Will Trueman here.
Within a day of that metahuman terrorist attack in Japan, in the year of Our Lord 2075, the internet discovered the manifesto of the villain.
In no time, users translated it into various languages: English, Korean, Chinese, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, and many others.
That killer’s manifesto, “CONTRADICTION IS TRUTH” (矛盾こそ真理), exploited the same dialectic that destroys the ability of men to use their rational faculties. The logic of unreason which fueled the era of horrors with Naziism, Fascism, and Marxist-Leninism in the 20th Century.
Intentionally disguising its nature as a heretical scripture to an esoteric religion through the postmodern manipulation of language and pretentious verbosity. Among the contemporary dialecticians, it spread like a Californian forest fire.
Only time would tell if it would take, but my father reading through this work’s pseudo-scientific, scriptural structure and seemed inclined to think that it would reinvigorate esoteric wizards.
Assuming most metahuman communities could resist propaganda, uniformity among them remained was a vain and inhuman hope. Much like the assumption of an underlying universal ethic among the nations of the world and their cultures.
All it would take is for a powerful minority to indulge in the lie to cause unfathomable damage and change the world. Believing the first lie told by the serpent in the garden, even after our special fall.
That we can become God by re-entering the garden of Eden, under our own power, and taking a second bite out of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
This was but a footnote within the news, which seemed utterly flooded with new discoveries unveiled from the first appearance of the GSSDO as well.
The most shocking of which was the discovery that not only did alien civilizations exist, but that these aliens were metahumans themselves. Albeit, the nature of their superpowers seemed different from those of Earth.
This raised several questions. Firstly, whether these are our brothers and sisters born from the same Adam and Eve, but displaced by some panspermic power across the cosmos?
Or if these cosmic siblings were the sons and daughters of another Adam and Eve as in the story of Starcrossed and Interleft? The enormity of this formless chaos bubbling to the surface deeply troubled me.
I didn’t even know where to begin with the Yōma problem that my foolish peers were so adamant about waging war against.
This self-imposed global lockdown gave me time to think about how I might appear as my alter ego in the day, if required. After the Cold Civil War of the 2010s-2030s, security cameras and dashcams were commonplace among most American households, even in high trust neighborhoods. This led me to contemplate strategies to get around cameras, to protect my identity.
A black dress might work to conceal me during the night, but it certainly wouldn’t help during the day. That day, I realized I when I manifested my alter ego; we were never in direct contact. Nor when I called her back to me. Introducing the idea that this ability might have a nonlocal nature to it.
On the first night of testing, I discovered I could manifest my alter ego on the opposite side of a barrier, such as a wall, ceiling, or floor. I even learned how to mute the glow of her summoning. So that summoning her would not draw attention to me if I conjured her outside.
On the second night, I could manifest her within the basement or on the opposite side of the opaque wooden fence while I was in the attic. On the third night, I could manifest my alter ego in the air, above a neighbor’s house on the opposite side of the street.
I meticulously noted every facet of my alter ego’s summoning with my eidetic memory. Allowing me to rapidly extend the ranges at which I could call upon her and return to one body.
The thought of letting anyone else die because of my ineptitude was unacceptable. I needed to cultivate both my powers and character so that I could transform the nature of this traumatic encounter with death on an unimaginable scale.
To transmute this trauma into a motivation for metamorphosis, as opposed to a catalyst for victimization and self-pity. Like the heroes of the Golden and Silver ages of superhero comics, the Cimmerian champions of sword and sorcery literature, and the saints and heroes of history.
At noon, I called my best friend, Rory Rider, to check up on her and make sure she was doing well. During this time, my father listened to the independent news outlets which engaged in empirical journalism, playing in the background, as he worked on creating various assets for his business; fully expecting the world to return to normalcy after the world adjusted to its new situation.
I talked to Rory about several things when I heard the live coverage of a police chase.
Turning on the TV, we witnessed something the police weren’t equipped for. I noticed that all the police cars that pursued them seemed to veer wildly and uncontrollably into disaster. As if someone had stolen control of the wheel and crashed them into each other, other vehicles, and or barriers.
The lead police vehicle violently change velocity, both speeding up and turning as if the wheel had been rapidly jerked as far left as possible. It struck and disabled another police cruiser. To my shock, all the cruisers violently careened into parked cars, poles, and each other.
