Fifteen Months Ago

  Standing ramrod straight in the doorway of her father’s home office, with her book bag over one shoulder, Isolde Tucker listened to the man himself talking on the phone. Even though it was barely six in the morning, Roland Tucker was up, dressed, and speaking loudly and animatedly to the person on the other end. Not that his enthusiasm was surprising, considering the person he was talking to was his son, Isolde’s big brother. Caleb had gone off to university in Europe a few months earlier, and the two of them were still trying to get used to both the time difference as well as not being around each other constantly. Growing up, Isolde had always thought her brother and dad were more like brothers than parent and child. Roland absolutely lived for everything Caleb did. He was their dad’s whole world, and could never do a single thing wrong.

  As she waited for her father and brother to finish their daily catchup before Caleb would head off to his next afternoon class, Isolde’s eyes shifted to the clock above and to the left of her father’s desk. Two minutes after six. If she was going to get her laps in at the school pool before it was time to get to the office to read the announcements for everyone in homeroom classes, she’d have to leave in the next six minutes. But she was committed now. If she tried to walk out while her dad was talking to Caleb, it would cause a scene. He’d accuse her of guilt-tripping him by standing there and then walking away while he was having a talk with her brother, his son, who wasn’t even on the same continent. No, now that she was in the office, there could be no walking away from it.

  The time continued to tick down, until there were only two minutes left. Maybe she could skip the laps just today. No, she had to do something to calm herself down, or she’d never be able to focus on her actual classes. And if she screwed that up, she wouldn’t be able to relax during the bus trip to the debate meet that night. Okay, she could do some running laps out on the track. It wasn’t as good as swimming, especially when it came to clearing her mind, but she could just--

  “Ahem.” Her attention was snapped back to the present as her father cleared his throat. He had already stood up from his desk and was looking at her. “You wanted something?” His words, as always, came very crisply and matter-of-factly, quite a far cry from the animated delight and uproarious laughter he always displayed with Caleb. “If the school needs another check for a--” He stopped as her hand rose, because she would never think of verbally interrupting the man.

  “No, sir,” Isolde quickly assured him once he gestured for her to go ahead. Her head shook. “I just wanted to remin-- I mean, tell you that I won’t be here for dinner tonight. The debate team is having our next match in St. Cloud, so we’ll be late. We’re going to stop for food on the way back.” Hopefully to celebrate a win, though it could also be to console one another after a loss.

  “Okay,” her dad replied, “and you’re doing the best you can to keep those grades up where they should be, I assume?”

  There was the opening. Isolde gave a quick nod. “Yes, sir. I’m on track to be the next Tucker family valedictorian. I’m only one percentage point behind that girl I mentioned, and she’s not--”

  “Hm?” The man blinked up from the text he’d just been sent from Caleb before waving one hand dismissively. “Oh, don’t worry about that. Your brother maintained the tradition already. No one expects you to keep up with the boys out there. Just do your best, and I’m sure you’ll manage to graduate.”

  “Manage to graduate?” Isolde couldn’t help but echo, despite knowing better. “But sir, I told you, I’m only one percentage point behind the frontrunner for valedictorian, and she’s a girl too. Yukiko is--”

  “Yukiko?” Roland had been looking at his phone again, but he heard the last bit. “Oh, well, that just makes sense, doesn’t it? Those Oriental brains are something else. Make sure she’s not a robot, I wouldn’t put it past them to sneak one of those over here just to see if they can get away with it. Don’t feel bad that you can’t match one of them. At least you’re pretty, am I right?”

  “I don’t… think you’re supposed to say Ori--” Isolde stopped, because her father wasn’t listening. He was too busy laughing at some text her brother had sent. With a sigh, she glanced at the clock once more before turning to walk out of the office. A couple quick laps on the track it was, then.

  Unfortunately, her father wasn’t quite done. As she turned to leave, he looked up and called out, “There’s a box of paperwork by the stairs, bring that in here before you head out, would you?”

  “Yes, sir,” Isolde agreed, before picking up the pace. She had to grab that box and bring it back quickly if she was going to have any time at all for running. Even if it was only a single lap.

