Seventeen Years Ago…
Late March, 2003
The bed was uncomfortable. The mattress was too stiff, the sheets were scratchy, the pillows badly needed more stuffing, the blankets weren’t warm enough, and it all smelled faintly of hospital antiseptic. But it was either the bed, a cushion on the floor, or a bowl-shaped chair that I maybe could’ve sat in comfortably a few days ago, but couldn’t now. And maybe never again. I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure if I ever would know. Or if I would ever want to know, for that matter.
It had been three days since it had happened. Three days since I saw a monster out of some horror movie, got body slammed by a myth, rescued the myth, and watched the monster fade away to ash and dust. Three days since I got solid, definitive proof that some of those tabloid-worthy headlines from Mexico and Brazil were actually real. Three days since I’d gotten something I still didn’t think I was ready to admit I’d wanted more than anything else in the world, and…
I pulled my knees closer into my chest, hugging the bundle of fluff and fur tighter in my arms. I tried to tune out the world, to just zone out and watch TV. But even that did nothing but remind me of just how much things had changed.
“This program is brought to you thanks to the following sponsors—“
“I definitely shouldn’t be able to understand that,” I murmured to myself, then winced as I felt a part of myself that hadn’t existed a few days ago twitch and move. God, that felt so weird, and… I hesitated to say that it felt off or wrong. Because it didn’t. It felt right. It felt wonderful. It felt… it felt like this was how things were always meant to be. How I was always meant to be.
How was I supposed to even begin to process that?
“I was unsure if such would occur,” a calm, deep voice rumbled from the bundle of fur pressed between my legs and chest, the sound somehow more soothing to my new ears than even the loudest cat’s purr. “It is fortunate. A language barrier would have been… inconvenient, at best.”
I kept feeling like I should have winced, or flinched, or otherwise shown some kind of shock or disgust at a grown man’s voice issuing from the twenty-pound fox currently letting me use him as a big, fuzzy stress ball. Or thinking that I should have been trying to run away from him. Or throwing the animal out the window. Or just — it — I didn’t know. Something other than what I was doing.
But after three days of being treated like an object or an animal or a monster by almost every person I came across, I needed the normality. I needed somebody to treat me like me. To believe that I was who I claimed to be, without needing to play twenty questions. Or draw blood. Or lock me alone in a windowless room for hours until I was desperately sobbing for somebody to at least say something or—
“Calm,” the fox said. “Deep breaths. You are safe. Secure. You shall not come to harm.”
I wanted to believe that. I wanted to believe that the fox was correct, that I was safe, that I would be okay. I couldn’t get my breathing to calm down, it was still too shaky, my fingers were so cold—
KNOCK KNOCK
I yelped, jumping high enough that I lost my balance, just about flung the poor fox across the room, and fell out of the bed and onto the floor. I pushed myself up on all fours (oh god, my, my… tail was tucked down between my legs, I didn’t do that on purpose, I still wasn’t sure how to move this thing how did I make it stop doing that—) and tried to find my voice.
“C… H…” I swallowed hard. “C-come in!”
The door to the room I’d been given opened, revealing a new face. He was a kind-looking gentleman with close-cropped black hair and green eyes, infinitely less surly or dour than the diplomats and policemen I’d had to deal with over the last several days, and he was wearing a light-gray suit with a pale-blue tie. The suit’s fabric looked really soft, and when I took a glance down at his shoes, they were shiny enough to reflect a clear image of the light fixture overhead.
“Good day to you, my dear!” He offered me a disarming smile when I blinked at the British accent, and out of the corner of my eye, I barely caught the fox closing his mouth and canting his head to the side in interest. “You would be…” he opened a leather folio I hadn’t noticed before, then looked at me. His brow furrowed for a moment, and the smile disappeared, but it came right back a moment later, bright and friendly. “Miss Ziegler, yes?”
“I — y-yes! That’s me,” I rushed out, hoping that he would stop at that name and not ask any further. I didn’t want him to say anything beyond that, to make the good parts of this feel less real.
“A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” he said, extending a hand. “I am Sir Ambrose Camden, a diplomat and negotiator in service to… hm,” he paused. “I suppose I should be saying ‘Her Majesty the Queen’, yes? Ah, that does not sound quite right to my ears. Let us just say in service to His Majesty the King, and keep that between us two, yes?” He offered me a wink at the end, but I hadn’t the slightest clue what he was trying to say, and something in the back of my mind whispered that I probably never would. “Regardless, there is no need to stand on ceremony. You may call me Ambrose, or Mr. Camden, should you prefer.”
