Birds. Blue. White, clouds, sky — I died, and yet I am alive. My account is filled with coins I plundered from alien souls, more coins than I can physically carry. My extra lives are many, right when I need them the least.
I am Samantha. I am 21 years old. I have failed in many ways, mostly academically, definitely on a personal level, considering how I lied to my parents for the better part of two years. My hobbies are playing video games with my sister and collecting weird bugs. I hug ghosts to death. Mimics also fall in that category now, apparently.
I have spent the last six days of my life going through the most harrowing, fulfilling, life-changing experiences a girl can go through. Becoming Custodian has been a mixed bag, in hindsight. The extra arms are a cool perk though.
Custodians aren’t magical girls. But that doesn’t preclude anyone from living up to their ideal selves. For starters, I want to be a magical girl. I’ll think of how to fit in the vampire and spider aesthetic later. For now, I should lie back, enjoy my soft bed, and relax.
And yet, as I lie here on the fluffiest pillow anyone could ever imagine, as if awaking from the most important dream in my life, I can’t help but feel a presence sorely missing.
“System? Did Clem make it out?”
[Yes]
“And Akira too?”
[Yes]
“Where is Addy?”
[Beneath you]
“And… and Becca?”
The silence is unnerving. I shoot upright, a paper slip reading ‘don’t get up you idiot’ falling off of my face. A twinge pinches me somewhere deep within my head-heart-spine-eye. I have a head-heart-spine-eye? Oh wait, that’s just my soul. It has suffered from being atomized only marginally less than the rest of my body. Which I can apparently tell now.
Cool. Cool cool cool.
Where is Becca?
I pull someone wearing Medusahead’s colors aside and ask. They don’t know who or what I’m talking about. Apparently it has been two hours since we teleported out of the Creektin Containment Dome. The charge within was enough that it could forego the use of a couple Custodian-shaped batteries for a while.
I get up, eliciting no groan from Addy. She deserves all the sleep she can get. Yes you do, my little over-achieving, self-destructive, obsessive, squeaky tanuki girl.
I squish her cheek. It makes me marginally more happy. I don’t open my channel to charge my only joy spell though. I’m pretty sure the feeling won’t last.
Slowly, like a newborn foal I stagger my way towards the dome glistening in the middle of the deciduous woods. A gust of wind almost knocks me off of my feet. I have over a hundred in Body dangit, why the hell are you so strong you dang wind?
[Repeated revival strains the soul. All stats decreased for: 00:02:12]
Oh, a revival debuff. Like in a real video game. I’m not even surprised.
My life sure has taken a turn for the weird.
I wait patiently, realising only after five minutes have passed that the final digit isn’t measuring minutes, but hours. I have two and a half days of less than stellar performance ahead of me. I can already feel the start of a nasty cold sneaking its way into my immune system. God, I want my stats back.
But I don’t get them. Instead, I get the dome. It’s normally translucent, but not today. Instead the inside is foggy, parts of the nearly invisible barrier smeared with… oh god, is that a mimic leg?
A tiny human the size of one of those anime-girl statuettes smacks right into the barrier. I only realize that it isn’t human by its off-green coloring, and the butterfly-like wings colorfully fluttering on its back. I’ve never seen a real fairy. Never, and I can see through just about any glamor in the world, which is really weird come to think of it. It’s showing its butt to me at the moment, so that takes a bit of the wonder of seeing a real fairy away.
It starts making a snow angel in the mimic blood. A gore angel. When it notices me, it tries to hide the razorblade it was casually playing with behind an embarrassed, sharp-toothed smile.
“You’ve got a bit of something there…” I motion towards its teeth where a slip of pink skin is hanging between its needle-like chompers. It blinks, picking the scrap up seemingly with its mind, and then slurping it up like spaghetti.
Aaand that officially concludes my interest in the fae. Great people, wonderful culture, just incredibly sporting about keeping invasive species off of their neighbors lawn.
“I see you’re up in spite of doctor’s orders.”
I turn, only to meet a woman I may have known under a different name.
Medusahead’s human body has brown curls coiling past her chest and a broody look, dark as thunder, as unimpressed with god’s creation like the average reptilian. It’d be intimidating if she wasn’t also like five foot something. Honestly, she and Addy look like they could be twin sisters.
