Chapter 27 Just Another Tuesday
“You’ll get used to the insanity.”
It was a lazy day.
After shovelling the corpses, the kebab store opened as usual. Few customers dropped by today, leaving only a few crows pecking at the pile outside.
The sirens were blaring, so technically he should be evacuating to somewhere safer, but the habits were ingrained. If death came the owner would meet it in his own shop.
Sometime past midday, a single crow came, instead of joining the gang scavenging the bodies, it flew straight into the store.
The owner almost shooed it out, before it dropped two twenty-dollar notes on the counter.
“I’d like to make an order,” it declared in an accent he couldn’t quite place.
Shrugging, for the owner has had stranger customers before, he turned to the grill behind him, “What would it be boss?”
The crow blinked, unsure, “Umm…”
And it asked the strangest question, “What has the most calories?”
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“Two Halal snack packs, three kebabs and a 1.25-litre quoake,” the owner declared as he wrapped it all up.
Ranpo nodded, “Thank you.”
He flew onto the counter, grabbing the plastic bags by his claws and-
He couldn’t lift it.
“Need some help there boss?”
Ranpo shook his head, “No need- well do you do delivery- actually I shouldn’t bother you on such a day.”
But what could he do? He was but a single crow. Both Aiden and Jun were too injured to move anymore. He was alone-
He glanced outside, at the murder of crows pecking at the corpses. Some were staring at him in curiosity. Seeing one of their own kind ordering food.
Ranpo cawed several times, short and repetitive.
(Greetings, can you assist me in carrying this?)
A cacophony of caws answered him.
(Your accent is horrible.)
(He talks naked chimp.)
(What is in it for us?)
Ranpo thought for a moment before he glanced at the pile of dead zombies under them.
(I’ll pay you.)
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“So…” Jun casually began.
“Ask away,” Aiden answered, his back laid comfortably against a wall.
“What the fuck is that?” they asked again. Currently, Jun was wearing neither mask, their face was oddly normal, a bit on the androgynous side, with most of their body obscured by an oversized hoodie and baggy clothing.
“I truthfully have no idea,” he answered, glancing at the cleaver laid by his side.
“But what kind of ‘no idea’ do you mean?” Jun pressed.
Aiden raised an eyebrow.
Jun raised their hands, gesturing wildly, “Like, do you have no idea because you just happened on it? Or do you have no idea because it’s a condition of your power? Or is it because you’re lying to me?”
“Well-”
“By the way, if it is the latter, I will hit you.”
A single groan escaped his lips, and he winced almost instinctively. Not at the pain, but at the expression of it. “How would you even know?”
“Instinct,” they replied with a completely straight face.
Aiden rolled his eyes. He calmly pondered if he should lie, obscure the cost of his ability, keep a potential liability off the table, then his stomach groaned and he realised he didn’t have the energy to care.
“It’s a condition of my power,” he explained. “Whenever I make a creature, I forget all information associated with it. When I made that wolf earlier, I forgot what wolf it was, when I made Ranpo, I forgot what a crow is, when I made this…”
“You forgot about it?” Jun finished. “Seriously? You just forgot about…” they wildly gestured at the half bloomed flower, “That.”
Aiden sighed, “I suppose I did.”
“Wait, but that doesn’t make sense,” Jun continued, “if you’re already paying a cost, why does your Hume go down?”
Aiden raised an eyebrow? “My Hume?”
“Like…” they gestured at Oros, “I saw your snake, I know your Hume goes down, and everyone knows an ability with a cost has significantly lower or no Hume loss at all.”
Jun continued, “The only two reasons it might still cost something is either you don’t value the thing you’re losing, which, well… memory is a pretty hardcore cost. So I guess you could not value your experience or…”
“Or?”
“Or the effect you’re getting is so great that even a reduction doesn’t matter,” Jun finished, a contemplative look on their face. “I wouldn’t have thought it was that until…”
They glanced at the cleaver by his side.
“I saw that.”
Aiden wanted to question what exactly that was, but looking at how Jun was dancing around the subject, he switched.
“What’s your story then?” Aiden asked, “You seem pretty knowledgeable about this stuff and how do your two masks work?”
Jun tsked, “I used to be from a geneline family.”
