The display sandbags were filled with real sand. They made quite the impression as I was bounced off of them only to land in a heap right in the trenches. Heck, there had to be an imprint on my face, my upper chest, and everything else the way I was ragdolled right through and over them. Just like water, sand was only soft until you hit it with considerable force.

  The room was spinning even after I rolled to a stop in a tangle of limbs.

  [Second Life potion has worn off, negating [1] instance of lethal damage]

  Someone get the number of that mimic that just ran me over, because OW.

  Ow? I’m supposed to be on painkillers, right?

  C’mon Samantha, you can do it. Pull air into your lungs, the push out and — oh, that didn’t feel quite right.

  My breath came as a rasp that turned into a hacking cough. I had to get up, had to move, had to do it now or I was a goner. After all, magical girls didn’t go down after one single hit, right?

  They do, that’s what they have extra lives for, that’s why they choose to fly. You idiot. You buffoon. It was the size of a tank; it was right there and you didn’t even notice it.

  First step: Get my arms sorted so I could push myself up. Yep, still had my arms, all four of them. I was sitting now. Good. I should get my bearings and—

  “Mo!” Moe cried.

  A shadow loomed above me, poised to strike within a single moment. I threw myself backwards, rolling like a pillbug as the tank tread came down, digging a small crater in the bottom of the trench. The mimic was a large one, probably a 1.5 ton model. The kind that killed Addy, and shortly after killed me.

  It was angry, desperate, or maybe both as it slammed down a half-morphed limb over and over, missing me as I pushed myself back again and again out of sheer instinct. Then I hit the wall at the end of the short trenchline, pushed off of that, and continued the same song and dance into the other direction.

  It wasn’t letting me catch my breath, and I was pretty sure the impact hurt my internals more than I could feel. If I was getting this right, the second life potion negated the initial hit, not the several impacts that followed. But hey, at least the pain was only mildly distracting. Hooray for painkiller potions.

  [Potion of leaping has run out. Rebound effect: Increased subjective weight for 10 min 37 sec.]

  Shi—

  My body was tugged to the ground immediately, as if someone set the gravity dial to ‘more’. The next slam of its limb missed as it predicted I would have moved up further forward. It was only a small relief as from below its body split down the middle to reveal rows of sharp teeth and tongue-like tendrils.

  One of the tendrils wrapped around my upper left arm, sticking to me like a fly trap and tugging me in closer as a second one wrapped around my neck.

  Fuck!

  The pressure as it tugged me up was immediate, too much to breathe, and definitely too much to allow for sufficient blood flow.

  Do something, do something now, now, quick!

  I tossed an acid vial up into its dark mouth. The creature roiled and twitched as the plastic popped, releasing its contents inside of it. Its grip slackened just enough for me to wiggle out. I half tumbled, half sprinted out of the trenchline, rubbing the bit of its black saliva that had dripped onto my arms away. It was more potent stuff than mimic blood, as I could feel the fibers in my gloves pull together, growing tight, flaky, and brittle.

  But I was alive and it felt great and holy shit that was way too close.

  … why does it sound like I’m being chased by a rhino?

  I made it out through the same broken window that I’d come in through, took a sharp left in what was more a stumble than a run, then yelped as the entire front of the tank museum exploded outwards.

  The mimic was still alive. It looked pissed. Tiny black eyes that I had thought were just pores all clustered around its front side, and I had the feeling that it was looking at me with a thousand deathglares. The mimic was mostly not a tank anymore, having shed its disguise for the four flexible spike-legs that were better suited for movement and combat. It was trailing a thick line of black blood, but it didn’t seem like a bit of blood loss was going to stop this rampage. These things were terrifyingly fast in a straight line. I needed more ammo, better weaponry to fight.

  What were my options here? Fight? Or flight.

  Would you look at that, it just made my decision for me because it was running right at me.

