Saturday noon, before heading to the party, I first went to Gonzo for another butchering session.

Despite my improved illusion spelling, which now made the spells last for six minutes and imposed no significant drain on my mana, I didn't want to take the risk. Knowing that I would be surrounded by a crowd of partying guests engaging in various activities, from dancing to games, I wouldn't want to leave anything to chance and let somebody find out about my demonic appendages.

Rationally, it made sense to go through with it, but summoning the energy and willpower to actually do it was a challenge. I dreaded and feared the intervention, and I believe it instilled a lifelong aversion and fear of those circular saws in me.

My body reacts differently now. It could be due to my new demonic nature or perhaps the effect of my levels; I don't know. After Gonzo had removed my demonic appendages, I felt a mix of hate, horror, fear, and energy coursing through my veins. It might have been the adrenaline or something else; who knows what the demonic equivalent is, but I needed some time to cool down.

Even after taking a hot shower to clean up the blood, I still had shivers. Wrapped in Gonzo's huge bathrobe, I sipped from the hot coffee that Helen had brought.

My regeneration was working wonders, and the bleeding had stopped very quickly. I was trying to mentally influence it, to slow it down for the remaining recovery.

"Why are you doing this?" Helen asked.

I shrugged.

"I'm going to a party with lots of people. I can't risk being exposed for what I am."

She chuckled.

“That's exactly the question. Don't you think that your magic wants to tell you something? Why don't you let these things grow properly? Why do you hide? We should live by what we are. You should have the courage to show what you've become!”

Oh yes, Helen thinks that my transformation is somehow the result of my magic. Well, it is, but in a different way than what I had told her.

I sighed.

“Do you think I would be able to live a normal life if I'd do what you ask me to do?”

She shook her head in negation.

"I do not ask you to do it. I was just asking the question! I think that we should recognize that magical creatures and persons exist and should come to terms with it. It is a civilizational need for our society to survive! If more people who are like you would do it, this would slowly become acceptable, but if everybody hides..."

It was my turn to shake my head with a sigh.

She talked about courage. Is this a question of courage or of stupidity?

"I'm not willing to die on the front lines of the fight for magic acceptance, Helen. Have you heard of any others like me? No? Why not?"

She repeated herself.

"If everybody hides like you do..."

I snorted. I've already been 'collected' once. Would it help if I explained to her that the meteor that had stricken the woods not long ago had not been a meteor but the controlled demolition of a research facility?

"You think nobody tried? I rather think that our overlords are busy finding and taking control of any person who shows the smallest degree of magic aptitudes. I suspect there are hundreds of biolabs where this thing is intensively researched, where they try to nurture and control it."

"Aren't you tired of hiding? Don't you have any trust in our society as a whole?" she naively insisted and reminded me of why I initially wanted to avoid disclosing myself to her. She is such an irremediably idealist!

I sighed.

"You, as a gamer, you ask me those questions? You saw what happened to the movement! Where are the boys and girls that have been arrested? What is going to happen to them? And that was only for maintaining a proxy server to that game world. What about the Bounty county? What is happening there?"

She conveniently ignored my argument about the gamers and answered only the second part of it.

"You know that those anarchos have caused a nuclear catastrophe there. The area is contaminated for ages to come!"

I raised a brow and looked into her eyes.

"Do you really think so?"

Our conversation was interrupted as a cleaned-up Gonzo, with no traces of gore, came back into the garage.

"Everything OK with you? How do you feel?" he asked. "I'm still shaken..."

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I shrugged.

"I feel like a chicken escaped from the abattoirs after having her wings, claws, and comb cut!" I said with a sigh.

He chuckled, then asked, "Don't you want Helen to try to heal the surface of the wound? Yesterday, she did heal one scratch on my hand; it was pretty awesome!"

I shook my head vehemently, “No, certainly not; that would probably only regrow my horns and the rest!”

Then I turned toward Helen – “Coming back to our conversation, don't show your abilities, Helen. It would be a very dangerous thing to do...”

She nodded with a pensive face.

“If you think so... I would come out with you if you decide to!”

I shook my head and rolled my eyes.

“Gonzo, take care of her, don't let her do anything stupid! Helen, just think of those children in the Golden Empire who did show some magical aptitudes as an analogy. We are at that level now!”

“If you want to make game-world analogies, I'd rather think at the Denikan Republic!” - she answered in protest.

I snorted.

“Yeah, because those were not identified, tracked, and conscripted for war?”

