[Royal Ur-mimic gestation pod]

  [Estimated completion level: 97%]

  [Destroy at any cost]

  “That’s a big berry.”

  Tanuki-Addy shot me a weird look.

  “Okay, I know that’s an egg. It just looks exactly like a strawberry crossed with a blackberry.” And a spider egg sac and an octopus embryo. Honestly the more I looked the more patches of mismatched material I could make out. Scales, fur, cartilage, and glossy connective tissue grew in patchy spots further towards a base connected to steel girders about twenty-odd feet up. The massive reddish sac of translucent pink goo hung from the ceiling like the udder of an eldritch mother. It was large enough to house a grown elephant. Faintly, I could make out a humanoid shape floating within.

  It looks like she’s trying to tell me something. But what?

  “How do I get it down? Wait until it’s ripe?”

  Distantly, another piece of the building collapsed.

  “Right. The quick way it is then.”

  Shooting it down with high explosive bazooka rounds was a pretty bad idea. It would be impossible to miss from here, but I couldn’t guarantee that the explosive force wouldn’t cause massive damage as it traveled through the insides of the egg. Water being what it is, it allows shockwaves to travel much quicker and farther, leading to barotrauma and, likely, death for anything nearby. Think dynamite fishing.

  No, this was a delicate operation. Emphasis on delicate.

  It looks plenty heavy. Maybe I can just…

  Rummaging through my backpack took nearly all my focus and effort. Everything felt heavy. I took out my Spab-4, loaded in the frost rounds, and took a few expensive shots. The base of the egg-berry flash-froze, hoarfrost creeping down halfway to where Rebecca was concealed in a congealed mass of pink. Once the base was covered from every side, I switched to the solid slugs. Each punched a thumb-length hole in the roof above. Not enough to cut the entire egg free, but enough to weaken the surrounding structure.

  Halfway through creating a ring of predetermined breaking points, the egg-berry sagged, turning tear-drop-shaped as it slowly pulled itself apart. There was a pop. The sac burst, drenching the entire room in amniotic mimic goo.

  I spluttered and gagged.

  “It smells like raspberry.” The artificial kind, the type of chemical smell that snuck up in your nose and took your olfactory system hostage.

  Addy was still hacking and coughing as the last of the stuff flowed off. She had to turn into her totally-normal-girl form just to dull her senses.

  “Warn me next time you — blurgh!” She staggered against me. I caught her, but only barely, feeling quite exhausted myself.

  “Careful there. I can carry you if you want.”

  “I’m supposed to be the one saying that.”

  “It’s alright. Lean on me all you want.”

  She grumbled, but didn’t pull away. Propping each other up, we staggered towards the pink goo-covered person.

  “Becca?” I asked.

  The pink goop suddenly turned into hedgehog spikes, lashing out in every direction. “Don’t come closer!”

  Yep, definitely Becca.

  I disregarded her warning, coming closer. “Becca. Can you hear me? Blink twice for yes.”

  A mouth with teeth formed on the side of Becca’s head. “I’m not Becca! I-I’m one of them. I’m a fucking bubble-gum monster!”

  “She looks more like a slug to me,” Addy mused.

  “Don’t be mean.” I leaned down and scooped bubblegum-Becca up in a hug. The pink stuff followed as if it was attached to her skin, or her bones. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

  The spikes grew soft. “It’s in my head. It’s me, Sam.”

  “I know. Rather, I don’t know, but I’ll make an effort to understand. For now, we’re getting you out.”

  Saving the day like a real magical girl. The idea alone filled my failing limbs with boundless energy.

  Carrying a semi-solid person-shaped blob whose stiffness changed with her moods was not easy. We had to stop halfway through our escape to drop her into my backpack for easier transportation. Moe didn’t even look surprised. He was a trooper for putting up with my shenanigans.

  The mimics were conspicuously absent. No doubt their leader was setting them on some scheme or another. It didn’t matter. Everything would be over the moment we made it back to and through the teleporter in the evac zone.