  Then maybe she could spend a couple minutes in the music room. It had soundproof walls, so no one would hear her scream until her voice gave out or she felt better. Whichever came first.

  **********

  “I thought you should have won that fossil fuels argument. Your side was better than his.”

  Hearing that voice, Isolde couldn't help but bristle a little. She tried to control herself, gritting her teeth before turning away from the vending machine she had just been perusing. That left her facing Yukiko Higa herself. They made quite the study in opposites, especially standing in front of each other like that. Isolde was a tall, skinny blonde girl with pale skin and a face that her own father had said belonged on a magazine cover. He said that quite a bit, and she remembered every time, because it was the only way he complimented her. He always told her that she shouldn't worry about having trouble in school, because she could always fall back on her looks. No matter how many times she told him she didn’t have trouble in school. Except when it came to the person right in front of her.

  Yukiko, meanwhile, was a small Asian girl. If she’d passed her in the streets, Isolde would have sworn she couldn’t have been older than twelve or thirteen. But no, this wasn’t a case of this girl being bumped forward several grades, even if she easily could have been. Yukiko was seventeen, just like Isolde herself. She knew that for certain, because she had seen the girl’s driver’s license and her official school file with all her records.

  This was a trap. Isolde knew that from the moment she'd heard that voice. Still, the sting of that arrogant creep down in the auditorium smirking at her like that as the judges awarded him the win a minute earlier was enough for her to reply stiffly, “Too bad you’re not a judge, I guess.”

  “Oh, no, if I was a judge, I still would have given him the win,” Yukiko informed her primly. “I’m sorry, perhaps it’s a language issue. What I mean to say is that you had the better side, but your argument was… ahh… caca? It was poop. You were not properly prepared, and you paid for it. And we paid for your failure.”

  “Excuse me?” Isolde took a step away from the machine and glared intently at the smaller girl. “Who do you think you are exactly? Who are you to judge how prepared I am, you little--” The word her father had said that morning popped into her head, making it all the way to her lips before she stopped. It didn’t matter how much she wanted to lash out, she wouldn’t say that.

  Lifting her chin slightly, Yukiko retorted, “You little what? What am I, exactly? A bitch? A cunt? Something worse? I’ll tell you who I am to judge. I am the person who was properly prepared for my own debate. So I won. That’s who I am. You are our captain, you should have been ready.”

  It was all Isolde could do not to reach out and smack the girl’s face. She clenched her fist and then forced herself to relax it, voice brittle. “I’ll tell you what, maybe you can tell me just what you did to prepare for this match, and I’ll tell you how you should brush up on your world history.”

  It was a low blow, she knew. Yukiko had been neck and neck with her in all of their subjects, even edging her out in a couple, aside from one. World History was the girl’s weak point. Not so weak that she didn’t get an A in it, of course. But weak enough to be a couple percentage points lower than Isolde, even after doing so much extra credit. And weak enough to be a sore spot.

  Oh yeah, it definitely hit home. Yukiko practically snarled, showing her teeth before turning it into a humorless smile. “I think I have done enough brushing up. And if I do need more, I will find a tutor who doesn’t fumble an assignment as simple as, ‘Prove fossil fuels are bad for the environment.’” By the end of that, the tiny, oh-so-kickable girl was giving that smirk once more. “At the very least, I would have remembered my notes, so I wouldn’t look so inadequate there.”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  A flash of red passed over Isolde’s vision. “Oh, you wanna know why I didn’t have my notes? You want to know why I was unprepared?” She saw the bag in her mind, the bag with all of her organized notes on that entire subject meticulously labeled and researched. It was sitting on the floor next to the stairs, where she had set it down to grab that box her father wanted. She was in such a hurry to get to the track that she’d forgotten it there, and didn’t remember until they were on the bus to come to this damn event. She’d done her best to get through it without her notes, but… well, it didn’t work, obviously. And now this girl thought she was so much better than her?