“I, uh, sure?” I accepted his hand. He pumped it up, then down, and then back to center before releasing me. All very simple, very clinical, and… and somehow, I found myself tearing up. It wasn’t anything special. Heck, it was beyond normal… but he was the first person to actually treat me normally these last few days. Actually normally, not just fake smiles and bald-faced lies. “I-I ah, s-sorry, I j-just—“
“It is quite alright.” He pressed a handkerchief into my hand.
I felt my cheeks heating up a bit from the embarrassment — then I felt those two new things atop my head move, and completely lost all track of my emotional state as I tried to process just how weird and unfamiliar and, and… and nice that felt.
“May I come in?” Sir Camden — Ambrose asked. I nodded, and he stepped through the door, closing it behind him. “I am sure you are confused as to why I, a British diplomat, am currently in the American Embassy to Japan, talking to an American citizen.” He turned to face the fox. “And a Japanese one as well, I suppose. Good sir fox, is it acceptable for me to consider you as a citizen of this nation?”
The fox turned to me in confusion, and I translated. Which was still so weird to me, by the way — you would think the massive physical transformation would be the strangest part of all this, but no, that was probably tied with having an entire language shoved sideways into my skull and somehow fitting.
“I am not against this designation,” the fox answered in Japanese, which I translated for Ambrose.
“I see, wonderful,” he said. “Might I ask, were you already proficient in Japanese prior to your, ah, transformation?”
I shook my head.
“Ah, another edge case, perhaps… regardless, I am getting off track.” Ambrose gestured at the chair I couldn’t stand to sit in, so I picked it up and moved it over to him, then sat back on the edge of the bed. The fox hopped up onto the bed and made his way into my lap, and I started stroking his fur to calm myself down.
“I’m sorry, but, what is this about?” I asked.
“Yourself, I’m afraid,” Ambrose said. “Or rather, the nature of your situation. Tell me, Miss Ziegler: how much do you know about Moonshot?”
I frowned, thinking.
“Like Lady Liberty?” I asked. I didn’t really follow the hero news; Mom always said it was ‘unseemly’ or ‘beneath us’, but even she cared some about Lady Liberty, enough to let me get a poster of her without complaining.
“Yes, such as her,” he prompted.
“Well, um. They’re, um, people with superpowers?” I offered. “Uh, apparently the first one was a NASA employee, and he got his powers right after the moon landing? I — I’m sorry, I don’t know much,” I said, blushing and trying to ignore the weird sensations coming from my new ears and my… my tail. “I — all I know is that it’s apparently pretty random and people sometimes get powers that seem to make no sense but other people get powers that are just like completely perfect for them specifically but nobody knows how it happens or what it means or anything, and then there’s people saying that it’s practically mandatory to go out as a superhero after and if you don’t you’re automatically a supervillain but then there’s other people saying you can just—”
Hands clapped, and I yelped again, this time thankfully jumping backwards and further onto the bed instead of falling off of it. The fox voiced his displeasure at the tight grip I’d grabbed him in, but settled down the moment I loosened my arms.
“I see.” Ambrose set the leather folio he’d been carrying down underneath the chair he sat in. “This will, unfortunately, take a brief explanation before I can explain what help I can offer, if you are amenable to such at this time.”
“I guess?” What else was I supposed to say, no? Thank you, come back later? What else was I even doing?
“Very well. Would you mind turning off the telly?” Before I could do anything, the fox hopped off of my lap, ran over to the nightstand, and turned off the TV with a paw. “Thank you, good sir fox. Now.”
Wait, hadn’t he not been able to understand English earlier? Was that a feint, or was there something else going on?… never mind, I’d ask later. I had company and questions; he had answers. I hoped.
Ambrose clasped his hands and fixed me with a serious gaze, though his eyes were still kind.
“Please bear with me; I am afraid there is a brief history lesson included here. The word ‘moonshot’, on its own, very much predates the current term. It held two main meanings: first, an undertaking so immense or challenging as to be almost impossible to achieve; and second, the act of launching spacecraft to the moon. The second definition came about only after the Soviets landed the Luna 9 probe on the moon, which was the point at which what was previously seen as impossible became all too likely, and fully became past tense in 1969.