  I felt a tickle, a warm breath on the back of my neck. Becca’s head was poking out of my backpack. She didn’t know I could see her with my rear eyes.

  Her mouth turned into a sharp-toothed maw before forcefully clamping shut on nothing. “Hey. Hey Sam. Remember the slug incident?”

  “The one where I was gaslit into almost eating one of the most parasite ridden creatures on earth? The one Tanya recorded, and remixed into a disstrack?”

  “I should’ve stood up for you.” Her good eye looked away to the side.

  “They would’ve made you eat it instead. I just licked it. And immediately rinsed my mouth. Safest way to let them have what they wanted.”

  She scoffed, grumbling into my neck. “You could’ve done with standing up for yourself as well. Always a big softy…”

  After making sure that she wasn’t about to ooze out of my backpack, I set my eyes ahead, and up. Dodging debris was slowing our progress. The ground felt as if it was teeming with life below as we broke out of the manufacturing hall and into the daylight of a setting sun.

  Nothing beset us on the wide, open parking lots. It was an easy escape. And yet… why was I feeling nervous?

  Just a hundred yards ahead, the hummer was backed up outside the fence, engine running.

  “Hurry!” Akira yelled over the din of the steel mill imploding and the quiet whisper of Rebecca mumbling in my ear. “It hasn’t noticed us yet!”

  “What hasn’t — oooh shit, Addy run, run, run!”

  The tanuki girl took one look back at the writhing pink mass rising through the factory roof. A gargantuan, oblong shape of mimic flesh tore from underneath the asphalt, growing up and stretching above the building. It was part animal, part person, part metal, part ground. Its surface littered with bits of steel beams that looked as big as toothpicks from this far away.

  That was one big mimic factory.

  The thing screeched, a horrible sound that started as a high-pitched song, tapered off beyond my hearing spectrum, then exploded with a physical force that hit me like a wall. It sent me tumbling to the ground, screaming, clutching my ears. It was as if this creature was screaming at the very fabric of space, angry that it dared to exist the way it did. Never in my entire life had I heard such a sound, and never did I want to hear it again.

  That proved too much, and the entire factory building collapsed, sending a wave of dust and stone shards rolling our way like a pyroclastic flow. Stone pelted me as I writhed in pain like the insect I was. How cocky, that I thought I could outrun sound. How arrogant, that I thought I could win against whatever that was.

  A cold and slightly rough mass oozed around my head. My pain immediately lessened.

  “Is this better?” Becca asked and I nodded. “Sorry, I can’t block it all out.”

  “You’re not… affected?” I mumbled, or maybe yelled. It was hard to tell.

  “Its vocal cords are shredded. It can’t scream like that again.”

  “And you know that how?” I asked and felt her shrink a bit further into my backpack.

  “I can hear it. It… it wants me back. You can drop me, if that at all helps you.”

  “Abso-friggin-lutely not. Even if you're becoming some sort of xenomorph-queen mimic, that doesn’t mean I’ll throw you to the wolves.”

  “I think I’d prefer to be eaten by wolves at this point,” she mumbled darkly. “There’s no hope. There’s no path forward.”

  “There’s a road right there.”

  She huffed. “And then what? What if I do become some sort of alien threat?””

  “First off, we’d probably have to prevent you from laying eggs inside people. And eating them. Maybe we can requisition a special enclosure for you at a zoo until we find a way to reverse the transformation.”

  “A zoo. Wonderful.” A smile. She was smiling. Why did she look so sad then? “You were always too nice for your own good.”

  [Estimated completion level: 97%->98%]

  Shit. Shit shit shit.

  [Emergency Quest: Kill the nascent queen - 2 extra lives, + variable rewards]

  I won’t, not just because I have no concept of where a queen falls on the mimic power scale, but because she’s my friend. Magical girls never give up on their friends.