She huffed but did not reply. As I finished my coffee, I placed the cup on the small wooden circular table.

“OK, Gonzo, hush, please, I want to dress. I have to leave for the party soon!”

He chuckled, nodded to Helen, and left, not without commenting jokingly in a low voice,

“Now I've seen it all: to be hushed out of my own garage! I knew that installing that shower was a bad idea!”

*

As soon as I arrived home, I started preparing for the party. Lola was feverishly working on her side; we were supposed to appear as an angel (Lola) and a vampire (me).

The vampire's face very much resembled that of the weather lady, which is why I chose it.

Lola's idea had been for us to portray two angels. There was one angel character that would perfectly fit her. The other one was a bit of a stretch for me, while the vampire fit perfectly.

I was now disguising myself as that lady and only superficially incorporating the vampire.

Sunny had agreed to our Fata Morgana singer unveiling action despite the short time we had left to organize things. It was planned to happen in the second part of the party towards the late evening when some of our songs should also be played. He already knew most of them, liked them, and sent a really warm email back.

Everything was pointing towards a great PR coup for us, and Lola was enthusiastically fretting about how great this would be. She almost acted like my personal PR manager and cheerleader, giving me a lot of good ideas, reading and re-reading the emails, and asking a lot of pertinent questions about the details of the action, pointing to a couple of flaws in how we had planned the unveiling actions.

She got in contact with Cara, Sunny's aide and PR manager, and they already exchanged a couple of emails discussing the details of the unveiling. She kept me and the boys in cc on those emails.

I was pleasantly surprised, it was really great to see her engaging herself so much for me, and I was already regretting not having informed her earlier about my singer career. Is it not the best to have your friends guiding and helping you? Unleash the power of friendship!

Once she was ready, she helped me check my make-up. I feared she would see those and ask about the wounds where the horns had been cut while doing her close examination, but it did not happen. Actually, I was almost expecting it, and at a certain time, I would need to come honest with her on this part too, but surprisingly, my magic illusions seemed to be that good now!

I was at the same time positively surprised and disappointed by not having the occasion to come clean with her, but there will be other occasions. Besides, what would stop me from showing her my horns once they grow back and starting the conversation?

We took a taxi, even if it was that close to home, as Lola said that we should not walk dressed in a party costume. That put a dent in my budget, but I could not let Lola alone bear the cost.

Sunny lives also in Queensborrow, but in the higher part of the district, not the lower part like we do.

Queensborrow is overall considered a noble district, being an area with individual homes with gardens, not blocks of flats or rows after rows of narrow hobbit-friendly, not human-friendly homes. But the district itself has two parts.

The higher part, closer to the woods, is the rich men's borough, and we had to pass through a checkpoint to enter it.

The lower part is for the upper middle class, but nowadays there is a greater and greater distinction between the middle class and the upper class. One side was getting poorer and closer to those 'useless eaters', the part of society that did not produce anything, while the other one grew richer.

I've always seen with sadness how my neighborhood was slowly decaying. Once I moved to this town, it was as if moving back a decade in my old town, but the signs of slow decay, if you knew where to look, were obvious here, too.

I've always tried to ignore these rather sad parts of our lives, as there was no way I could change it; it was as it was. Best to live and let live, as my father used to say, and accept that the upper class does as it pleases.

This checkpoint was actually not legal; the area should be open for all to walk through, but they do have their own security and guards, and interpret the laws as they please. There was no use arguing with them; even if you were right, you would end up losing a lot of money, eventually your existence for the sake of an argument, so most people conform to how things were.

In other countries, the mobility of most people was limited to a narrow neighborhood, and whole cities were off-limits for most of the population, a trend that was furiously fought against here.

At least we still had the theoretical right to go in there.

It stung to see that we were halted, asked to get out of the taxi, the party invitation checked, and us personally controlled as for an airport security check, while other rich people just passed by.

If you tried to protest, you'd end up with cavities searched or a full-body X-ray, and I didn't want to get there.

On the other hand, I could kill them all and walk through...

Okay, stop hallucinating, Lores; you are going to a party!

Lola was chatting with these people, very excited to be allowed into the upper-class borough and go to that party, and she looked really gorgeous in her costume. I must say that even these checkpoint people did seem to be impressed by her looks and gave her a kinder treatment.

Once the assholes were satisfied with having frisked us long enough, we were allowed to go, and they even wished us to have a great party.