  I dodged around a minivan, then ducked and rolled under a truck as it tried to smash through the trailer, mind racing as to how I was supposed to kill it. A sneaky shot from my Toothpick scorched its pink carapace, but it had friggin armor or something, because it only carbonized the surface instead of exploding the juicy insides. The Goop Gun fared a little better, but even then the acid was spread too far and didn’t dig deep and quick enough. I could maybe kill it like this, but not before it killed me.

  “System, I need a bazooka!”

  [Engaging auto-purchase order for: Anti-tank weaponry. Your budget, please?]

  “Hundred soulcoins!”

  [Purchase complete]

  [Soulcoins: 120->20]

  [ETA: 1m 30s]

  A spiky leg slammed through the metal above me, filling the air with the smell of gasoline.

  “I need something now, dammit!”

  [Delivery time may be reduced against an additional fee.]

  The truck creaked. “Something I can actually afford!”

  [Ivory Soulcoins may be spent to chaotically improve existing gear. This can increase a variety of features, from sturdiness to firepower, fire rate, weight, size, etc*

  *Certain improvements might cause emotional draw, heavier weight, or other balancing negative effects.]

  I scrabbled back across asphalt until my head hit a wheel. Right, I got a single coin for killing the elite leaper. Obviously, I needed a better weapon and I needed it now. The Toothpick was precise and damn effective against small stuff, but it didn’t do much against the big mimic. The Goop Gun was good at damaging everything so far, but it had a low ammo capacity and I couldn’t use it in close quarters for fear of splashing myself with it. But considering it was either risk that or guarantee being eaten, well…

  “System, please upgrade my Goop Gun.”

  [Rolling attributes]

  The gun glowed like in a goddang gacha game, complete with a little track of music to build anticipation and hype that had to be coming from somewhere. Probably inside my head.

  Then it plopped down right in my hands to the sounds of victorious trumpets. The whole thing took a couple of moments, but when I came too the huntsman was still pulling its limb up from where it had gotten stuck in the truck’s undercarriage.

  [Major positive attribute: Organ seeking slime - Liquid becomes more viscous and actively burrows into targets in search for yummy organs.]

  [Minor negative attribute: Reduced ammo capacity - Projectile requires more mass per shot, reducing ammo capacity from 6 to 4.]

  [Minor negative attribute: Joy draw (minor) - Requires joy to fire.]

  The huntsman finally got its limb free. I got up and ran out from under the trailer before it could skewer me.

  The description was terrifying. The gun was technically better, yes, but it didn’t increase the slime’s acidity. Technically, every part of a creature was some sort of organ, even skin. This would basically stick even harder, probably ooze into any open wounds on its own. My toothpick didn’t make open wounds, it cauterized them.

  And then there was the joy draw.

  There was nothing to be happy about with this situation. I screwed up. I expected the double ambush, but fell for the long-con, distracted by loot, shinies, and the promise that I was good enough. Why couldn’t I have just followed Clem and Akira, made sure that they were okay? The uncertainty of whether they made it to the evacuation zone — a zone I was only told about, but hadn’t actually visited — was not doing it for me in terms of emotional stability. And I needed stability. I needed joy, I needed something, anything that would keep me on my feet.

  [Potion of ‘bravery’ has run out. Rebound effect: Nothing]

  And apparently, I was only getting a double whammy of fear and anger, anger at myself. My situation was all my fault. The potion of bravery was a placebo. Way to go Samantha, really played yourself there. Maybe if you hadn’t been watching youtube videos on the drive back home yesterday, you wouldn’t have hit a werewolf, and you’d at least be with Mom, Dad, and Lily.

  I didn’t even bother opening my channel to [Arms & Arms proficiency]; there was not a single productive emotion coming out of me right now. The mimic had finished digging its way out of the trailer, its chest-sized bundle of trypophobia-inducing eye-holes wandering across its body before settling right on me.

  I raised my Toothpick. It could get to me in two leaps. Maybe I could inflict enough damage to make it bleed out after it was done mauling my corpse.