  [Acknowledged]

  [Emergency Quest: Retrieve mimic queen for study and dissection - 3 extra lives, + variable rewards]

  No! Becca is my friend!

  [Acknowledged]

  [Emergency Quest: Destroy the mobile mimic nest (major) - 3 extra life]

  That’ll do. Now stop distracting me.

  The system was silent after that. Notably, it didn’t remove the first two quests.

  I tried to get up. A root-like tendril cracked the earth near me, a human arm grabbing my leg. It didn’t have to hold me down with much force at all. My legs already felt like jello.

  Suddenly, a slash of a sword cut it loose.

  “RancorSurge!” Addy growled as she turned into her mighty were-tanuki form and pulled me back onto my feet. And from there, I ran, ignoring every complaint my body was screaming at me.

  We closed the distance with vomit-inducing speeds. The hummer was already driving, the ground cracking beneath it when with a lunge Addy sunk her claws into the back and heaved herself and us both on top of it.

  “That’s it,” she wheezed, “I’m… that’s all of me. For real this time.”

  She vomited rainbows in a sparkling trail behind us. Potion side-effects, likely. She must’ve been on fumes before she pushed herself beyond her limits with those. I had to pry her claws from the roof and drag her in through the turret ring by her neck-scruff.

  “Hey watch the visor—

  “We’re already stuffed full in here—”

  “Oof!”

  Her fluffy frame filled out most of the backseats, much to the chagrin of our other passengers.

  Kazinsky was squeezed against the back of the front seat, the drone operator quickly running out of space to breathe. “I am trying to manually direct our self-driving convoy up ahead around obstacles, so if you don’t mind, make yourself less distracting.”

  “C-compaction. Ugh.”

  Addy promptly slumped together, clocked out as if she was dead to the world. I breathed stuffy car air, plus the scent of half a dozen people. “Sitrep?”

  “The evacuation has mostly proceeded without issue, if you disregard all the hostages being half-mimics, the tanuki going AWOL, and the freaking kaiju nipping at our heels.” Kazinsky said.

  “It’s the giant nest,” I said. “It’s where they stored the lion’s share of the biomass.”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Nests are immobile, they don’t just… it just noticed us, by the way.” Kazinsky slammed the side of the vehicle. “Dammit! There goes the last drone.”

  “I can always buy more,” I offered.

  “Won’t help. With a target that size we’ll always know where it is.”

  I peeked out the back window. “So about nests being immobile. It’s right behind us."

  What I can only describe as a cronenberg earthworm the size and width of a skyscraper was busy bulldozing its way through the forest surrounding the steel mill. Trees in its path were uprooted by a giant flat-toothed mouth, or tossed above its head by four pedipalps. The rest of its body moved forward like a centipede on too many arms and legs to count in number or type. In a brief glance I noticed spider legs, human arms, single great claws, fins, tentacles, and hooves. A series of holes pockmarked its hide, each hiding the movement of smaller mimics.

  It was keeping up with us, for now. But it followed with a dogged focus. If we didn’t deal with it before reaching the teleporter, it would crush everyone there before we could get out.

  Paul chimed in, yelling from the driver’s seat loud enough to catch my attention. “If it wants to catch up to us, it’s gonna have to do more than fifty miles per hour.”

  “It doesn’t have to.” The road swerved beyond this point. My minimap said so, and what more, I knew these roads. If it wasn’t going to be stopped by trees, it was going to catch us.

  Up ahead was a long curve, and the local gravel pit.

  Idea.

  “System, how much would a ton of lubricant cost?”

  [Lubricant, machining quality: High quality lubricant based on crude oil. Used to keep engines running and gears turning. Bulk purchase: 10 Soulcoins/ton]

  “Buy it,” I said.

  We reached the curve. The pit was on our left. The mobile nest was out of sight, though I could still hear it charging through the forest, coming ever closer.

  “Instant buy lube!”

