"Whee," shouted Ben. "Faster!"

"Ahhhh!" screamed Tommy.

"I can see my house from here!" exclaimed a third kid, whose name I didn't even know. Seriously, since when did Ben get the idea that he could rent me out for cheap thrills? And why did I go along with it? Tommy's dad had welded together some sort of circular contraption with four seatbelted seats, and I was taking it for loops around the neighbourhood, much to their delight. I still hadn't convinced mum to have a go though.

It had been a few days since what had become nationally known as the Kholakel monster scandal, as if the city itself was somehow responsible, and the humans within had been completely unrelated to the whole incident. My parents had been visited by a couple of very nervous officials, who agreed that I was still legally Lily, and that I'd done nothing except act in self defence, so I wasn't about to face somewhere over a thousand murder charges. They thanked me for ending the production of monsters and asked very politely if I could possibly try to tone things down a bit in the future, please, if I didn't mind.

Surprisingly, I found that I didn't mind. I still had an innate desire to go and kill stuff, but I didn't need to anymore. I was back with my family, I'd taken revenge for my friends, and no-one seemed to be actively trying to kill me. On top of that, I knew that if I did, mum would be disappointed in me. Somehow, mum's disappointment was far more terrifying to me than any weapon.

Of course, toning things down didn't mean stopping completely, as someone I'd caught mid rape in the city centre could attest to, had he been conscious. Instead, he was sedated and wired into a funky green tube while my minions worked to get the mana extraction equipment running again after its sudden shutdown.

And mana it was, apparently. I never did get the name of the goon that was running the B site, but obviously he hadn't had the whole thing to himself. There were plenty of researchers previously working there, who had scattered back to Kholakel when the mayor died, promptly getting poisoned by the water. Once I found a few, I had all the information I needed to work out what was going on, and all the minions I needed to get it running again. The equipment they'd invented used humans as first stage concentrators, then drew mana out of their blood, storing it in prepared crystals. The crystals themselves came from the corpses of dead monsters, which meant we now had a limited supply, and that I needed to absorb the mana from them without slicing them in half in the future.

At some point, someone was going to ask me to pay an electricity bill or sign a pay cheque, or the state was going to try to claim the facility, but I could leave that problem up to future-me. Sometimes, I could be incredibly mean to future-me.

Mana fuelled magic and the supernatural in the same way that electricity fuelled a light bulb. Apparently it was incredibly sparse in our world, but living beings took it in and concentrated it, with higher life forms building up greater concentrations. Not enough to actually make use of it, but enough that the monster hybrids could survive off mammal flesh. It was hypothesised that in the world monsters originally came from, the natural density was far higher, and that humans would build up a sufficient concentration to make magic a reality.

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That led to some of the more insane researchers wanting to build a portal to travel there. I noped on that one pretty hard. Not only did I not want to connect us to a world where monsters like me were common, given what had happened last time, but it raised some interesting questions about why life here could process mana at all when there wasn't enough of it to do anything with. What would be the evolutionary basis for that? Was life here somehow a refugee from this other world, escaping the monsters? Were mana levels higher here in the past? Those films with fire breathing dinosaurs may not be as inaccurate as I thought.

Among the minions, I unexpectedly found the operator who had originally been in charge of my cell block; the one responsible for watching me and sending me the notes. He'd been moved to B site after A site shut down and had continued to watch cells here. Whether by coincidence or design, he'd remained in charge of Alicia after she'd been moved. I'd wanted to talk to him about her, and about me and Samantha, but when I got to his desk and saw the 'world's greatest dad' mug sitting on top, next to a photo of a smiling family, I lost control for the first time in a long while. Suffice to say, he did not survive the encounter. Between the mayor himself and the casual evil displayed by his employees, I'm not actually sure which was worse.

Not that I could claim the moral high ground here; I would be perfectly prepared to sacrifice strangers in order to protect my family too. I would not, however, ever sip coffee from a world's greatest daughter mug while I did the sacrificing. I would never make it a job. It was also rather hypocritical. I'd focused on him because he'd dealt with me and my friends, but wasn't everyone here just as guilty? Yet I was keeping them around because I needed feeding. They were all brainwashed with mutagen, admittedly, and while I hadn't been taking advantage of it for the rest of the city, I was happy to abuse it here, but that didn't excuse what they'd done.

I brought the kiddies in for a safe landing in front of our house, where a collection of parents were waiting to grab them, some still not entirely comfortable with the harpy express. Still, it was progress; comfortable or not, they'd entrusted their children to me. They accepted that I was as much a resident here as anyone else. This was my life now, I guess. Lily the harpy queen. My new normal. Should I go back to school too? I'd missed a month, but I could probably catch up.

What sort of job would I go for if I graduated? Despite my half-jokes about running for mayor, I was currently under the age limit, on top of lacking any relevant knowledge or qualifications. For all his depravities, the previous mayor did actually keep the city ticking over, which given its state was no minor achievement. I'd certainly be keeping a very close eye on whoever got the job next, but it wouldn't be me.

Back when I'd flown to Gronorlie, I'd been expecting a life of moving constantly from city to city or country to country, eating their criminal population, living on rooftops or empty housing, often being the cause of the aforementioned emptiness. Living back home with family and being an allegedly normal, minimally murderous member of society was a grating change. But for their sake, I could try to fit in.

I took back to the skies on my own, zooming upwards way above the clouds, climbing until the sky itself started to fade away and my face became layered with ice, neither the temperature nor thin air bothering me in the slightest. From this high up, I could see the world curving away beneath me. It was a beautiful sight and reminded me once more how glad I was to have my magical wings. I had taken everything the worst of humanity had thrown at me, and I'd not only survived, but I was happy with my changed life. I'm sure I'll have all sorts of problems in the future, but I can live secure in the knowledge that whatever comes my way, I can always flee up here to enjoy the view. And then throw lightning at my problems until they go away. Lightning is every bit as cool as wings.