I look over the working soldiers as they hurry around and get things together for our return to base. While they work, I occupy myself by sitting on a crate and practicing making different shapes and objects with my shadows. It’s good practice and an easy way to keep my mind at least somewhat focused by giving my hands something to fidget with.
I would have spent my time helping out, but the soldiers still seem a bit skittish around me. Most of them have gotten over it by now. They spend their days risking their lives against monsters after all, and considering that I haven’t snapped and killed everyone yet, they are strong enough to get over it and accept that it is just how I am or whatever… So, while most of them wont jump or flinch around me anymore, I have noticed that they do sort of have their guard up whenever they are around me.
The others… Well, I don’t want too rude, but… They’re a bunch of pussies…
It has been almost a week since I killed the Doppelganger, and I haven’t really done anything to try and scare them. Hells, I’ve been extra careful to make sure to keep my Field reeled in as to avoid startling anyone. But they just keep acting all jumpy around me. One guy even ran away from me when I asked how his day was going! He was like twice my size! I know that I can be a bit scary, but this is just ridiculous. And besides, I’m small and cute! What kind of man runs away from a little girl!?
Hahhhh…. Not important… Oh well, it was a bit weird that so many people were ok with being around me despite how I look anyways. It was bound to happen that there would be people afraid of me. At least I’m not getting rocks thrown at me or anything…
I wonder if I will ever have a witch hunt happen against me…? Actually, would a mob of angry humans even be able to do anything against me? Rocks wouldn’t hurt me. I don’t burn, so burning at the stake is out. I can break concrete and bend metal so; I don’t see drowning going very well… Could they hang me? I don’t think that would work; my neck is too strong… Beheading? No, no… a human with an axe wouldn’t be strong enough…
Meh, not even worth thinking about. I could just run away from an angry mob.
Hmmm?
I get pulled out of my ADD fueled mind wondering about stupid hypotheticals as I notice everyone finishing up and heading over to wait at the exit.
Dismissing my attempt at making a tiny T-Rex, I hop off of my crate and put my pack on. Shouldering my sledgehammer, I head over to join everyone else to wait for Sergeant Quincent to get here. I make sure to hover around the edge of the group, and while most of the gathered soldiers don’t do anything, some of them noticeably shift away from me. I make sure to mentally note them down so I can avoid being around them. The last thing we need is for them to freak out over me scaring them or something stupid like that and getting themselves hurt or killed on the walk home. We are still in the city and all it takes is one moment of distraction to end up losing your head or getting dragged off into some dark corner.
Among the soldiers that are being sent home, about half of them are injured to some extent. A broken bone here, a nasty laceration there. Things that are best left for the surgeons to look at and fix, rather than having a field medic slap you back together with stuff out of their pack and nothing but a prayer that you don’t catch an infection. One guy ended up getting a nasty foot infection because he went too long without changing his socks. And another guy, the complete dumbass that he is, has a rotting tooth because he apparently doesn’t like to brush his teeth. The both of them ended getting chewed out royally for entirely preventable ailments.
After a short while of waiting, Sergeant Quincent shows up with some men carrying stretchers. One holds Mr. Footrot McGee. Another is for a body bag containing Private Johnathon Demetri, the poor guy that got sucked dry by the Doppelganger just an hour or two after getting his porno mag confiscated. I look over the body bag, but… I don’t particularly feel anything for him other than pity. It’s not as if I had known him and this mission was my first time working with him. Now he is dead and gone… Two years ago, I probably would have cried over him, blaming myself for not making it in time to save him. It’s probably rather cold of me, but I am just glad it wasn’t someone that I was close to. Instead of one of the soldiers here that I like to hang out with, it was just a stranger…
I really have seen too much…
I should probably try and put more effort into caring about others outside of my immediate cycle of friends and family. If the doctors are right and I really am immortal, I should make an effort to care about others more, so I don’t end up being lonely in a hundred years or so…
At the very least, my demons should be long lived…
I shake my head and try to force that last thought out. I’m still tearing myself apart over changing one guy into a demon and my stupid brain is already wanting me to make more!