“It was with this victory in the space race and the espionage of the Cold War in mind, as unexplainable happenings grew increasingly common following Armstrong and Aldrin’s walk on luna firma, that Allied powers made the deliberate decision to employ an already known and used term to describe every iteration of this new phenomenon that they encountered. And outside of carefully monitored internal documentation, these phenomena could only be differentiated from one another by context.”
“So… you’re saying the CIA made it confusing on purpose so they could get one over on Russia?” I asked.
“On the Soviets, Miss Ziegler,” Ambrose gently corrected. “But in essence, yes. After all, while loose lips sink ships, well. It is one thing to say you were anchored over a wreckage in the Aegean, and it is quite another to say some incomprehensible gobbledegook suggesting the launch of weapon platforms to Mare Tranquilitatis for manual astronaut install.”
The fox canted his head to one side, in obvious confusion. I didn’t notice that I’d done the same until everything seemed crooked, and when I caught myself, I felt that heat in my cheeks again. And felt my new ears do something. God, how did I control those things? I didn’t want to keep on just… broadcasting all my thoughts for the world to see!
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“Regardless, by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Allied intelligence had sorted every known instance of Moonshot, proper noun, into three distinct categories, A, B, and C, each of which was further subdivided into three more categories: A1, A2, and so on. Alas, these alphanumeric designations never properly caught on, but I suppose we can blame deliberate dissemination of the base term to the American public for that.”
“Why?” I found myself asking.
“To further muddy the waters for enemy intelligence operatives, I presume,” Ambrose said. “It’s hard to tell who is and isn’t knowledgeable about a specific instance of Moonshot if the signifiers are context-dependent and the overwhelming majority of the people around you are using the term without that requisite context.”
I… sort of got it? I think?
“If you are ready to continue?” Ambrose asked, to which the fox and I both nodded. “Very well. We will go in reverse order, for reasons that will quickly become clear — and yes,” he held up a hand to forestall the question, “ensuring that the categories only made sense out of order was also intentional.
“Type C Moonshot refers to known sources of power. This Moonshot possesses the capacity to permanently confer abilities onto humans. The subcategories specify the nature of the source: C1 refers to beings, C2 to objects, and C3 to locations. There is a bit of wiggle room between them, but in general? If it can move under its own power, it is C1, and if locomotion must come from another, it is C2, with C3 being reserved for wholly stationary fonts of power. Admittedly, this is the category that could grow as our understanding expands, but for the moment these three are sufficient. Do you follow?”
“I suppose? And um… I guess that means this guy is C1?” I asked, scratching the fox behind his ears.
“Just so!” Ambrose agreed. “Moving on from there, we get to Type B: the issue of power, what results from its use.”
“So we’re jumping straight from sources to effects?” I… think my ear did that thing again? Urgh, that was still so weird! “I feel like we’re skipping the important part. Wait, this is on purpose too, isn’t it?”
Ambrose nodded.
“Unfortunately so. Now, to continue: Type B1 is reserved for ephemeral effects. Electrocution, unnatural plant growth, accelerated corrosion, aftereffects that do not follow conventional rules; all of these fall under Type B1. It is, to be frank, the least descriptive of the subcategories. Now, if Type B1 refers to ephemeral effects, then Type B2 contains the permanent ones: augmentations, transformations, or any other effect which carries its own inertia; that is to say, barring any outside action, it shall continue unabated.”
“Like a fire that never goes out?” I asked. “Or a perpetual energy machine?”
“Yes to the former, no to the latter,” Ambrose clarified. “The latter is an example of Type B3: a deliberate creation which carries the ability to confer either or both of the other two categories’ effects by itself, without any additional input by the Moonshot responsible for its creation. I believe a good example would be the TARDIS, or the sonic screwdriver.”
“The what?”
My breath caught in my throat when the persistently friendly look in Ambrose’s eyes dimmed for a moment, replaced by something I knew all too well: disappointment. It disappeared between one blink and the next, but I still felt something like a stone in the pit of my stomach.
“... ah.” Ambrose cleared his throat, a bit of awkwardness in it. “My apologies, I… it was not my intention to concern you. When you have some free time, however, I would recommend looking into Doctor Who. I wager you would like it.”
I didn’t really have any response to that, so I just nodded. The fox yawned, showing plenty of teeth in the process. But while that had caused some concern in the cops and embassy personnel we’d had to deal with over the last few days, all it did was make Ambrose’s smile grow a tad wider.
“Very well. We get to the final category: Type A. This categorizes the people with powers by the source thereof. The higher the number, the more common they are, and so we will go from most to least common.