  I shot its center of mass, again and again, but the laser just refracted off to barely a sizzle. The thing turned, took a step off of the trailer.

  A shot rang out. The thing twitched, turning in confusion. Then ten more rang out, twenty, thirty. The familiar sound of a hundred rounds of differing calibers, from 5.56mm rifle shots to .45 ACP pistolcracks whipped through the air, impacting right in the mimic’s side. There was movement in the shops on the opposing side of the road, two gunmen at floor level and two more on the roof. They were being liberal with their lead. At this kind of range, it was harder to miss this big of a target than hit it.

  The mimic seemed more annoyed by this attack than actually wounded, the same way an elephant only got angrier if you didn’t kill it with your first shot. But the sheer fact that I wasn’t alone in this gave birth to a single, sharp emotion: relief.

  I pointed the Goop Gun and fired away.

  The glob was uniform and round, like a single teardrop instead of a slash of water moving in every way water did when launched as a projectile. It impacted the mimic on its upper back and stuck to it like a booger — an apt comparison considering how it was entirely green. The booger-projectile quickly began its work, pitting the creatures back. I swear I saw it shiver with what might have been joy as it discovered the bullet holes. It sucked itself into them with tortuous slowness, but it was doing work. The mimic, confused at first at the persistent burn, was scrabbling around in panic, stabbing itself in the place where the goo entered inside of it.

  I emptied the entire acid vial with three more shots, watching the mimic take itself apart, watching it slow down until it eventually stilled and died.

  [Soulcoins: 20->50]

  There was something unreal about watching it twitch one last time and then getting the notification that it was finally, objectively dead. I wasn’t expecting to win, or to live, but hey, here I was, allowed to live for another day.

  “Oh god thank fuck oh man oh gee,” I said, shuddering, and tearing up. I… didn’t look great. My gloves were torn, as were my tights in places, and I had blood everywhere. Some of it was mine. Some of it wasn’t. Hard to tell when I was crusted in sand.

  But I was alive and that was enough.

  I barely noticed the gunmen approaching until I could see down one of their rifles where they stood ten yards away from me.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  “I said hands in the air, freak!” one of them yelled.

  “I… what?” I asked. “All of them?”

  “Yes. Drop your weapons or we’ll drop you, capiche?” one of his buddies asked.

  I-I don’t understand… what? We’re on the same team!

  “B-but I’m a magical girl,” I said, wiping away snot, blood, and tears. “I’m here to save you.”

  At that moment, I got a notification that said that my haste potion had also run out. Concurrently, a long rod of metal materialized out of nowhere, a sort of retro-futuristic bazooka appearing with a label reading ‘handle with care’. It came preloaded, like all my weapons.

  I dropped it. Rather, I failed to catch it at all, exhausted, slowed and weighted down as I was.

  The launcher hit the floor, misfired, and blew the trailer of the truck in the back sky-high.

  Fuck. Fuck me.

  I closed my eyes and prayed to whoever listened that I wasn’t about to get shot.

  I wasn’t. Instead I was disarmed, my arms bound (even the injured one, ouch), and then loaded up in the back of a pickup with four heavily armed men. They all looked dirty and grimy, though not as much as I did. And wait, wasn’t that big chunky dude one of dad’s gun range friends? What was his name again, Fred, Ed…

  “Hiya Ted.” I gave him the bro nod. He did not reciprocate. How very un-bro-like of him.

  I was about to explain to him how these zipcords were really digging into my wrists when suddenly, almost every potion I’d taken wore off simultaneously. I leaned over the side of the car and barfed a rainbow-colored stream that didn’t seem to end.

  +++

  At some point, I passed out, and then I woke up tied to a chair, in a dank room that smelled of leather and gunmetal.

  Ugh. My head.

  The splitting headache aside, I felt strangely at peace. Sure, my hands were tied, there was a bucket of rainbow colored sick weighing down on my legs, and my skin was pink like a raspberry, but who cared? Not me.