I take a couple of calming breaths and then look to the final stretcher…
He has really been growing…
Laying on the final stretcher is my first. Nathanial Smith… He has changed quite a bit since I had last seen him. Originally, he had looked like a skinny teenager with the build of a young athlete that likes to run and play sports. Just a couple inches short of being called a beanpole.
Now he is looking like a man of muscle and stature. He is taller now, probably around 6’5” and is still growing. He is built with thick but healthy-looking muscle, with everything clearly showing as his muscles strain against the fabric of his clothes. They probably fit him just fine a day or two ago, but now he is in need of some bigger clothes. Between his legs, I catch sight of a tail similar to my own. Although this one does not end with a tassel of fluffy black fur, but instead with a spear headed tip. It isn’t bladed or anything crazy like that, but I imagen he could probably kill something if he hit it hard enough with it. Hells, I’ve done the same with my own.
Adorning his head is a pair of curved horns that are growing from his crown. Those will be quite intimidating when they are done. Looking at his fingers, I find that they aren’t like mine. Instead of ending in a series of sharp claws, his instead have pointed but very sturdy looking fingernails. Which makes sense. He isn’t built for clawing and stabbing; he is built for crushing and punching.
His skin, quite noticeably, has not changed in color. He isn’t grey like me, and he hasn’t been turned blue or red like the common depictions of demons. He is still the same slightly tanned white that he was. Besides that, there are sections of his skin that are scarred. I can’t see the area’s that are covered by his clothes, but it is clear on his face where he had been burned away by the acidic blood of the Doppelganger. I can see where the burns go up and into his hair line, disappearing behind flowing locks of black hair that trails down his back and end in curls.
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Why the hell does the mutation make our hair grow out? I wonder if his will be as hard to cut as mine is…?
Looking him over, I have to say that he is very handsome now, even with the acid burn scars. His face is largely unchanged, at least from what I can remember of it. But his face has taken on a more handsome bone structure now compared to his more kiddish look that he used to have.
Even being gay, I can admit that he is rather handsome now. Not enough to suddenly turn me straight, but he will definitely have ladies, and even some men, turning their heads to watch him as he walks by.
Well, it only makes sense that I would make him handsome. I want him to have plenty of kids after all. Would be harder to build our numbers if he was unattractive…
I shake my head again and pull myself away from that line of thought. Especially, the information coming to me about his new and improved baby maker resting between his legs. I push aside that information with a small mental note that whoever his wife ends up being, they are probably going to be a very satisfied woman…
Too much information brain! I could have gone without knowing that!
I look him over again and a tiny sliver of my guilt falls away. I may have forced him to mutate and made him mine, but at least he will get to be attractive. If I had made him into some ugly looking demonic creature, I really would have never been able to forgive myself… I just hope that he won’t hate his new body…
From behind me I can hear as a couple of people are talking and this pulls me out of my thoughts. “That’s Smith, right?”, “Holy shit he’s gotten big!”, “I’m glad I’m not the one holding his stretcher…”, “Why is she hovering over him like that? She looks like a mom staring at her baby.”, “Geeze, he’s like Captain America now. He used to be so small…”, “Can that happen to anyone? Can she just change people like that?”, “Hey, uh… Dude. Do you know if Smith was seeing anyone or if he was single…?”, “No, I think he is single… Wait, the fuck!?”, “I don’t mean it like that!”
I ignore the gaggle of chattering soldiers, resisting as a small part of me wants to focus on the conversation about the guy that might have just accidentally outed himself, and instead focus on one of the other things I heard. “Why is she hovering over him like that? She looks like a mom staring at her baby.”
I’m hovering over him?
I finally take in where I am and find that I am standing right next to his stretcher, my eyes locked onto his sleeping body and looking him over.
I mentally slap my brain in the face and forcefully take control over myself. Ripping my eyes away from him, I turn on the spot and march over to the Sergeant. I ignore all the comments flying around from the soldiers behind me. Forcing myself to keep focused.
“Sergeant Quincent, I will be heading out first to scout ahead. I’ll be waiting at the train yard.”
I don’t wait to hear his response as I immediately take my leave, taking off in a sprint towards the train yard.