“Type A3 covers the ‘random incidence’ powers. As it so happens, every single member of this group describes the same event signaling the acquisition of their abilities: a dream, vision, or hallucination of a beam of light coming from the moon and striking them in the head, heart, sternum, or the like. In this scenario, the provenance of the term ‘Moonshot’ is purely coincidental, despite them receiving their powers from being, well, shot by the moon.”
I just sort of gave Ambrose a look. Then I shared one with the fox, who gave me about as good of a shrug as a quadruped could.
“Moving on. Type A2 describes those people whose powers simply appear without fanfare, and have a tendency to be rather fitting to them as a person. One day they are normal, the next they are not, and we still haven’t the foggiest how or why otherwise-identical people can have one be A2 Moonshot and one, well, not.
“But alas, now we come to the rarest of them: Type A1. These Moonshot are not coincidental. They are not accidental. They are not random. And they are often far more powerful than the other two types. Beyond that, though? The key distinguishing feature is that every single Type A1 Moonshot received their powers from an example of Type C Moonshot. You are much the same: it was this fox’s actions and decision which made you as you are now.
“And alas,” Ambrose sighed, taking on a decidedly more despondent tone, “this deliberacy and rarity lie at the root of your problem.”
“Problem?” I asked, feeling like somebody had poured ice water down my spine. “I — I’m sorry, I don’t understand, just — what problem?”
Oh god. I, was this why he’d just spent the last who knows how long giving me an Idiot’s Glossary to Superpowers? So I’d understand just how screwed I was? How everything was about to go from bad to much, much worse?
“In the year 1998, the Treaty on the Restoration and Repatriation of Artifacts and Antiquities, initially put forth by the UK, was ratified by all member states of the United Nations,” Ambrose explained. “On its surface, the treaty requires that the spoils of empire, conquest, colony, and exploration be returned to their original location or culture of origin, and where that is not feasible, to the most fitting cultural heir or a designated caretaker state. In practice, this treaty is as important as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, because it forbids other nations from, say, sending special forces to spirit away Type C Moonshot in the night, or make one of their own into Type A1 Moonshot. Given the power of many Type A1’s, this is seen as the equivalent of stealing a nuclear bomb, shipping it back home, and then pointing it right at where you stole it from. Essentially, the Repatriation Treaty forbids purposefully doing what has accidentally befallen you: going to a foreign country, being empowered by Moonshot C native to that country, and then leaving.
“The United States and Japan are, obviously, both signatory parties to this treaty. Under the terms, you,” Ambrose pointed at me, “must return to the United States. And you,” he pointed at the fox, “cannot be taken out of Japan. And the requirement of you both maintaining a certain measure of proximity to one another, to which you have already attested at length, complicates matters.”
Wha… what?
“But, but I—!” I stammered. “I didn’t mean to do any of this! I — I didn’t want this, o-or, or ask for this!”
I hugged the fox in my lap close. He wrapped his tails around me, pressed his wet nose into my chin. I tried to focus on that sensation, on the tickling feeling of his fur, the small spot of damp cold on my skin. Anything to try and keep from focusing on the idea that I was some kind of, what, international war criminal or, or fugitive, or just, outright an illegal existence.
What was I supposed to do? What even could I do? How was I supposed to fix this? Oh god, I already hadn’t been able to get in contact with family in days; they didn’t even know what had happened – would they ever? Was I never going to see them again? Was I just, just stuck here? Trapped? Going to be locked up and have the key thrown away, or…
… or would they just kill me? Kill me, take the fox, pretend I’d died in a ditch somewhere?
“—Ziegler? Miss Ziegler!?”
Could I put that past them? If it was between letting me go home, or breaking a major international treaty and starting a war, why wouldn’t they just, just… shoot me in the back of the head and throw my body in a hole in the middle of nowhere? Say I went to that suicide forest place and just never came back out? Got lost on a backwoods hike and died of exposure?
“—Ziegler!”
Hands, hands on my arms, too tight, it hurt, they were coming to take me—!
“Aah!” I yelped, pushing away the person who’d grabbed me, that new feeling deep in my core igniting for just a second. Small flashes of purple flame came from my hands as I made contact, then I grabbed the fox and ran into the bathroom, locking the door behind me.
“Child,” the fox rumbled.
