The next hour was a combination of terrifying and utterly boring. The process for the defense was simple, a wave of entities would come in, we would clean them up with usually no issues, and then I would head inside and begin healing someone while the others kept watch. There was a certain rhythm to it I found interesting, how waves would come in at certain times with certain group sizes and combinations of entities. Of course there was some randomness to it, but the idea that these things understood some concept of strategy fascinated me. I asked Celeste to track the statistics of it all just in case I ever wanted to look at it.
After a while had passed, I had gotten back up to a decent amount of points, 323 after buying extra ammo for everyone. Thankfully, the homing pistols did the job, and I was quickly growing attached to Mars and Venus. As I stood over man with a broken leg, casting yet another healing spell on him, I got a call back from Arc Angel.
"Hey, just checking in with you. Should be ready to leave in an hour or so, you busy?"
"Not busy enough we can't talk. So, you wanna get this whole name thing done finally?" As I said this, I saw her face light up in joy. She really must have been bored waiting for me.
"Yes! Okay so, obviously we have to stick in line with your whole adorable fox girl thing, but is there anything else important that might be marketable, or anything we should stay away from?" She said, and I finished healing the man and walked to a corner of the store to talk about this in private. People tend to give you weird looks when you talk to thin air.
"There is something we should try and avoid. I didn't exactly look like this before my transformation." She giggled as I said this.
"Well yeah, I assumed so. Earth doesn't have the best prosthetics yet, so I figured that was part of it." I had to process what she meant for a second. I guess in some places you could just, get fox ears surgically. That was admittedly rather cool.
"Well, that's not exactly what I meant. I looked a lot less feminine before today, if you catch my drift." I saw her squint at me for a moment before speaking.
"Can't say that I- OH! Now I get it! I can understand why you would want that to be low profile, don't want your deadname or anything out there."
"Exactly! ...wait, what? No, I didn't choose this! It just came with the ears and the tail."
"But you said your names Liara, right? And you're going by she/her?"
"Well, yes, but I mean... look at me!" I gestured down to my chest, which was still distinctly female.
"Trust me hun, I'm pretty sure me and everyone else have been. It's a good thing we get our physical abilities boosted, cause you definitely needed that extra back strength." I felt a blush erupt on my face as she said that, and I looked down at myself. I knew I should feel annoyed that she was talking about my body like that, but all I felt was a weird sense of pride I didn't really understand at the time.
"To be honest, I kind of forgot how big these things were. Are they that noticeable? Hang on, don't answer that, that's not the point of this conversation! I didn't pick this body, just like I didn't choose to get fox ears. I'm not exactly a real woman."
"Liara, you do know people change their bodies all the time, that doesn't make you or them not real women."
"I know trans people exist, I'm not a moron! I'm just saying I had no control over this." I noticed as I said this a few people looked over at me oddly. I must have been getting a bit too loud.
"Okay, but do you like your new body?" Arc said, and this made me stop and think for a moment. I wasn't sure I felt strongly one way or the other about it, but obviously I preferred my old body. Although the enhanced hearing was really useful, and I did like my new hair. I always had trouble growing it out before, and now it was rather nice looking. I realized this was going to take a lot of thinking to fully figure out, and I didn't have much time at the moment.
"Listen, Arc, I understand what you're trying to say here, but I'm fine. I'm just Liara right now because it's easier than explaining things to everyone I meet. Could we please just get back to the naming thing?"
"Alright, but you should talk to a friend of mine later. So, no mentioning of your past in the name or branding, got it. So, there's a couple directions we could go for with this. We could focus on your abilities and work the whole fox angle into it, or we could go primarily for the fox elements."
"Let's stick with just the fox part, I can't think of anything revolving around gravity that isn't just a pun."
"Ooh, you use gravity magic? I've never seen that before, you'll have to show me. Anyways, let's start thinking of a name. Are there any myths about foxes on Earth?" I didn't even have to think for a moment before multiple ideas popped into my head.
"A ton actually. They're related to trickery usually, and also funnily enough transformation. There's kitsunes, they're messengers of the deity Inari, little trickster spirits that can turn into people and have multiple tails."
"And what about that god? Is he a fox?"
"Inari? No, but they are sort of the god of foxes. Also their gender is weird, sometimes they're depicted as a man and sometimes a woman, it depends on the period." She smiled at me as I said this, and I looked at her confused for a moment.