  [Soulcoins: 119->80]

  Several barrels of industrial-grade lube appeared in thin air, denting the hummer’s roof as they tumbled off. I aimed a bazooka shot, the high explosive ordinance more than enough to burst metal barrels through pressure alone.

  The curve was plastered in yellow-brownish lube seconds before the nest came crashing through the forest on our right. It scrabbled for hold, failed to find any, and slipped down a pit so wide and massive I didn’t expect it to climb out under its own force anytime soon.

  But then, buzzing filled the air. Akira, Clem, and I all watched in horror as the nest sprouted a frankly abhorrent amount of fly-like wings. It fell off the side of the road, drooped a couple feet, then caught itself in a flying curve that ended with it crashing onto the road only a couple tens of yards behind us.

  “It’s adapting!” Akira shouted.

  “How?” I asked, but I knew the answer. My eyes zoomed in on one of the mimics riding on its back grinning with obvious delight. The Ur-mimic was screwing with it, riding the thing using my body, as if to mock me. Its face split into an inhuman grin. Then it changed shape once more, disappearing among the swarms of smaller mimics covering the factory worm.

  “Motherf— any ideas?” I asked, already loading and shooting an armor-piercing bazooka shot at the big thing.

  The side of a barn would have been easier to miss at this range. The factory worm only let out an ear-grating roar as I blasted one of its basketball-sized goat-eyes. The bleeding crater was soon replaced with a cluster of cells quickly growing into a new eye.

  “Besides shooting it in the face, because that evidently isn’t working.”

  One of the smaller caster mimics clambering on the nest like ants on a wooden log got a lucky hit in. Its black acid beam cut along the back half of the hummer. Metal screeched, then the roof detached entirely. We were now officially driving in the most fuel-inefficient cabrio in the world.

  “You’re the Custodian, do something!” Paul cried as one of the fliers cracked into the windshield.

  “I don’t know what!” I cried back. “My biggest shot barely tickled the damn thing!”

  “Inside—” came a voice from inside my backpack.

  “Huh?”

  “This thing can regenerate as long as its core is intact,” Rebecca said. “It’s the heart, the brain. That round thing on its tail all the way in the back is it, but its covered in layers of scales and armor as thick as your leg. You’d have to go around the back to get a chance at killing it. Here, let me show you.”

  Rebecca poured out of my backpack. The pink mimic-part of her — which was most of her by this point — turned into a caterpillar that looked vaguely similar to the kaiju chasing us. One segment near her butt bulged and blinked ominously with a dim light.

  I don’t think pointing out how naturally she is shapeshifting is going to help.

  “I can’t hit that from the front.” It was too long. This thing was literally built like an earthworm: all segments, no brain, except way back in the butt. It was leaving giant mounds of dirt and undigested woodstuffs in its wake. It even copied the digestive system, apparently. “I can probably get inside.”

  The car jerked, and a rain of leaper spines bounced off the road right where we’d been seconds ago.

  “You can’t,” Rebecca said. “You’ll get ground up and squeezed into paste. You’ll die. It’s suicide.”

  “I’ll get three whole extra lives if I kill this thing.” Five if somehow I managed to get the Ur-mimic together with it. I’d already lost track of it. Maybe this was just the finale in its long line of plans to rid the Creektin barrier of its magical girl batteries once and for all. Then again, killing it was my best shot. After all, how was a magical girl born but through sacrifice?

  “System, buy me a flashlight, plus the largest explosive you can. Unlimited cost.”

  [Understood. Would you prefer conventional or nuclear options?]

  “Uhhh, whatever’s more portable?”

  [Purchasing: Special Atomic Demolition Munition SADM - B54/S (Collector’s edition): The smallest nuclear device ever constructed by the US army, intended for the destruction of key infrastructure such as bridges, tunnels, or ports. 5 ton TNT-equivalent explosive mass. Verify fingerprint, turn dial to desired fuse time, then double tap ignition button and remove yourself to a safe distance. Alternatively, verify fingerprint, hold ignition button, and pray that god has mercy on your soul. Price: 75 Soulcoins*]

  [*Limited stock! Only (3) units left!]

