The RV bucked as Sam pressed her boot down against the accelerator pedal, but even with as much speed as it could manage, Jackpot was left behind by the Mini Cooper and the Crown Victoria. Both cars shot ahead, with the Mini taking the lead and screaming out of view while the RV struggled to pick up speed.
“Shit!” Sam shook her head. “Looks like slow and steady is our only option. Remind me, what am I looking out for here?”
Pete found that the race rules had been added to his heads-up display, accessed via a steering wheel icon. He quickly scanned them, reminding himself and relaying important details.
“Don’t go outside of the track and don’t hit anything, including the other cars. Stay inside the RV, and don’t stop the RV for more than five seconds. Make sure you go through all the obstacles; otherwise, we’ll be slowed down even more than we already are.”
He shook his head.
“Oh yeah, and we’re not allowed to get rid of specters. Nero, any idea what the fuck they are?”
[Nero] Yes, indeed. In this context, the term specters refers to a race of manufactured psionic beings that can enter the mind of a sentient being and temporarily induce strong emotions, hallucinations, or powerful etheric bonds between individuals. Here is a list of common effects specters might cause if you are unlucky enough to be touched by one. Here is a brief description.
Pete’s display was filled with information as well as a visual representation of the specters, which looked, rather predictably, like skull-faced ghosts that were comprised of smoky purple vapor. Every one of them had a hazy skull that was a little different, maybe because they were each based on a distinct species.
>> NON PLAYER CAPITALIST [NPC] CLAN
NAME: Psionic Specters
TYPE: Manufactured Psionic Construct, Etheric Parasite
ORIGIN: [REDACTED]
AFFILIATION: None (Free-Roaming Anomalies)
THREAT TIER: Low-to-Mid (Variable Based on Host Willpower)
>> CLAN DESCRIPTION
Psionic Specters are artificially manufactured entities composed of condensed etheric cognition. Lacking physical bodies, they exist as shimmering silhouettes or distortion warps visible only at close range or through specialized detection gear. Their sole purpose is to infiltrate the mind of sentient beings by making contact with exposed flesh or neural auras (colloquially referred to as “being touched by a Specter”).
Once contact is achieved, the Specter threads itself into the host’s consciousness, feeding off the emotional, psychic, and cognitive turbulence it induces. Though rarely fatal, interactions with a Psionic Specter can dramatically compromise decision-making, emotional stability, and combat effectiveness.
>> COMMON SPECTER EFFECTS
>> EMOTIONAL OVERRIDES: Specters can forcibly amplify or suppress emotional states, often to debilitating levels. Common overrides include:
+| Intense dread or panic,
+| Euphoric mania,
+| Sudden guilt or grief,
+| Uncontrollable rage,
+| Disruptive laughter or giddiness
>> INDUCED HALLUCINATIONS: Specters generate vivid sensory distortions, typically tailored to the host’s memories or fears. Hallucinations may include:
+| Phantom voices calling to the host
+| Distorted versions of allies or enemies
+| Shifting environments
+| Time dilation or sluggish perception
+| Illusory attacks or phantom wounds
>> MEMORY DISPLACEMENT: Short-term memory fog, loops, or swaps between individuals, including:
+| Forgetting recent actions
+| Reliving old memories as if current
+| Confusing allies with past acquaintances
>> WILLPOWER DRAIN: Specters feed on mental fortitude, temporarily lowering:
+| Focus
+| Resistance rolls
+| Perception
+| Ability activation accuracy
>> ETHERIC SWAPPING: Psionic Specters can forcibly swap the consciousnesses of two or more nearby individuals. This effect is abrupt, disorienting, and often catastrophically timed. Swaps usually last from 3 to 18 seconds, though rare “Deep Swaps” can persist up to a full minute. When the effect ends, consciousnesses snap back to their original bodies, often causing momentary vertigo, nausea, or lingering trance states.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
NOTE: Specter-induced hallucinations and the like typically last for no more than 5 to 10 seconds; however, this timeframe may increase among those with low mental fortitude.
“Jesus!” Pete said. “Body swapping! That’s fucking insane.”
