Aurora’s alarm buzzed annoyingly and reliably at seven AM. She reached over with her bruised, but not broken right arm, and gently slid her finger across her phone screen to silence it with a practiced motion. The broken glass reminded her of the day before, just as much as the pain across her body. Of course she forgot to turn it off after she got back from the hospital a few hours ago.
She lay there a few moments longer, frustrations broiling in her mental oven as she worked herself through a breathing exercise. She would not - could not - afford to be seen as the large angry man. Not even in her own apartment. Not even over the crippling hospital bill, destroyed van, unpaid sick leave, wiped out savings for HRT and mostly likely late rent bills that those dumb fucking- She caught her train of thought with an iron grip, ending it before it had the chance to spiral into a depressive pit.
With a grunt of a voice far too deep and masculine to feel comfortable, she rolled out of bed. A bit of food and changing her bandages would be good to keep her focused on something other than her life being ruined again. At least this time wasn’t so bad. She still had a place to live, even if only until she fell behind on rent. Maybe she could crash with Kate, if things got really tight? Aurora barely knew her though, and it felt like an imposition to even ask.
With the practiced ease of someone far too used to getting very little sleep, she threw some slices of shitty white bread into the toaster, turned it on, and stepped into the bathroom. The mirror was covered with a towel that had sat there since moving in, and the rest of the bathroom was sparsely used. The countertop only had her toothbrush, toothpaste, and a simple reusable razor.
Aurora let out a pained grunt as she bent down to get at the cabinet under the sink, pulling out her first-aid kit before returning to the kitchen and sitting down at the shitty little table she managed to get out of the damaged items pile at the warehouse. It wobbled a little, but was sturdy enough for her broke-ass needs.
As she went about carefully removing the gauze around her wounds, Aurora took stock of the various different injuries that were going to be draining her transition fund for the time being. Her right arm was covered in many small slices from the shards of her windshield that had sprayed across her, and bruised in several places. Her face stung from multiple cuts across it too, and three of her ribs were fractured. She was covered in scrapes across her back from where some other driver had hauled her out of her van and across the pavement after she passed out. The doctors kept telling her she was lucky - if Crimson Omen had landed just a foot more to the left, she would have been crushed to death. Aurora had to rely on all three of her therapy sessions to shut down the intrusive thoughts about how it might have been better to get crushed to death than deal with the hospital bills.
Her phone, still in its place next to her bed across from the table she was sitting at, started to ring with the familiar tune of the song that Kate had insisted she set as her ringtone. It belonged to some Paragon over in Europe who’d joined up with a Europop group who’d somehow never fully gone away. With a soft grunt, she stood up and picked the call up.
“Yyyyello?” Aurora asked, making sure her tired, pained voice came through as deadpan as possible.
“Aurora! Oh thank God, you’re okay!” Kate’s relieved voice came through as a heavy sigh rapidly followed. “I know you sent me a text that you are at the hospital, but you stopped answering!”
“Ah.” Aurora felt her face heat up just a little bit. She’d been so tired the day before that she’d passed out as soon as she got home. “My phone died, and I was completely out when I got home.”
“Ugh! Stupid technology, completely failing when I need it most!” Her friend moaned over the phone, sounding like she was sixteen, not twenty-three.
Aurora let out a light chuckle, “You need it the most? I nearly got crushed by a supervillain yesterday. I’d say the technology failed me when it didn’t make a Crimson-proof windshield.”
“Well clearly you’re fine!” Kate protested, “You are okay enough to be making jokes about it, apparently!”
“Eh, I’m in a lot of pain, but it isn’t like pain is a new experience.” Aurora pressed her cracked phone to her shoulder and pinned it with her head. The toaster had just finished with her morning snack, and she was working to butter it with the cheap margarine she had in her fridge.
“Sure thing, miss big army girl.” Kate’s sarcastic tone made the comment on her past bearable. Aurora didn’t have the heart to tell her how much the reminder hurt. She wasn’t about to risk losing her only friend over a small joke. “I’m coming over there to check on you, by the way. I don’t trust you to be honest with me about your injuries. You’ll probably downplay them and try to come back to work before you should!”
“You really don’t need to do that…” Aurora replied tentatively, though she knew it was a losing proposition. Kate was exceptionally stubborn, and once she set her mind to it there was no stopping her.
“Yes, I do! Now you lay your ass back down in bed, girl, and I’ll be there in thirty minutes once my car is done charging.” Kate, predictably, shot back.
There was a knock at the door, and Aurora turned to look at it with confusion. “Alright, fine. I’ll see you soon, Kate.” She ended the call, and limped over to the door. Who the hell was knocking on her door at seven in the fucking morning? She took a steadying breath, still refusing to play into the stereotypes, and opened the door.
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There was no one in the corridor of her shitty little apartment building, though sitting on the floor in front of her door was a simple grey cardboard box no larger than a shoebox. It had no markings, no shipping label, nothing. Aurora glanced up and down the hall, confusion growing. She hadn’t taken that long to get to the door. The delivery person should still be in the hall waiting for the elevator… But there was nothing. All was quiet.
