The entire country shut down in response to the so-called G² Impact, but it wasn’t just the United States that reacted in this way. The economic and military superpowers of the world - the USA, Russia, China, Brazil, and India - all seemed paralyzed in a state of uncertainty.
Everyone knew that the beast which attacked Japan would have to be slain, or it could crawl out of the sea and collapse another nation with its hideous strength. However, whatever it was had apparently evaded detection until it appeared on land, and there was no guarantee that there weren’t more of them out there.
Only the Global Strategic Self-Defense Operations seemed to be confident in themselves, but the world was rightly suspicious of their claims.
I was pulled out of school and made to stay home until more had been discovered, so I found myself with ample free time. Not wanting to be too idle, I spent most of my day reading and drawing. My father had a massive collection of comics, dōjin, manga, manhwa, and mànhuà, as well as an impressive collection of cartoons and anime. His love of these mediums clearly came from his love of drawing and heroism, from Beowulf to the Zafarnamah, and it’s where I inherited my tastes in storytelling and media. I always preferred the stories of heroes who didn’t just take responsibility for their power but actively chose to defend and love even those who hated them. “Protecting a world that hates and fears them” was the official summation of one of my favorite classic comic runs, one that I felt was maliciously ruined over time and long before I was born. The first comic I began reading that day was Kamen America, and the last was Ava’s Demon.
I made it a habit to pray the chaplet of divine mercy delivered to us through saint Faustina daily, for the hope of the souls of those who lost their lives because of my powerlessness during the G² Impact. It became a ritual I would continue every day for the rest of my life and would encourage others to join, not just for the victims of the G² Impact but for the lives lost in my future activities and future eldritch attacks. I never lost hope, because it was my understanding that God, being omniscient, could retrocausally apply the graces obtained through future meritorious prayer to those who had already passed at the moment of their death and grant them both the requisite knowledge, power, and freedom to receive salvation. Whether they choose to accept such an offer was theirs to make.
My father has an interesting background. He is a 100% disabled veteran of the United States Army, a former EMT, and a martial arts champion. Currently, he makes a living as the owner of a vtuber talent agency. I received a notification on my phone that he was currently streaming, so I clicked on the notification, and it opened the stream.
His avatar was a wolf bishōnen with dark skin, short, straight red hair, and a science fiction visor concealing his eyes. This persona was clad in armor blending the aesthetics of a medieval knight with properties that indicated a powered exoskeleton. His own streams mostly consisted of a combination of art and gaming livestreams, with occasional forays into political commentary and philosophy classes.
He, like all the talents he managed, viewed the occupation as a kind of kayfabe-based storytelling, with characters occupying a liminal space between actuality and fantasy. In his current stream, he was outlining the plan going forward for the talents he managed, considering the recent events.
He explained, “We will continue to make material in the upcoming weeks, but I’ve granted additional downtime to my idols so they can gather supplies and make arrangements with their families. Regarding talent in the Republic of China…”
I did not stay for the full speech and closed the stream. Then, I called my friends to check up on them. After that, I finished my reading and headed into the garage. The garage had been modified into a makeshift gym where I would practice my form on the wooden dummy and speed bags.
My father, a counter-Gramskian, believed in the necessity of entertainment as an escape and release. However, he always emphasized the importance of being mindful of my limitations. This was a lesson I had learned the hard way through a recent injury from a fight with a friend, which resulted in broken bones for both of us.
As I was practicing my forms on the wooden dummy, I heard a voice in my head that wasn’t my own say, “Hello there, Miss Trueman.”
Startled, I jumped away from the wooden dummy and started scanning around the gym. It had my attention as it explained, “My apologies. I am a telepath.”
I thought to myself, “What the hell?”
Still closely examining the room as a precautionary measure.
The voice explained, “Do not worry. I can only relay information. I can’t actually cause people to think or do anything.”
I quipped back silently, “But you can apparently read minds.”
The voice explained, “Yes, but my abilities work more like a search engine than what you seem to think. I can isolate concepts and scan people’s memories and thoughts for information without eavesdropping on unrelated information.”
I switched to thinking in Mandarin, but the voice was one step ahead of me.