“I’m her half sister,” she says, blatantly reading my mind. “On the mother’s side. Werepeople clans tend to be big on family connections. And my stupid sister needed someone to keep an eye on her.”
“So I have gathered,” I say, since nobody would willingly keep up with a team leader that was actively ignoring them for two years without sufficient secondary motivation. “Family sticks together?”
“Like shit on a stick.”
I snort. She’s funny in a direct, bossy kind of way. Reminds me of Rebecca. I kind of want to drink this girl.
Wait hol’ up.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“I see you brought back both of my associates unharmed,” she interrupts before I can follow that train of thought any further. One of her snake-drones lands on her shoulder, coiling around her neck. She gives it a little scritch under the chin. Adorable. I too wish to scritch the danger noodle. “They did a little happy ‘yay we survived against all odds dance.’ Good job.”
The mention of the mission kills my mood more than a little bit. “We still lost someone.”
“So I heard. A hostage, someone almost fully turned. You knew them?”
“Her. And I did. We used to be a thing. She saw that I was bothered by the comments people made about her dating the slug-licking bug girl. Shortly after, she ended things by dumping me in front of our friends. I thought she hated me. In hindsight, it’s painfully obvious she thought she was doing me a favor. I didn’t notice. We were both kinda dense like that.”
“Riveting life story,” she deadpanned.
“Well, sorry for trying to share,” I bite back, maybe a bit more than I meant to. Her absence doesn’t feel real yet, like it hasn’t quite sunk in.
There is a pause, poignant and filled with tension.
“Apologies for appearing inconsiderate,” she says, and I wave her off despite not really meaning it. Maybe a poor social sense runs in the family. Maybe it’s a tanuki thing.
Nonetheless, she’s here to say something more. “Well?”
“You culled the ghost haunting my half-sibling. For that, you have my thanks.” She bowed deeply, if briefly. And then she didn’t leave.
“...so what’s the caveat?”
She put her finger to her mouth and whistled. Whooie, what a whistle it was. You could probably call a dog from a mile away like that.
Of course, I don’t get a dog. Instead, a pinkish, oozing blob slowly reveals itself from where it had been hiding behind a rock. When it reaches us it stretches until about chest-tall, moving its liquid body in defiance of creation. Alas, gravity is a bad bitch, and so it falls in on itself again with a sad bounce.
“You seem quite able to reason with the unreasonable, so I am foisting this responsibility onto you.”
“Okay? What is this?”
“I do not have the slightest idea. But whatever it is, the system has classified it as a Custodian.”
Really? I reach out my hand, but the towering blob of pink ooze just flinches back, as if afraid of my touch.
[Custodian Rebecca, Lvl 1]
Wait, WHAT!?
“Rebecca, what happened?” Dumb question. The same thing that happened to me except where I was impaled by an alien spider, Rebecca was swallowed by an alien mimic.
Magical potential plus sacrifice equals an explosive entry into the exclusive club of professional martyrs. Welcome, Rebecca. I… cannot tell if I’m talking to your face or your butt, since you’re sort of amorphously a goo-shaped soda drink. But welcome regardless.
Jell-o-Becca wobbles uncertainly, shivering as if someone had dropped a pebble into her surface. A small bubble forms in the middle of her body, rising through it until it hits the surface with a tiny little sound.
“Blip.”
“Oh my god. You’re adorable.”
“She is a slime,” Medusahead deadpanned, much like her half-sister tends to. “Their insides have a ph-scale that can melt metals in seconds.”
“Except, she’s a person, my friend, who literally wanted to sacrifice her life for… I don’t really know why you did that. Did you want to make it up for me? Wobble once for yes, twice for no.”
Wobble.
“Well, as far as apologies go it’s a little extreme, but I appreciate the conviction. So, if I had not been on that Hummer, you wouldn’t have thrown yourself into the maw of the worm?”
Wobble.
“Oh, uh. Huh. We’re going to have to drill the correct magical girl mindset into you. You’re not going to eat me in my sleep are you? ”
Wobble wobble.
“There you have it. Slimes are friends, not foes.”
“Considering you seem enthusiastic to further the field of spider to goop communication, I will leave you to it. You’re a weird one.” Medusahead bowed once more before leaving me behind.