Families built off of inherited abilities, originally from a manifested ancestor. “Past tense?”
“It was a branch family from some bigshot one, it doesn’t matter. They were fuckers who tried to eugenics their entire family into some perfect superhero team.”
There was genuine bile and distaste in Jun’s voice as they explained.
“Everyone knows an ability passes down to their kids in some form or variation, what most don’t know is that the ability becomes weaker in a sense. There is a thing called Priority which dictates whether an ability activates at all. After multiple generations, the ability the kids have won’t be enough to even clear the Beatles Bar, the Priority level of the universe.”
“Meaning it won’t activate.”
Jun nodded, “A person can have an inherited ability that is as or even stronger than the original ability, and they would have enough Hume to qualify as a metahuman, but if the Priority is low, it won’t be enough to actually affect reality.”
“But if that’s the case, how have geneline families persisted for centuries?”
They raised two fingers, “Two methods, first, they teach the kids to artificially raise their priority level.”
Aiden raised his eyebrow.
“A general rule is that the more rules, costs and conditions an ability has, the higher priority it has. They teach the kids to add certain rules to their ability, and by enforcing those rules, the priority rises over time.”
“And the second?”
Their face scrunched up in disgust. “The second is they marry a fresh manifested, so that their ability is added to the genepool. A booster shot of sorts. Their kids will be back to the base priority level, enough to show a working ability.”
Jun adjusted their position, crossing their legs, “That’s what my parents wanted of me. I didn’t show the family ability, and even after adding eight different conditions it still didn’t manifest, so they wanted to marry me off to some rando.”
“Oh,” Aiden could already see the shape of this story. Arranged marriages to ensure a decent ability was passed down, a person who spoke with spite at the very concept.
Jun’s eyes were distant, reminiscing the past, “I still hadn’t come out then, and I was confused… so fucking confused. Sometimes I felt fine, other times I felt like shit in my own body. I started trying on different clothes and shit, and I would feel better, showing the world the me I was rather than the me I was expected to be.”
“My parents didn’t like that, they didn’t like it at all. They kept introducing me to new people, people they obviously wanted me to marry, but how I acted threw them off for a while. They kept getting madder at me, saying I was just doing it for attention and lying to their faces, until one day, I told them to fuck off.”
They chuckled slightly, “I got disowned that night, and when I left the house with only a suitcase, I realised there were symbols on my hand.”
Quietly they raised their hands, on their palms, was a sun and a moon, glowing softly in the shade.
“So that’s how my ability works, I get the body I want, whenever I want it.”
They raised their right hand to their face, “It is how manifestations work, to show something of the person, of what they want and what they are willing to pay.”
“That is how my power works, that is why it is a mask.” And he looked at me, his face half-covered with a white fox mask with a rising sun, “So what’s the lie Aiden? The face I was born with or the mask I chose to wear?”
Who was the real Jun?
The person they were born as, chained behind family and tradition, or the person they later chose to be?
“I’m not sure if my answer is right,” Aiden replied.
Jun chuckled heartily and slapped him on the back, he winced slightly at the strength of it, “Neither was I. So what about you, Aiden?”
“What is your mask? To manifest an ability that butchers your own mind?”
Aiden was quiet.
Not knowing the answer, not knowing if he would like the answer if he knew it.
He only stared up at the sky.
“I originally made Ranpo as an experiment,” he said, “but he quickly became a sort of… comedic sidekick if that makes sense.”
Overhead, there was a group of crows, flying close together, carrying a strange package.
“Now I wonder what he is.”
An entire murder of crows landed beside them.
“Claws off!” Ranpo yelled, corralling the other crows, “let the idiots with thumbs do it!”
“Did you multiply?” Jun asked as he began unwrapping the plastic packages.
“What? No, I just bribed these idiots to help me carry the bags.”
A multitude of angry caws answered him.
“You still rely on a barter-based economy! Of course, you are idiots!”
Some of the older crows began dispersing, instead, gathering around Jun as he fed them chips and kebabs. A few were tearing at the dead goblin flesh nearby.
The younger looking ones, of course, were still gathered around Ranpo. Still cawing at him.
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“Fool! I am immune to ‘your mama’ jokes for I had no mother!”