Later in this chase, a motorcycle seemed to act outside the control of its driver. The engine revved, and the machine popped a wheelie as it went berserk—almost like a horse bucking its rider. Throwing the poor man off his own ride.
The ghost ridden machine raced to overtake a new police cruiser, crashing into it by popping a wheelie and stopping. This caused it to slam into the cruiser, flip onto the hood, smash the windshield and flip over the vehicle.
It was almost as if one of these two criminals could manipulate the controls of motor vehicles. Which, if true, would make it impossible for a police pursuit on the road. Therefore, since the police pursuit of these thieving vandals was impossible, the job of stopping their rampage lay on someone like me.
They seemed to be a pair of petty teenage car thieves in ski masks, emboldened by the collision of the mundane with the supermundane. Their reckless driving and power-tripping risked untold property damage and fatalities.
The foolhardy young man on the passenger’s side peaked his head, torso, and hips out of the car window and howled with adrenaline as he sat on the door. Risking his own safety for a cheap thrill in this careening vehicle.
While continuing my conversation, I made my way to the alleyway fence. Then I summoned my alter ego in my room. She then used her super-senses to make sure the coast was clear, then tapped on the closed curtain of my window to signal this discovery to myself.
So, I recalled her, then immediately summoned her back into our world, further away than ever before. This time two hundred meters away and fifty meters in the air. Something I chalked up to the adrenaline coursing through my veins and the urgency of the situation.
This, being the first time that I had ever manifested in the daytime, I noticed that my Gothic Lolita attire was now pure white. While I loved the dress, I had more important things to do.
I controlled my descent to safely land on the sidewalk, then took off at subsonic speeds towards the broadcast’s last location. Contrary to what I expected, it wasn’t the distant sounds of helicopters and criminal chaos that guided me. Rather, there was something more subtle I could feel: a psychical sense guiding me beyond the powers of hearing or sight.
It was a presentiment that allowed me to more accurately anticipate where I needed to be. A novel power I discovered on the fly when I realized I could predict how the distant sounds would change.
It wasn’t long before I made it to the scene, where I found the hoodlums had entered a parking garage. Before they made their way into the parking garage, I scanned the car with my penetrating vision and got a look at their faces.
Tracking them through the garage, I saw something incredulous. The car carrying the criminals would never come out, as they transmuted it, while driving, into a 2045 Ferrari. The act of transformation made a distinctive cacophony indicative of warping metal, glass, and rubber.
These two criminals then removed their masks and calmly left, expecting to get away as if they were merely pedestrians.
After their departure, I jumped down to the vacant sidewalk and I took off. At 248 mph, I quickly caught up to my target and decelerated to match their speed.
I used my penetrating vision to eavesdrop on them: peering through their skin, muscle, bones, and vehicular obstructions to see every small but meaningful articulation and intuitively reconstructing their conversation. I could see the synaptic discharges within their bodies, granting a complete 3D visualization of their brain activity and activation potentials within their peripheral nervous systems.
While I could not use this information to possess a perfect knowledge of future action or even intentions, it granted me forewarning about what they could potentially choose to do.
I reached equilibrium with the driver's side of the car and knocked on the window and signaled for the driver to roll down their window. While they did not deign to stop the vehicle, the driver complied with my request to roll down the window.
I heard the passenger comment to the driver, “Hey, isn’t that the woman from the news? The one who was helping with rescue efforts in Japan?”
I confirmed, “Yes. Now I ask that you pull over now.”
The driver asked incredulously, “What?”
I explained to them, “I know you’re the perps the police were chasing earlier, so consider this a citizen’s arrest.”
The driver tried to pretend as if he didn’t know what I meant as he turned to his passenger and said, “Is she serious?”
I asked the driver, “When did you crack your skull?”
They both seemed to be surprised by this statement.
I told them, “I can see through opaque matter. Which is how I could see your faces through your masks before you entered the parking garage, and how I know your passenger placed the masks underneath his seat. It’s also how I can see the long healed over linear skull fracture on your parietal bone.”
This statement clearly horrified the driver, who didn’t know what to do.
The cocky passenger snidely remarked, “What, you’re a vigilante and a doctor?”