  [Number of potion backlash effects ongoing: 12]

  [Statistical anomaly detected. Report filed & forwarded on case: Multiple potion overdose survivor, patient S.]

  “Is that a new record?”

  [For someone your level, yes.]

  “Hell yeah.”

  [Is there anything you’d like to add to the report?]

  “I have a tolerance for… yummy liquids.”

  A bit of rainbow dribble made its way into the bucket.

  If there was one thing that I didn’t think was going right today, it would be… yes, there was pain in my arm and pretty much everywhere else. The only thing I had for reference was when some hobo cracked my eye socket with a glass bottle when I went out clubbing for the first time with a group of people from theatre studies. He’d meant to hit Nathan, my scattered stage design mentor, but whiffed and hit me instead. Physics dictated that bottles flung with the intent to maim didn’t just stop out of polite respect for anyone.

  Rude, I know, but blame the bastard bottle bonker, not the bottle. It somehow hurt less than what I was going through right now.

  I’d woken up hungover, with half my face as together as an endgame jenga tower. There was someone… many someones arguing loudly in the room next over. As for this room, there was a black billiard table, widescreen TV running a bluescreen, trophies hung across walls — yep, I knew this place.

  It was the gun range. Specifically, the hunting lodge adjacent to it, where after the guns were put away for the day the parched herds of hunters could sup on that sweet nectar known as non-alcoholic beer, since alcohol and guns don’t mix. They were less of a herd, and more a group of friends that had refused to move out of sleepy Creektin for one reason or another. ‘The fellowship of the gun’ they called themselves as a joke. Dad and his fellowship had watched a lot of Lord of the Rings right on that couch to my left.

  Dang, I wish I was sitting on that couch, and not on this stupid chair. At least one of them had the decency to splint one of my arms. Definitely cracked the bone on that one. But there was another problem. The gun range was at the other end of Creektin. I was further away from home than ever, and apparently I was a prisoner.

  This did not inspire fear, but instead curiosity. What were they trying to accomplish in stuffing me in here? Were they afraid? Were they going to take me out back and shoot me for being heavily armed?

  Hehe. Armed.

  I didn’t care. Probably some potion’s fault.

  My head lolled to the side. Yep, it still felt like I was carrying a bowling ball on my shoulders. But that was life. Sometimes you just had to lie down and accept death.

  My chair fell over. I was still tied to it. The floor was nice and cool. There were rainbows everywhere.

  A muffled ‘Mo’ came from inside my backpack.

  “Hello Mo,” I drawled. “Sorry for falling over.”

  A bit of shuffling and he crawled outside.

  “Is that a pruning shear?”

  It was. Now he was just standing there, big black eyes staring at me as if waiting for an order, or permission.

  “I don’t see anything in need of clipping though.”

  He looked at me weirdly and then disappeared below waist level. Slowly, he began cutting through the zip ties fusing my arms with the old garden chair.

  “Ooh, trying to free me? Sneaky. I like your style, but I’m not sure I can move even if I’m fully freed up.”

  Good thing I didn’t have much say in the matter. I was bound in one moment, then free in the next. I didn’t get up though. Everything felt like it weighed too much, like my existence was an affront to gravity itself. There was nothing I could do here on the floor except maybe read some news, or look through my system.

  “I wonder if they picked up my bazooka,” I mumbled. “Come to think of it, you just bought the next best one, didn’t you, system? Show me what it does at least, so I know if it's worth rebuying it.”

  It had to be something really good for a hundred coins though.

  [SUMMONING LICENSE - M404 unguided anti-tank launcher: US military surplus, Korean War era, mint condition. Enchantments on the barrel adapt barrel diameter to any self-propelled warhead in the range of 50-110mm. Can be summoned and de-summoned at will using the key word ‘bazooka’. Weight: 24 pounds. Comes with three High Explosive 90mm grenades. Tacti-grips allow use of the reinforced barrel as a club in close quarters combat* - 100 Soulcoins.