Aiden might’ve imagined it, but the crowd- murder? The group of crows surrounding Ranpo seemed genuinely taken aback for a moment when he declared such, as if half their vocabulary had suddenly been made naught.
Aiden unwrapped a kebab, taking a bite out of it. “How much did you pay for all of this?”
“Like thirty-eight dollars?”
“That’s pretty good,” Jun said between bites of chips.
“Could’ve been cheaper,” Aiden muttered. If they had bought the ingredients and cooked it themselves, it would’ve obviously been more cost efficient.
That said, a lunch shared with a murder of crows was undoubtedly the strangest he’s had in either of his lives.
“By the way Jun.”
“Mmph?” he said- well approximated the sound of questioning whilst his mouth was full of food.
“When are the police coming? I assume you called them ahead of time.”
Somehow, Jun conveyed the expression of utter dumbfoundedness through his mask rather well.
Aiden sighed, somewhere in this abandoned district, was a blackened circle where someone had given their life to buy some time. “We’re kids, someone better than us needs to deal with this.”
He nodded, swallowing his food, Jun took out his phone, raising it to his ear.
And blinked in surprise, as he took it off and put it on speaker.
“We do not have any available officer’s to respond to your emergency, please wait. If your emergency is urgent, please leave a message after the beep.”
And it beeped.
Jun ended the call, hurriedly typing into his phone.
Then he turned pale.
Aiden shuffled next to him, looking at what he was looking at.
“So that’s why the sirens are on.”
A video from atop a helicopter, showing a familiar landscape.
And over the headless corpse of kaiju killed in brutal desperation was a Gate to Necrada, pouring corpses over it like a flood of grey.
Slowly, the headless corpse moved.
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“Now that is a problem,” Vice Principal Taylor muttered.
The Bleed effect of Necrada, slowly worming its way into the kaiju corpse.
“Close that Gate!” Freddy yelled somewhere, “Go and stop it no matter how many we lose!”
A flood of power, an intense sense of wrongness.
“We’ve sighted a Necron Overlord!”
Wreathed in death and forgotten yore, an ancient skeleton stepped out of the Gate.
And where it walked, things died.
Plants withered, animals rotted.
Even things without the concept of death died as well. The air died, the earth died, the very fabric of reality died.
And with this death, the mountain-sized corpse of the kaiju twitched and moved with greater furore.
“Can we call for backup?” the Vice Principal asked.
“I’ve been trying,” the Guardsmen beside her answered, “but everywhere is busy…”
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“We can’t send any backup,” the military police caller answered. “Not at least for another ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes!” Glory Girl yelled over the deafening buzzing, “That’s enough time to make cup ramen, eat it and clean up you dolt!”
All around her was an empty and barren waste, a waste that was once a town.
People fled under her as she blasted at the encroaching swarm of flies. But even doing her best, she could not stop it from consuming all metal in its path.
And making more flies.
“I’m dealing with a Class Three Grey Goo scenario here!” she yelled once again into her communicator.
“We can’t afford to spread our forces any further,” the person simply answered, and even with the deafening buzz she could hear the desperation in his voice. “Every surviving fly manifested its own ability… we can’t afford to move people without sacrificing a greater chunk somewhere…”
“So please, perform delaying actions until reinforcements arrive.”
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“Hold the quarantine!” a captain of the military police yelled. Standing atop a blockade of vehicles, each armed to the teeth and firing upon the crowd that came.
“Please let us out!”
“They’re killing us!”
The encroaching crowd yelled.
On each of their faces was a fly.
“Please let us out!”
“They’re killing us!”
And they kept repeating these phrases, asking to be let out.
“Non-lethal methods aren’t working!” someone yelled beside him. Firing more tear gas into the crowd, which the infected simply ignored. “What’s command’s decision-”
The man couldn’t finish, before a bullet was fired into his chest.
“Steven!” an officer jumped to help the downed officer, dragging him back into the barricade.
The captain quickly scanned the area, his ability enhancing his sight beyond what was human.
And he sighted an infected person attempting to reload the rifle.
“They’re getting smarter,” he breathlessly realised, with every human taken by the swarm, the overall hive mind was getting smarter.
“Get down sir!” another officer yelled, and the captain complied. Hiding behind a riot shield as he called command.
