“Watched? From where?” I squinted.

  Addy was looking towards the eastern end of Creektin, a residential area full of old houses and poorly paved-over cobblestone roads. Creektin was a widely strewn settlement, wider than most even in the sprawling towns of the midwest. Until the mid 19th century it used to be two distinct encampments; one a small community of a mix of settlers, natives, and ex-slaves, and another a gated community of old and new money filled with hunting lodges and holiday homes. The former was west and south, the latter was east.

  “Oh, yeah, that checks out,” I said. “That place is filled with ghouls and ghosts. I tried hugging some of the less creepy ones, but they didn’t budge.”

  Addy turned to give me a look. “You can see ghosts? Why? How? You can’t see the incorporeal, you don’t have over three hundred in Soul.”

  I watched past her shoulder, where a copy of a mid-thirties woman pushed herself up from her body. She looked down at her own face, jumped in surprise, and disappeared halfway through a surprised ‘eek!’. That was probably the way most people passed on, though I couldn’t say for sure. Today was the first time I’d seen a dead body. It still twisted my gut.

  I refocused on Addy. “Is that a bad thing?”

  “It isn’t normal.”

  “When is something ever with my life?” I moped, letting all four of my shoulders sag.

  She squinted. “If there are ghouls, I will handle them. But that’s not what I’m here for. I was chasing a slippery target. Before we met. I… didn’t catch it. I thought I did, but it wasn’t the real one. And then that stupid wizard tried to apprentice me, and I lost the trail; it was just so frustrating and—”

  “Addy, you’re going to have to be a bit less vague if you want me to understand you. I want to help you.”

  “I don’t need your help,” she said and batted my hand away. “I’m fine, I can do it on my own. I haven’t failed yet. I cannot fail. I can’t have a second Capua.”

  Her fur bristled, standing off in every direction. This went deeper than just worrying about the near future. Something personal was digging into her like a thorn under her foot, and that something was the key to figuring her out.

  And then she would get better and I would prove that I could be a good friend. And we’d kill all the mimics together, like a wonderful magical girl duo. The end.

  I tried to keep the swirling emotions from reaching my face as I walked up, grabbed her face, and pointed it down until our eyes met. “Easy there. Breathe. Focus on my voice. That better?”

  Slowly, she closed her eyes and nodded.

  “Whatever it is that’s haunting you, I can help. I’ll try. Do you want a hug?”

  Before she could open her mouth a wall of text appeared in front of my face.

  [Warning. Readings indicate initial threat assessment as inaccurate. Modifier to convergence creatures within dome discovered.]

  Highs and Lows: This convergence event features a high number of below-average threat level invaders, and a high number of above-average threat level invaders. Custodians are advised to caution.

  [General and specific threat assessment calculations complete.]

  [Generating missions.]

  "Addy, what does this all mean?” I looked nervously at Addy.

  She blinked, before that burning focus set in on her face again.

  “It means the system’s about to tell us which fires need putting out.”

  [#1: Escort mission: Evacuate survivors]

  Assumed difficulty: Lvl 15, 1-2 agents

  Primary objective: Escort survivors to the evacuation zone. Evacuation zone is marked on the minimap.

  Primary reward: 2 Silver Soulcoins/Survivor. Must be directly saved through Custodian action.

  “Oh, good. An easy one,” Addy said.

  “I… don’t have a minimap.”

  “You can buy one. It’s an upgrade to your implant.”

  [#2: Offensive mission: Cull the Strong]

  Assumed difficulty: Lvl 25, 2 agents

  Primary objective: Contain the outbreak of mimics in and around Creektin by destroying the critical essence-enhanced units directing their forces. Quest targets will be marked by the system. Elites remaining: [12]

  Primary reward: Looted essence, 100 Silver Soulcoins/kill, 1 Ivory Soulcoin/kill, +1 extra life/2 kills.

  Her grimace turned into an outright frown. “Should’ve expected that. Shit.”

  “How bad is that?”

  “It’s not a beginner-friendly quest. Elites are bad business. Treat each and every one like a huntsman. You should stay clear of them, even if the rewards are pretty—”

  The script suddenly blinked a bright red.