“Nice try, but my ability bypasses all linguistic barriers.” It told me smugly in the language I was now thinking in.
I reluctantly considered transforming into the Lolita Princess, but the voice asked for a moment to explain itself.
“My name is Uriah. We’ve never met, but we go to the same school. I have been searching for metahumans with remarkable powers.”
I asked him incredulously, “Why?”
He explained, “A great evil is coming to the city of New Providence. Something fundamentally unlike the kaijū that destroyed Tomoeda.”
I told him, “Cut out the cryptic bush beating and get straight to it.”
Uriah agreeing with a caveat, “Of course, but before that, I’d like you to meet the rest of the team.”
“Team?” I asked
The ghostly image of four middle school girls—Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and Hispanic—appeared in the room. They dressed in casual wear: the Chinese girl in shorts, a long sleeve stripped shirt, and tennis shoes with her waist-length hair unbound. The Japanese girl was in pants, a blue, short-sleeve shirt, and tennis shoes with short unbound hair. The Hispanic girl, with hair tied in pigtails, and dressed in a pleated knee-length skirt and cyan long-sleeve shirt. Finally, the Arabic girl with hair tied into a ponytail, wearing a red, long sleeve shirt and skirt.
The Chinese girl introduced herself, “My name is Ailing (懓鈴).”
The Levantine lass made her acquaintance. “My name is Ashadeeyah.”
The Hispanic girl revealed her identity. “My name is Irma.”
The Japanese girl extended a formal greeting, “My name is Naoko.”
Then, as if composed of some wispy fumes, his form composed itself, his arms outstretched to the side like some arrogant, but exceedingly well dressed, middle school boy, introduced himself, “And I am the man who brought us all together.”
He was a Mediterranean lad, dressed in a black, long-sleeved, button-up shirt, dress pants, and black dress shoes with red hair, freckles, and green eyes.
I asked him, “What’s with the getup?”
He explained, “First impressions are important, so I dressed up to meet each of you.”
I introduced myself, unimpressed with the theatrics. “My name is Will.”
Ailing, Irma and Ashadeeyah all seem to react to me differently than did Naoko. Ailing, with a sense of excited inquisitiveness, clasped her hands together with a smile on her face. Irma had a look of slight surprise, with her head cocking back and to the side almost imperceptibly; her right hand lazily pointing in my direction. Ashadeeyah seemed the most taken aback, leaning in with a slight head tilt and noticeably furrowed brow, as if visually inspecting me. Their simultaneous reactions bewildered Naoko, and the girls made eye contact with each other, noticing each other’s reaction.
It was like they were carrying on a conversation without me, as Uriah said, “Good, you’ve found something in common with her.”
I asked, “What might that be?”
Ailing asked, “You speak Mandarin?”
Irma remarked, “You speak Spanish?”
Ashadeeyah probed, “You speak Arabic?”
I glared at Uriah and quietly snapped at him, “This increasing breach of my privacy is not winning you any favors here, boy!”
Back in Texas, I grew up in a Chinatown where I took classes in Mandarin, learned Spanish from my adoptive paternal grandparents, and received instruction in Arabic and Hebrew from a former IDF soldier who legally immigrated to the United States. Even now, I regularly receive tutorage in Venda and Shona, but this was information that strangers could not have instinctive access to. My father did not pick these languages arbitrarily. Rather, he picked them because he wanted to help me connect me with both my adoptive and biological heritages.
Uriah explained, “That wasn’t on purpose… Anyone I connect with a telepathic relay can sense commonalities between each other, whether I want them to or not.”
Naoko redirected our focus. “With all due respect, the reason that we’ve reached out to you is your humanitarian escapades in Japan, as well as that stunt you pulled stopping those thieves, prior.”
Ailing cautiously confessed, “You seemed like the kind of person who would help us.”
I took a frustrated breath and patiently reminded them, “Y’all’ve yet to explain with what, specifically.”
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Naoko explained, “Yōma are different from kaijū. They hide themselves in their own domain. A pocket dimension which can only be accessed at certain points in space, under certain conditions, and from which they can subtly influence the thoughts, sensations, and decisions of others. Yōma possess no internal organs, leave no body behind when destroyed, and can create armies of smaller minions called shōki.”