“Captain Shegal,” the radio buzzed, “examinations are in, all patients infected with the contagious fly ability have been declared dead. Over.”
The captain blinked, staring at the crowd full of people whose faces were covered by the invading flies, even underneath, he could see the pain and desperation painted on their faces.
“Roger that, over,” the captain answered, knowing what was commanded of him.
To his team, he spoke, “The infected have been declared legally dead and are now just puppets of an ability.”
“Thus lethal weapons have been authorised.”
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“Shit!” a girl yelled as she dodged a zombie’s swipe. “Urban Guerilla! There’s too many of them! They have better action economy!”
In front of the teenage girl, several dozen multicoloured dice floated. One of them was moving, the number on it counting down until it hit one, then the next die started counting down.
“I can’t deal with this!” she yelled, just as a harpoon speared through the body of a mutant zombie, then dragged it down into the ground where it drowned in concrete.
“See that’s what you oughta-” a glob of acid was shot directly in her direction, she noticed too late, she could not dodge in time.
Then suddenly, the rows of dice in front of her increased by one, and a yellow, cube-shaped tetrimino slammed down as a shield.
It quickly disappeared as more neon tetrominoes began slamming into zombies all around her.
“Thank you!” the girl yelled, looking back to see Alexis miming with her hands. “Hey you’re the girl from 10A aren’t you?”
“You’re from MIA as well?” she asked, slamming down another block onto a zombie.
“10B!” the girl excitedly answered. “Oh! And there’s Urban Guerilla,” she pointed at the spitter which had targeted her, a gloved hand shot out of the ground beneath as if the stone was water, and grabbed the ankle of the spitter, dragging it down screaming. “He’s not in MIA but he’s damn helpful!”
Alexis noticed the ground underneath her rippling, almost like water. A harpoon shot out, dragging another zombie down, but instead of slamming into the ground as if it were solid, it splashed away the concrete as if it were a liquid.
More zombies came, and the three worked together.
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All around the city were the scenes of chaos.
“So no backup will be coming huh,” Taylor muttered. “Everyone, focus on evacuation, contact a Gigantes Unit, I will check the Overlord.”
“VP,” Freddy began, “Gigantes circuits are made from dead kaiju neurons…”
She tsked, “So it won’t work here either…”
“💪🤝📖?”
“No Foxy,” the VP answered, opening a book with her hands. It was not written with text, but with braille. “I will deal with both myself.”
“Teleport out of here with Sister Savage’s prayer, Carl will ensure the stability of the spell.”
Freddy winced, “Do we have to rely on Church magic?”
“😔”
“That’s the only way I can see getting all the residents and Guardsmen out in time,” she answered.
“👁️👁️”
She glanced at the other Invader, the one weaved of countless hands. “I’ll deal with that one as well. And contact High Court Judge Harold, he’ll know what to do.”
Freddy nodded, echoing her commands into the radio.
As everyone retreated, one single-blind woman stepped forward. On one hand, she carried a book written in braille, on its cover, was painted the symbol of Scales, weighing Sword and Gavel.
The kaiju rose with a great cry and the Necron Overlord stared at its single opponent.
The book was opened to a certain page, glowing brilliantly against the encroaching dark. Taylor Selezid spoke,
“Do any of you have a visa?”
Confusion on the Overlord’s face, until golden chains shackled it and all things that heard.
“Chapter 10, section 10.5, requires unlawful non-citizens be detained until they are granted a visa or are removed from the country.”
And so spoke the Archmagus of Law.
“Necron Overlord, you are also charged with theft of national property, deforestation, unlawful usage of metanatural powers and-”
Death faced Law and the chains broke.
The zombie kaiju raised a massive claw and slammed down where the Archmagus was, but she was already gone. Standing far away from where the mountain had attacked, her book opened to a new page.
“Chapter 22, section 22.6, Those of the Executive Branch will have the ability to teleport anywhere within…”
Blood and chaos.
An eldritch flower stood behind her, weaved from countless arms and writhing with bloody symbols and she could no longer move.
“I suppose trying to arrest all three of you monsters at once would be taxing my authority,” Law murmured.
Either way, most of this chunk of reality no longer belonged to earth, so diluted by alien dimensions that claiming she had jurisdiction here was shaky at best. She might not even be able to use section 22.6 in a few moments.
