Supernatural Taxes

38) I am the Lord of Procrastination, why don't I get OP cheats?

It was past midnight and Atla dozed, staring at the ceiling in a haze. She tried to remember the day her mom was talking about, playing with her gran in the field on new years. But it didn't come that easily, Atla just had a feeling that she remembered her gran smiling.

She rubbed the old stretched burn marks, mostly on her legs and a little on the back of her hands, they didn't look too bad and she'd had these for so long that they didn't interest her until now. When was Ruth smiling, when both of them were lying in the field burnt? Or was Atla just making up memories based on what she heard...

"Atla, do you want to talk about unlinking?" Thanos floated through the door, Adelard had finally left, locked up and thrown the keys through the window.

"No I don't, I said I don't want to deal with this today," She unpaused her Castlemania game, making a point to not look at or react to Thanos.

"You'll have to after your mom calls you again. I've been on the internet a lot lately and those that defend the supernatural, even there, are in the minority to put it lightly. Objectively your best choice would be to ditch me..."

"Whose side are you on? Besides who says I need other people to defend me?"

"Yours." He stated. "I want what's best for you Atla and right now, that is looking like you should break away from the supernatural, because being wishy washy right now won't do you any good. Without me you'll be able to go on the trip you worked hard to save for, you'll get your friends back and stop being harassed eventually."

Atla was growing tired of Castlemania so she rummaged inside the box of personal items to see if there was another game among them, she was sure she played more popular and mainstream titles than this as a child but they weren't in the box. Had her gran lost the others? There were crayons drawings and colourful picture books though.

Among them was the strange tale of Prometheus but also a few others, Hercules, Perseus, Triton, Anubis as well as another one. Atla stared at the cover, Thanos floated over and commented, "The tale of Atalanta? Ruth read that one to you often."

"Oh yeah, Atalanta was some greek heroine's name," Thanos was the only one that used her full name with any regularity.

"Not just, 'some greek heroine', Atalanta was one of the first recorded supernatural heroines. And, according to some accounts, possibly one of the greatest. In fact"

"—Okay, okay. I take it back," Atla could tell when Thanos was gearing up for a ten minute lecture, "Why was I named Atalanta though?" She couldn't imagine her parents caring about this.

"Ruth really pushed for it, eventually your parents capitulated. This was when they were newly married and Ruth held a lot more sway as mother in law.

"Did I like the book?" She looked at the cover which showed a forest cottage, a bear and many-headed shadows.

"Tough to say. Well obviously you liked it because Atalanta's your name, but the book always made you angry and fired up, but you seemed to enjoy that so Ruth just kept reading it to you..."

The book was very worn, with dirty fingerprints all over it and right on the front cover was little Atla's first piece of vandalism. The tale of Atalanta had the Atalanta crossed out and replaced with, ME in red crayon, it was cute but also a little obnoxious she thought, judging her six or seven year old self.

She began reading

Atalanta was the king's daughter, but the king didn't want her

So he left her in the forest to grow up alone.

In the forest lived a hunter and his familiar

They raised Atalanta as well as they could