--- Mia ---
Tom stared Scelus down. Then he reached into his coat and drew an enormous sword from it that should not possibly have been able to fit inside.
He pressed a button, and the sword burst into flame.
Mia was grateful that he was willing to defend her, but somehow all she could think about was how impractical that giant flaming sword looked. What was wrong with a gun?
"Wait, you want to fight me?" Scelus exclaimed in shock.
"Well, uh, yeah? Of course?" Tom said.
Both of them looked at the other in confusion, but before Mia could say anything, Scelus reached into his coat and threw an ornamented black ball at them.
The ball hit the ground and exploded into a large quivering mass of black and red.
"Gross!" Tom shouted in alarm as he dodged away. "What the fuck is that?"
A maw with far too many teeth erupted from the dark mass with a bone-chilling screech, followed by a body that looked like the unholy cross of a raptor and a centipede.
"Oh, nevermind. It's just a demon." Tom said in relief.
Then he stabbed the demon with his giant flaming sword, killing it instantly.
Scelus looked afraid, and reacted by throwing even more of these black balls at him.
A small army of various demonic creatures erupted from the ground, each more horrifying than the last.
Mia wanted to help, but she had no way to fight this. She was a nurse! What was she supposed to do?
"You've underestimated me from the start, and now it's time for you to pay the price!" Tom said with a smile. Was she imagining it or did his teeth just twinkle? "You might want to surrender now, because the longer this fight goes on, the more embarrassed you'll be when I emerge victorious!"
Then he started carving through the demons like a hot knife through butter.
Oh, nevermind. It looked like she was in an action movie now. And a shitty one at that.
"What's the matter? Can't keep up? Don't worry, I'll make sure to take it easy on you... just kidding!"
Mia knew she should be taking this life-or-death situation more seriously, but she could not resist the urge to roll her eyes. She should have brought some crackers. They would go very well with Tom's cheesy lines.
At least he wasn't making puns. Mia the Purrian really hated puns.
Scelus was looking more and more panicked as he threw another batch of bound demons at them.
But this time, one of the demons ignored the man with the giant flaming sword and decided to go for her instead.
The creature was a massive monstrosity of teeth and claws and it was sprinting directly at her!
Mia's life started flashing before her eyes.
"Polymorph!" Tom shouted.
The demon suddenly turned into a frog in mid-leap.
A very confused amphibian hit Mia in the face, and she slapped it away on instinct. The frog landed on the ground, croaked at her once in complaint, then started hopping away.
Seconds later, all of the demons lay dead.
"You can't just attack me! Are you mad? I am a Count, I deserve respect!" Scelus shouted in terror as he drew one final item from his cloak.
This one turned into a creature that defied description. Mia got a headache just looking at it.
She turned to look at Tom instead, to see his reaction.
"Ah fuck no. I'm not fighting that thing. PETEA would have my head!" He shouted.
Then he started dodging the beast's attacks while frantically shouting at people Mia couldn't see. "What do you expect me to do? Well, I don't have a fourth-dimensional cage with me! Fucking get me one then! I know! I'm not going to hurt it, I swear, but I need you to help me out here!"
She glanced at Scelus and the two of them shared a look of confusion with each other. What was Tom doing, and who was he talking to?
"Tourists." Scelus said with a sneer, as if that answered the question.
After several seconds of frantic dodging, Tom suddenly pointed his finger at the headache-inducing monstrosity and shouted "Banish!"
And just like that, the creature disappeared. One moment it was there in all its maddening horror, and the next it was gone.
Scelus raised his hands.
"I give up! I surrender!" He shouted.
Then more quietly he added: "Why did you attack me, anyway?"
"What do you mean, why did I attack you?" Tom asked. "You threatened to kill Mia and outright asked me if I had any objections. What did you expect would happen?"
Scelus blinked. "I thought you'd just offer to buy her off of me and I could make a quick profit. I mean, you looked like you might care about her and you are very rich, so I bought her off her owners at a fair market price and planned to sell her to you at usurious rates."
Tom looked between Scelus and Mia in confusion.
She decided to add her own two cents. "Yeah, I interpreted it the same way, nyaa. It's a pretty common tactic around here. Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy that you decided to defend me, but that was kind of unnecessary, nyaa."
"Why didn't you just pay me?" Scelus shouted in a strange mix of terror and indignation.
"It didn't occur to me, alright!" Tom shouted in disbelief. "Oh man. This has all gone really off script. Whatever. So how much does it cost to buy Mia off of you, anyway?"