  Mouth opening to tell the little bitch exactly what she thought of her, Isolde abruptly froze, her gaze focused on the area just past the other girl. The two of them were standing on the exterior second floor walkway of this high school, a bridge of sorts connecting the auditorium to the main building. She’d come out here to get some fresh air after that horrible showing, and for a snack.

  All of which meant they were standing outside. And hovering just over the distant football field, facing them, was an Ostrich fighter. The Eighty-Seven mecha had its long legs drawn up inside its body, and its head pulled down, making it look like one big metal orb with a smaller orb atop that. It almost would have looked funny, if Isolde hadn’t seen just how much devastation even a single one of those things could cause. Especially when there wasn’t anyone to oppose them.

  Seeing the hovering ship as it faced them, its weapons aimed right at the pair on that bridge, Isolde stopped thinking. She stopped hearing Yukiko’s words as the other girl kept ranting, not having noticed what was going on. She stopped doing anything and waited for death to hit her.

  Then she stopped waiting. Her hands snapped out to grab the girl in front of her, yanking as hard as she could while turning. With Yukiko’s confused, angry demands echoing through the air, Isolde dragged her to the edge of the bridge and gave a hard shove. Her hand went down to grab the girl’s belt so she could haul her up and over the half-wall there, sending her tumbling and screaming down into the bushes. The high-pitched whine of those weapons charging up a split-second before firing completely drowned out that scream, as the blonde girl threw herself off the bridge right behind her rival. And then the bridge they had been standing on exploded.

  Landing hard in the bushes, pain rushing through the arm she had come down on, Isolde only realized she had been screaming through all of that once her throat started to hurt. She couldn't actually hear herself, or anything else, over the lingering effect from that deafening explosion. Her foot was tangled up in some roots, and she briefly thought it was a hand grabbing her. That just made her scream even louder, practically twisting her own ankle in the process of ripping it free so she could scramble awkwardly to her feet. Another wave of pain went through her arm.

  Yukiko, who had landed more fully on the thick bush, fell sideways off it with a series of curses in Japanese. The small girl lifted her head from that sprawled position in the dirt and stared at the absolutely annihilated bridge. There was nothing left, safe for a few broken pieces of metal rebar sticking out from either building. Seeing that, the girl made a very soft whimpering sound.

  “Get up, get up!” Isolde pivoted, reaching down with the arm that wasn’t screaming in pain so she could grab Yukiko’s hand. “We’ve gotta go! Do you want to be part of their haul?” That was what the Eighty-Seven did, when they attacked a place like this. They made raids to grab new human prisoners to infect with their crystals. If the two of them didn’t get the hell out of there before the Intruders caught them and threw them in a cage, their lives would be over. They would be sent into a whole different world, with their memories erased, so they could end up helping the Eighty-Seven invade that one too. All while the crystal form that had grown out of and around their bodies would act as just another random footsoldier in the Intruders’ army.

  Sure enough, even as they came out of those bushes, the two of them saw a group of those Taken, the basic crystalline footsoldiers of the Eighty-Seven. The very same thing that would happen to both of their bodies if they let themselves be captured and infected. The crystals would grow out of their skin, cover them completely to create a glass-like copy of their body. Then they would be transported to a new world with no memory of who they were, while the crystal form stayed behind as grunt labor and the lowest type of soldier for the Eighty-Seven.

  There were twenty or so of those things coming toward them. In the background, they both saw more dragging students and teachers alike out of the other buildings, while those ships hovered overhead and took potshots here or there, for no apparent reason other than to cause even more destruction so they could spread fear and panic. No, not just that. There was a reason for the fear and panic. They wanted to flush out anyone who was hiding, and make them try to run.

  Well, they still had to try. If they stood there, they’d be taken. Without another word between them, Isolde and Yukiko turned to run away from the group marching toward them. And then they immediately stopped, because there was a second group coming from that direction. Pivoting back another way only revealed a third group. There was a wall behind them, and groups of Taken troops coming from all other directions. They were trapped with no way to go.

  “Wh-what do we do?” Yukiko stammered, backing up a little until she was standing in the midst of those bushes next to the wall. Her eyes darted around in a panic, already hyperventilating.