"So then that fits perfectly! You aren't a full fox, just a fox girl, and you also had a gender change." I realized what she meant and simply shook my head annoyed. I had to admit she wasn't wrong though; Inari did fit pretty well.
"I guess that does work. Plus, Inari is a Japanese deity, and I am half Japanese. Oh, that's a country on Earth in case you didn't know."
"Well, that's settled then, nice to meet you Inari! And I actually do know about Japan, they make all those weird cartoons that got super popular recently."
"Have they? I thought people around the universe would have other things to watch. I guess Earth media is pretty interesting for people that aren't humans." I said, and she gave me a confused look much like the one I gave her earlier.
"There are a lot of humans that aren't from Earth you know. What did you think I was?" I simply stared at her blankly for a moment.
"To be honest, the whole demon thing made me not think about it. And I have seen some humans, but I never actually considered why they were here." That was one of the most jarring shifts to the science scene when the Zenith came to Earth. Evolution, while a real thing, never really happened with humans, and instead planets were seeded with sentient species by some unknown group a long time ago. I had assumed Earth was the only one seeded with humans, but I guess I was wrong.
"Well, I am a human in case you were wondering. I'm usually too busy to be looking at stuff on the data-union, but apparently Earth's media is getting pretty popular. Which is weird, cause I don't think you guys even have the data-union yet. They usually only set it up when a planet starts getting invasions, otherwise they'll just use it for communication purposes, so I guess someone's been leaking it out there."
"I'm sorry, are you telling me there's a version of the internet but for the entire universe, and no one told me?"
"If the internet is what I think it is, then yes. Now that you're a guardian, you can probably just buy the hardware to access it yourself though. The VR stuff can get really expensive even for a guardian, but it's useful to invest into." I was now much more interested in finishing this invasion quickly so I could start looking through all of that.
"I have so many things I need to do after this. Hang on, Celeste, any updates on the next wave?" I said, realizing that it was about time to head back out. Celeste popped up on my shoulder and looked at me.
"Negative, it appears this wave will be taking a bit longer to arrive. Feel free to continue your conversation, I'll inform you when your mana levels are back up to normal."
"Well that's good at least. Oh, speaking of mana levels, I had a question for you Arc. How do you use mana to make yourself stronger? I wanted to make another ability earlier but apparently I have to learn how to do that first."
"That's really easy actually! Well, it isn't, but it is easy to get started. You know how you push mana around your body to cast spells? Just feel out your mana and do that, moving it through your body in circles. Once you get used to moving it, push it into whatever part of your body you need and hold it there." I nodded and closed my eyes, focusing on feeling out the mana in my body. After a moment, I saw what looked like a river of violet petals come into focus, flowing uncontrollably through my veins. I imagined reaching out a hand to tug at it, and I found it was much harder to control then the more instinctive use of spellcasting.
If I tried to change its path directly, it ripped away from me and actually hurt a decent bit. Instead, I tried to change the direction it was flowing gradually.
After a few tries, I got it flowing into a sort of whirlpool near my chest, and then directed the energy to my arm. Right as it reached my arm, I grabbed a hold of it as tightly as I could and opened my eyes. As I did, I saw my arm was coated in purple energy, and I did a quick test jab.
I punched at the wall in front of me, not too hard in case I screwed up somehow. My fist slammed into the wall, leaving a rather large dent with cracks spiderwebbing out from it, and I felt no real pain in my hand. Arc gave me a celebratory clap.
"Congrats! I wasn't expecting you to get that so soon, it took me a few hours of trying to get it to hold still."
"Well, I doubt I'll be able to use it consistently for now, but it wasn't as hard as I thought. Just gotta work with the river, let it flow where it needs to."
"A river? I see it more as an electric current, but I guess everyone visualizes differently. Anyways, if you tried to make an ability before it would have gave you a little message saying no, but now you should be fine. Just think about what you want the ability to do, and your Contractor should work with the system for the rest." I looked at Celeste, who nodded to confirm that was how it worked. I noticed that the guards outside were starting to get a little restless, so I knew I needed to finish up this conversation quickly.
"As a basic rule, I recommend not making more than four abilities per guardian rank. Since you instinctively know how to use most of them, making too many abilities can stifle your decision making. As she said, all you have to do is relay to me somehow what the ability you have in mind does, and I can make suggestions on how to improve it. An ability having drawbacks and weaknesses can actually amplify what you can do with it, but for now just try something small, we can change it later if we need to."