"The standard usury markup for this type of transaction is five hundred and forty percent, so about two Imperial Notes."
"Alright. Cool. I have no idea how much an Imperial Note is but whatever. Here you go." Tom said as he tapped a few buttons on his wrist-mounted computer.
Two Imperial Notes! That was insane! And he just paid it, just like that?
He was saving her life, and yet this was so much money that Mia was tempted to tell him to spend it otherwise. Maybe give it to charity? It would save so many more people that way!
"Also, Mia, you are free now! I don't like slavery, so I'm giving you your freedom."
Mia's jaw dropped. She did not know how to respond, and just stood there while her brain rebooted.
"Wow. You are crazy, giving a slave her freedom. How are you planning to make a profit from that?" Scelus asked. "Still, that just barely offset the cost of all the demons you killed. But I'm not dumb enough to make something of that. You have probably bought a waiver to get away with this as well, and I won't waste my time. Pleasure doing business with you, and good evening to you, sir."
With that, Scelus left.
"That did not go how I was expecting it to go." Tom said after a few seconds.
Then he broke into a huge grin. "That was so awesome! You see, Mia? Unexpected stuff like this is why I never read the cultural primers. You just can't get into situations like this if you are too well-prepared.
"And by the way, the joke is on Scelus. I didn't actually buy a complete immunity to get away with crimes. I just bought a much cheaper license for a thirty seconds headstart before the police are allowed to chase me. It sounded much funnier than buying complete immunity."
"Thank you, nyaa!" Mia shouted at Tom once the reality of the situation caught up to her. "You saved my life! And you bought me from the Malumians, nyaa! Am I really free now?"
She was both happy and very confused. A slave being freed? That basically never happened. She actually had no idea what it meant.
She really wanted to hug Tom, but she restrained herself. As a woman you shouldn't be too forward. It could make the men uncomfortable.
"You are welcome! And yes, you are free now. Humans aren't fans of slavery, as a rule."
He smiled as he handed her a data chip that verified her newly gained status as a free citizen. She could scarcely believe it.
"Man, this day was great. First I made a bunch of friends, and then I got to fight some monsters and save a cute alien." Tom said.
Wait. This time she was not imagining it, was she? He just called her cute!
"Actually, come to think of it, this is a great time for me to shift back. You should know what I really look like."
And then Tom's body shifted and warped. His feline ears disappeared and were replaced with cute round ones. His body proportions changed with them, and he became a little shorter and narrower. So handsome!
Unfortunately he was still wielding his stupidly oversized flaming sword. It kind of ruined the image for her.
"Nyaa! It's nice to meet you, Tom! You look nice!" She said. She hoped that wasn't too forward.
"Thank you, it's nice to meet you, too!" He responded.
Both of them stood around for a few seconds in awkward silence.
"I have to admit, I was not expecting to encounter a Shoggoth here." Tom commented to break the silence. "I almost stabbed it before I realized what it was! Can you imagine the outrage that would have caused?"
"Wait, that was a Shoggoth? Those are horrifying eldritch abominations! They are much worse than demons, nyaa!"
"Hey now, don't be mean, Mia. I've read a lot about Shoggoths and they are actually a really cool species. I don't want to hear any hate speech from you against them."
"But everyone who studies them goes insane, nyaa!"
"No, they are perfectly normal natural phenomena if you understand anthropics. They are just memetic entities that embed themselves in the psyches of sapient species and reproduce through their subconscious."
"Just?" Mia asked, making air quotes around the word. "Nyaa." She added belatedly.
"Well, now that we have Faith Engines and can interact with this sort of stuff directly, they are just a particularly interesting form of wildlife."
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"Wildlife? But they drive people insane and warp space and time! They defy comprehension, nyaa!"
"Oh no, they are actually perfectly logical once you learn about consensus reality and understand that spacetime is really more of a thinky-feely, wibbly-wobbly theater stage kind of thing. Sorry, I can't explain it better than that."
"It must be very powerful wildlife though, nyaa. It gave you trouble even though you killed all the demons so quickly."
"Not really, no. It would have been easy to kill it, but I would never do that! It's a protected species, so I had to wait for PETEA to give me access to enough power to banish it without hurting it."
"What? What is PETEA? Is it the source of your power, nyaa?"
Mia was intrigued. She wanted to learn more about the strange knowledge and abilities the humans had that allowed them to fight even something as dangerous as a Shoggoth.