“Okay, so we can’t get rid of them,” Coop said. “How do we avoid them?”
[Nero] Specters do not tend to move swiftly. It is easy enough to avoid them, provided you do not let them touch you. I will allow, however, that this task is made considerably more difficult while driving a vehicle at speed. The Specters will pass right through the body of this vehicle, but if they touch the flesh of a sentient being, they will immediately attempt to possess that individual for a time.
“They’re visible though, right?” Sam asked.
[Nero] Correct. You will be able to see the Specters once they are within visual range.
She nodded. “But probably too late to avoid them. Shit! Okay, let’s just focus on what’s right in front of us then, I guess.”
The road ahead was lit not only by the fluorescent green strip lighting on either side but also by floodlights from above, which made it a lot easier to navigate. The crowds of people Pete had first thought would just be positioned at the starting point of the race also lined the racetrack to either side. There were thousands of cheering aliens, all sporting different merchandise and boasting a range of confusing emojis and symbols floating above their heads.
Pete reflected that there must be thousands of them lining the road on either side. Crazy that there were so many Dominion citizens willing to watch what must have been a relatively minor event in the grand scheme of the Dominion Ultrimax competition. It gave Pete a new appreciation of just how big the Dominion actually was. With hundreds of worlds populated by billions of individuals, filling the seating on a novice race like this was no difficult thing.
That thought was rapidly pushed out of his mind as he saw the first obstacle up ahead. A large area of the road was highlighted in bright blue with the word OBSTACLE written in bright red hovering above the area. There was a single red goblin face grinning to the right of the word, but Pete had no time to consider what that might refer to.
“Here we go,” Sam said, steering directly for the obstacle.
As the RV drew closer, it became clear that the area ahead consisted of a slight upward ramp that led up to a section of shallow water. It reminded Pete of the go-cart competitions he’d watched on YouTube during particularly dull periods at work. Most of those go-cart runs ended in comical disaster, but hopefully this would be different.
He found himself gritting his teeth and bracing as the RV ran up the ramp, raising only a few inches in height before it drove off the end and into the pool of water beyond. Water sprayed to either side, and the RV fishtailed a little, but Sam quickly brought it under control.
“No sweat,” she said as the track curved slowly to the right, crowds of onlookers cheering and waving as the RV flew past.
Pete looked down at the race map hovering just above the dashboard and saw the two green squares that obviously represented the other cars, already well ahead and showing no signs of slowing down.
“We’ve got time,” Coop said, looking up at Pete. “Plenty of time for those other cars to make a mistake. We just need to stay focused, that’s all.”
They reached a slight hill, and Pete saw another obstacle up ahead, just beyond the rise. He couldn’t see the ground from their position, but the warning sign had two grinning red goblin heads to the right of it this time.
“My guess is, those heads symbolize the difficulty level of each obstacle,” he said, pointing ahead. “Is that right, Nero?”
[Nero] While there is no hard and fast rule to this kind of challenge, I would suggest that your guess is correct. Depending on the nature of this second challenge, I may be able to map out the relative difficulty of each additional goblin head, if that would be useful.
“Do it!” Sam answered, gripping the steering wheel tightly as they crested the top of the rise and momentarily felt the giddy sensation of weightlessness before the RV’s tires hit the ground again.
The obstacle they hadn’t been able to see clearly was off to the left, and Sam had to steer sharply to reach it, despite the protesting tires of the RV. Fortunately, even at the RV’s top speed, she was still able to maneuver the vehicle into place, just hitting the outer edge of the obstacle region and narrowly avoiding a penalty.
Instead of a ramp followed by water, the area lit in bright blue was slick with a translucent substance that was so slippery the RV skidded across the asphalt immediately following the obstacle. The track curved sharply to the right, but the RV kept sliding forward, heading right for the edge of the road despite Sam’s best attempt to direct it to the right.
Desperately trying to think of some way to halt their forward momentum, Pete caught sight of movement in the rear cabin. He turned just in time to see Torgo firing a blast of fire and ash out of his hands while Craig held the goblin in place. Instead of aiming the fire horizontally, the little goblin was hanging out of the door and aiming directly at the area in front of the rear right tire.
