“God, Kai, it’s good to see you.” Leonidas said when his sister hugged him, and he wrapped his arms around her in kind. “I was so worried about you, and when I got back, all I saw in Miami was the aftermath of whatever—”

“You were in Miami?” Kairi asked sharply, and pulled back from the hug. “When?”

“Uh, an hour or so ago? I just returned and—”

“Did you see anyone else there?” she interrupted again. “Any other survivors?”

“What? No. I heard some screams, but there was—”

“Fuck,” Kairi said in agitation, and with a clear departure from the quiet girl he’d known. His sister had never said more than a ‘gosh darn it’ in the years he’d known her. Hearing her use a harsh invective was momentarily bewildering.

“Kairi…” a woman’s voice called hesitantly from nearby, and drew their attention.

Their mother, Maryanne, was looking at both of them with what Leonidas might have called a mix of hope and fear, and was standing in front of their father—who had a gloved hand firmly on her shoulder, and was watching them both with equal parts paternal concern and… wariness, Leonidas realized.

“Mother,” Kairi said before Leonidas could respond, and in a voice that could have frozen a campfire.

Maryanne winced at the ice in Kairi’s tone, and Leonidas looked between them both in bewilderment.

“Okay. Time out.” he said with the very same motion of his hands once used by coaches the world over. “What the hell is going on? Before Kairi arrived, pops, you, g-ma, dad, and mom looked like a bad rendition of West Side Story—and now that she’s here, you’re all looking at her like she’s half-rabid or an escaped convict.”

Kairi snorted at his words, and his parents and grandparents shifted uncomfortably.

“They haven’t told you, then?” his sister asked with what Leonidas would have generously called a disparaging glance for their parents and grandparents.

“Seriously Kai,” he began irritably, “this whole vague and mysterious thing is getting old.”

“I bet.” she agreed. “So let me unveil the truth, since our dear family hasn’t, or won’t.”

“Kairi, you—!”

Leonidas’ grandmother, Gwendolyn, fell silent when Artur put a massive hand on her shoulder and shook his head. “She’s the most unbiased of us, Gwen. Let her be the one to tell the boy. He can make the right choice that way.”

“The right choice, father?” Reginald cut in angrily. “Of course you’d phrase it—”

“Who the hell do you think you’re talking to, Reg—!”

“Pops! Dad! Enough!” Leonidas cut them off. “Jesus Christ, let Kai speak.”

His mother and grandmother, he noticed, still hadn’t approached him or Kairi—though he had a feeling that was largely due to his sister, more than anything. Both older women appeared to be looking at Kairi like she were a skittish or dangerous animal, and wanted to avoid provoking her.

“The world ended a year after you vanished, to the day.” Kairi started suddenly, and without a preamble. “One day I was waking up, after another night of crying because I thought you were dead or something no matter what our parents said, and the next minute there’s a blue screen in front of my face and I’m being congratulated for being part of the ‘Integration’.”

“A blue screen?” Leonidas asked with a blink.

“Yes…?” Kairi said with a raised eyebrow. “You’ve seen them, I imagine.”

“Yeah. Sure. System screens. ‘Congratulations, Leonidas’ blah blah.”

Some instinct warned him against mentioning the fact that his screens were red, and instead Leonidas just listened when his sister gave a nod and continued.

“Well, things went pretty nuts after that. Mom, Dad, and I were down visiting pops and nana for a holiday, since it was the anniversary of your death—or transmigration now, I guess—when it all went down.” Kairi sighed at the memory and eyed their parents quietly. “Thankfully, our parents are massive weebs, and we probably got a better handle on things a lot faster than most people did.”

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Both their parents smiled a little at that, Leonidas noticed, though it was a strained expression. Even his grandparents seemed to be willing to admit that much, because Artur and Gwendolyn both gave the younger couple a terse nod of acknowledgement.

Leonidas looked back at his sister a moment later when Kairi continued.

“Dad figured out how to access all the menus and functions pretty fast, thanks to his library of Isekai and shit, and mom wasn’t far behind. By the time the first goblins showed up, we were all already armed and ready to go.” Kairi twirled her finger indicatively and nodded her head toward Artur with a sardonic smile. “Pops tried to bring out the family arsenal, but we realized pretty fast that guns were basically worthless. Something about the way the System reclassified reality made them way less effective than they should have been, and even headshots only seemed to piss off the little fuckers.”