"No, PETEA stands for 'People for the Ethical Treatment of Eldritch Abominations'. They are a wildlife preservation society. They were originally founded because people kept trying to awaken Cthulhu as a joke, and it turned out that sleep deprivation is actually a serious problem for him. So some humans got together and founded PETEA to put a stop to all this bullying of eldritch abominations."
Mia had never heard of this 'Cthulhu' individual but she was glad to hear he was no longer getting bullied.
"So PETEA isn't normally the source of your power, nyaa?"
"No, my viewers are. I'm a celebrity, and I'm borrowing their power. Say hi to the camera!" Tom said, and waved at the air.
Mia didn't know what that meant, but she decided to do as he asked her to and waved at the air, too. Were invisible humans watching her? Mia was excited by the idea, and gave them her brightest smile.
"So cute!" Tom said.
"How does being a celebrity help you fight demons, nyaa? I thought you were a soldier, or a psion."
"Basically, it works like this: We use Faith Engines to warp reality, but there is only a limited amount of reality warping we can do before it starts negatively affecting the stability of the universe. Which is about as bad as it sounds. So all of us humans have an intervention budget for how much we are allowed to use Faith Engines to warp reality. If many of us pool our budgets together, we can do much more impressive stuff.
"Most of the time, we don't need to do that, because reality warping is very efficient inside the pocket dimensions we built, and it's also decently efficient in the wider galaxy out there. Unfortunately, the Facinus Sector in particular is really polluted from all the magical detritus the Malumians have accumulated over the years. An average human won't be able to get very far here with the Divine Intervention Budget he has available.
"But luckily we can crowdfund our reality warping. I'm a celebrity. That means a whole lot of humans share their budget with me because they like watching me do cool things with it. Cool things like saving innocent slave girls from evil slavers!" He winked at her.
The humans were psions who could share powers with each other, and Tom was famous, and that was why he was so strong. So a person's power would scale with their popularity. It was strange, but she could wrap her head around it: The humans were able to trade reality-warping-potential with each other as if it was money. That meant that the richest among them were the most powerful. Tom was absurdly rich, and he just massacred a small army of demons and even defeated a Shoggoth. It checked out.
She was just sad to hear that he called her a slave girl instead of a slave woman. It was quite insulting to be honest. It was not her fault that she had a very youthful appearance despite being a young adult. Not every Purrian woman could be blessed enough to look mature at a young age. Many women were unfortunate and kept their youthful appearance until a very advanced age. Calling her out for that was just plain rude. After he called her cute earlier, she was really getting some mixed messages from the man.
"Ok. This is much crazier than I was expecting, but I think I understand, nyaa." She responded. "I don't really get the way you fight, though. What is up with the giant flaming sword, nyaa?"
Tom smiled brightly and started waving the flaming sword around. "Do you like it? It's awesome, isn't it?"
"What is wrong with a gun?" Mia just asked right out. Seriously. Why?
Tom's face fell.
Oh no! She made the human sad! She didn't know what she was expecting, but it turned out that a sad human looked exactly like a sad baby ape. It was so unbearably cute! Mia felt terrible for making fun of Tom's sword.
"Swords are stylish. Style matters if you want to keep a good number of viewers. It's also a lot more fun than just shooting things. That's why I mostly use swords and wizardry."
"Wizardry? As in, magic? But magic doesn't exist. Or is this a case of 'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic'?" Mia quoted the ancient Purrian philosopher Sir Meowton.
"You have that saying, too? Nice. And yeah, that's exactly it. I have no idea how some of my abilities work, so I just call it magic. I mean, I just turned a demon into a frog by pointing at it and yelling 'polymorph'. I'm sure there is a logical explanation for how that works, but I will be damned if I know what it is. As far as I'm concerned, it's just magic." He shrugged.
"That sounds weird, but I guess I can see the point. I don't know how most of the medicine I administer in my job as a nurse works, either. I just trust that somebody really smart designed it well, and that it will save lives."
"Yeah, there probably is someone who understands how that spell works. It's too formulaic to be entirely free-form reality warping. That would be much more expensive and is usually not worth it. But programming your own spells requires an education in physics, informatics, and applied theology. I'm not that smart right now. I'm a wizard, which is basically a script kiddie who learns how to use spells other people made without understanding how they work. But I'm fine with that. Turning demons into frogs is fun, whether or not you understand how it works."
"Wait, you said you are not that smart 'right now'. What do you mean by that?"
