I launched three arrows into the minotaurs side before being forced to jump away, as the warrior next to me ran forward. The beast slammed it’s fist down, but with one fell swoop, he severed it’s arm, and shortly after it’s throat once he leapt into the air. As the monster dissolved into ash, we both took a moment to catch our breath, before he said something to me.
“For fucks sake, that’s the fifth run without the drop!” I snorted as I imagined him raging in his setup at home.
“Dude, it’s like a ten percent chance, you’ll get it eventually. Plus it only takes like four minutes to respawn.”
“Yeah yeah, whatever. Anyways, you down for one more kill?” Ian said, and I shook my head.
“Can’t, got class in like thirty minutes. I’ll see you tommorow.”
“Damn, alright. See ya Liam.” He said, and disappeared. I scrolled down to the log out screen and hopped off the game, and everything went black. I opened my eyes and took off my vr gear, placing the headset back on my desk. As I got up, I threw on a jacket and headed to the bathroom in my apartment to make sure I looked okay for class. I walked in, pushing my roomates clothes out of the way, and looked in the mirror. My hair was a bit messy, but otherwise I looked pretty much the same as I always did. Short blonde hair, lankey limbs, generic looking face. Mom always said I took more after dad, which was true in a way, but I did get her hair color. He was still visiting my grandparents, so I hadn’t talked to him in a few weeks except on the phone, and I was honestly prefering it.
This is why I never liked looking in the mirror for too long, always made me think of bad shit. I left the room, heading to the exit of the apartment. It was decently sized, and rent wasn’t bad with a roommate. Aside from the not picking up after himself, he was pretty much fine.
“Can you get those clothes out of the bathroom?” I yelled out as I opened up the door to head out.
“Got it!” He responded, probably in his room gaming or something.
“Cool, be back in a couple hours!” I said, before walking out the door and heading down the stairs. As I walked into the entrance of the apartment complex, my landlord ambushed me from around the corner. How that old lady could sneak around like that I would never understand.
“Liam! You have rent yet?” She said, and I groaned to myself. Right, rent had gotten pushed up this month.
“I have the money on my desk upstairs, but I have like twenty minutes to get to class with a fifteen minute bus ride, so i’ll get it to you after class, that good?” She scowled at me, but nodded, heading upstairs. Work hadn’t been giving me many hours recently, but I still managed. I headed out the front door, seeing the bus pull up to the stop outside. It was about ten in the morning, but since it was the middle of winter in New York it was still slightly dark outside. I sprinted over, getting ready to hop in, when I heard a noise from my phone in my pocket.
“Attention citizens, there has been a minor breach. Anyone within 3000 feet of the street shown on the screen, please remain calm and find shelter. A total of three low level entities have been detected, and clean up crews are on the way.” A robotic voice said, coming from everyone elses devices as well.
Well, fuck, so much for class. Everyone currently on the bus hopped out immediately, heading into the apartment building for shelter. People had mixed emotions, some were panicking while others looked vaguely annoyed. It was easy to tell who had been in a breach before and who hadn’t. Plague had been showing up on earth for years now, but only ever in extremely small numbers. The Zenith, an incredibly technologically advanced race, had arrived to warn us of them back in 2003, and in the twenty five years since then technology had been advancing insanely quick. Normally a set number of guardians would be warped in instantly, but since earth got such little attention from the plague, they just trusted the military to handle it. I started emailing my teacher informing them I was stuck in the breach, when someone bumped into my shoulder. I looked up and saw a cop escorting a couple into the building. He looked rather young, probably new to the job.
“Oh shit, my bad.” I said, and let them pass. As they did, the cop stayed behind and looked at me.
“Kid, you better get inside quick, this isn’t some game.”
I nodded and went to follow him inside, but I was interupted by a high pitched shriek, and everyone who was outside whipped their heads over to the noise. A woman was maybe thirty feet away, pointing at something. I had seen videos of plague appearing, but it was harder to understand in person. It was like my vision was drawn away from the area as light bent around it, before suddenly everything snapped back into focus and something was laying there. It was green, laying in a coil. Some kind of snake? Was there a kind of plague that looked like a snake? I got the answer to that question very quickly, as the creature opened it’s eyes. All fifty seven of them, on every inch of it’s body each under a large scale. Everyone who was outside at that point sprinted inside, except for me and the cop, who were just standing still staring at the thing in confusion. It looked over at the woman, and that seemed to break her stupor. She started running towards the apartment building, as the plague entity suddenly snapped into movement, slithering behind her faster then I expected. I looked over at the cop, who was still just staring at it.