  [Soulcoins: 80->5]

  … I may have made a mistake in letting an AI decide that.

  My emergency shopping spree was dutifully interrupted by a hail of leaper spines impacting the deck, a sleeping Addy, and me. Two hit my chest. Another one grazed my cheek, leaving a gash. But the last one hit true, embedding itself deep into my thigh, despite Paul’s evasive maneuvers. The mimics were close enough that hitting wasn’t hard.

  I couldn’t do everything at once. I was going to be paralyzed, again, within minutes. At least it would take longer now that I had a huge amount of Body. Still, we wouldn’t reach the evac zone with enough of a headstart to evacuate everyone.

  Two choices, then: Sacrifice myself to kill the creature and irradiate part of Creektin. Or don’t. See how many of my friends make it out.

  Not much of a choice.

  The package appeared in under a minute. It was a suitcase with an ominous red button. I chucked my backpack, my weapons, anything of value. It sort of felt like I was about to go skinny-dipping, except my pool was a horrid maw smelling of dead plant matter and machine oil.

  The mimic nest had caught up so much I could feel the warmth of its breath. Akira had taken Addy’s sword and was trying to beat its nose in, to little effect.

  This is it. I don’t think Custodians were ever supposed to use their extra lives like this. Man, blowing yourself up is so not magical girl coded.

  Alright Samantha, jump. I said jump dangit. Jump!

  “So, I just have to press this button?” Rebecca asked.

  “Eh?”

  I looked down at the puddle of Becca holding my nuclear briefcase, and the exact pink copy dripping from my hand. Somehow, somehow she managed to slip it out.

  “You have to hold it actually,” I corrected her reflexively. “Oh no you goddamn—!”

  She jumped just like that. The mimic worm swallowed her whole with a gulp.

  I stood there for one brief heartbeat. And then I sucked in a breath and jumped in after because goddammit that was my idea. You don’t get to take away my dramatic gesture of universal love and high explosive excellence, Becca. That’s my job.

  And she didn’t have a finger print to set the damn thing off.

  Immediately, everything was dark, cramped, and wet. Also, full of leaves, dirt, stone, and steel. Everything hard pricked my limbs, everything soft got in my eyes. The flickering light of my flashlight barely illuminated anything. Fuck, this was a stupid idea. Why couldn’t I have been born with better ones?

  Oh well, better start crawling until I run out of air.

  If my predictions were correct, then the insides of an earthworm designed to sift microbes from dirt wouldn’t be immediately lethal to a me-sized spider person.

  I felt another rush of air disappearing past me into who-knows-where. Mimic biology wasn’t very physics-based, but these nests were a whole lot more similar to earthborne lifeforms by necessity. The less magic it used to upkeep itself, the more it could spend on production.

  I came across a bifurcating path. The one with air and all the blood was probably where the lungs and vocal cords were at. Vocal cords had no place on a worm-slash-caterpillar’s body, but then again this wasn’t a worm nor a caterpillar.

  I chose the other path. Lungs were a dead end.

  If my experience of dissecting an earthworm wasn’t betraying me, then the area that just widened and then quickly closed was the crop, followed by the gizzard, then the intestine. The slow-acting acid on my skin wasn’t so bad as the smell; I had to hold my nose with one arm at all times or risk having my lungs slowly blistered and scoured from the inside. But hey, at least the Ur-mimic probably thought I was already dead.

  Then, the predictable happened. Every surrounding wall contracted, pushing my head and arms against wet, pliable flesh. Then the flesh turned into chitinous plates, the pressure making my chest armor creak audibly.

  I lost my breath. Still, I struggled forward, hoping that my ridiculous Body stat would help me survive through breathing gastric gases just a little longer until I hit the end of the intestine.

