Dear Diary,

Getting shot in the head hurts like a bitch.

I mean, I think it does. I'm pretty sure it did. Today's been kind of a mess. Lemme start at the beginning.

So, today was gonna be kind of a shit day at school, so I decided to cut out after lunch; with me having the first lunch period, that gave me most of the day to myself. What with a third of the school coming into the cafeteria and another third heading out, it wasn't too tough to slip out of the building. Okay, I don't know what the other kids do that gets them caught, but I just put my head down, act like I'm supposed to be going where I'm going, and nobody gives me a second glance. It's a knack; I blend. I don't even think about doing it, really. Hell, I don't even realize I'm doing it most of the time. I only notice when I'm pulling some unlikely bullshit. Which today was kinda full of, but I'll get there when I get there.

Once I got out of the school I had to find someplace to be. The house was empty and depressing; Mom died a few years back when I was a freshman, Dad kicked the bucket way before that. At least Mom told me he did; he hadn't been in our life for a while before that. I kinda remember him as a deep voice, rough hands, and a moustache, but for all I know that's just from Mom talking about him. If I met him on the street I wouldn't recognize him. For all I know Mom lied and he's still out there somewhere.

Anyway, technically I lived with my older sister. In reality, she had an apartment across the river in Philly, and only 'lived with me' so I could finish out High School in the same school district where I started. I dunno why that seemed so important back when Mom died, but at the time I threw a goddamned fit when my sister talked about me moving in with her, so she 'moved back' to 'take care of me'. Really, she just put her name on stuff and I paid for it out of the insurance money from when Mom died. You'd think that wouldn't last very long, but when the insurance policy is covered by work, and you live in the shittiest part of a shitty town, 'cost of living' can be stupidly low if you don't fuck around and waste money.

So I didn't want to head home. Instead I stopped at the corner store, picked up a pack of gum and a couple pastelillos, and started walking toward the waterfront. Not sure why I headed that way in particular, other than the fact that a couple schools and banks had rebuilt a couple big chunks of it, which meant it wasn't as beat up and decrepit as the rest of the town. I wasn't into military stuff, but the battleship they'd parked in the river was a not-completely-boring way to waste a few hours. If the old vets had the unenviable job of taking donations and playing tour guide today, I might even flirt with a couple of them. I'm nobody's idea of pretty, let alone hot, but when a young woman flirts with a sixty something guy, the sixty something guy reacts. It's like a law of nature or something.

My sister would throw a goddamned fit if she knew I'd done that once or twice before with dudes old enough to be her grandfather. I mean, flirted with them. Thinking about doing more than playing around makes the little kid part of me go all squick, but the adult part figures they're at least likely to know what they're doing, y'know?

Of course, that's part of what would make my sister go ballistic. 'You're not an adult, and I'm responsible for you!' I can't count how many times I'd heard that line. I could sign up for the military, get sent overseas and get shot, but in so many other ways I might as well be a little kid. Nobody who isn't looking to exploit someone is going to hire someone my age at any rate. I mean, I've got the choice of 'do you want fries with that?', enlisting, or looking for that overstuffed black leather couch. Kinda sad that I'm pretty sure I could make more money from that last one than either of the other two. God that sucks.

I'm getting off track. Like I said, it's been a hell of a day. Where was I?

Oh, right. Heading to the waterfront to find some way to kill a few hours.

Anyhow, I meandered my ass down to the waterfront and hit the jackpot. A bunch of big yellow busses parked in front of the aquarium, with two herds of kids moving more or less toward the front gate. I walked over and attached myself to the back of the first group, letting the confusion work for me. A few minutes standing in what passed for a line, and I was inside. I lingered near the gate until the second group started coming in, then split off to go look at the sharks.

Everybody else is always looking at the dolphins or the penguins, but not me. I head straight for the sharks, or the octopi if I'm in that kind of mood. Lest I be misconstrued, I mean the kind of mood where I want to fuck around with something more intelligent than the druggies on the street. Once in a while I'll go past the octopi and try to find the little color changing squids, but on a day like today, with two whole groups of not-legally-adults tromping through the place, they'd be hidden but good. Hell, the octopi would probably be hidden too, so no point in going there. Instead I just stared through the thick plexiglass at the sharks, wondering if maybe there was a way to get up to the catwalks they used to feed them. Don't worry, I'm not the sort to go swimming with them, but if you're gonna fuck around teasing someone, it's got a whole different visceral level of thrill if there's not bulletproof plexiglass between you.