  [EMERGENCY MISSION: Ur-mimic hunt]

  Assumed difficulty: Lvl 43, 3+ agents

  Primary objective: An offshoot of the Ur-mimic has been gathering information on earth’s creatures for years before the initial invasion and is now attempting to merge with local alien forces to jumpstart their invasion. It was last sighted near [Creektin].

  Find it. Kill it before it can return to the pink planet, at all costs.

  Primary reward: Looted essence, 1000 Silver Soulcoins, 5 Ivory Soulcoins, +2 extra lives.

  Time limit: Uncertain, remain ready for updates.

  “That’s a lot of money,” I said with a nervous chuckle. Addy remained silent. “Addy? Hey, Addy, talk to me?”

  Addy blinked before slowly turning from staring into the distance to facing me. She was shaking like a tree in the wind. “It’s happening again, Mason.”

  “Who’s Mason?” I asked and her face contorted, reliving some old near-forgotten pain. “Is this related to Capua?”

  Addy blinked, then growled, then shook her head and waved me off. “It’s nothing. I’m fine. Now, about the quest—”

  “No. Addy, I’m not talking about the quest until I know what the heck is up with you. You’re worrying me, you’re showing, like, all the signs of PTSD and maladaptive coping mechanisms,” I commented and oh boy was that not the right thing to say.

  She grabbed me. For a moment I felt her claws dig painfully into my waist as she held me in place.

  “So what if I am? I won’t let that stop me; nothing will. I’m a werewolf, were-tanuki, were-whatever. It doesn’t matter. All that does is that I fucked up, and now there’s an emergency quest out to finish what I couldn’t. I can feel it, the eyes of the lodge; always judging, never good enough. A weretanuki, but not just a wereperson. A Custodian, but not magical enough to fly. You couldn’t possibly understand the shame, the agony that comes with that, can you?”

  Oh, but I could. I knew what it felt like to feel like a fraud for promising a gifted kid, and delivering… me. Bouncing between what you could do with your life, but never committing fully for fear of failure had to be a special kind of hell. Sometimes, I’d just lay in bed, listening to music that only served as an echo chamber, heightening my own guilt, but accepting that because that was about the only control I had over my life. It was nice, finding a kindred spirit; it was nice knowing I wasn’t alone in this world. If only she wasn’t trying to squeeze the life out of me.

  The look in her eyes was manic. I could smell her breath. Hot air hit me in the face with every breath. It was minty, barely covering the smell of tar and blood. I wanted to give her a hug. But I couldn’t. I was frozen in place.

  “S-so,” I said through chattering teeth. “Ur-mimic. Bad stuff?”

  She grinned, but it wasn’t a fun grin. “Been chasing it since I found it in Europe. Followed the scent; it always has a scent. But it's a clever bitch, real clever.”

  “Are we talking, like, dog-clever, or dolphin-clever?”

  “Human-level. Maybe more.” The look in her eyes was obsessive, bordering on manic. “This is the Ur-mimic, a tiny piece of that piece of shit… It’s the most dangerous mimic type that has ever visited earth. Three seconds. If it touches you for three seconds, it can transform into you. It could be your neighbor, your sister, your cat. This isn’t your run-of-the-mill dumb pink mimic bottom-feeder. This is a real predator, top of the food chain, malicious, evil, conniving. And as if that wasn’t enough, it can cast magic.”

  For a second I imagined Lily, opening the door to some stranger before being pulled into a pitch-black chest cavity as the doppelganger took her place. She was alone at home a lot these past few days. Or maybe it disguised itself as mail and let itself be delivered right into our home. The chances that it was our house was slim, but not zero.

  And that insecurity was already eating me like pouring acid down my throat.

  Addy stared at me for a short while. Then, slowly, she retracted her clawed hands. “You understand now? This is what my failure means. I won’t suffer it, not one second longer. The bitch is still around. I’m going to catch it and rip it apart. I will.”

  She turned around.

  “Hey. You’re not thinking of leaving me, are you?” That would be irresponsible, it would be a terrible decision from a tactical standpoint. “You can’t do this by yourself. You literally died less than an hour ago. What, are you just planning to level your way up until you can beat that thing in a fair fight?”