Uriah confirmed that, “Because they leave no body behind, what we know about them is extremely limited.”
I asked, “What do you mean, they don’t leave a body behind?”
Naoko explained, “Their bodies disintegrate into an evaporating ash when they die.”
I confessed, “Well, I have x-ray vision, so I could scan their interior composition while they’re in motion and report my observations… Are you suggesting that no one has ever done that before?”
Naoko, looking surprised, explained, “No. People with x-ray vision are uncommon.”
It was now that the girls and Uriah himself seemed to realize that I have no experience with superpowers outside of my own, and no experience with preternatural monsters outside of one recent catastrophe.
I politely advised them, “Listen, girls… You shouldn’t concern yourself with monsters…”
Ailing, desperately pleading, interrupted me, “What’s coming is the most powerful Yōma in all of history! One which can send the world into chaos, same as that kaijū did recently!”
Uriah informed me, “I have it on the authority of a diviner that a collection of Yōma will make an appearance in New Providence within a couple of months. One of them will bring with it an army of over thirty million deathless foot soldiers.”
Naoko stuttered at the thought, “Did you say thirty million?”
Clearly, none of the girls were aware of this beforehand.
Uriah confirmed this notion, expanding, “The thing is that Metahumans with divination abilities often suffer from communication disorders, which make their visions of hidden knowledge difficult to decipher.”
Uriah’s telepathic relay wordlessly informed me that by the term “diviner” they were not referring to a practitioner of an occult magic, but rather that the word was being used to refer to Metahumans with the in-born power to predict the future.
I simply asked them, “Do any of y’all have any experience fighting?”
Naoko agreed, “Will is right. If we’re going to do this, we need to get together and practice…”
I clarified, “That’s not what I mean… Have any of you been in a real fight? Have you ever been kissed with a fist, had the wind knocked out of you, or broken a bone?”
No one would look me in the eye after that question; confirming my suspicions.
I informed them, “Look… I got into a fight with a friend. She broke my hand, an arm, and a foot, but I broke both her forearms and one of her feet. I only recently fully recovered from that.”
I asked, “Uriah, can you transmit sensory information?”
He confirmed, “Yes, I can.”
I asked, “What about memories of sensory information?”
He confirmed again, “Of course.”
I requested him to, “Show them what it’s like to break a bone.”
The girls collapsed, crying out in pain as they grabbed at their arms.
I requested, “Now send them my experience back in Japan.”
Suddenly, you could see the devastating experience wash over their entire bodies.
I contemplated asking him to share what it felt like to lose a mother, but I decided that such a thing was too intimate a pain to share and might backfire by strengthening their resolve.
I told them, “I know what it’s like to lose a family member. I won’t be privy to you doing that to your parents and siblings.”
Naoko was the first one to respond. “You’re seriously trying to convince us to step down? You just showed us exactly why we need to prepare to fight!”
I looked at her incredulously.
Irma clarified, “We’re not talking about going off to fight in some foreign country… these Yōma are going to make landfall here!”
Ailing reinforced this reasoning, “Our family and friends are at stake here… How can you seriously ask us to do nothing?”
I told them, “Whatever your powers and motivations may be, you aren’t ready for this kind of thing.”
Irma replied in anger, “What makes you prepared?”
I admitted, “I thought I was, but I recently discovered that I’m not either.”
I continued, “My father is a martial arts champion. He taught me how to shoot. I asked him about military strategies and tactics. He explained room clearing drills to me in detail. I even got a BSL certification, and he taught me what he learned both as an EMT and Combat medic. I spent over a month rigorously testing out the limitations of my alter ego, and while I have yet to discover my limits, I know they must exist. You see, I can operate under the assumption that if my alter ego dies, I won’t… because when my alter ego suffers damage, it doesn’t translate to my real body being hurt, so I am at less of a risk doing this…”
I told them, “That bilocation ability is the real crux behind my activities. I don’t have to make the same compromises as most others. I doubt that any of you can bilocate… what happens if one of you gets hurt, or worse, killed? Are you willing to do that to your families?”