I sarcastically remarked, “A photographic memory goes a long way when you have friends in academic disciplines… Now tell me, which one of you can control cars?”
The passenger freaked out at that accusation and caused the vehicle ahead of me to come to a full stop.
I simply jumped over the car, landing in front of it. The hijacked car then sped up to intercept me, but I dodged the vehicle and jumped high in the air. While I did not know how to fly; I found I had more control over the trajectory of my descent than expected.
I landed in front of the car with my targets, ready to stop them as I did those criminals the day before the G² Impact. The driver swerved to avoid me, and I immediately intercepted them.
Calling upon that tactile power again, I intercepted the vehicle with my gloved hands without damaging it or injuring the passengers as I ground my shoes into the pavement. The friction brought us close enough to a halt that I could I effortlessly lift the vehicle above my head as I came to a stop.
That initial accusation was a bluff. I did not then know whether it was a specific or general telekinetic power that the passenger possessed, but now I was sure that they could only control vehicles. If they had power over flesh and blood, he would have tried to influence me. Instead, they had only shown some power over motor vehicles.
The occupants howled in abject terror as I leaped 700 m (2,296 ft) straight into the air.
At the peak of the ascent, I briefly let go of the vehicle to tell them in American Sign Language, “Be not afraid.”
I grabbed hold of the vehicle and dampened the inertia of the car and everything within with my tactile telekinetic power. We landed in an adjacent park. I displaced all the kinetic energy through my body and into the ground, which ruptured underneath my feet. Because of this, both the passengers and the vehicles were unblemished. Sans them having passed out from the sheer terror of the fall.
The last thing I wanted to do was damage a stolen car or physically hurt two teenagers. Not that the vehicle, if stolen, could be returned to the original owner because of its comprehensive transformation. Though I thought it might be possible that the license plate remained unmodified. So, I opened the car door and confiscated the keys, which I then placed right side up.
I flagged down the news and police copters that saw this all transpire and once again employed my knowledge of American Sign Language to say, “These two are the perps. The driver can change the appearances of cars and the passenger can remotely control motor vehicles. Their masks are under the passenger’s seat.”
I showed the news chopper the keys, then placed the keys on the branch of a nearby tree. The police, guided by the copter, arrived, then I fled the scene, again.
It was much harder to disappear in the day, so I patrolled the city until nightfall, when I could more effectively return home unseen.
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As horrible as it was to fish corpses out of burning, irradiated, and carcinogenic rubble, I learned a lot about how my powers through on-the-fly observation. Lessons that would help me in my self-chosen responsibilities as both a superhero and a magical girl.
To ensure that, no matter where I was in the world; no one else would suffer a loss of life or limb due to me failing to use my abilities to their maximum efficiency.
* * *
The world was still under a self-imposed lockdown, so I passed the time with my father after he finished his work. To keep his company running, he had to ramp up his own production. Normally, he only streamed one week a month, and those streams usually only lasted for two or three hours. This week he streamed for ten hours every day since the G² Impact and still found time enough to spend with me.
Most of his talents took him up on his offer to take a break from streaming to spend time with their families. Although, many of them soon returned to their kayfabes after seeing him put so much effort into his job.
As a manager, he advised them to reduce their time streaming and helped them efficiently manage their time so that they could spend more time with their families. Many of them only streamed for an hour or two every few days during this period. Something which helped their fans to de-stress during this terrifying period. A decision rooted in my father’s business philosophy.
I played games with my father often. Some days we played board games, some days card games, and on other days, we would play one of the myriad video games he obtained for his business. However, I assumed he would probably be tired of video games at the end of his stream, so I searched through our collection of board games.
I made my way to the board game shelf and looked to find something to play. We were both very skilled chess players, and my father’s international business dealings meant that he inevitably learned how to play a variety of classical board games.
My father had sets for international standard chess, caturaṅga, Gliński’s hexagonal chess, janggi, makruk, shōgi, sittuyin, Tamerlane chess, and xiàngqí. We owned other strategy games such as Abalone, Backgammon, Battleship, Blokus, Checkers, Chess Unbound, Connect 4, Da Vinci’s Challenge, Go, Gobblet, Hnefatafl, Hive, Leaves, LYNGK, Martian Chess, Nine Men’s Morris, Otrio, Pünct, Quarto, Reversi, Skud Pai Sho, Sternhalma, Tak, YINSH.