“It still makes no sense,” their grandfather growled under his breath.

Leonidas resisted the urge to laugh, despite everything, and listened to Kairi.

“Dad figured out pretty fast after the first wave that we needed to find somewhere more defensible than the house, so we took off for the school. Uh—”

“Saint James’.” Reginald called helpfully.

“—that one.” Kairi said with a flat glance for their father, whose smile faltered. “We went to Saint James’ Boys School, and found some others there too. Pops was pretty well known in the Three Rivers, given the family had been one of the founders, and his status as a former SEAL meant the rest of them deferred to him pretty quickly. By the end of the day, we’d set up a sort of base and command structure.”

“That sounds pretty good so far,” Leonidas said thoughtfully. “Pretty normal, actually.”

“It was.” Kairi agreed. “And for the next few months, that was life. We figured out how to use the Map, the Store, and the Codex, and got our classes, developed Cores, all of it. Things were… Well, they weren’t good, but they weren’t awful either.”

“I’m sensing a but.” Leonidas said when Kairi finished, and his sister chuckled mirthlessly.

“Yeah. There’s a but, Ace. The ‘but’ is the arrival of the non-humans. The Fantasies, as we took to calling them. Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Gnomes, you name it. The goblins were just the first wave, tiny and stupid as they are. The real races, the smart ones, came way after—and they didn’t come unprepared. I’m talking about full-on invasions, big brother. They teleported in castles, towns, ships, you name it.”

“Invaders.” Artur declared with repudiation. “Monsters.”

“They’re people, Artur!” Leonidas’ mother cut in. “They’re different, but they’re still people!”

“Don’t be a child, Mary.” his grandmother responded blithely. “They’re no more people than feral dogs are house pets. The whole lot of them are a threat to humanity’s existence!”

“First it was Asians, Mexicans, and Arabs, and now it’s Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs.” Reginald responded just as angrily. “It’s always just another excuse to hate what’s different!”

“Do not speak to your mother like—!”

“Damn it, dad, I’m not a child any—!”

“Gwendolyn, you can’t really believe—!”

“Don’t you try to lecture me, Mary—!”

“ENOUGH!” Kairi said with a sudden shout, and a ripple of power that shook Leonidas to his core. He felt a shiver of terror roll down his spine, and swallowed against a suddenly dry mouth and shaking legs. His parents and grandparents had also fallen silent, and though they seemed less existentially terrified than him, both couples were looking at Kairi with tense expressions.

“Sorry, Ace.” Kairi said before Leonidas could speak, and reached out to lightly touch his chest. When she did, the sudden chill and fear that was gripping him vanished like it had never existed, and Leonidas let out a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding.

“What the fuck, Kai?” he asked breathlessly.

“Reaper’s Domain. It’s one of my Archetype skills. You’ll understand later.”

“Reaper’s—?”

“Anyway.” Kairi cut across him while their parents and grandparents stayed quiet, and looked on tensely. “As you can see, the fantasies changed everything. Humanity went crazy when they appeared, and people split basically down the middle. Pops ended up becoming a founding member of the Humanity Alliance, which went on to take over control of most of the human settlements in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia.”

“That’s…”

“Huge, yeah.” Kairi said casually. “The Aetherium Store has some really useful gadgets for communication and whatnot, so as long as you set up proper relay stations, you can stay in touch across distance pretty well.”

“What about you, mom, and dad?”

“Mom and Dad left around the second year and joined some of their friends who had come to check on them, and headed further east toward Virginia and New York. They joined the Unity Coalition, which controls the vast majority of the East Coast from Maine down to Virginia. Kentucky, United Carolina, and West Virginia are all contested states between the two sides.”

“You said mom and dad,” Leonidas said while still trying to wrap his mind around the sheer scale of what was being said. That was hundreds and hundreds of miles of territory. “What about you?”

Kairi looked at him and when she smiled, there was a mix of amusement, pain, and a sense of hardened ruthlessness in her eyes that Leonidas had seen only a few times before.

On Elatra, in the eyes of people that had survived demon attacks.

“I told both sides to eat a dick,” Kairi said simply, “and joined the Nomads.”