  Reaching down, Isolde grabbed a stick and gripped it tightly. Her voice was a weak, soft little whine. “A-anything we can. They aren’t taking me. They aren’t taking me.” She spoke a bit louder then, addressing the incoming troops. “You aren’t taking me!” It was pointless, she knew that. A stick wouldn’t stop them. A bazooka wouldn’t have stopped all of them. Nothing could save the two of them from being dragged into one of those cages and turned. Nothing except--

  A ball of energy shot down from the sky, cutting through Isolde’s panicked thoughts. At first, she thought it was all over, that one of those ships had taken another shot at them. It felt… well, better than being turned into a way for the Intruders to invade another world. And at least her body wouldn’t be copied to become another footsoldier for them. Dying instantly was better than--

  Then the ball hit her, and Isolde was lifted right off the ground by the force of it. She was sent flying backward to slam into the nearby brick wall. But there was no pain. She didn’t even feel the agony in her arm anymore. Bouncing off that wall before dropping to the ground to land incredibly lightly on her feet, Isolde heard a soft voice in her head, a feminine voice that filled her with a sense of warmth, acceptance, and protection beyond anything she had ever felt before.

  I am nameless. I am here. I am yours. We are one, and we shall stand for those who cannot. I am all that you are, and you are all that I am. I am nameless. You are all that I am. Who am I?

  The name came to Isolde without any thought at all, a name she had seen while studying Hindu mythology for a school project. It was the only name that made any sense right then, and she spoke it aloud, her booming voice sounding oddly distorted even to her own ears. “Kalaratri.” The moment she said the name, a figure appeared beside her. It was a lion, with gold fur that was streaked through with purple.

  The large cat stood right there, but Isolde didn’t feel any fear. She felt safe, protected, loved. She felt at home. And that was when she finally looked down to see herself. Her school uniform had vanished. In its place, she wore what looked like a metallic tuxedo. The pants and boots were gold, while the jacket was dark purple with a bit of gold flakes mixed in, particularly near the bottom. Her shirt was gold too, with a purple tie, and her gloves were that same purple mixed with flakes of gold. Later, she would learn that she was also wearing a short, purple homburg hat with gold flakes, and one of those fancy, intricately designed party masks that covered the top half of her face. That was gold with purple lining, and matching violet lenses over her eyes.

  It looked like a stiff, uncomfortable suit. But she could move perfectly in it. It didn’t impede her at all. And why would it? Freestyler armor was meant to fight in. This wasn’t actual clothing, it was magical armor. It was armor that would protect her from those monsters. This was… this was…

  “Holy shit,” her electronically distorted voice stammered. “This is-- oh!” That last bit came as the nearest Taken lunged for them, springing forward a good twenty feet to close the distance.

  Pivoting instantly, Isolde caught hold of Yukiko with one hand to pull her out of the way. In the same motion, her foot snapped up to kick the incoming Taken with enough force to shatter the thing. She actually kicked through the creature, sending shards of it flying all around them.

  No sooner had she set that foot down once more, than the second Taken was right there on them, reaching for Yukiko. With a grunt, Isolde yanked the girl backward away from that grasping crystal hand, sending her falling into the bush, yelping the whole way. While the Taken was still reacting to that miss, Isolde snapped her other foot up and out, kicking it in the chest. That wasn’t enough to shatter it, but the thing was lifted off the ground and sent backward to crash into two of its nearest companions.

  Then there was Kalaratri. The Kite-- her Kite had already hurled herself into the group of Taken that had been coming from the left. She was a whirling tornado of devastation, shifting from lion, to monkey, to bird, and then up to a bear that towered over that group. The Taken never knew what hit them.

  Meanwhile, the other two groups of Taken had paused briefly, taking in the changed conditions. They looked at one another. There was a sort of collective shrug, before they went right back to their programmed duty of apprehending these girls. Or trying to.

  Isolde, looking down at her gloved hands, closed them into fists. “I think I can work with this.” Her gaze snapped upward, seeing the Taken approaching. “Oh, hell yeah.

  “I can definitely work with this.”

  JOKE TAGS