“Shh!” I hushed him. There was a window in the bathroom. How high up was I? Second floor? Ten feet to the ground? I could do that, just had to roll — wait would a roll hurt now? I hadn’t had a tail before, would it—
“Ow!” I shouted, shaking my hand. What, he… that damn fox bit me! What the hell!?
“Calm, child,” he spoke. “You were panicking. You are safe. I will not allow you to come to harm.”
I… I took a deep breath. Closed my eyes, and just… counted. In, two, three. Out, two, three. I… I was okay? I was okay. I was fine. For now, at least, I was fine.
I opened my eyes, and saw myself in the mirror. My eyes were red and puffy, cheeks a bit pale, but aside from that, I was… I was so normal. Brown hair brushing my shoulders. Brown eyes staring back at me. A big puffy sweatshirt and a pair of shorts. It was all… it was so normal.
But then my eyes were drawn to the tall, furry triangles on top of my head, to the long, bushy tail sprouting from my backside, to the smooth skin where human ears used to be. To the reminders that I wasn’t all human anymore. The reminders of why I didn’t recognize my face anymore.
The reminders that I didn’t know who I was anymore.
“Miss Ziegler?” Ambrose’s voice filtered through the bathroom door, followed by a light knocking. “My dear, are you well?”
“I, I-I’m fine!” I called back, tearing my eyes away from my new and still wholly unfamiliar reflection. I pulled the bathroom door open, and saw the slightly singed spots where I’d… burned his jacket. Oh, no… nice going, idiot, look what you did. “I am so, so sorry about that, I, are you okay?”
“No apologizing,” Ambrose ordered. “I startled you out of a panic attack, you are still new to your abilities.”
“Still, I, um.” I stopped there. If he was telling me not to apologize, well, what point was there in doing so again? “I… you, um. Said that I need to go back home, but that, uh, the fox has to stay? But I, he said that would kill me. I, I…”
I didn’t want to die. I was barely an adult. I’d only just gotten to, to—
“That is why I am here,” Ambrose said, gently guiding me back to the bed and sitting me down on the edge of the mattress before taking a seat beside me. “Both the United States and Japan have very clear stakes in this matter, and neither of them can remain objective. An American citizen possesses these powers, but the source is Japanese in origin. A compromise must be reached, and the UK offered to send a neutral mediator to facilitate these discussions — me.”
“Oh.” I sounded so quiet to my own ears, so tired. “I… so you’re going to try and get me home?”
“If that is what you want,” he confirmed. “We will be talking more in the coming days, and I will need your assistance communicating with the fox, to determine his stance on this. But…”
Ambrose sighed.
“I beg of you, please be patient,” he said. “There is no precedent for a situation like this, where it was accidental and between allies, and all that before we consider that the grantor was sapient enough to have made a conscious decision on the matter. I do not know how long this will take,” Ambrose admitted. “I will try to have you home soon, hale and whole. But I will not make you a promise that I cannot keep.”
I didn’t really have an answer, so I just nodded.
Something buzzed. Ambrose reached into his pocket and pulled out a pager.
“Bugger. Duty calls, I’m afraid.” He stood from the bed and reached into his coat’s inside pocket. A moment later he had a business card in his hands, which he placed on the nightstand. “I shall request that the ambassador furnish you with a computer and telephone access, that you may establish contact with your family, although… I understand you may be a tad reticent to do so. If you would like me to notify them in your stead, my personal email is on the back of the card.”
“T-thank you, I… I’m not ready yet,” I admitted.
“I shall do so as soon as possible, then.” He extended a hand to shake once more.
I went in for a hug instead, pressing my head against his chest. He made a brief sound of surprise, but he did reciprocate and hug me back, if a bit awkwardly.
“M’ sorry,” I mumbled against his shirt. And I was sorry. I just… I needed a hug. The fox was a good replacement, but… it just wasn’t the same. I needed human contact that wasn’t angry or scared or… or painful.
“It is alright. But.” Ambrose pulled out of the hug and held me at arm’s length, and I looked up to meet his eyes. “I do need to go, at least for now. I shall be back within a few days, though. Two, three at most.”
“Okay.”
Ambrose smiled, then grabbed his folio from underneath his chair. He walked over to the door, opened it — and paused.
“I will have you home as early as possible,” he said. “To the best of my ability.”
Then he smiled, and left.
I believed him. I really did. He was a good man, I could tell, and he was good at what he did. But despite all of his best efforts, every trick in his book, dozens of compromises and hundreds of offers and too many thousands of hours?
I didn’t see home for over a year.