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
"Well, I could, uh... I've got nothing. Arc, any ideas?" Before she could say anything, I heard shouting in the background of the call, and she looked to the side annoyed.
"Ugh, sorry, I've gotta deal with this. Call me when you've got all those people ready to evacuate." She hung up and I was left just staring at the naming screen. I hoped she was okay, but she seemed like she was fine. Suddenly, I felt something tapping on my shoulder. I turned around to face the person and noticed she looked oddly scared.
"Um, miss, can I ask why you're punching walls and talking to yourself?" I looked over at the dent in the wall and awkwardly put a hand behind my head and chuckled.
"Sorry, was just trying something that a friend of mine was teaching me over the phone. My bad if I scared you or anyone else." I walked past her through the store, muttering apologies as I headed out the front door where I saw the two guards sitting around anxiously. The Zenith girl gave me a wave as I walked out, and I looked around. I only saw the corpses of previously killed entities lying around. I decided to focus on listening a little closer to see if I could hear any hornets buzzing around.
"What are you doin?" The girl practically yelled in my ear, and I jumped damn near five feet in the air in shock as my ears started ringing.
"I'm trying to listen to any sounds nearby, I have really good hearing. Things just seem strangely quiet right now. Celeste, how are things looking on the cameras?"
"I actually don't see a lot at the moment, it appears the remaining entities have begun clearing out." She said, and something about that made me nervous. Once the ringing noise faded, I tried listening in again, and I could very clearly hear entities making noise across the floor.
"I still hear things, are you sure there aren't more... wait a minute, what does the top floor look like right now?"
"One second, let me check... here we go, it appears to have filled back up with entities after we left." I felt my stomach drop as she said this, and I whipped around, sprinting into the store. There were only a couple more injured people, so I dashed over to the one who looked the most physically able, who was some type of insectoid race I hadn't heard of before. I quickly healed them and looked around at the crowd.
"Alright people, listen up! Everyone grab your things, we're heading towards the shelter. Anyone who can lift a decent amount of weight, work together and help carry anyone who's still injured. We leave in a minute and a half!" I yelled before running back outside, making sure Venus and Mars were still okay. The human guard looked at me like I was insane.
"What the hell are you doing, I thought we were supposed to get everyone healthy before we left?"
"I must admit, I am also quite confused. Why are you in such a hurry?" Celeste said, and I turned to face her as she walked behind me on the floor.
"Because we're screwed if we don't leave right now! There's still a decent amount of entities on this floor, but we can't see any of them on the cameras, and the top floor is suddenly filled to the brim! That means that fucking recorder is down here, it's the only entity that would know where the cameras are!" The guards looked at me confused, while I saw Celeste take a moment to think about it before her face filled with dread.
"How did I not notice that?! Get everyone out of here now!" She said, and I nodded before she disappeared back into my head. The guards seemed confused but nodded as I ran back into the store. The crowd was clearly rather panicked, but thankfully they seemed to understand that this was an emergency, and I saw people helping out the injured in whatever ways they could.
"Okay everyone! Walk out of the store calmly and stay ahead of me and the other escorts. It's a straight shot to the shelter, so just move as quick as you can without falling over! If you hear anything behind you, we have it handled, if you see anything in front of you, this pair of drones will take care of it. Let's go!" I stepped to the side as people began filing out of the store. Once they were all out I followed behind them and sent Venus and Mars to the front of the crowd. Me and the two guards walked behind them in formation.
"Horde incoming, right behind you!" I turned and was immediately terrified, seeing a pack of entities even bigger than the one I had fought earlier, maybe fifty or more. I called Venus back over and left Mars at the front just in case and began unloading into the horde. The civilians instantly panicked, but thankfully this only encouraged them to move faster. We managed to shoot down about ten or before a few of the acid spitters forced us to start running towards the shelter ourselves.
As the guards continued sprinting, I stayed behind, pulling out my last two Molotov's as I chucked both in the air before casting a plume of fire over the horde. The fire caused the two bottles to explode, and the flaming liquid rained down over a majority of the entities, heated further by the fire magic.
The good news was a large number of entities died on the spot. Unfortunately, the fire was clearly a bit too much, and it quickly set off the safety systems of the building, as water began spraying out immediately.