Speaking of bulletproof, I'd mentioned being shot, and by now I know you're all 'god, when will this bitch get to the good part?' I'll get there when I get there. If a goddamned shark chomping toward me didn't grind my gears when there's plexiglass between us, how much do you think you'll have to do when there's notional paper and ink and time in the way?

Anyhow, I was there chilling with my shark homies, trying to ignore a few other kids who had, like me, split off to see something cooler than Flipper, when I heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire. People always go on about how they think its fireworks, or a car backfiring, but once you've heard actual guns being fired you really don't make that mistake any more. Okay, I didn't. I didn't know about stupid people. Maybe they did. So anyway, gunfire, and not the one or two shots I'd heard when some asshole decided to dispute the franchise rights to his favorite dealing corner, but the ongoing rattle of someone who didn't give a fuck how much ammunition cost. Screams echoed through the aquarium as well, but screams didn't scare me. Bullets did.

Just my luck. I ditch school, walk all the way down to the waterfront, and get caught up in some white people school shooting bullshit. I shook my head, reminding myself that there were good ones out there; that not all white people got off on flaunting their privilege and walking away from crimes that would leave me bleeding in the street. I shouldn't blame everyone with a particular skin tone for the actions of a few assholes.

I started looking for a way onto the catwalks seriously now. A door off to one side labelled 'employees only' seemed like a good bet; I ran over and tried the handle, but as you might imagine, it was locked. On the other hand, it had the feel of an emergency door; one of those that is only 'locked' from one side. I dug into my purse looking for my school ID. A few seconds searching and I had it in hand, trying to ignore the sounds of gunfire coming from the hall, trying to ignore the two other kids who hadn't left at a run when the shooting started.

In case you're wondering why I was trying to jimmy a lock instead of running, there's like, no cover outside the aquarium, and something told me that whatever frustrated incel had decided to take his lack of sexual prowess out on his classmates was counting on that. Also, I'd barely passed Phys Ed. I didn't 'run' so much as 'half-heartedly jog'.

I got my ID in between the door and the frame, and pulled the door open just in time for a single shot to rip it out of my hand and slam it against the plexiglass of the shark tank. My hand was fucked up when the door handle ripped its way free of my grip, and a burning sensation crept across my chest, but I didn't stop to look, I just ran up the steps on the far side of the door. I'd like to say I hit the catwalk at a dead run, but as I just said, me and physical exertion don't get along. Adrenaline forcing my heart to try and pound its way out of my chest, I crested the top of the steps onto the catwalk at a dead stagger. From behind me I heard someone say something like 'Another one for you, over by the shark tank', but I didn't pay too much attention. I kept staggering forward, trying to put some distance between me and the top of the stairs. I came to a juncture with another catwalk, and decided to turn right because I slipped, dropped my purse, and almost fell backward into the shark tank on my left, then overcompensated and fell onto the catwalk to the right.

Shaking my head to clear it where I'd bounced it off the catwalk, I pushed myself to my feet, looking around for the shooter as I did. Bodies covered the bleachers where the kids had been watching the dolphin show. A few bodies floated in the water; one in a wetsuit, a couple in regular clothes, and even a couple dolphins.

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Who the fuck shoots dolphins? Like I said, privileged incel bullshit.

Anyway, I spotted the second shooter just as I made it to my feet. Unfortunately, it took me a few precious seconds to recognize him as a shooter, since he lay flat on the roof of a building, a rifle pointed directly at me.