No, right now, the Living Concept of Law was doing what it was best at.
Wasting time.
She became aware when the first paper was signed.
A petal reached out for her, but she knew how its ability worked, she quickly stepped out of the way, in a fashion that wouldn’t be directly moving to or from it.
Death tickled the edges of her form, threatening to break her before Death recoiled.
“Chapter 22, section 22.2, those of the Executive Branch will not be affected by injurious hostile action when administrating justice.”
Three sections, three laws. As an Archmagus, that was her limit, that was the number of laws she can forcibly execute, all had to be on the same two pages where the book was opened.
The sky darkened as the kaiju slammed its claws down, but the flower’s own ability interfered with it, causing it to halt in the sky.
The second paper was signed. It seemed that the Judge was hurrying on her behalf.
“C’tana. Si. Koas.”
The flower began speaking, began casting.
Beneath her, the earth began to shake, to rumble with great force as spikes of earth shot out. The zombie kaiju retained its ability huh?
But all was naught as the Judge signed the third paper.
Nothing hit Law as she executed 22.6 for the last time, and standing at the edge of the battlefield, she spoke, “Chapter 13, section 13.1, 13.2 and 13.3.”
“Metanatural entities arrested and legally declared guilty of crimes before a court of law may have their metanatural abilities confiscated for a certain duration dictated by the Judge. Such confiscated abilities are to be stored, and in the event of a Class A or above event, can be given for usage by a senior member of the Executive Branch with the signed approval of a Judge from the High Court.”
And all 28 abilities that she had requested became hers to use.
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Aiden watched night fall from his balcony.
The chaos of the day had finally ended, Jun was snoring somewhere, having been too tired to go back to their own home.
So here he stood, staring at the stars.
A dark shadow fluttered by, landing beside Aiden.
“A nice night.”
“It is,” Aiden agreed. There was still fighting all over the city, and no new information from the battle at Last Stand, though the shaky video footage online seemed to indicate his Vice-Principal was winning.
“Do you have an answer?”
Aiden was quiet, a moment of silence to contemplate, before he spoke, “Today I saw myself die. I saw myself die in every way that mattered, but you…”
He turned to look at Ranpo. “You remained.”
“I understand why you wish to do great things now.”
For even if the ocean eventually washed away all your footsteps, if you tried hard enough, some footsteps might just last a bit longer.
“You are right in that my life does not matter,” Aiden said, “even if I was removed from existence itself, nothing much would change.”
The world would still move, people would still struggle and fight, those who were strong would still keep the sky from falling, life would go on.
What he spoke did not matter, yet, Aiden felt that they did.
He could see two paths, two different meanings he could give.
Like Jun had asked him, what was the lie? The person you were born as, or the person you chose to be?
Was Ranpo still the testing prototype he had made or had he grown to a new thing entirely?
Aiden knew, deep in his heart, what the answer was.
At first, he didn’t realise it, but upon thinking back, he now did.
For whether consciously or not, when earlier Ranpo had asked him the purpose Aiden served, he had stood next to him.
With a single touch, Aiden could reabsorb Ranpo, end that prototype that had shown rebellion.
Yet he did not, for whether the crow had meant it or not, he had shown trust in standing next to him.
The first purpose Ranpo asked for was for the saving of lives, not of glory in battle, not of force of arms. Ranpo understood what good was, Ranpo did not question why he wanted to do good, only the scale, Ranpo was a good person.
And this had happened, all without him knowing.
So what was it?
Were they like the King of Nothing’s puppets, so inviolably linked to their creator that they perished with it?
Or was it something else entirely?
Aiden breathed in, and answered,
“It’s fine whatever you choose to do. It’s fine if you want to leave, to fly free, it’s fine if you want to stay, only to leave later on.
Whatever happens, I just hope you can find success on your journey, to become the better person you want to be.”
‘To become better than I ever was.’
On that moonlit night, an answer was given, whispered like a promise.
Ranpo shuffled in, flapping his way onto Aiden’s shoulder as they both stared at the stars.
It was a quiet declaration. For no matter what it changed for the people that spoke it, the world as a whole was not moved, in the end, for this insane world, it was just another Tuesday.
And a single crow silently declared it would change that.