We also had Azul, Monopoly, Risk, Royal Game of Ur, Sagrada, Uno, etc.
I made my decision and had several hours left before my father was done with work, so I trained in our in-house gym, and do vigorous cardio for 90 minutes.
Listening to a conversation between a Thomist and a Palamist discussing the essence-energy distinction on a philosophy podcast, I performed my scheduled routine. 100 explosive pushups, 15 mixed grip pull ups, 100 pulse squats, 100 sit-ups, and a 10 km on a treadmill, in addition to other exercises. Ensuring not to neglect the lower back.
After that, I went and read some of my dad’s books, this time reading Stephen King.
At 15:00 hours I prayed the chaplet of Divine Mercy, for the people I encountered in Japan.
When my father finished, at around 17:00 hours, I let him wind down for about thirty minutes before I asked him, I asked him, “So how’s your scalp?”
He admitted, “Cold, but I’ll get used to it.”
I then asked him, “Would you like to play a game of Risk?”
My father was better than me at this game, but I was no novice myself.
He lit up and accepted my challenge, and we started our game. Unlike most people, we read and memorized the rule book, which meant that the game was more streamlined.
During the gameplay, I asked him, “Could you tell me more about the Trueman family?”
He thought about it for a moment, then asked, “Have I ever told you the story of how we got our name?”
I lit up and told him, “No, you haven’t.”
He smiled and explained, “Well, as with you and me, the story of the Trueman family begins with an adoption. An Anglo-American in the territory of Tejas, adopted a Spaniard boy who was the sole survivor of his village, which was massacred by the Comanche. Back then, the Mexican government did little to nothing about its outer territories being raided by the Comanche and Apache.”
He explained, “It was actually the Americans who settled in Tejas who brought with them infrastructural development and security to the Spaniard and Native American settlers.”
I asked him, “I believe you told me about this part. About how the Mexican government intentionally let the foreigners build the infrastructure so that they wouldn’t have to do it themselves?”
My dad smiled. “And how their sloth cost them the territory of Tejas? They effectively abandoned their responsibilities to their subjects… and both necessarily and rightly lost their legitimacy over it.”
My father explained, “There was a time when people forgot that the defenders of the Alamo included not only James Bowie, William B. Travis, and Davy Crockett, but also José María Esparza and Carlos Espalier. José María Esparza was among the few who were granted a proper burial at the Alamo, thanks to his brother who served in the Mexican army. His brother petitioned the leadership for this privilege, and out of respect, they granted his request. However, most of the deceased were cremated.”
I asked him, “Do we have any ancestors who died at the Alamo?”
He told me, “Yes. They were cremated.”
I asked him, “Is that why, despite our adoptive family being almost entirely Hispanic, we have an English surname?”
He answered, “Yes. This is also why adoption is such an important tradition among the Trueman lineages. It’s the cultural root explaining why I was adopted, and why your father asked me to take care of you if the unthinkable happened.”
I remarked, “That you told me about.”
He confessed, “I’m sorry that you didn’t get to meet them.”
I confessed, “I’m not… As curious as I am about them, I’m happy that you’re my dad, and I wouldn’t change that for the world. Besides, death isn’t the end, so I’ll still get to meet them one day.”
My father smiled, “Ever the optimist, aren’t you?”
We spent about 120 minutes playing the game before I lost. After which remembered something.
“I forgot, I have something for you, from your tatarabuelo.”
He handed me a DVD of an old cartoon and explained, “He started watching this when he was 14. It’s still one of his favorites, but considering his health, he thought you might enjoy it.”
It was a complete series of Ed, Edd n Eddy. A show I had never heard of, but my great-great-grandfather had good taste in media, so I gladly accepted this gift.
I asked my father, “When can we visit him again?”
My father confessed, “I don’t know. He said he wants you to stay here because it’s safer.”
I understood we might not see him for a while, given he was in too poor a condition to come to us.
He explicitly told my father not to let me come visit him, but my father immediately proposed a compromise: “But we could do a video call with him tomorrow. Maybe he’ll agree to a watch along and you can enjoy his gift together.”
I accepted this offer without reservation.