Naoko shot back, “We can’t just stay put and do nothing!”
I, careful to control my volume, returned fire with, “Why are a bunch of schoolgirls even doing this? Where are the adults?”
Uriah explained, “Most superhumans do not have the kind of powers required to fight yōma. On average, men tend towards more specialized powers and women towards more broadly applicable powers, so most people who can wield powers that simulate magic are female; even then, such abilities are uncommon. We metahumans have culturally conditioned themselves to be discrete with our abilities… superheroism isn’t common. That, combined with the fact that these things are frightfully new, makes mobilizing defensive force quite difficult.”
Naoko pointed out, “That and just because we have superpowers doesn’t mean that we aren’t subject to the same pitfalls. We wouldn’t have believed any of this ourselves if we didn’t confront fairies ourselves.”
I asked her, “Fairies? Like the Daoine Sidhe?”
Ailing added, “You could call them yōkai or yāo if you want. They’re essentially the same thing.”
I asked incredulously, “You expect me to believe that I am the first superpowered vigilante and that fairies walk alongside metahumans?”
Uriah admitted, “No. The magical girl who patrolled this district for four years disappeared months ago. And fairies are much more elusive than metahumans are. Hence why most of us do not believe they exist.”
I decided to ignore the bit about magical girls apparently being real too and further argued, “Okay, forget about the fairies… That’s precisely my point: what happened to her? What you need are people with real-world experience in a relevant field: ex-military and law enforcement officers. Not whatever this is… She had four years of practical experience. You lot don’t even have a day’s worth of experience.”
Naoko protested, “I will not wait for my family to be destroyed by monsters.”
Frustrated, I shook my head in disbelief and assured them, “Look, girls… I will deal with these Yōma. What you need is a good martial arts instructor… Learn how to fight… Cultivate your minds and bodies and your powers. I’ll even deign to spar with you and help you cultivate your powers, but I will not let you accompany me on monster hunting.”
Irma asked, “So you won’t teach us?”
I told them, “Look, just because I’ve been involved in martial arts for most of my life does not mean I am qualified to teach you what you need to know… I have no experience coaching, just in providing peer support… the kind of fighting I’ve been taught is in many ways both too much and too little… I am underqualified to teach you what you need to know to fight monsters… but maybe getting the wind knocked out of you will knock some sense into you. Also, a prodigious fighter is not made in a few months…”
Naoko attempted to protest, but I interrupted her and told them, “This conversation is over.”
Uriah disconnected me from the telepathic relay. A courtesy I honestly did not expect.
I was frustrated at this violation of my privacy, but I knew deep down, especially after yesterday, I couldn’t ignore the possibility of yōma being real. After all, I’ve been active as a superhero in secret for more than a month. I just dealt with the devastation of a kaijū attack, and I could have sworn I saw a Tolkienesque dwarf on the news with a wand.
I needed to get out for a bit, so I made my way to my room, placed a jackknife in my pocket and made my way down the street, taking a bend at a crossroads to visit the corner store. I was surprised to find that it was staffed, though barely. It was a ma and pa shop owned by an Anglo-American gentleman and his Korean wife, with a specialty as an Oriental market with some subspecialties in European culinary oddities. While this city’s majority population is Pan-European diaspora, me and my father currently lived in a Koreatown, and many of the students I went to school with came from across the country with more than a few being foreign exchange students.
I bought myself a box of jujubes, and I ran back to my house. Along the way, at the bend, a concrete wall blocked my vision, which lead to me running headfirst into a 160 cm tall Japanese high school exchange student.
We both fell to the ground, and I heard the girl, startled, exclaim, “Wiru-chan, okā-sama!”
I could tell that she was speaking Japanese because I recognized some words commonly known in the otaku subculture, but I was lost as to what she was saying. Looking up, I noticed another woman behind her. The sheer size of the girl accompanying the girl I collided with startled me. A woman with a young face, blue eyes, and flowing blonde hair standing 244 cm tall.
The giantess gently drpped to a knee and outstretched her hand with “Small lady, are you hurt?”
I come back to my senses and admit, “No.”
