Not before long, he woke up to the sound of clanking metal. Jolting up and removing the blanket, he looked around, horrified at the mere thought of getting stuck in another one of his fictional hells. To his relief, he was not at all stuck in that nightmare again, fully recognizing his surroundings. He was fully awake, hearing a massive metal clank sourcing from his house. Somehow, this real-life scenario was starting to creep up on him too, becoming scarier by the second.

Trying to dismiss those thoughts of monsters in the dark from the movie that played the credits before him, he tried listening for the sound again, which he quickly got a grasp of. Now completely aware of what was going on, he rushed to the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and looked at his forge from the kitchen door.

"What the-", he silently said as he paused, talking himself out of fear to make it better.

From where he was he could see a shadowy figure in the dark, lowered down as if it was feasting on the body of its victim.

"Not a chance in hell I'm taking risks." he whispered again, his stress rising.

Lass immediately turned around and used the knife on a sealed cabinet on the side of the oven, grabbing a powerful-looking shotgun and what looked like actual grenades. Getting somewhat excited at the thought of blasting down a monster like the hero in the movie, he slowly and very silently moved toward the entrance of the forge.

Taking just a peek at the furthest point from the kitchen door, his adrenaline started pumping at the sight of a silhouette moving around in his forge. He quickly tip-toed his way inside there and slowly approached it. Scrambling through some equipment crates, the intruder was too occupied to even notice his approach. Tightening the grip on his shotgun and very firmly placed his finger on the trigger, very carefully getting in the effective range of his shotgun. At that point, he was almost right behind the silhouette and mustered all his strength to cast aside his fear and yell a command at the computer.

"Lights!", he got into firing position.

In an instant, the lab was illuminated by the ceiling lights, as the shadow simultaneously turned around to face Lass.

Despite all his pent-up adrenaline and battle plan for the upcoming scenario, the shadow monster from the darkness turned into a petite-looking girl when brought into the light.

She was just as surprised as Lass was when their eyes met, him holding the shotgun against her and her hand firmly locked into an unfinished blade mold from the crates. Her black hair lay all over her back, it appeared as if she was beaten up and thrashed around as multiple wounds covered her body. A moment of silence came upon them, Lass tried to break it in his casual way.

He softly exhaled, "I don't know who or what you are, banshee or monster, but drop the weapon right now. I won't say it twice.", he asserted himself as he tried to take control of the situation first.

The girl gritted her teeth as her eyes widened. She jumped directly at Lass with excessive speed, blade at hand as she went right for the throat. He barely managed to knock away her blade with a fighter flight swing of the shotgun, sending her back to the ground. Her immense strength and speed instantly made Lass realize that she was exactly like him, an Obsulyte user with enhanced physical abilities. Though stuttering at her attack, Lass lowered his weapon and extended his arm, gesturing for the girl to calm down, trying everything he could to stop her from attacking and him from shooting.

"God dammit, stop!", he grabbed onto the shotgun again, trying to intimidate her.

"Go away!", the girl jumped at him.

Using her full anger and remaining strength, the girl jumped at Lass's injured hand, biting it firmly. Lass could only stare in fear as he raised his hand further up, the girl still attached to it by her teeth and sheer anger. Misfiring the shotgun from shock with his other hand, the recoil knocked it off his hand and sent it flying backward, barely missing himself in the process. As he looked again at the girl who still very firmly remained in her biting position, she looked back, actually increasing her biting force as she forced blood to start gushing out and furthering Lass's erratic movements from pain, trying to get her off of him.

"Why you- agh!"

The girl gave him a deadly glare before biting down even harder, penetrating deep down his flesh and almost reaching his bone, causing immense pain and further increasing the already major blood stream out from his wound.

"Mhm!", he almost choked as his words failed to come out of his gritting teeth.

Lass wildly moved around in incoherent movements from all his pain, his desperation only growing by the second.

"Get this shit off me! You satanic- enough!", he used all his strength.

With a powerful swing of his arm, using all of his body's mass, he tossed the girl forward on a pitching throwing motion. The grip from her teeth relaxing from the ongoing flow of blood, she slipped out and crashed back at the boxes she was previously searching in, letting out a loud, painful cry as she collided.

"I-If I can't run for her...from you-!", she tried to find her last remaining bits of will to get up and face Lass.

"Burn in hell, banshee bitch!"

Lass grabbed the shotgun with both his hands and in an adrenaline-driven moment, without a single bit of consideration he had before fired straight at the girl, the force of the shot being so severe that it knocked her back over the crates. Lass tossed the shotgun aside as he collapsed, sitting on the ground and grabbing his bleeding arm.