I turned to Becca.
“You have a nice smell. Like a raspberry soda. You fizz like one too. Can I maybe, y’know, have a sip? Just to try what you taste like!”
Wobble wobble.
“Becca, please. I swear I’m not being weird. It’s for science. Stop wobbling away. Becca, pleaaase!”
+++
The aftermath of a Convergence event was nearly as busy as during an ongoing one, but without the time crunch. Creektin had about 7,000 inhabitants not including drifters and visitors. Of those, 6,531 made it outside. It was a small miracle, if I was reading the open data bases right. The Custodians responsible for the relatively uninhabited triangle between Sault Ste. Marie, Trenary, and Gaylord (yes that is an actual town, no I wouldn’t want to live there either) were unavailable when the event occured. A much larger incursion trapping potentially tens of thousands of people in Chicago drew the attention of surrounding areas, but even if it hadn’t, convergence zones had popped up all over the northern hemisphere.
Reinforcements never would have come. That meant I was supposed to focus on the 6,531 people I helped save instead of the 469 people that tragically lost their lives. 469 at the minimum. That number would increase in the following days depending on how many non-residents got caught up and how many bodies could be identified after the disaster. Sobering was not the right word. It felt like abject failure.
And yet… we really did make a difference. Granted, I only helped save about two hundred of those directly before going into a coma, plus Clem and Akira, plus some people from Ted’s neighborhood watch. Addy and Medusahead did most of the rest.
Even as I hugged my family as tightly as was safe and as long as was socially acceptable, all I saw among the refugee town of tents that had sprung up a safe distance away from Creektin were reasons to do better. Those six-and-a-half thousand souls were a miracle, but even miracles needed to be fed, clothed, and sheltered.
A week’s worth of adrenaline was gone from my system, leaving a void that was both infinitely tiring and causing a restless energy to thrum throughout my limbs.
How many Body points am I away from my next set of arms?
[Body: 146]
Four points. Must’ve forgotten to use some of my free stat points, because I have exactly four left over.
I’ll… delay any further spiderification for now. I just want to feel normal for a while.
Soup kitchens were set up everywhere, distributing canned tomato soup with toast, butter, and grated government cheese ingots. Some idiots tried to push to the front of the line until some officers from nearby precincts were called in to ensure order, mostly by spreading the word that people who volunteered to help got fed immediately. They had their pick of volunteers after that.
People gave me looks when I tried to volunteer, and not just because I was a tall, many-armed and many-eyed individual. I was told in no uncertain terms that the quote-unquote ‘Heroes of Creektin’ deserved some rest. The rest was mandatory, as were the mixed looks of adoration, surprise, anger, fear, and disgust.
If you people were to try and collectively charge me like a spell, you’d end up with a miscast.
Still, I needed to do something to feel good about myself — to be good, period.
Turns out, the hectic evacuation done piecemeal separated a lot of families and friends.
“Do you have a picture?”
Everyone had pictures of loved ones, since everyone had phones. After whittling the pool of people down to those who didn’t simply forget to try calling them again, there were still dozens of groups left to connect.
A thin guy, blonde hair, birthmark on his neck. Thin, blonde, birthmark. Thin…
“Excuse me, sir?” Yep, that’s him alright. “Your wife is looking for you.”
The reunion was tearful. The little kid looked less relieved than her parents, and more interested in asking me why I had so many extra bits. I disappeared, and reappeared two sets of secondary eyes for her, then swapped them for a pair of huge primary eyes.
“Boo!”
She gasped. And then broke out into a smile.
“Can I touch them?” My eyes, not my arms.
“That would be… a bit painful. But you can touch my arms.” I looked to the parents for affirmation. “If I may.”
I felt her joy as her parents gave the ok, felt it on some deeper level, as if reliving my own amazement at my new body for the first time. And, in some part, I hope she felt mine too.
[Congratulations! The System has bestowed upon you one [1] Custodian moniker]
[Your unique designation: Trigger Happy Arachnid]
[Custodian monikers are permanent. Complaints may be filed at the department of intra-custodial relationships. Complaints filed to date: 0]
[Your capacity to feel Joy has increased by [1]%]
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