“Do something!” I yelled, as he sat there dumbfounded
“Uh, I don’t-“
“For fuck’s sake!” In a rash decision that I do not regret to this day, I reached down and grabbed the cops gun out of his holster. Even that didn’t seem to wake him up, as I dropped to one knee and aimed at the snake. The woman either understood what was happening or got scared, and thankfully moved to the side onto the street. Before the snake could follow behind her, I fired twice into it with the pistol. The recoil wasn’t horrible, but it still had me gritting my teeth. The snake did slow down, but only enough so that it could turn to whatever had shot it, and began rocketing towards me. I barely heard the cop yelling in the background as I fully unloaded the clip into the snake as it moved closer. With each shot a few of the eyes burst with blood, before eventually about thirty feet away it stopped, limping forward a few inches before it’s eyes all closed.
The woman sprinted past me into the building, and as I turned around I noticed the cop had too. For once in my life, I was very glad my father had taught me how to shoot a gun. I turned the safety back on and caught my breath. I had just killed an entity. If I didn’t get arrested for taking a cops gun, I might get an award or something!
Anyways, it was about time to head inside. Or it would have been, had something not hit my stomach at about forty miles an hour and sent me flying twenty feet across the sidewalk. I barely managed to grab my head so that my hands took the impact on the concrete instead of it, but it still hurt like all hell. I looked at whatever had attacked me, and saw another green creature, what looked like some kind of small winged feral cat. It sped towards me, and I looked around to see the gun sitting next to me. I grabbed it, switched the safety off, and whirled toward the entity, but I had to duck as it swept down at me. I got up as it turned around, and ran into an alley nearby. As I did, I could tell something was wrong as I felt a searing pain with every step, but I had to ignore it for the moment. I whipped around to see the flying thing diving down for another attack. I pointed the gun at it and pulled the trigger.
Stolen story; please report.
Click.
“Oh.” I said, my tone oddly calmer then I felt. I forgot I had already shot the whole clip. Well, I guess this wasn’t the worst way to die. Would have liked to at least finish college though. I closed my eyes as it sped closer to me.
“It doesn’t have to be the end you know.”
I opened my eyes, and tried to look around for the voice I had just heard. For some reason, I couldn’t move my body, and as I stared forward I realized the entity in front of me was moving incredibly slowly for some reason.
“Don’t be alarmed. You won’t be able to see me yet, i’m simply speaking in your head for the moment. I am a contractor, and after watching you for some time I believe you have the right qualities to become a guardian.” The voice said, as though it was right next to me. It was very gender neutral and spoke with a pleasant but robotic tone.
I tried to yell and ask it what was happening, but my mouth was also not moving.
“Again, still just in your head. I’ve slowed down our conversation so you don’t die before we can finish this contract. As you might know, a guardian fights against the plague, much like what you’re doing right now. Unfortunately, we don’t have much time for me to explain more, so instead i’ll just say that accepting this contract will mean you won’t die right here. Will you accept?”
I tried to think about this logically for a moment, but the a chance to survive was too good to not take.
“Alright, fine! But since I was forced into this contract to survive, I should have the right to rescind it later!” I thought, and I felt as though I heard the voice chuckle.
“I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way, but I do appreciate the thought. It shows me you think your actions through. Alright, with this conversation, your fate is sealed. Welcome, new guardian, to a battle against hell itself. Join your siblings in arms and fight for a better tommorow.” It said, and as it did, I felt some kind of surge through my body, like my blood was on fire and my brain had short circuted. As I felt myself grasp reality again, I saw the entity was still coming at me in slow motion.
“Uh, do you have a plan to deal with this?” I asked the voice.
“Oh, don’t worry about that. New guardian awakenings tend to be rather destructive to any plague entities nearby. Exiting thought acceleration protocol in 3, 2, 1.”
As it said this, I saw the entity suddenly speed forward. At the same time, I felt the surge run through me again, and I keeled over in pain. Then, right before it reached me, a white light shot out from me, and it enveloped the area around me. As it touched the entity, it disintegrated, fading into dust, and I could do nothing but simply wait for the feeling to stop.
Suddenly, I found myself standing in the middle of a room. I looked around confused, and noticed I could move again, and the pain I had felt was gone. I swore that I knew this place, but how the hell did I get here? Suddenly, I realized it was my grandparents house. It was what one would expect from an older traditional home in Japan, but I always found it comforting as a kid, despite how run down most of it was. I recognized the specific room I was in, and looked towards one of the walls. In a glass display case sat an extremely old looking mask, styled after a fox. As I looked at it, three people walked into the room. My father, grandfather, and a younger me walked past me, ignoring me completely. Was I looking at a memory? I could only guess this had to do with me becoming a guardian. I looked to be about six years old, so this must have been right around when we first moved to Japan. My father led me by the hand up to the display case. Usually he was and still is a stern man with a near constant glare, but whenever he was showing me things about our culture, he seemed to lighten up. The only other times he would do that was when he was with mom.