  “I don’t plan to make it fair.”

  “Great! We can team up on it. That’ll be double unfair.”

  She gave me a side-eyed glance. “You should go to the evac zone, help out there. That’s my advice. I know I can’t force you. But if you insist on taking things on that are outside of your league, of dying a stupid hero’s death… please don’t do it where I can see.”

  She went low, grabbed a handful of the earth and then launched herself straight down the road.

  “Addy. Addy, wait! Goddammit, Addy, I’m not that fast!”

  I ran after her, but there was no use. The speed she could reach in a straight line was frankly inhuman. In a couple bounds she had cleared the parking lot and the fence of the closest suburbanite. And then she was gone and I was left all alone.

  “Fuck. Fuck!” I kicked a mimic corpse. It felt like kicking a leathery water balloon. That helped vent a bit of the frustration, but there was just so much to deal with.

  She left me. We fought together, we looted our corpses together, and now she was gone.

  I have seven days left. Seven days to finish one of three quests to save my cat.

  [Not as easy as you thought, is it?]

  I growled at the stupid script from the stupid System.

  “That’s you taunting me, Mochi, isn’t it?” I asked.

  There was no response.

  I drew all four hands through my hair and checked my surroundings. All clear. It was just me and my thoughts.

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  “If you think this is enough to make me give up on anything, you’re friggin’ wrong.” I stared daggers at the words as they disappeared into nothing. “She is… Addy is friggin’ frustrating is what she is. But she’s my friend, and I’m invested now, so I’m not letting go until I’m done too. I’ll save Foggy and her.”

  I’ll become whoever I need to be to accomplish that.

  Setting conventionally horrifying transformations aside, I needed to catch up in levels. Addy showed me two spells, so she was at least level 10. A normal weretanuki bound by Newton’s physics couldn’t move half as fast as her. I was comfortable doubling that estimation, and still calling it a low-ball.

  So, I just had to reach level 20 to be on her level. Currently, I was level 5.

  She kinda has a point. I’m underleveled as heck.

  But there was a mimic apocalypse happening all around, and that was an ample source for everything I would need to succeed. Coins. Essences. Information.

  “You can do it. C’mon, Samantha. You’re a magical girl. Magical girls always rise to the occasion. You can do it. You can do it!”

  +++

  “I can’t do it!”

  A fist-sized crab-spider mimic jumped my leg. Its legs were knives. Literal knives.

  I booted it across a fence. It wasn’t even dead, just stunned, and out of my field of view. No way it wasn’t going to come back and try again later.

  The emotional high from declaring myself filled to the brim with the indomitable spirit of Sam-kind lasted for one-and-a-half casts of [Arms & Arms proficiency]. Then I was back to worrying how I was going to back up my claims with actions.

  The system gave me three quests. No idea which ones are the most reasonable to complete for a level 5, of course. Then again, nothing said I had to choose which quest would revive Foggy right away. I could just… wait.

  Sounds like a plan.

  I sighed, rubbing my shins. This would’ve been a lot easier with Addy around. But Addy was gone. I had no clue how to find her since the fuzzy gremlin didn’t even give me her number. But, before all of that, there was something I should’ve done minutes ago.

  I called Mom, Dad, then Lily, who should’ve all been home. None of the calls went through. They didn’t even ring once, as all I got was an immediate ‘could not connect’. That was worrying.

  “S-system, how much for a minimap upgrade?”

  [Minimap upgrade basic level: 10 Soulcoins

  Soulbound: 50 Soulcoins]

  I blinked at that. Soulbound meant it stayed with me even after death, right?

  [Soulbound modifier: Item can be summoned from nearby for free. If the item is damaged or destroyed, guarantees an instant magical repair and/or replacement.]

  “Gee, thanks for reading my mind,” I grumbled. “Can you guess which one I’m buying then?”

  [All purchases require consent]

  “I’m buying the basic upgrade. Because I’m poor.”

  [Soulcoins: 45->35]

  A miniature map appeared in the top right corner of my vision, covering the nearby area in roughly a hundred foot radius. It turned more or less see-through depending on how much I focused on it.

