me to buy a leash and take you out for a walk?.” She couldn’t stop herself from mentioning the painful part.

“I demand an embarrassing dark secret from you in exchange! It’s not fair that only my mental image is going through shit.” I used the most basic psychological trick which was mainly used in kindergartens and elementary schools.

Violet remained silent for a while and after reaching some kind of a conclusion nodded her head.

“... just don’t tell anyone… like seriously don’t… I will kill you if you do…” She started in a quiet, slightly threatening tone.

“As long as you will stay silent about the pet part.” I was surprised that the trick had actually worked.

“... I was playing with an electric toothbrush… got too heated up... and it kind of broke…” She finished with a voice that grew almost inaudible by the end.

I was about to ask what was embarrassing about breaking a toothbrush, but after seeing her tearing face which was like a thousand red suns I ate these words.

I immediately started talking about the part involving Luna and the trip to the watchtower with her, because it wasn’t hard to notice that Vio was extremely regretful of the words she said and was probably considering killing me to keep my mouth shut.

When I made a slight break in the explanation for questions. She didn’t ask anything, just kept staring at me.

There was only a handful of things left to talk about, Nero Grue, the murder in the park, and some leftovers. Everything connected with my three grand promises was omitted, this was a topic for another occasion.

“They really died?” She asked, it looked like a verdict had been made and I was going to be spared.

“Yeah, it was gruesome. Hard to believe that a small girl could do that without batting an eye.” I answered, but for once there was no scene of the splashing brains in front of my eyes. On the other hand, it was replaced by something even more shocking.

In the end, I explained my behavior in the SSC and the reasoning behind using a slime.

“I didn’t know… sorry.” She said biting her lip.

“It’s ok, I know that it wasn’t your fault.” I reassured her.

Damn, teenage girls are adventurous indeed… a toothbrush, really?

“Well, that’s pretty much everything. What do you think?”

“I think that I’m sticky from sweat and want to take a shower.”

“Since we’re both dirty, what about cleaning the flat first? Then you can get your shower and we will proceed with making a grand esper out of you.”

“Yeah, let’s do that.”

And you probably require some time to think about everything carefully.

We both stood up and started gathering the cleaning tools.