  The intestines did not end. I clawed my way forward, first in leaps, then in regular motions to conserve my strength, then in odd undulations, as if I myself was becoming one with the worm. I needed to hurry, before the thing ate the hummer and everyone else in it.

  But I couldn’t. I wasn’t anywhere near something that felt like a giant ball of armor and brains, which meant Becca probably wasn’t either. She had to be up ahead, past this stupid blockage right in front of me

  “Move, dammit,” I hissed, sucking in some more gut-aroma and dirt.

  “By all means, shove a little harder; it’s helped you so far,” someone grouched ahead of me.

  “Becca!?”

  The blockage shifted, twisting in on itself. An earthworm-shaped becca wiggled its way next to me, making the cramped intestines even more cramped. Her body couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be an object, some creature made of ebony scales, or a human puddle, so it was all at once in a terrible mix. Her face was torn in half, one side featuring a single brown eye as the only hint of humanity while the other one was a mockery of every expression a human could make. Currently it was angry, with ten finger-length teeth poised to bite.

  “Don’t call usss that — fuck! Fuckity fuck! Get out of my head you freak.”

  “Becca, breathe.” I know what you’re planning. I want to bop you over the head and yell at you for being an idiot, but that would’ve made me a hypocrite. I was planning to do the exact thing you were. “Can you move?”

  “I-I don’t know itsss calling me. I didn’t jump on purpose! Or maybe I did, and I just wanted to die a human. I’m here to, to… I don’t know — why won’t you die!? Samantha, for the love of god, push me before I genuinely go insane.”

  “Can’t. Not a strength build.” Plowing straight through obstacles was more Addy’s style. All my extra arms were doing in this situation was pushing at the walls to prevent them from squishing me into paste.

  Becca oozed back, past me, then around me. Slowly, I felt her envelop me until she was up to my shoulders. It tingled. I preferred that over the vice-like grip of the Ur-mimic.

  My head popped out the other side. There, blockage circumvented, and all I had to do was wear my ex-girlfriend as a slippery skinsuit. This was neither an innuendo, nor a one-sentence horror story.

  Think straight. Getting hard. Air. Brain.

  With friction solved, I grabbed whatever intestinal lining I could and pulled myself forward with all the fervor in the world. I didn’t know if what I hit was its brain, but I sure hit something hard. Whoo boy, it was getting dark around my eyes.

  And there goes the flashlight.

  Darkness, once more. Panic asked for permission, but I was busy.

  “It’s not working, Samantha, I’m pressing the button and it’s not working!”

  “Needs fingerprint. Here. Let me try.” I fumbled around with it in the dark. Something bleeped. That was hopefully a good bleep.

  Becca laughed a dry laugh. “There it is again. Everything you set your mind to, you manage to succeed in somehow. I don’t know how you do it.”

  “Not true. Make mistakes. Fail.”

  “And what if after the mistake, nothing ever went back how it used to?”

  “Try again. Make amends. Be good.”

  “Even if I have to start from level one?”

  “You can… start trying… now...”

  What I wouldn’t have given to see her face.

  “Are we still friends?” Really? Are you asking that while I am literally suffocating?

  The answer was choked from my mouth. Lucky for her, I was a master of nonverbal communication. And so, for possibly the last time for ever, I drew her into a hug. One of my hands found the bomb and held it behind her back as we embraced each other in the guts of an alien worm. I’d never hugged someone through nuclear hellfire before. It wasn’t the best atmosphere for a reunion.

  If it was any consolation, it wasn’t so good for the worm either.