The next little bit I don't remember perfectly. At a guess, I'd say the brain damage caused it, but I'm not a fuckin' doctor, so what do I know? Something hit me square in the forehead, or at least it felt like it hit me square in the forehead. As I've noted previously, getting shot in the head hurts like a bitch. It also flipped me back into the water behind me. I sank, stunned, lungs burning where I breathed in salt water, eyes open and staring. I figured at least I might make a decent meal for the sharks I'd spent the morning tormenting until something wrapped itself around my chest and pulled me deeper into the water. I think my brain misfired, because I tried to say something like 'oh, the Octopus tank', but with my lungs full of water and my brain full of bullet I don't know what it came out sounding like. A moment later the arm wrapped around me twisted, showing me one huge eye on the side of a big bulbous head.

I don't know quite what happened next, but it felt like falling. That made no sense, since I was already in the water, where I'd be sinking if I wasn't being held by a giant octopus, but sense making or not, my brain told me I was falling. Of course, as I've noted, my brain wasn't in the best condition, so god fuckin' knows what actually was happening. I hung there, staring into that giant eye, falling faster and faster while not moving an inch, for I don't know how long. The eye consumed more and more of my fading vision, seeming to get bigger and bigger until I saw nothing else.

Right as I thought I was about to black out, I got the weirdest sensation; everything got slightly dull except the center of my vision, which had a weird obscured clarity to it, like a pop-up window except in real life. Whatever instinct I had that let me pull off that blending-with-a-crowd thing screamed at me incoherently, and letters appeared in the middle of the weird pop-up thing.

Mimic? (Y/N)

I didn't say yes. I didn't say no. I didn't say anything; I was struggling with a serious case of 'death by gunshot' complicated by 'death by drowning'. If I did anything, it was more of a mental shrug followed by resignation embodying the idea of 'fuck it, why not?'

That's when shit got really weird.

No, really. Up until that point my last day had been crap, maybe unusual crap, but violent death was something that just happened in my town. It happening due to some random racist bullshit was ironic, but the actual death itself wasn't all that unexpected.

Anyhow, weird.

Over the course of a few seconds, the eye in front of me shrank down until it looked barely bigger than my own. At the same time, my head fell apart. Okay, that's what it felt like, the top of my head splitting open and the insides rushing out, and out, and out, until there had to be more of me on the outside of my head than there was me inside me. Finally, my arms and legs and body split, twisted, and shifted until I had eight long, heavy tentacles reaching out from beneath what little remained of my neck.

Before I could really come to terms with the weird stuff going on with my body, the eye in front of me blinked, the octopus detangled itself from me, and it shot toward the shimmering surface far above us both, leaving me floating near the floor of the tank. For the next few moments, I did nothing but admire how the aquarium had managed to recreate the look of a real seabed, despite being nearly fifty miles from the ocean.

Then the echoes of screaming and explosions reached me.

I couldn't really tell you why I crawled up the side of the enclosure. Maybe I didn't want to be huddled on the bottom of the tank when the shooter found me. Maybe curiosity had overcome my fear. Maybe I was in a dream state and just did it because it seemed like the next thing to do.

Maybe I was just pissed off and now had eight limbs to go ham on someone with.

I got to the top of the wall and, after a moment's confusion, managed to push one eye out of the water. After another moment spent blinking and trying to focus, everything snapped into crystal sharp clarity. One thing became immediately clear. I wasn't in Kansas any more.

Okay, I wasn't in Kansas to begin with, but now I wasn't in Camden, New Jersey either. At least not one that I recognized. The river was wider, not so built up along the shoreline. The Ben Franklin Bridge was just... wrong; too many way too skinny posts reaching down into the water, way too high of an arch, and clean white marble on the underside of the expanse. Closer to me, the aquarium seating was shaped differently and looked to be concrete or maybe stone instead of cheap aluminum.

Also, there was a fuckin' dragon in the water, firing blasts of flaming goo at anything that moved. I didn't really get an appreciation for the size of the thing until my recent rescuer, now twin, groped his way out of our mutual enclosure into the big pool with the dragon and all the dead bodies floating around. The dragon must have seen the motion, because he looked our way and spat a hunk of flaming gunk in my direction; the other octopus had already made his way over the jetty and under the surface of the water. I, on the other hand, sat there like a dumbass until the gunk splattered over me and exploded.