  “It’s… kinda small.”

  [Minimap upgrades may be bought for additional Soulcoins.]

  “Yeah, no. Thanks, but not now.”

  I focused on a sky-blue pip pointing towards the center of town. The pip was marked ‘evacuation zone’. That was where I was headed, if I heeded Addy’s advice of focusing on the easiest quest.

  But she also implied I could try to catch her.

  I shook my head. I needed to check in on Mom, Dad, Lily, and my pet tarantula as soon as possible. Clem’s house was close by as well. If I followed a north-east curve, I could hit her house, then my own before arriving at the evacuation zone.

  That’s a plan.

  I plotted the route, then took a look around.

  The odd gunshot was ringing out throughout Creektin, reminding me that despite the extraterrestrial invasion, people were still fighting back. Normal people. Whatever cover The Society had was definitely blown. Keeping my extra arms a secret was probably never going to happen anyways. And they were awesome whenever they decided to work correctly. Maybe one day my joy efficiency would be high enough to run [Arms & Arms proficiency] 24/7. Maybe I could wield two guns, akimbo style. Maybe I could wield four.

  Or maybe I needed a buttload of stats first. Body was a necessity for scaling that spell at the very least, then probably Sense and Mind for fine-motor control. No clue what Soul did. I mean, the definition said that it was the most obviously magical stat, but also that having more of it would make me more of an empath? That sounded nice. It wouldn’t help me survive though.

  I should probably put my next free point in it anyways, just to see what the difference feels like. I need to figure out exactly how much of a difference each point in each stat makes as well.

  I added it to the handy to-do list I kept perpetually hovering in the corner of my vision.

  Check in on Parents.

  Check in on Clem on the way.

  Get levels.

  Learn more about magic and stats.

  Find Addy.

  A bit of joy trickled down my channel. The computer inside my head rules!

  Now, to get back home I’d have to hike through Creektin for about two hours, which, given the general state of public transport (non-existent) and the current state of affairs (violent alien invasion) meant I was going to have to walk.

  So I walked. I had a gun in my hands, uncuttable tights hugging every limb, and about a bajillion fears bouncing around in my head, wrestling for dominion. They mostly concerned my family, and whether they were alright, but I reserved a scant few moments to be scared for my own life as well.

  Such as when a drain cover suddenly launched itself at my face, causing me to fumble my pistol. Stabbing it to death with the Takamura knife worked surprisingly well since while it looked like steel, it was still the same coarse and rubbery substance every mimic was made of. It still left an uncomfortably deep cut across my left cheek.

  E for effort I suppose.

  I wiped the black goop off my brow when what was quickly becoming my favorite consumable item appeared right next to me.

  [TidyBlank Instacleaner: Your dirt-banishing agent of choice. Mysterious stains on your bedsheet? Blood on grandma’s carpet? Got toxic alien invader goop all over you? Well, fret not, because with the TidyBlank Instacleaner we solve all your hygiene-related problems. Just two squirts and the muck can eat dirt. Price: 1 Soulcoin/bottle (500ml)]

  The back said its main ingredients were Thaumagloxid and Metahydracarbinol, two chemicals I was fairly sure didn’t exist. It wasn’t necessarily a magical instacleaner, but it sure felt like one.

  I got two bottles.

  “Oh yes, thank god for this stuff,” I muttered as I sprayed myself and my pistol down.

  The piddle pistol was starting to feel inadequate. Oh sure, it could kill the small mimics in two to three shots, but the magazine capacity was dreadful, reloading was a pain, and the stopping power against anything larger than the smallest mimic was negligible. I needed something that could do its job better, much better, but that was going to cost me quite some points.

  I looked around for a parking lot since those were mostly empty on Sundays, meaning long sight lines in case anything wanted to get to me. There, I could finally check the System Shop without worrying that the next garden gnome was going to turn pink and sprout razorblade tentacles.

  The shop popped up, promising me that for only 4999 Soulcoins I too could be the proud owner of a sub-atomic deflagorizer.

  I kinda do want to deflagorize some atoms.