“Liam, be very careful in this room, okay? A member of our family made this mask a very long time ago, so you cannot touch it. It’s one of the first masks of it’s kind, and it was used for ceremonies and celebration by hundreds of different women.”
The younger version of me nodded, looking at the mask in awe. I remember even as a child understanding the signifigance of it, more then just a family heirloom. Even now, I was still entranced by it. The design was a lot like many other kabuki fox masks, but the material was clearly incredibly old, and something about the design just spoke to me. Apparently my grandfather was offered a lot of money to donate it to a museum, but seeing as he was already rich, he always rejected those offers.
My father led younger me off to see the rest of the house, with my grandfather following behind saying something in japanese to him. He always talked so fast I could barely understand him. I eventually walked forward, deciding that if this was a memory I might as well finally try on that mask.
As I took a step forward, I felt the world lurch, and I realized the end of the room had gotten farther away from me. After half a minute of trying to get to the mask, I got frusturated and just started running towards it, and eventually I started to make progress. But while I was moving closer, something felt wrong with my body. It wasn’t painful, but I could physically feel ligaments and bones in my body breaking down and then rearranging themselves. Before I could look down to see what was happening, out of nowhere, some kind of purple streak appeared inside the display case like something out of a video game. A hand shot out of the streak, grabbing onto the mask, and it pulled it in before I could reach it. As this happened, I tried to call out to whoever or whatever just took my families heirloom, but I collapsed to my knees as what was happening to my body got to be too much, and the world went black. Then, color returned, and I was back in the alley. Was that all just a dream, or was it some kind of vision? I slowly picked myself up, and it was clear that my injuries hadn’t magically healed themselves despite that event.
“Computer voice? Do you know- ugh, my throat hurts. Wait, what’s wrong with my voice?” I asked, coughing to clear my throat as it sounded much higher pitched then usual.
“Hello Liam, I see the contract went through successfully on your end- oh my.” The voice said, now sounding destinctly more feminine.
“What? Does this have to do with me being injured?” I said, immediately realizing how stupid that was. Why would a cracked rib or internal bleeding make my voice higher?
“Well, you see…hey, why don’t I activate your hud for you? That will let you warp directly to your countries Zenith Guardian facility!” It said, sounding oddly panicked for what I assumed was an AI. I simply nodded, and suddenly a message box like out of a video game appeared in front of my face.
Hello new Guardian! We understand you may be confused by your current situation, so simply press this button to be warped to the nearest Zenith facility, where an expert will let you know more about what’s going on! Do you accept?
Baffled, I clicked yes, but nothing seemed to happen.
“It didn’t seem to wo-“ I was cut off as a blue rift in space appeared underneath my feet similar to the purple streak I saw before, and I fell into it, screaming in my still oddly high pitched voice. The inside of the portal was just blue for miles in any direction, and I was only inside for a few seconds before I landed on my back in some kind of building.
Im not sure exactly what I was expecting from a Zenith building, but this wasn’t it. The room was cramped, looking more like the floor of a typical office building. I looked up and saw a Zenith sitting in a chair, looking at a screen of some kind. Zenith are birdlike creatures, covered head to toe in feathers, and while they had claws for hands, on their legs they had hooves, and their beaks were very short. The one sitting down, who had grey and white feathers, looked down at me as I fell in, and their eyes widened.
“Oh shit, finally! Xino, get in here, theres a new Guardian!” They said in a more masculine voice, sounding less like a hyper intelligent being and more like your typical teenager.
“Wait, really? I’ll be right there!” I heard a feminine voice call out from a seperate hallway, and another person ran around the corner. They were much shorter then the first person, but had the same color plumage.
“Wow, you weren’t lying! Hi, i’m Xino, this is my brother Tritan, and welcome to your first day as a guardian! And you are miss…” She said, waving her hand as though I was supposed to talk.
“I’m Liam. Wait, did you say miss?”
“Yes, it’s proper for us to call you by any honorifics.”
“That’s fine, but i’m not a…” I trailed off as I looked down, noticing something just slightly odd.
“Someone better explain why I have breasts in the next thirty seconds.” I said, looking down at the decently large chest I now for some reason had attached to me, as well as the rest of my suddenly very feminine body. Xino looked at me wide eyed.
“You didn’t know about the transformation?”
“The what?!” I angrily questioned, and her brother got up and stood next to her.
“If she’s upset about that, she’s really not gonna like the tail.”
“THE WHAT?!”