The impact wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, maybe due to my current squishiness. The flames and acid, on the other hand, burned, eating into my skin both above and below the waterline. I tried to swear while pulling myself over the jetty into the water, but apparently an octopus beak isn't the best at screaming 'motherfucker' at the top of my lungs. Instead I shot forward, directly toward the source of my pain. After a moment of screaming agony, I bounced off of the thing's thigh. The burning stopped immediately, and along with the minor euphoria of that surcease of pain, my attention was distracted by another of those weird popups.

Mimic (Size)? (Y/N)

Not knowing what exactly it meant, I went with my standard response of 'fuck it, why not?'

The dragon shrank. At least, I thought that's what was happening at first. Then I realized that everything else except me was shrinking too. Then, because eventually I can catch a clue if it beats on my head like a maraca, I realized that I was growing. Within seconds, the thing spitting fire and death all over the aquarium looked up at me as I laid one long tentacle across its back to keep me from sinking. It breathed in, obviously about to cover me in flaming much again. Without thinking about what I was doing, I grabbed its mouth with one arm and squeezed to hold it shut. Its eyes bulged a little, and some foam leaked through its teeth, but mostly it looked like someone who had just been forced to swallow a load of vomit; simultaneously revolted and furious.

Right about then I realized something. The dragon was buoyant, enough to keep itself and me above the waterline. That meant that a hefty chunk of its size was mostly air, maybe some kind of swim bladder. Another big chunk, currently covered by one of my arms, was wings; not exactly the most durable of structures.

I, on the other hand, was one big ball of pissed off muscle. I wrapped another arm around its head, two more around its body, and one around each of its non-wing limbs and squeezed for all I was worth. It tried to claw at me, but without any good leverage the most it managed were superficial cuts. Things started breaking; first the wings crunched and snapped, followed by the Dragon's jaw. As its struggles grew more frantic, I switched from crushing to pulling; its neck stretched a long way, but long before I reached my limit it caught. I flexed every bit of my muscle, and after a few loud pops like tree trunks and high tension wires snapping, its head tore completely free.

That left it fountaining blood from the end of its neck; from the vague itchiness I felt it probably wasn't any less caustic than the stuff it was puking up before. I tried tying it in a knot, but that worked about as well as you'd imagine; all it did was spray blood in different directions while I worked to tie a knot with unfamiliar limbs. Finally, I just thought 'screw it', bore down on the body of the thing with all eight limbs until something ruptured explosively; after that it sank to the bottom with me pretty quickly. I did my best to cover it up with the sandy soil on the riverbed, figuring it might at least slow the spread of the gunk.

By this point I felt pretty awful; not in the sense of being hurt, per se, but the kind of bone-deep weariness that comes from lots of adrenaline making you do lots of athletic stuff that you have in no way trained for, ever. I wanted to just collapse right then and there, but my little octopus friend chose that moment to poke me with the tip of one of his arms. Blinking, I looked at him, then looked up to the surface where he pointed. Dozens of bodies floated there; some in pieces, others made up of pieces that shouldn't have meshed, like the one with the upper half of a bodybuilder and the lower half of a fish. Vaguely I saw people moving along the edge of the water carrying some kind of long poles. Spears, maybe? My brain needed a break as much as the rest of me. I looked down at my little octopus buddy, unsure of what he wanted me to do; help with search and rescue, fight off the men with spears, or maybe run away with him to the Caribbean. PR was pretty nice this time of year, so that sounded okay, but leaving now was just right out. I had no go left to give.

I turned back to him with a shrug, and another of those popups filled my vision.

Blend? (Y/N)

My poor abused brain chose that moment to remind me of how octopi could change themselves to look like just about anything. If I was gonna take a nap, it sounded like a good idea to do so as a rock, rather than a giant sea beast, so I nodded in the affirmative.

Even faster than I'd grown or changed before, I shrank down to a normal human size, with my normal number of limbs and my eyes back to the front of my head. I think I even had teeth, because they jammed together painfully when several thousand tons of displaced water slammed down into me.

The next few moments were a blur. I remember a long, fleshy arm around me. Things rapidly got brighter until I was more or less tossed onto the lowest row of seats in the aquarium's amphitheater. The last thing I remembered was an older woman bending over me, screaming to someone behind her, 'I've got a live one here!'