Still slick with whatever oily substance filled the last obstacle and pushed aside by the sheer force of the burst of fire and ash, the rear tires slid sharply to the left, swinging the back of the RV around so that the whole vehicle was drifting for a moment. The tires then began to grip, and the RV lurched forward just before it hit the leftmost side of the track markers.
Screeching tires signaled the vehicle’s recovery, and the RV righted itself as Sam straightened the steering wheel.
“Good thinking, Torgo!” Pete shouted as a third obstacle appeared up ahead.
It was another level two obstacle, but instead of a slick, the RV plunged into a large mass of soapy foam, which covered the windshield and made it impossible to see for a few hair-raising moments. The windshield wipers were practically nonexistent, given the damage the RV had taken in the past few hours, so Pete used his Rapid Fire Coin Toss ability to try to clear away the foam.
Trying to clear away foam with a spray of Belch Bucks worked about as well as expected, and the group was forced to use more mundane means. Craig and Grizzle ripped the one remaining curtain off the kitchen window and handed it to Pete, along with the curtain rod. He leaned out and used this somewhat more effectively to wipe away the foam.
The whole time this was happening, Sam drove with her eyes locked on the racing map, using that to navigate around corners rather than attempting to look through the windshield. Thankfully, there were no new obstacles encountered for the few seconds they were blind, and Sam was able to keep them on track until they reached a long stretch of road with nothing up ahead except for a dozen or so wraith-like figures hovering in the middle of the street.
“Shit!” Sam blurted. “Where the hell do I go?!”
The specters were arrayed in such a way that it was impossible to go around them without heading outside of the track lines. The ghostly forms hovered a few feet above the air; smoky, purple forms of various shapes and sizes, each boasting a different kind of skeletal head marked out in mist.
Pete had no genius advice to offer, but there was no time, anyway. Judging that the smaller group of specters on the left side of the road would be less harmful than the larger group, Sam steered them to the left, and the RV thundered through the spectral forms.
What followed was a baffling moment of dislocation where Pete tried to shift his body out of the way of the spectral creatures. In an effort to do so, he hung himself outside of the RV, holding onto the vehicle frame and narrowly avoiding the specter passing through his seat.
Coop was clinging to his neck as he hung out of the RV. She scurried down his arm and jumped back onto the seat, but Pete couldn’t move fast enough to avoid one of the specters that was hovering just outside the vehicle.
Being touched by the strange psionic creature felt a little like walking from the stifling heat of a hot summer’s day into a room chilled by frigid air conditioning. It also brought an intense feeling of nausea as a rainbow of bright colors filled Pete’s vision.
He heard cries coming from the rear cabin, but before he could register what was happening, he felt himself ripped out of his own body and squeezed through an impossibly small hole. There was no pain accompanying the sensation, but it felt extremely odd. The sensation lasted only a moment before he was once more placed back in his body.
Only it wasn’t his body at all.
Pete blinked, flinching as he gripped the steering wheel of the RV and the vehicle swerved in response to his panicked movement.
“FUCK!”
He turned to see himself sitting on the nearby seat, eyes wide, hands patting his chest.
“Fuck!” his body replied.
? Overpowers: Magical Girl Crossover ?
by Moawar
He, Life, had a simple job.
His responsibility as an Overpower was to make sure that fiction stories and the characters in them follow their dictated path. He always did his job well enough, not more or less than was needed.
His latest assignment, however, would, in retrospect, prove to be his most challenging one of all.
He would find himself in a unfamiliar world. There he'll have to quickly adapt to guide Nozomi.
The strongest magical girl with the potential to accidentally destroy those she seeks to protect in her fight against evil.
What to Expect: A love letter to fiction, where each relevant character represents a different genre in fiction with a few twists to make them fresh. Ex: Isekai, Shonen, Magical Girl, Tragedy, Cultivation, Regression, Tokusatsu, Horror, and many others. All are united under one theme: life and how each character will choose to live theirs.
If you like the psychological aspects of Madoka Magica and the mixing of different genres a crossover story brings then this story is for you