  [You have killed: Mobile mimic nest (major)]

  [Rewards distributed among all participants]

  [Soulcoins: 54->554]

  [Extra lives: 0->3]

  [Congratulations! You have reached level 29]

  [+4 Body, +2 Sense, +2 Mind, +4 Soul, + 1 Free Stat Points]

  [Ding ding! Emergency mission Ur-mimic hunt has been completed]

  [Soulcoins: 554->1554]

  [Ivory: 0->5]

  [Extra lives: 3->5]

  [Congratulations! You have reached level 30]

  [Congratulations! You have reached level 31]

  [Congratulations! You have reached level 32]

  [+16 Body, +8 Sense, +8 Mind, +16 Soul, + 4 Free Stat Points, +1 Essence slot, +1 Spell Mod Point]

  [Congratulations, Custodian Samantha! After reaching level 30, you have officially joined the ranks of full-grown Custodians. You may now be called to join mandatory quests. Shine bright with the color of your soul!]

  [Extenuating circumstances have delayed your title-bestowing ceremony for the near future]

  [Ding ding! Emergency mission Kill the Nascent Queen has been completed]

  [Extra lives: 5->7]

  [...]

  [You have died]

  +++

  Somewhere in low earth orbit, the aspects of joy and sadness watched as the last of a tar-colored rain finished pouring on a car with only its front wheels left. The back had a titanic bitemark where the trunk and rearward axle were supposed to be. All passengers were squeezed onto the front passenger seat.

  The look on Mochi’s face would’ve fit the aspect of fear, Eep’s face better. It turned to Abyssl with a hollow look.

  “I want a different Custodian. This one scares me.”

  “She is reckless. She explodes a lot. It’s a bad habit,” the aspect of sadness mulled. “I’m sending her back down.”

  “No debrief? No interdimensional spa time? Nothing? She just blew up a friggin’ tactical and a strategic threat in one go. Didn’t even need much investment. 75 Soulcoins, what a steal! Maybe we should include a bomb inside every future Custodian’s body.”

  “That is not our purpose nor our decision to make.” Abyssl hung its head, the raincloud above its head grumbling with silent thought. “She will be best served knowing those she loved are unharmed. She will require space. I am going to redact parts of her file until she is willing to have them revealed herself.”

  “The bigwigs of The Society aren't going to like that excuse. They will go snooping, they will go on scheming. The fools!”

  “They will bear the consequences. She already has a small army of allies. It is a tragedy she wasn’t born into a wizarding family; she could have made a great difference by now.”

  “I like how straightforward she is.” The aspect of joy stared across the globe with a wistful smile. “She’s going to be beloved by all the aspects, as little as that’ll help or hinder her.”

  “Yeah. We’re just emotional support mascots after all. Come on, RANCOR is already spamming me with access requests to her file. We have other Custodians to instruct. Just the amount of work is making me depressed.”

  Mochi tilted its body quizzically. “I thought you liked being depressed? You’re the aspect of sadness. It’s kind of your thing.”

  “I can be depressed in many unfun ways.” Abyssl’s gaze lingered on the marble of earth below. “They were supposed to be magical girls. But the universe is yet filled with things other than magic, and so they have to be those too, for ill, for good, for survival. The best of them turn themselves into living weapons because anything less and earth as we know it will cease to exist.”

  Its liquid head rose to gaze at the crack in the sky. Reports across the globe were scattered, but overall hopeful. The coral planet was waning.

  One planet down. Eight more to go. The largest convergence event in earth’s history was just getting started. “Whether they are accepted or scorned by the people of earth, it won’t matter much. Because in the end, we are creating a world where monsters will rule over man. I trust in man’s kindness, and potential to make friends. But I fear their potential of making monsters of their own.”

  Mochi nodded sagely. “I… didn’t understand any of that. Let’s go make some more weapons!”

  The twin aspects continued on with their business. A new soul had already made its way into this limbo beyond heaven or hell.

  [Crafting Custodian Contract v0.622a. Price: 10,000 Soulcoins, 50 Ivory, 1 potential wizard]

  tomorrow. Book 2 will follow on the regular posting schedule on Tuesday.

  Following, Rating, or Reviewing. Also, the is 12(!) chunky chapters ahead. Every cent goes towards staving off my imminent demise, which would, no doubt, wreck havoc among my posting schedule.