  Sadly, my budget was modest.

  [Soulcoins: 35]

  On the flipside, the shop had everything. Like, literally, if there was anything I could find in a home-depot or a Walmart, I could buy it here for soulcoins. Lightbulbs, microwavable food packets, propane and propane accessories. The price was outrageous since the only way to get soulcoins was to kill enemies of humankind, but hey, I was paying for the most convenient transportation method ever on top of the product.

  Consuming had never been easier.

  I navigated to the search function, tapped ‘advanced search’ until it opened, then began putting in parameters.

  Now let's see: lightweight, easy to use, high efficiency, moderate stopping power, moderate range…

  I looked at the list, then belatedly added another one.

  Pistol

  Very important. The things it was recommending to me at first were a bunch of magical shortbows and shuriken that I had no clue how to use, and wands that I definitely had no clue how to use. My emotion-channeling efficiency was apparently crap, so I wasn’t going to get to shoot mimics with hate-beams or joy-bombs anytime soon.

  They did have a lot of options for joy bombs though. Like, wow those were a lot of ways to make arguably the best emotion you could feel violently explode your enemies.

  After a bit of searching and paring down options, I settled on one that fit most of my criteria nicely. Payment went out and after about three minutes my package plopped down right beside me.

  [Toothpick Mk1: The newest model for laser-induced spontaneous combustion, the Toothpick follows our company’s three laser-technology promises: Doesn’t irradiate your body, doesn’t falter after only a couple shots*, and does cause devastating effects against biologicals. At Light Mechanics Novelty Tech & co. we vow to… Price: 20 Soulcoins, 4 Soulcoins/battery pack.]

  [*Battery pack may explode during extended bursts]

  It was a laser pistol. I always wanted a laser pistol. Ever since I was a little kid I…

  Ok, seriously, I got it because it filled my demands to the T. The battery capacity was forty max-power shots, though the power could be dialed down until it had a thousand shots. At that point I could barely fry an egg with it, but it was a nice-to-have feature. Its effective range in-atmosphere was about forty yards. That was on the low side until I realized that the average shooter, aka me, couldn’t hit crap beyond 50 yards with a pistol anyways. And I was doing a lot of running and gunning, so long-range shooting was definitely not a priority right now.

  The outside was sleek with a padded grip and a little bulb at the end of the barrel that was described as a protective vacuum casing for the actual focusing lens. It was a 0.7 Megawatt pulsed laser that I could hold in one hand, with the square battery pack making up more than half of its entire weight.

  … is 0.7 Megawatt a lot?

  A phone charger was about 5 Watt, so 0.000005 Megawatt, but the charger had a continuous output of 5 Watt per hour and… grah, this was why I didn’t study math! It was a big laser on a small gun, the ammo was rechargeable at any charging station rated for electric cars and could be overloaded to explode (which it hopefully wouldn’t if I took good care of it). And if that all wasn’t enough, consider this: lasers are cool as heck.

  And what did using cool as heck items do for me? They increased my joy. Ding-ding! Correct answer to: Samantha Rubens. You may now purchase the item.

  Twenty soulcoins. Plus two magazines for four each, for a total of twenty-eight...

  [Soulcoins: 35->7]

  Poverty, thy name is Sam. But hey, I got a new shiny thing! It was cool, the battery capacity was physically improbable for its size, but it was mine, and I couldn’t wait to try it out and—

  [Arms & Arms proficiency: Charged - 58% Joy, 24% fear, 18% anticipation]

  —and I forgot that I was channeling that. Well crap, that was a kind of suboptimal spread of emotional charge. Addy said something about not charging a spell with the wrong emotion, but the vast majority was still joy so it would be alright… right?

  I activated the spell and immediately something was off. My arms were shivering, muscles spasming and contracting at the exact worst time to make them move the way I wanted. Joy was there, yes, but the considerable amount of fear was running havoc among my nerve cells, and the anticipation was only making things worse, delaying muscle contractions by painful fractions of a second. It was the worst cramp imaginable and it friggin’ hurt.

  By the time the laser arrived I was happy that my spell had ended. Happy.