  *Warranty expires if used as a club.

  **May misfire if mishandled while loaded]

  “Bazooka,” I said and the bazooka appeared in mid air, bonking me right on the head. I let out a pathetic whimper. That was mean, system. You were definitely doing this on purpose.

  Also, wow, was this weapon loaded with implications. Apparently I didn’t own the weapon, but just the license to materialize it out of nowhere? How did that work? And it was just a license; does that mean my license could be revoked? Also, what the hell, why were we using magical weapons in the friggin’ cold war era?

  I sincerely hope there wasn’t a secret magical arms race going on during the cold war. Oh who am I kidding, there totally was.

  Maybe all those memes about the wizard wars weren’t entirely fiction after all…

  Okay, no, let’s not think about that right this moment. I was in a relatively safe room, lying on the floor yet again. Theoretically, I could place a hand under my body, push myself up, scrabble over the coffee table, then roll out of the window if I somehow managed to remove the planks nailing it closed. But that sounded like effort and currently, effort was not in my name.

  “Hey Mo. Do you have my essence?”

  “Mo.”

  “Nice. I need to affix it. Do you know how—”

  [Affix an essence by swallowing it whole]

  “Oh.” I spat out a rainbow-colored gob of spit. “Put it in my mouth, please.”

  The small, spider-shaped gemstone was sweet on my tongue. If I had to compare the taste to anything, it would have to be lemon-flavored gummy bears. Everyone in my family liked those the most.

  Then the gem grew legs and started skittering down the back of my throat and ew, ew, oh my god, that felt just… terrible. Uncomfortable. Somewhat terrifying. It settled in my stomach before sending out waves of heat, heat that was quickly replaced by the cool, calm reckoning of the system describing exactly what it was doing to me.

  [Affixing: Coral Leaper Essence]

  [Unlocking human genome]

  [Stabilizing magical (side)effects]

  [Gathering bug report]

  [Magi-technical handshake initiated]

  [Ding!]

  “Ding?”

  Magic go ding. Who’d have guessed?

  [Coral Leaper Essence]

  Tier 1

  Rarity: Uncommon

  Growth: +2 Sense

  Choice: (1) of (3) Abilities

  [Setae] - Anticipation

  Charges: 0/1

  Charge cost: Minor (variable)

  Your body grows many different Setae, capable of sensing pressure differentials, chemical compounds, vibrations, and pheromones in a [3] meter radius around you. The effective radius grows by [5%] per point of Sense. Cost increases depending on number of Setae created.

  [More Spider-eyes] - Fear

  Charges: 0/1

  Charge cost: Moderate (variable)

  Grow or remove a pair of spider eyes anywhere on your body. Eye cost is variable depending on the size, complexity, and efficacy of the chosen type of eyes. Every extra pair beyond the first requires twice as much Fear than the previous pair to create.

  [Proprioception Sensors] - Passive

  Gain an intimate understanding and control of the levels of force your body exerts, both within and without. Force sensing accuracy and control grows by [1.5%] per point of Sense.

  Now that’s what I’m talking about. All of these were good, some might say great. But first, from the top.

  Spider fact: [Setae], from the latin word saeta for bristle, are the little hair things that make spiders the fuzziest, cutest little critters. Normally their chitinous exoskeleton blocks all sensory information from outside, except with these things they can sense just about everything in a 360 degree area. It’s a kind of three-in-one deal for smell, touch, and hearing, which in my mind was a pretty good set of senses to have.

  Sense and touch together sounded like an especially great combo. What if I could sense the smallest movements all around me? I’d never have to be worried about mimic ambushes ever again. Except, well, the jumping ones could probably leap or shoot at me from outside of my sensory range. And if they were indeed adapting at the speed Adelaide was afraid they were, then it wouldn’t be long until they discovered how effective just throwing rocks and stuff at people was.