I jumped backwards with as much force as I could while making myself lighter, and as I leaped into the air, I used the vantage point to assess the situation. It looked like there were no entities in the path of the shelter, so that was good, and we had already managed to clear out about sixty percent of the horde. The problem was, I still had no clue where that damn recorder was.
As I began falling back down, I started shooting some of the flying entities who were trying to clear past me to the crowd. I heard Celeste shout a warning and looked to my right to see a ball of acid coming right for me, so I increased my density. I managed to fall just under it before hitting the ground, and while I felt a little pain, I could tell I hadn't hurt myself too badly from the fall.
There was about fifty feet from the horde to me, and then maybe another hundred feet from me to the crowd. The guards, noticing that things were starting to turn in our favor, began unloading into the crowd again, giving me the opportunity to run back and meet up with them. The crowd had made it to the shelter, so I jumped ahead and slammed my palm on the door.
"The door only opens for five seconds, so the front half goes now, and the second half goes next!" I yelled to the crowd as the door opened. People began pushing past each other to get in, and I counted down the seconds before going into my inventory and pulling out my glaive, dropping it down to block the rest of them as the door slammed shut.
I turned back and was extremely relieved to see that the escort squad and the drones had managed to clean up most of the entities and were just busy picking off some stragglers. Somehow, we had managed to actually get through this thing.
52 Entities Killed, New Point Total: 895
"You two, you're going in now!" They both booked it over as I put my hand on the door again, and as it popped open the remaining civilians headed inside, with me staying behind to clear up the rest. As the two guards sprinted in, the Zenith girl turned to me.
"Stay safe out there-" Her sentence cut off as she made an odd choking noise for some reason. I looked down slightly and found the reason why. A pointed vine was sticking out of her chest, and I saw the gun I had given her fall out of her hands as the doors slammed shut, and the vine retracted. I turned around slowly and saw the recorder from earlier standing in the middle of the room as Venus and Mars blasted it with no effect. It looked at me and unhinged its jaw before the horrifying voice from earlier came out.
"Stay safe out there!" It mimicked with her voice added to the mixture, and I could see that it was smiling at me. It knew what it was doing, and it enjoyed it. I felt any fear I had from seeing this monster leave me as my mind focused on one thing. I had already failed one objective by letting someone else die, but I wasn't going to fail the other one. This thing was going to be dead by the end of the night. I launched forward as I pushed the button to activate the second blade on my glaive, and I saw two more tendrils shoot out absurdly fast towards me.
I ducked under one and sliced out at the other, and thankfully the glaive managed to cut through it easily. The recorder leaped towards me, preparing one of its hooked hands to stab out as it fell, and I focused on flowing as much mana into my arm as I could. As I did, I saw it reach out and extend over the glaive, coating it in the same energy as I swung against the scythe while increasing my density.
We clashed as it nearly fell on top of me, and after a brief struggle I managed to slash through the scythe, lopping it in half, and continued the attack by stabbing at its head. Another tendril shot out of its stomach, forcing me to dodge to the side as it scraped against me, leaving a small laceration as it went. The recorder jumped back, screeching at me while looking at its severed hand. This was where everything fell apart.
Before I could rush in to attack again, I saw the remaining half of its hand begin to bubble, and it quickly began healing itself. I followed suit, healing the cut from earlier, but I could tell I was almost out of mana and this thing didn't seem to have a limit to its healing.
"Get out of there! You aren't winning this, don't get yourself killed for nothing!" I almost got a headache from how overpowering Celeste's voice was in my head, and I took a second to look around. The recorder was clearly about to send more tendrils at me, and my two drones were just fruitlessly emptying mags into it. I had to accept the facts. I wasn't going to be able to kill it right now.
"Dammit, fine!" I decreased my density back down and sent Venus and Mars back to my inventory, sprinting for the ring to the lower levels. I heard the same noise of the tendrils flying towards me and jumped as they flew under me, and I sailed over the railing, headed for the ground floor. As I slowly drifted down, I saw the recorder look over the edge at me. I figured it would try and jump after me, but all it did was lift up one of its scythes and give a wave as it had that same grin on its face as before. I was furious, but there was nothing I could do.
I gently landed on the first floor, and as I did, I saw there were a number of entities down here that hadn't noticed me yet. I had a decision to make. I could either get somewhere safe and process what had just happened, or simply get to killing. It was a rather easy choice. I pulled out my glaive and sprinted towards the nearest plague, hoping to lose myself in the battle.