Several

Expressions

Very quickly.

"Well. That's... quite the idea. I see your point, however. Given that Torok's soul does have the relevant protections, we would get nowhere without a relevantly functional soul of our own, and would directly feel the contest with one."

"Exactly!" says Hazel, nodding. "I am also privately interested in distinguishing the answers to more subtle questions such as whether you have separate souls between identities or a single unified soul or a single soul with permeable internal divisions. But I can see how the question of whether, taken collectively, you have a soul at all, is of vastly greater and more urgent import, and if you want it answered quickly, I suggest that we ask Torok to express his gathered wisdom on the subject of recreational attempted murder and then see what happens if you try it. Of course I do not mean to suggest that you should do this if anyone involved is not comfortable with the prospect; it is, I think, both a morally weighty and an interpersonally intimate endeavour. I have alchemical solutions to pursue if you would rather take the slower route. But my alchemical investigations can only provide us with more and more different indirect pieces of evidence to assemble into a picture, and I think a direct contest of wills with Torok would be immediately and definitively enlightening."

"No, I think we're more okay with this plan than anyone sane ought to be. We will of course stop once we feel something, or fail to feel anything. Probably Sable or Neo does this, though. I'm not comfortable enough with Torok for him to have a touch exception, Maya's only prone to violence in defence, and doing it herself would make Ruby miserable. Sable and Neo would both be fine, as would I if Torok had an exception for my touch-sensitivity. We'll certainly want to do alchemical tests for the finer details, but let's get the important answer the quick way."

She looks Torok sharply in the eye. "So how's this work?"

...he rubs his face self-consciously.

"Uh—so when Hazel says 'recreational attempted murder'—the thing I do is, uh, strangle people. It's... the easiest way to keep the struggle of wills going, because strangling's slow, right, and you can—adjust how hard you're going, to give someone a little space if they're starting to fail—this is kind of awkward to talk about. But—I don't think you should stop the moment you think you feel something, actually. If you want to be really sure, you should wait until we've both either felt it or not. Because—I think—I mean whatever Hazel says I'm not an expert but I think it's possible, that if someone with no soul tries to kill someone who has one, they might feel the struggle and just also feel that they're not getting anywhere with it? And 'not getting anywhere with it' might be harder to pick up on than 'feeling anything at all', so if you stop the second you feel anything at all, it might turn out that what you felt was my soul?"

"Your theory is plausible," Hazel contributes.

"Extremely reasonable. Strangling was our intuitive guess for the best option, too. And yes, we'd want to both feel it to know for sure. Mm. I wonder if having individual souls would make it feel different if we switched mid-attempt."

"A fascinating question, though perhaps one best left for a second experiment," says Hazel. "So, if I understand correctly, our experimental procedure is this: Sable or Neo attempts to strangle Torok. You each look out for the sensation of the struggle of wills—I have never personally experienced it so I can't tell you what it's like, but I understand it to be distinctive. Torok should have some nonverbal signal by which he can report either that he has clearly felt your will contacting his or that something seems to be going wrong—in fact these should perhaps be two separate signals, because whether you should stop when you see the first is something of a judgment call, the second rather less so. Am I missing anything?"

Sable smirks a bit, intrigued despite herself. "Me, I think. Taps of one of Torok's hands against one of my arms. One tap for something wrong, two for feeling it."

"Hmm... my instinct is that the signals should be more distinct than that—I can imagine someone in a state of urgency trying to repeat the first signal for emphasis..."

"Can you snap your fingers, Torok?"

"Yeah. Snap for 'found it', tap for 'something wrong'?" he suggests. "—the other thing you should probably know about trying to kill somebody is—you have to be trying. You don't have to be mad with rage or anything, I've done this before with people I absolutely didn't mean to kill and wasn't planning to take all the way, but—you still have to be trying to kill them, not just playing at something that happens to look like it. If you're just playfighting, most times your wills won't even touch."

"That sounds good. And yes, I suspected as much"

She checks the fish once more, turning if need be.

"Ready to try whenever you are."

He considers. Finishes up with the vegetables, while he's at it.

"...no point in waiting around, I guess," he concludes. "I want to know if you have a soul."

"Your choice of standing, sitting, or laying down with me straddling you."

He gives this question due consideration.

"...most practical to be lying down, I think? Keeping your balance isn't much of a distraction but it's some of one, and we want to be really sure we have our attention on the important stuff. So—"

He steps out of the loose circle of seating around the campfire and lies down in the sand, looking unsettled but determined.

"Would've been my preference as well."

She straddles his waist. Wraps her hands around his throat.

"Here we go."

And she tightens her grip, and keeps tightening until she's sure she's strangling him. Not just as hard as she played with her ex, and not only a little harder than that. You have to mean it, in both physical force and apparently willpower.

She is going to kill this man unless he taps out, or they learn what they aim to.

It's obviously not a comfortable situation to be in but mostly how he looks is focused, 'listening' as hard as he can for the moment when her will touches his.

When it happens it feels like nothing else in the world. Something at the core of her being, touching something at the core of his, bearing down on it with crushing force. His will is sharp and strong—this wouldn't be an easy fight, if she fought it to the end. But it is, increasingly clearly, a fight between equal opponents. She has the strength to fight him, soul to soul.

After only a couple of seconds, Torok snaps his fingers. He's not tapping out yet—he's not in danger yet, his will still firm against hers. But he's confident that he's seen what he needs to see.

When she feels it, she gasps. Her eyes widen, her pupils dilate, her cheeks flush. Every single one of her senses, including one she never knew she had before today, fill her attention with crisp vividity.

The feeling is beautiful. She has never felt a truer experience of the interplay of her own power and that of another person than this moment. She squeezes harder and leans her soul into the feeling — not pushing her soul any harder yet, just savoring as much of the sensation as she can.

"I feel it," she breathes. "Oh, I feel it."

She doesn't notice, but her nipples stiffen a bit through her thin blouse, and she unconsciously rolls her hips once.

She knows what it feels like to touch her soul to another's and fight now. What does it feel like to go all out?

She pushes harder, for a bare moment, if she can, and then lets go, tumbling off of Torok onto the ground and hugging herself tightly, panting and flushed.

Pushing harder does work, and it makes the feeling of soul against soul more intense as he struggles harder to match her, for that single moment before she stops.

...Torok makes a soft noise of something like amusement and sits up, rubbing his neck. "Well, you definitely have a soul, no doubt about that. You all right?"

She nods, blushing intensely. "I enjoyed that every bit as much as I thought I would."

"...yeah, it's... really something, isn't it. Though I can't say it's very much fun from this side."

(Hazel is over there looking fascinated.)

"Neo and I would enjoy it, I think," Maya notes. "But as far as we'd like to take it, we quite clearly need to invent resurrection first, on top of needing our separate bodies."

She sits up, her breathing notably steadier than Sable's had been before the switch, and checks on the fish and vegetables, turning or tending them if necessary.

"Hazel, are there any slow tests you'd like to start today?"