  It worked for our ancestors, so why not for them too?

  If I took this ability, then the radius would increase by… nine times two is eighteen, times five is ninety — almost three extra meters which, in freedom units, was near twenty feet. Still, that was awfully close quarters. And besides, being covered in spiky hairs probably wasn’t a good look on camera. It might end up in me getting shot, even just by accident. Hugs would become difficult, as would everything else that required body contact. And finally, it used anticipation, and my anticipation efficiency was…

  [Anticipation efficiency: 6%]

  … not great. I was four times as good at channeling fear, and even that was pretty shitty for a magical girl.

  With a sigh, I looked at the next ability. [More Spider-eyes] was an odd one. Unlike [More arms], it was an active ability, meaning I wouldn’t automatically get more eyes at certain levels. The benefit was of course quite obvious: I could grow more eyes on my face for better depth perception, or I could grow them somewhere else to expand my field of view. Not sure my brain was wired to handle more than a human-level field of view, but that just meant I would have to put some points into Mind to hopefully balance that out with extra processing power.

  They were spider eyes too. That was a very broad category. Most spider eyes were great when compared to insects, but the only ones that were comparable to human-level eyesight were jumping spider eyes. Technically, this leaper-mimic was more of a jumping spider than a tarantula or any other garden variety net spinner. Still, depending on the breadth of types of spider-eyes I got to choose from, this ability was either good, or just meh.

  … I could totally learn how to focus on two places at once with enough stats. That sounded fun, and more importantly, it would go a long way towards removing ambushes from the equation.

  The more I thought about it, the more [More Spider-eyes] was becoming a strong contender.

  As for the last one, [Proprioception Sensors] was a weird one. It was a passive, which meant no emotional draw, and it scaled off of Sense in the same way as [Setae] did, so that was good. But what exactly would it sense? Would it help me find my place in space? Spiders don’t have any receptors for acceleration or balance — their movement works via liquid pressure in their limbs, so movement is kind of automatic, and their eyes give them enough sense of where they are in space. Maybe this ability would just give me more control and sense over my bowels, which does not sound like my cup of tea for superpowers. Then again, maybe it would give me a bit of that self-awareness people claimed I lacked at times.

  That could be great for casting magic stuff. But did I really want to skill into something I was already pretty crap at? Maybe I could become a flying fortress of magical bombardment in ten years, or maybe I’d be dead tomorrow.

  Maybe the bonus multiplied with [More Arms]. But even if it did, 1.5% per point was just way too little to consider now. If I had a guarantee that it would fix the issue with my wandering arms. But as is, I didn't have enough Sense to scale it. Yet.

  “System, any thoughts?”

  Alas, the system remained silent. Maybe it was for the best. This was my future. I shouldn’t let some robot in low earth orbit muck that up for me. That was my job.

  I was probably not taking [Setae] because I wasn’t into growing knife-length hairs out of my skin, which was doing its job quite well thank you very much.

  So the real question was: Visual perception, or self perception. [More Spider-Eyes] or [Proprioception Sensors].

  I tossed and turned, which was to say I stayed put on the ground, grumbling and groaning to myself. I even made a list.

  Then I ignored the list and asked myself the truly important question: Which one of the choices would make me more happy?

  When put like that, the answer was clear as day.

  “I choose you.”

  [Essence affixed]

  [You have gained: More Spider-Eyes - Fear]

  Samantha Rubens

  [Lvl 9] - Transformation Locked

  Body: 15

  Sense: 18

  Mind: 1

  Soul: 1

  Free points: 1

  Silver Soulcoins: 50

  Average emotion-crystal-core efficiency: 9% (Expand List)

  Essences (2/2): Coral Huntsman, Coral Leaper

  Passives: [More Arms]

  Spells: [Arms & Arms proficiency - Joy], [More Spider-Eyes - Fear]

  Augments: —

  °°OooO°°