I immediately turned my attention to the girl I ran into and, helping her back up to her feet, asked her, “Are you okay? I should have been paying attention to where I was going. I’m sorry…”
The Japanese girl stammered, “I am unharmed, but I should have been paying more attention.”
I took responsibility for my mistake, “No, I was the one who ran into you, so it’s my bad…”
The Japanese girl had a sense of wistful déjà vu on her face and in her voice.
The giantess introduced herself. “My name is Adora Maheshwaran, and this is my sister, Asuka.”
Turning to look at her, I saw she had a blackbody piercing in her ear.
After a moment of befuddled shock, I introduced myself, “My name’s Will Trueman.”
I noticed they looked like some of the concept sketches I saw in my dream.
I asked her, “So, are you adoptive sisters, stepsisters, or are you half-sisters?”
The giantess admitted, “Half-sisters.”
I asked her, “Did you receive your name from a biological or stepparent?”
The giantess seemed amused at this inquiry. “Quite perceptive. You don’t look Germanic yourself. I’d guess you’re Chinese and Bantu.”
I lit up at the observation with the excitement. “Wait, are you studying anthropology?”
The giantess chuckled at that and explained, “Heavens no, but I guess I’ll answer your question. My sister and I share the same mother, but not the same father.”
Asuka seemed rather irritated at the forthcoming of her sister.
The giantess parted, along with her sister, with the words, “May you live in interesting times, Jeune Mère de Infinités.”
Arriving home, I went back to my room and closed the door. I looked at the palm of my hand, where I had seen a similar blackbody object held by my larger body in my dream. Then, it appeared silently, between the blinking of my eyes. My heart skipped a beat. The “All-Slayer” - I heard it called that. There was a deep sense of awe, as if my subconscious and body were responding to something that my conscious mind could not yet apprehend.
I momentarily conceived it transforming into a spear, the king of weapons, and it did just that. It leaped out of my hand and extended into a blackbody weapon so dark that the surface details were imperceptible. I reached out and grabbed it, and a power surged through my body, flooding my unconscious. It spoke directly to my consciousness.
Not in words, but in pure ideation. Upon slightly moving it, it lit up with an electric pulse, almost as if it cleaved electrons from their orbitals. I imagined it in other forms and it reflexively metamorphosed into a jiàn, dào, and māccuahuitl. I gave it a name, like how my father named his rifle in the army. Its name is Holiday Junction, and with but a thought, it vanished again. I had yet to test this out in the same way I had tested the potencies of my alter ego, which gave me something to do in the interim.
I checked on my dad with my phone, and he was still streaming; so, I went upstairs to my room, placed down my knife, and put on an audiobook of The Neanderthal Parallax by Robert J. Sawyer. I grabbed a sketchbook, sharpened my pencil with my knife, and sat down at my desk. Recalling the odd-looking soldier I saw on the news, I sketched his face from memory. I drew a rough model of the rest of his body afterwards. I continued to draw for about thirty minutes before I checked the news again.
Of course, the news about the G² Impact seemed to completely eclipse every other concern, but some of these titles were absurd: “Kraken Spotted Off Coast of Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego”, “Giants and Halflings Among Humanitarian Workers”, and “Spartan Society in Antarctica”. I clicked on the article about giants and goblins, and sure enough, there was a video of a man of extraordinary, but natural, stature paired with a woman who was short enough to fit the description. Though it wasn’t necessarily their stature that stood out to me, much like the man with the wand on TV, but rather their faces. The giant had a blue complexion with tattoos across his face, while his friend, helping him direct people to safety, had a green complexion with a red dot painted between her brow with what looked like three petals, pointed left, right, and up, as well as two stems extending outwards between the petals.
At the time, I didn’t know that floral bindi pattern would be something I would become personally familiar with. The world was changing faster than anyone could have anticipated, and it would take time for us in the civilian world to catch up, but unbeknownst to me the people in the GSSDO had already become accustomed to all of this, and that would put them at an advantage compared to the rest of the world.
Luckily, I wasn’t going to go through all this alone; so for the time being, I should let someone else with more intimate knowledge of what is coming narrate their story.