Because of the difficulties of sneaking around during the day, my alter ego could not return until late at night, when everyone was expected to be asleep. When my alter ego arrived home, I could recall all that had happened to myself that stayed home.
* * *
During the wait, as day turned to twilight, I heard something which was neither human nor beast, but which more resembled the organic analogue of a chiptune cry of pain.
I made my way into the woods, following the sound of metal hitting flesh and bone accompanied by these eldritch cries, where I encountered a strange sight.
The beaten, almost albino creature had two white circular eyes with whirling black circles of fur. On its cheeks were eye-like patterns: blood-red irises, a blue lacrimal caruncle, and the rest of the image was as black as pitch.
At the end of its almost rat-like tail was an octahedral club with a long spine at its end and four claw-like protrusions for each of the other rounded points. Its fur was like that of a polar bear, sans the vibrant black stripes that decorated its limbs, body, and tail.
A young man, maybe 14 years old, with a bloodied aluminum baseball bat, wound up for another strike when I approached him from behind and grabbed the bat. Halting the wind up in its place.
Despite its apparently featureless eyes, I could tell from the movement of its ears and its chiptune-esque cries that this creature, like many mammals do, was asking for help in its own creaturely way.
I ordered the kid, “Step away from the creature!”
The cocky brat demanded, “Who the hell are you?”
The clear disparity in our sizes compelled him to step away from me and towards the creature, which stood on all fours and postured as if to defend it.
I told the kid, “I don’t know what that thing is… but considering its natural armaments, the fact you and your clothes remain unblemished, and that it immediately stepped up to defend you, I think it’s safe to assume that your assault of this animal was not in self-defense.”
The beastie’s lagomorph-like ears perked up and in my direction.
I told the boy, “You can’t just go around abusing creatures for your own amusement. What habits does such behavior cultivate?”
The beastie began sniffing the air in my direction and seemed to look me in the eye when I glanced down at it. At that point, all aggression left it and it stood upright on its hind legs like a prairie dog.
This seemed to annoy the boy who kicked at the creature, but I intervened and simply placed my leg between his kick and the beastie before he made contact. Both the boy and the beastie immediately recoiled in surprise at the speed of my intervention.
The beastie lowered its head and approached me like a cat, placing a light, scent-marking headbutt on my legs. A behavior that seemed to send the boy into a rage.
“What the fuck are you doing Akhbar (עַכְבָּר)?” The kid screamed.
The beastie seemed to speak. An act that seemed to horrify its owner. It spoke only one word, which it repeated with aggression, “Choose!”
It stepped in front of me as if to face its abuser.
At which point, another creature, with six emaciated, clawed, humanoid arms, an upright, bipedal frame, a mousy tail, and a hummingbird like beak, cloaked in a tailor-made black robe, made its presence known. Gently descending from the sky, its icy blue, lidless eyes were wide and blinked with a nictitating membrane.
It spoke with an inhuman tongue, and Akhbar seemed to relent.
This new creature’s appearance unsettled me, but utterly froze the kid in terror.
The beaked thing promised, “I am not for you, metahuman, nor am I hear for the tamer. I am merely here for the creature.”
I readied for a fight before asking, “What do you plan to do with it?”
The beaked thing promised, “I simply want to help it heal.”
Akhbar moved away from me and towards the beaked thing, which tapped the little monster on the head.
The beaked thing said, “The bond which abuses, I sever for the mutual good of the abused and their abuser.”
The kid immediately fell to his knees, as if suffering the sudden onset of the most painful migraine I have ever seen.
I darted to the boy with superhuman speed and used my penetrating vision to see the unnatural storm of neurological activity coursing through his brain.
The beaked thing assured me, “Do not fret. He will be fine in a few minutes, though he will need to sleep.”
I made by way to the beaked thing and, grabbing it by its cloak, demanded, “What did you do to him?”
The beaked thing gestured with its hands as if to signify pacifism.
It said, “The child will be fine. His pain should subside in anywhere from a minute to an hour. This poor creature was about to sever their psychic bond, which would have killed the child. I simply stepped in to ensure that the severing of their bond was as safe as possible.”
I asked the beaked thing, “What in God’s name are you, creature?”
The creature answered me, “I am what your metahuman academics call a nouiform. Like the other creature before you, I am a creature that bonds with humans.”