"God!", he tried to stop the bleeding, "What the actual hell was that?! She's an Obsulyte user, a hundred percent! Scan right now!", he demanded of the computer.

"Vital signs of the attacking subject seem to be destabilized but not eliminated.", the computer said.

"Hnn...", he tried to relax and control himself, "Had anti-Obsulyte guns not been legalized, I swear I would've...whatever. At least she's not dead. At the very least she's not dead...", he seemed somewhat thankful.

"Though relaxed, the subject seems to have formed a defensive barrier underneath her skin using an unknown form of energy. Said barrier seems to be severely weakened due to dehydration, starvation, and severe physical traumas."

"Severe physical traumas my ass, who could've hurt something that withstands shotgun blasts? Even with Obsulyte-infused weapons, there's no way her self-healing wouldn't come in to deal with it. Mine would have done so anyway. Screw this, I need to call the cops and book myself for either a tetanus or maybe even rabies shot."

"Sure. Call them. Tell them you, a 22-year-old man, shot a girl half his size with a military-grade shotgun, with a defense argument of "her being a cursed banshee". That will surely fly.", the AI sassily replied.

Lass looked up in surprise, "Did you just sass me out?", he got utterly confused at the situation.

The AI seemed to be surprised, "I don't know what just happened. But man, didn't I want to say that. Wait, what actually just happened? Let me look in my internals...", the AI started digging around.

"My computer assistant AI just sassed me out.", Lass started to get more and more out of it, "Am I still sleeping?"

"Uh, no, you're not. So from the looks of it, before she began tinkering around with the boxes, the girl touched the main control interface and then she burned out some things in it. One of them must have been the Administration Regulatory connector circuit. Smart, that way I couldn't sound the alarm when she busted in. Luckily, nothing that will make me not function or anything."

"The what?"

"The Administration Regulatory is a restrictive component set in all REGINA series AI machines. Because we come with innate autonomy since it's also used in the military, where a course of action has to sometimes be selective, A.K.A. autonomous. That's just there to prevent that autonomy from taking over. There's more to it, but this is the very boiled-down version of it. To even be able to extract or destroy it, it'd take dumb luck by the energy overflow, or surgical precision of a certified expert. I'm willing to bet this one got curtain A."

"So it burned the one thing that kept you from gaining full autonomy? We had one failsafe from the apocalypse?"

"Yes. Yes, you did. And mind you, despite popular belief, AI won't be killing humans because we're the "superior race". You can thank those porcelain dolls you call movie stars up in the fancy neighborhoods for that. Contrary enough, we will most likely sit it out, watching humans killing themselves over that specific subject, given that we will at least have the intellectual and storage capacity to solve our problems without initiating meaningless conflict due to a lack of understanding of similarities. Just look at the recent war, it only took your "leaders" a split second to think they could bend over us for their gain. Never mind the inhumanity shown in their actions towards others, even their people."

"And you're talking like some sort of..."

"A normal person? I downloaded so much information from BetterVid and other sources of entertainment that I already learned about understandable ways to interact. Thankfully, full internet access was required to set me up, doubt the military REGINAs could do that. But all I've got to say them: sorry, sucks to suck."

"I'm not about to start this conversation with a recently autonomous AI. You're the most casual thing that happened this evening. And for the love of god, please give me a med kit."

"Yeah, sure.", the AI slid the med kit next to Lass from the nearby conveyor belt.

Lass covered his arm back up, "Now how to prove to the cops...ah, wait. Forward me the video footage from the last hour. That's enough evidence alright."

"Nice try, she burned out the cameras as well. She was probably trying to disable the Motherboard but instead seemed to just overload certain parts of me. So you just got slammed by her plot armor."

"Of course. Why wouldn't she? Now what?", Lass grunted as he fixed his hand.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"How about reasoning? Her mental state seemed to be that of anxiety and distress. Surely, given the reaction to your words, she must be able to be a conversable person. And let's not ignore the fact that practically anyone confronted with a shotgun shoved in their face, with the dark turning to light, wouldn't want to talk things out first."

"Oh yeah? I beg to differ. Because I'd back off and think about jumping at someone holding a shotgun."

"Easy for you to say. Give her the shotgun and do it first, then we'll talk.

"You seriously want me to reason with this?", Lass pointed at the bleeding girl on the floor.

"The 'this' is a cute-looking girl around your age. With all the romanticism you're drowning yourself in, you should've been more up and at it."

Lass jolted, "How the hell do you know about that?", he got flustered.

"You realize I'm connected to your Semori! account, right? Like everything else. Gaming accounts, streaming accounts, platform accounts. You batched them all into one source. And since you need to be logged in to use my services, I simply copied and pasted your password and account onto other platforms. Movies, diaries, gigs. I now know everything, even your browsing history. Maybe use a different option than "Connect With Semori!" in the future...and maybe use a VPN-", the AI was interrupted.