I’ll need to be careful while we are traveling. If I keep letting myself get distracted, something bad could happen…
I just hope that I can learn to get this stuff under control before I go and do something stupid.
----------------------------------------
Walking under the cover of the trains, I look around and take in the soldier's handy work. One of the teams had transformed the area into a sort of tunnel for us to travel through using camo mesh and tree branches connecting over the top of the trains. The areas between the train cars have been blocked off, turning our route through here into a covered path snaking through the train yard. It's my first time seeing the finished project. When they were busy building it, I had been tasked with patrolling around the area and keeping everything away from the train yard. Now we have a relatively safe path that the soldiers can use on this stretch of the journey. All be it just a short part.
Behind me, the rest are following a short distance away. Thankfully, Smith is obscured by all the bodies between us, so I’m not at risk of suddenly losing my focus by looking at him. Sadly, it doesn’t change the fact that I can sense him.
Knowing that he is being carried a few meters behind me, being carried out of the area that I consider my territory, is doing some weird shit to my instincts.
Part of me wants to immediately turn around and grab him, to run back to the airport and protect him until his changes are finished. Another part is aware that we are transporting him to somewhere safe and pushing me to hypervigilance. With every step away from the airport, these two desires war inside of me and continue to annoy me. Like two bored kids fighting and screaming in the back seat of the car, I just want to turn around and slap them both with my ring hand. I’m trying to focus up here and my own brain is driving me nuts.
On the outside, I just continue to walk forward. I don’t want the soldiers following behind me to start spreading more rumors about me being crazy…
Eventually, we leave the train yard and step into the warehouse district and something in the back of my mind tells me that I had just stepped out of my territory and into contested lands. The part of me that wants to take Smith and turn back puts up one final protest before finally going silent as he is carried over the arbitrary line that my mind had drawn in the sand.
The decision has been made; we are moving to a different nest. Protect your first. Kill anything that threatens him.
The part of me that wants to hover around him falls away and I immediately launch myself off from the ground and move to the roofs of the warehouses. Maintain safe distance. Secure perimeter. Servants know to follow the safe path around the nests. Prioritize eliminating anything that gets in their way.
Everything else falls away except for what is important, my body moving under the pull of instinct as I jump from roof to roof, always keeping the group within eyesight and watching as they move to navigate around the several nests in the area.
Whenever something gets anywhere near them, I descend on it like a bird of prey before quickly launching myself back up onto the rooftops, leaving behind a bloody mess from a crushed skull or a broken body.
My memories soon become a bit of a blur after this… Flashes of moving through the trees, a memory of wrestling some giant thing to the floor before snapping its neck, a feeling of pulsing my Field to frighten off a bunch of creatures hunting in a pack…
I blink and the world slowly falls back into reality around me. Looking around, I find myself sitting in the back of an ambulance, Smith laying on a stretcher while two other soldiers sitting opposite of me with a medic standing off to the side by the stretcher.
One of the soldiers notices me moving around and says, “Holy shit, she’s back… Hey, you awake in there?”
I look to him, my eyes fighting to focus back down on Smith as the vehicle drives, its wheels passing over the bumpy road.
“Ah… Uhh, ya… Ya, I’m awake….” I rub at my face, “What the hell happened? Why are we in an ambulance? Where are we?”
He takes a careful look at me and says, “We’re on base, just got here. You’ve been out of it since we left the airport, like you were in a trance. You wouldn’t talk to anyone or sit still. When we camped for the night, you disappeared outside and wouldn’t come back till morning. The night watch heard what sounded like a lot of fighting…”
A bit nervously, he gestures to my body. I look down at myself and -ignoring the cloak covering me to hide me from the civilians- find myself covered in my shadows as a bodysuit, my clothes shredded and hanging off of me in ribbons.
“What the fuck did I do!?” I exclaim.
My hands go to my head, and I hold myself as my heart races in my chest. Fighting to control my breathing, I work to suppress a panic attack from coming on.
I lost two days! I wasn’t in control of myself for two days! What the fuck!? I need to get this under control as soon as possible or I’m going to lose my fucking mind!