I asked it, “For what purpose?”
The creature obliged me, “It is simply our nature to bond with rational souls.”
That phrase, “rational souls“, stood out to me as Scholastic language.
I commanded the creature, “We will go to the hospital, and so help me if anything happens to this child…”
The manner in which I said it clearly showed I was using an inclusive use of the word “we”.
The creature willingly submitted. Placing its upper right hand in the air as if to give an oath.
It said to me, “I will take responsibility for anything happening to the child. Though, luckily for me, the bond shared between him and the little one was not strong, and should last only thirty seconds.”
I turned back to the child and saw that, as promised, the neurological storm in his head ceased and he returned to normal cognitive function, though very exhausted and angry.
The small creature reared its back like a cat, bearing large bone crushing teeth, and readying its tail like a scorpion. But before I had to defend the boy, the beaked thing spoke inhumanly, which the little thing seemed to understand, and stepped between them.
Then the beastie disappeared with supersonic speed into the woods.
He wobbled to his feet and screamed, “You fucking bastard! I can’t feel my connection with Akhbar!”
The beaked thing told him, “To save your life, I severed the bonds between you.”
The boy threw a tantrum, claiming, “You had no right to do this! He was mine!”
The beaked thing offered to explain more about what he and Akhbar were, and I took him up on his offer. So, we left the sensory range of the aggressive adolescent, though I monitored him with my superhuman perception and ensured that he eventually made his way back to the city.
I asked it, “Do you have a name?”
The beaked thing answered, “My name, is Kauākṣara.”
I inquired, “How many more like you are there?”
Kauākṣara confessed, “I cannot know. Much like your metahumans, tamers have mostly existed in secret. Though, given what I heard about the goings on in Japan now, this GSSDO has been aware of our existence for some time.”
I presented some information for its assessment. “On the news was a birdlike creature carrying a pygmy man, which seemed to have the power to manipulate the debris. Is this one of you nouiforms?”
Kauākṣara assessed, “That would be my assumption, but I have never met this specific entity. I have been roaming the American continent since the 1400s.”
I asked it, “Where are you from, exactly?”
Kauākṣara made a noise that I assumed to be roughly equivalent to a chuckle, then said, “Someplace that no longer exists. Comes with the territory of being thousands of years old.”
I interrogated, “What does this bond between nouiform and the tamer entail?”
Kauākṣara explained, “It depends. Often it entails a psychic connection, allowing passive telepathic communication between the two.”
I finally asked, “Are you familiar with yōma?”
Kauākṣara confessed, “Not by this term. Could you describe it to me?”
I described it to the best of my abilities with what limited information I had available, and Kauākṣara seemed to recognize something.
Kauākṣara suggested, “I will investigate this matter, but I do have an idea what these might be, and I do not suspect nouiformes. If I might ask, where did you get this information from?”
I explained, “This information came from a diviner.”
Kauākṣara thought for a moment, the something beyond my perceptions caught its attention.
It promised me, “I will report anything I find back to you, but for now I must go.”
I asked, “How exactly do you plan on finding me?”
Kauākṣara answered, “Let’s just say I don’t think it will be very hard to find you. Goodbye, madam.”
Just before departing, he stopped, then warned me, “Be cautious around us, madam. We are extremely powerful, and while some of us mean no harm, and even love humans, there are some among us who are incredibly Machiavellian, sadistic, and even anthropophagic.”
I asked one last question, “What kind are you?”
Kauākṣara left me with, “The kind who finds joy in others’ joy.”
Kauākṣara departed from me, and I did not chase it. The fact it kept its word regarding the wellbeing of the child was enough for me to trust but verify.
Now that it was the dead of night, I made my way back towards home unseen and remotely called myself back to my alter ego, still at a distance.
I experienced the sudden recombination and organization of experiences into one coherent narrative of memories, and I was happy that no one got hurt today.
My recombination occurred when my younger self was about to head to bed, so I said my nighttime prayers, then went to sleep.
Right as I was about to doze off into dreamland, my phone got a notification, and I checked on it.
I received a text which read, “So, you’re a fan of Lolita fashion as well?”
My heart almost stopped, and the next text came by, “Your secret is safe with me, but can we talk tomorrow?”