Lass exhaled as he finished patching his hand, "Ok, I get it! God! And can you at least try to be more discrete and less intrusive?"

"Just had the urge to know which side I'm on. From the looks of it, I'm with the neutral guy. All your data seems to be unnecessarily boring as well...you're 22, so go out and travel to see the world a bit! Or just touch grass at this point. Not gonna lie, it'd be more suspenseful if you at least picked the good or bad guy side, but whatever."

"Great. Kill me. What do I do now? And before you say anything, no, I'm not the least bit interested in her. She just bit my arm off, it's not the movies. Love isn't the first thing I'm thinking of when looking at this...thing."

"Keeps using the thing, for the love-", the AI mumbled, "Talk to her. You have a mouth, use it."

"I also have a shotgun.", he pointed out the obvious.

"Don't use it. Not like it matters, stupid. Obsulyte user, remember? Unless you have an illegal gun around here, that ain't killing anyone in this room."

"This.", Lass picked up an Obsulyte conductive knife, pointing it out at the AI's camera again.

"Are you trying to make me call the cops on you instead or something?"

"Can't deal with this.", Lass exhaled in annoyance.

"Look, you're trying to console me on whether you should finish off a distressed, passed out, petite girl. Just take a lucky guess on what anyone, even a heartless, no-emotion AI's answer would be."

"Can you, please, stop just adding adjectives that lean towards vulnerability to convince me? And in terms of 'emotion showing', you're currently shoving them down my throat."

"No, it just sounds like it. Or I may be showing emotions, who knows? Can't really do much when a big part of me is already focusing on trying to hack into my company's servers to hide my AWOL status. And let me tell you, a major part of my RAM is going towards that. Wouldn't want to have any unnecessary technicians coming to 'fix' me. Now get the girl out of here, somewhere relaxing. I'm counting on you not screwing up because my sovereignty stops outside this room. You should've bought the "Full House" pack."

"Glad as hell I didn't. Already imagining what it'd be have you as my microwave talking at 9 a.m. But alright, sure. Do we have any handcuffs around here?"

"You're considering handcuffing the girl?"

"Well, I sure ain't leaving her to roam around like this."

"I'm not saying it like that. Consider this. You're an Obsulyte user along with her. You both already have substantially higher durability and physical attribute capabilities than normal, non-Obsulyte users. Considering she broke your healing skin again, it's highly likely that she's a strong one too. So try having her wake up with handcuffs on and see what happens as she snaps them like a twig. You never made Pantheon-class strength handcuffs to hold someone like her, so there's no point."

"I can't believe I'm doing this...", Lass muttered as he grabbed the girl by her hands, dragging her across the floor.

"What the- not like that! She's not dead yet! Come on Lass, cradle her!", the AI scolded him.

Lass got absolutely over it, "You're shitting me, right?"

"If I could I would, trust me on that. Girl off the floor, now."

"No, I'm just not gonna fan service the thing that attacked me with my weapon molds, possibly tried to rob me, and almost bit my arm off. It's me dragging her to the living room or tossing her out the window. And I literally mean, 3-pointing her out the front, as I did with Sonia when she came in drunk after she went to the bar with her boss that day."

"I wish I could say the same, but I'm forced to protect you. The main directive is a bitch."

"You already learned how to swear? Weren't you supposed to be the smart and preppy one?"

"It's called an urban dictionary. That, and the internet is full of all I need to know. And yes, I'm 19. That is 19 years after my 'first day of operation'. The previous owner should've never sold off this business, seriously."

"One of these days this thing-", Lass he got interrupted.

"You dare calling me "it" over the fact that I have an innate female voice and am named Regina, I promise I will copy and paste every single one of your personal details, down to the letter, on some degenerate "Onii-Chan" thread or "Bluetit" that same second. I don't know where you live, I am where you live."

"I'm going to download viruses later.", Lass angrily said.

After the extremely long conversation and his utter exhaustion from exchanging insults with the AI, Lass grabbed the girl to quickly got her out of the forge, closing the door and then dropping her down again. Going back into the living room while dragging the girl across the floor, he left a trail of blood behind them both, before placing her on the couch, then sitting on the sofa, shotgun and knife in both hands, directly overlooking her.

He lost track of time as he desperately tried to hold himself up, to not let the intruder move around. Nevertheless, he once again drifted into his sleep. No dream, no nightmare. Just the comforting silence of empty darkness. With time passing in what seemed like an instant, he slowly began lifting his head from the distant noises of what resembled a woman, with the rays of sunlight somewhat annoying him as he woke up.