  Let’s not ever do that again.

  And now the spell needed charging again. Ugh. Luckily, I had a convenient new toy to play with. Time to put this thing to the test.

  There was a convenient discarded handbag that I was pretty sure had been following me for three blocks now, just lying there on the road about forty yards away. I aimed at the splash of blood around the silver-studded button at center mass. There was practically no knockback as I pulled the incredibly light trigger, but the sound was like a whipcrack.

  I missed just barely, searing the strap clean in two. But the thing didn’t move, so was it not a mimic?

  Apparently not. Paranoia was already setting in. The parking lot around Mister Morgan’s animal shelter wasn’t too large. The window next to the front door was shattered, but if anybody was looting pets of all things during the apocalypse, then I would eat my boots, er, shoes.

  A reflective glint had me whirling around. There, seven feet behind me was a perfectly innocent road sign standing in the middle of the lot.

  “SOP.” It was a tall red sign that just read ‘SOP’.

  Definitely a mimic.

  It didn’t react to my movement. That was… good? Ambush predators didn’t like to spring their trap while they were being watched; it applied to anything from tigers to crocodiles to snakes. Maybe I should get a mask with a me-shaped face and strap it to the back of my head. These little critters couldn’t be smarter than tigers, right?

  Come to think of it, there was no way that 1.5 kilo of mimic — roughly three pounds — could make this sign, no matter how much you stretched it. It was probably a new type, one that I hadn’t seen before.

  I kind of want to know how they think and react to stimuli. Yeah, I’m not playing with my food, I’m getting information on the enemy.

  I kept my Toothpick trained on it as I slowly walked in circles. “Hello to you too, mister SOP sign.”

  It didn’t react to my voice either.

  I walked back a few steps, then twisted around, expecting another perfectly timed ambush, but there was none. When I turned back, the SOP sign was a few inches closer to me.

  “Ah, I see. You’re quiet. That’s your deal.”

  Suddenly, the sign’s surface rippled like flaky water, splitting horizontally with a mouth made of pink coral polyp-teeth.

  I shot it immediately.

  The Toothpick exploded a hole as wide as my fist right through the O and P. Lasers apparently did that to biological matter, instantly boiling water into gas. That implied the blackish stuff on the inside had a high water content, and wasn’t that just interesting?

  Maybe mimics aren’t as alien as we thought they were. Biologically speaking. They were still horrifying murder machines.

  Its saw-toothed mouth twitched and contorted around the smoking hole.

  “I…et… quaiat…”

  It was talking — no, rather, it was trying to mimic the sound I was making, complete with intonation and everything. It still sounded as if it was gargling with a mouth full of woodchips, but that would change if it had time to adapt.

  Lesson learned: don’t talk to mimics or they’ll steal your voice.

  I shot it again and that did it. The mimic twitched one last time before going entirely rigid.

  [You have slain: 6kg Coral Pretender]

  [Soulcoins: 7->12]

  More points for larger mimics. Figures. Bigger was more dangerous, not just because of the physics of ‘how hard can you hit something’, but also because they had more mass to use for their disguises. Stepping on a mimic bag would cost you a foot if you were armed. Stepping on a mimic carpet meant that it could swallow you whole. Stepping on a mimic bridge?

  … I sincerely hope I won’t have to fight mimic’d real estate. Then again, that would charge the dome quite a lot. We might be on a timer until the mimics break out, but the mimics are also on a timer to get rid of or delay us before we can cast the mother of all explosion spells.

  I really would prefer not to blow up Creektin, if at all possible. We would have to evacuate every person before even thinking of using the first two dome spells. Even then, every animal, every pet, every house and every road I’d known since childhood would be gone. If I had to press that button, I don’t know if I could do—

  I turned around and that was when the side mirrors on a car launched themselves right at my face. Because there was always one more mimic. And they always went for the face.

  could just put some extra chapters up as soon as tomorrow.

  right now, via teleport, what would it be? Me, I think I'd go for a medium-rare peppersteak, ported in directly from some restaurant's kitchen still smoking hot. Maybe some green beans wrapped in bacon on the side. And some fries. Mmmh.