"Well, I used to be smarter, but I dumbed myself down to the level of a baseline human because it's more fun. Same reason I'm keeping myself ignorant on purpose, really. But that's a whole nother topic. The important bit is that I basically have no idea what I'm doing, or why any of it works, and that's exactly what makes it so fun."
Mia cocked an eyebrow at that.
"I'm being serious." Tom continued. "The reason I'm popular as a celebrity is that I'm willing to go into weird situations blindly and because I'm good at improvising. Most of my subscribers want me to make embarrassing mistakes out of ignorance, and then watch me as I try to find a way to get out of that mess again. It's my shtick."
"That is so weird to wrap my head around." Mia responded. "You have to act like a fool because otherwise your power doesn't work. Is that also why you used all those incredibly cheesy, terrible one-liners earlier in the fight?"
"...No. I just like making those. Wow. I just got notified that my subscribers held a poll and they basically all agreed that my one-liners sucked. Well, at least 'so bad, it's good' won out over 'just terrible' and 'commit Sudoku to regain your honor'."
Oh no! Now he looked sad and embarrassed again! Like a cute baby ape! Mia had to fight down the urge to hug him. It would be inappropriate to hug him without permission, and it would be rude to ask.
She flattened her own ears in embarrassment.
Fortunately, Tom quickly brightened up again: "Don't worry. I don't mind getting called out on stuff like this. That's the only way to improve. I guess I will have to work on my lines."
Privately Mia thought to herself, what was the point in even having one-liners at all? But she did not say it out loud, because she was pretty sure that Tom was not ready to have that conversation.
A thought occurred to her. "I'm trying to find a good comparison for how your powers work, nyaa. Your subscribers empower you, and you have to keep them happy. That sounds sort of like a god calling upon the faith of his clerics, nyaa."
"Oh wow, that's very flattering, but I'm far from that. I don't have the power of a god. That's way too expensive for me. I mean, we can create gods of course, but it takes a lot of effort."
"Of course." Mia echoed with a hint of sarcasm.
"For example, we built The One Above All that the Fidelians believe in. They are a very faithful species, and it was super embarrassing to explain to them that their god didn't actually exist. But we fixed that, and now he does.
"Now that he exists, he is powered by all of their belief and prayer that was otherwise going to waste. It's not actually very efficient compared to just building more Faith Engines, but it's kind of neat."
"It's 'kind of neat' that you created a god for them, nyaa?" Mia asked.
Tom just shrugged. "It gets the job done, and the Fidelians preferred that over getting access to our Faith Engines. Only the name is kind of weird because their god is called The One Above All and he is actually kind of low in terms of overall power. There are a bunch of great memes about it, but I guess they wouldn't be funny to you without context.
"Making their god real took a lot of effort. That wasn't done by celebrities but by our government, using taxpayers' faith. I'm really nowhere near that level of power, so please don't get the wrong idea."
"Don't sell yourself short, nyaa! You saved my life! You are really good with that sword, you can turn demons into frogs, and you even have the greatest superpower of all."
"The greatest superpower of all? Please don't tell me you are talking about friendship. I don't think my heart could take it."
"Friendship, nyaa? Why would you think that is a superpower? I wish it was, nyaa. No, what I meant was money. Being rich is the ultimate superpower in Malumian society."
Tom stared at her, then abruptly started laughing.
"Yeah, you are right about that, Mia. We should probably make the most of my money now before they realize that I bought all my stuff with Fairy Gold."
"Fairy Gold, nyaa? What's that?"
"It's a fictional currency that turns to rubbish when you try to use it. I wish I could see the looks on their faces when it does."
"But you are paying in digital currencies. Those are just numbers on a computer, how can they turn to rubbish, nyaa?"
"Well, all the bits involved in the transaction will turn into zeroes, obviously."
Mia was pretty sure that computers did not work this way, but she decided to just take his word for it. She had a feeling that if she questioned every strange thing Tom said they would both die of hunger before they got anywhere.
"Tom, the Malumians really care about money a lot, nyaa. This is bad. This is really bad."
"What do you think they will do when they find out?"
Before she could open her mouth to respond, the loud noise of a powerful siren suddenly filled the air.
"Attention! A Greater Demon is about to be released to hunt down a dangerous heretic. Citizens are advised to stay inside and pray. Slaves are advised to carry on with their work and try to make themselves look tasty."
Mia's blood ran cold in fear.
Tom started laughing loudly.
"Oh my gods, that was awesome. Great comedic timing. I almost feel like I'm in a movie right now." He commented.
"This is no laughing matter!" She rebuked him. "Didn't you listen? It's going to kill people just on the way to get here! And then it will try to kill us, too!"