Kneeling down carefully, she picked up the box and brought it to her little kitchen table with cooling toast waiting for her. Aurora was more than willing to eat cold toast though, if it meant solving some confusion. Grabbing one of her paring knives from the knife block, she slid it smoothly through the tape holding the box closed.
Opening it only made it more confusing - inside the box sat a small mechanical fox and a bundle of folded black fabric. Aurora blinked at it a couple times, lifting the fox out of the box and setting it on the table. She unfolded the fabric, which turned out to be a black t-shirt in her size. There was plain white lettering across the front of it that only created more questions.
It read, ‘I was picked to be on intergalactic TV and all I got was this lousy shirt and cosmic powers’. Aurora stared at it a few moments, mind trying to twist around the idea until it actually made some form of sense. Intergalactic TV? Cosmic powers? What??
The fox popping to life on her table was what pulled her out of her stupor, as it gave a loud chirp. Aurora let out a yelp and all but threw the t-shirt at it. It gave a swipe of its mechanical paw, brushing the shirt away before turning two golden glowing eyes in her direction.
“You know,” The little fox said, “That isn’t a very nice thing to do when I’m supposed to be giving you fantastical powers.”
“What,” Aurora stumbled, trying to pull her thoughts back together as one wild thing after another occurred right in front of her, “the fuck is going on?”
“One, language.” The fox admonished, sitting down on its hindquarters as it looked up at Aurora. The fox’s tone changed into a retail voice that was falsely cheerful. “Two, welcome! You’ve been selected for the 12th season of Superstars: Planet Dirt! Congratulations, Aurora Barker!”
The robotic fox then slumped, laying its head down on its forward paws as it looked up at Aurora. The cheerful tone was gone when it spoke again. “My name is Esprit, and I will be your assistant AI as you adjust to your new life. I will also be your point of contact with the producers, should they need to reach out to you. Would you please place your hand in my mouth so I can bite you?”
Aurora’s good hand slipped over her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose as she took in the deluge of information. Of course this would have to happen. She wasn’t the most well versed in what happened in the world of the paragons, vagrants, and the aliens that had put Alon Husk’s Mars expedition ideas to a firm death, but she figured her luck was rotten enough to forcibly drag her into the messy quagmire.
“Can I refuse?” Aurora found herself asking the fox, Esprit. “I’ve got enough going on, and frankly I don’t want to be on… Intergalactic TV? Fuck that feels weird as hell to say. I don’t need my life being broadcast to however many people out there.”
Esprit let out a long-suffering sigh as their eyes closed, and they sat back up. “Not really, no. Once you are selected, like you have been, the process is usually already too far along to back out. Your options now are to either let me bite you, and deliver the nanites required to make the alterations to your body to accept the STAR system, or for me to wait until you fall asleep where I am contractually obligated to activate you anyways.”
“Back out? I never wanted to be a part of this.” Aurora frowned, putting a lid on the bottle that was her anger. Now was not the time to be arguing with a robotic fox that wanted to turn her into some kind of freaky TV star.
“Nor do most who are selected. That’s why it is selected and not volunteered.” Esprit shot back, and Aurora tilted her head to the side to concede the point. “Please make this easy on me? We have a lot to cover today, and seeing as you are scheduled to return to work tomorrow, we need to get through the onboarding today.”
“I…” Aurora thought over her options. Obviously this little robot knew a lot about her. And if she had been selected through some kind of lengthy process, that meant she’d been getting watched for a while now anyways. At least, if it was anything like the selection processes she’d been through with the army during her time in. Plus, there was the bonus of whatever… Stuff she got through being one of those SuperSTARs she saw on the news feeds. Maybe they had some kind of advanced transition stuff? It’d certainly be a help if she had the force to back up her identity. She rarely saw even the meatiest of meatheads on Chirper insulting the one or two openly trans heroes she was aware of. Letting out a sigh that challenged the world-weary one Esprit had given her earlier, Aurora nodded. “Alright, let's do it then.”
Aurora was surprised when it seemed that Esprit was surprised at her response. “You… Aren't you going to cry? Fight? Protest? Do something dramatic?”
“Nnnnnno?” Aurora replied, raising an eyebrow. “Why would I do that? I don’t have much of a choice here, and there are some benefits despite my objections.”
“I… See. Interesting.” The little fox seemed to frown on its surprisingly expressive robotic face. “Please place your injured hand in my mouth. The healing will go faster if the nanites transit through there first.”
Aurora did as asked, and as Esprit opened their mouth she put her hand in. The fox rapidly bit her, four pin pricks shooting into the front and back of her hand. It felt like the many inoculation needles she’d gotten, but in places no needles had ever been put. After a moment, Esprit let her go.
“There we go! You shouldn’t feel any pain after that, but in about…” Esprit pretended to check their paw-wrist for a watch, “Ten seconds you should feel the system come online!”
“Feel it how?” Aurora asked, blinking at the fox for a moment before her world exploded into an overstimulation nightmare. Colour, sound, touch all across her senses blossomed. Memories came flashing back, the sound of explosions ringing in her ears. The smell of blood all around, the screams… Aurora wasn’t sure when she started screaming too.