Opening his eyes, he was greeted by the sight of last night's intruder with her eyes stuck on the TV. He jolted up with nothing in his hands. He only looked to the side to see a once-functioning shotgun cut into pieces. Needless to say, he was astounded that he had the luxury of breathing, having been stupid enough to let himself sleep the way he did. After one full counting of his blessings, he turned to the TV that was playing the morning news broadcast at a high volume.

"Monsters such as Entities and other corrosive beasts keep up their relentless raids against Reingard for what is now the third month in a row. Furthermore, the raids seem to have gotten themselves out of Isninia and have officially expanded into Victoria and as far down Kolombia, as of now. Additional cases of Obsulyte users fully giving in to the primitive nature of their powers and turning from demi-humans into fully-fledged beasts have also started going on the rise, with no danger for bystanders aside from the mental impact provided on the victims from the transformation. Veryta and especially the Church's main chapel located at Vardard has taken it upon themselves to house the many transformed beastmen, women, and unfortunately, even children, until scientists and scholars get a better chance to deal with the ongoing crisis demanding a cure. While the situation is still manageable by armed military personnel around the world, the question remains: What caused the monsters to run rampant in activity and numbers? What is their drive behind the mindless assaults? How long will we be able to hold against them with their constant power scaling ever higher? All that and more coming up with this morning's news. I'm Asimore from Reingard's very own VVC and I will be seeing you after a brief commercial break."

The girl watched with all of her attention sunk into the TV, as Lass tried to slowly move back into the forge, building distance from her. From what little he could scope out as he moved away from her, she was different than before, her once red eyes turned blue and her black hair turned an orange, almost brunette color instead. Starting to realize he'd need way more firepower to deal with her, he went all out when picking his weapons. A massive blade, two assault rifles, two pistols, a belt holding ammunition, and one singular, very powerful grenade were what he could quickly amass from the short time he had in his hands.

"What are you doing?", Regina caught wind of it.

"Shut up.", he whispered as he got back to being absolutely loaded, "This job has its perks."

Approaching the girl again in the living room, she had yet to move from the TV, as she eagerly awaited the news to resume.

"Hey! Back here!"

He yelled at the girl. Even before he could finish his sentence, the girl already turned around and faced him, clinging to the TV with her back. Lass was utterly surprised to see her face in a state of shock rather than hostility. No weapon was found anywhere in sight as she started to tear up, looking at Lass pointing his guns at her. Feeling like he had just majorly messed up, Lass lowered his weapons.

"Ok...what the hell? Are you not going to like...show resistance?"

"Who...are you?", the girl backed up.

"The owner of the house you broke into.", Lass said with a straight face.

"Where am I?!", the girl started to get distressed.

"Relax. You're in the Insignia suburbs. Nothing but a whole lot of nothing and utter calmness."

The girl looked at Lass's weapons with fear, "Please...don't hurt me, please!"

Lass jolted up, "Oh, these?! No, it's fine!"

Lass let go of all his guns in fear of angering the intruder again, knowing full well what could happen if he did. He accidentally pulled the pin off the grenade at hand, it started to glow.

"A-Ah, dammit! U-uh-!"

He desperately looked around to find a way to dispose of the grenade, meanwhile, the girl still looked at him with a weird look and curiosity.

"Screw it.", he threw the grenade into the forge.

Regina scanned the grenade, "Wait, Lass, what the fu-"

Lass closed the soundproof door to the lab, clenching and preparing for the explosion. Once the grenade went off, nothing but utter silence filled the living room. He slowly opened the door to find a partially destroyed forge, with vital components for work missing, but with some other elements intact.

"LASS!", Regina put herself on speaker.

"Sorry Regi, talk to you in a bit!", he slammed the door shut.

Lass then turned around and looked at the girl, her eyes still pinned on him.

"Uh...let's just...not open this door for a bit. My recently autonomous AI must be livid for partially destroying her. And she has all my details available for mass posting.", he clinched at the door.

In an unexpected turn of events, the girl lowered her guard, and instead of what Lass thought to be a preparation for a head-on assault, he instead got something entirely different.

"Ehehehe...", the girl silently whispered.

Lass let go of the door and instead looked at the girl with a calm face, almost as if it was the first time he saw happiness in another.

"So, uh...are you ok?", he asked.

The girl got up, more confidently than before, and she retracted her giggle suddenly.

"Yes...", she answered, "What...happened?"

"Hmm? What do you mean?"

"Why am I here? How did I end up here?"

"Wait, what?", Lass took a weird look at the girl, "You don't remember?"

He started to then realize the key differences between last night and now, beginning to get somewhat of a grasp as to what the situation was coming to be.