With a heavy heart she added: "If you aren't strong enough to kill that thing, then maybe we should just give ourselves up right now. It would be better to die immediately than to be responsible for the deaths of innocents just to gain a few more minutes of life."
"Wow. Way to bring down the mood, Mia. Don't talk like that. It's going to be fine. This is just a Greater Demon. They are pretty simple and straightforward memetic constructs. Worst case scenario for me, is that I overestimate myself and it kills me. Then I will just respawn later. It's expensive and will eat through a lot of Divine Intervention Budget, but I don't care about that.
"But you are right that this is dangerous to you and to the other civilians. So how about this: As soon as I figure out where the demon is, I will charge at it straight ahead without wasting time on coming up with a plan. You can run away in the meantime."
Charge straight ahead without a plan?
"That is not what I meant!" She shouted in alarm. "Please don't be an idiot and get yourself killed."
"It is far too late for that. I already decided to be an idiot months ago when I created this body. So I guess it's goodbye then. It was nice meeting you, Mia. Whether I win this or not, you probably shouldn't be around because the fight could be dangerous for you. But if you want then maybe we could meet up again later?" He asked her.
Was he blushing? No, it was probably just the stress getting to her.
Then a realization hit her like a freight train: "They know who I am!"
"What?" He asked.
"I just realized the Malumians know who I am! Scelus bought my slave contract. He knows my identity. That means you bought my slave contract with false money and you couldn't have freed me! I'm still a slave, and they know where I live!"
"Oh shit!" Tom exclaimed.
Then he suddenly looked into the distance and seemed to get lost in whatever silent communication he had. "Huh. Well, that's a relief. Good news, Mia! You are trending!"
"What?" She asked.
"It means that people really like you." He explained.
"I know what that means! How does that help us? The Malumians know where I live! They might go after my family!" She said.
She was starting to panic. This evening had been a rollercoaster of ups and downs, but this latest development could see her and her entire family killed! All she had wanted to do was to satisfy her curiosity and find out what was going on with the stars, and now this!
The situation was so bad, she had even stopped saying 'nyaa', as Purrians customarily did to show appreciation for the universe. She did not feel very appreciative of the universe at all right now.
"Well, it helps us because you have gained the attention of some pretty famous humans, and they want to help." Tom explained calmly. "Lilian Weaver has endorsed you and wants to give you a power up."
"Who?"
"Lilian Weaver. Let me make a comparison: That demon is called a Greater Demon because it's tougher than lesser demons and requires more psionics to summon. Lilian is to me what a Greater Demon is to a lesser one. She probably has at least a thousand times more subscribers than I do. I'm a big fan of hers, myself. She is on her way to the Facinus Sector now. I can't wait to see what she will do when she arrives. Maybe we will even get to meet her?"
He got a starstruck look in his eyes just talking about her.
"Anyway, she just decided you were fun to watch. She says you seem like a good person who got dealt a bad hand by the universe and now she wants to help you gain control of your life. Wow, that's so nice! She also says that she liked it when you made fun of my one-liners and my sword. Ouch. That's less nice. And she says that it’s funny how we both keep misinterpreting things and ignoring obvious hints. I don’t know what she means by that and I literally do not want to know, because it’s funnier this way.
“Anyway, she endorsed you, and that sent a ton of viewers to the both of us."
"What does that mean? Do I have people watching me right now, nyaa? Um. Hello humans, thank you for watching me?" She asked the air as she waved shyly in a random direction.
"Hahaha, you are a natural. That looked so cute, you already got donations just from doing that."
"Donations, nyaa?" Mia asked.
"Yes. They are donating Divine Intervention Budget to you, because they want to see what you do with it. Congratulations, Mia! You are a celebrity now!"
Just then, a deafening demonic roar shook the city. A cold shiver went down Mia's spine.
"Oh shit! Looks like the demon is good at tracking people. We are out of time." Tom said. "Let me just unlock some abilities for you. I hope you can think well on your feet and will figure this out quickly."
Then he waved his hands vaguely in Mia's direction.
Before she could respond, a large blue info box suddenly appeared in the middle of her vision, as if she was wearing a VR headset.
System Initialized. Class Unlocked: Nekomancer, Level 1
"What is this, nyaa?" She asked.
The demon roared again, and this time it sounded much closer.
"This is going to be so awesome!" Tom exclaimed, ignoring her question.
Then he looked at the air and said "If you like what you are seeing, don't forget to subscribe!"