“What was that about?” the girl asked me.

“Name first. You can call me The Dealer.” I extended my hand to her calmly.

“Lania... Lania Wind-Moves-Clouds,” she replied as she took my hand. Actually an inherited name, not a random choice or spirit name.

I hauled her to her feet effortlessly, and she gasped at how strong I was. I’d definitely put on some weight in the past few weeks, and strength multipliers were at work the whole time.

“There’s a big problem here, and I think it might be related to what happened to you.”

She blinked at me with big, puffy dark eyes. “W-what?”

“Do you know what Skrulls are?”

“Aren’t they one of the aliens who keep trying to invade us for some reason?” she asked after a moment’s thought.

“They’ve tried four times openly, that the public histories know of.” With a pull and a turn and a crouch, I dragged her onto my back, stuck her there, and effortlessly began to bound down the hill as she gasped in shock at the sudden motion and crackling of voltage. She still kept a deathgrip on her bright electrum dagger. “Three of those the High Guard took care of out in space, one fleet made it down to the planet ten years ago and spurred a planetary effort to fight them when they came down in California.”

She was making little exclamations before she put up her legs around my waist, and I stuck them in place, too. Her hand finally opened and let the mindblade go, and she grabbed me with both instead of just one, holding on as I picked up speed very quickly.

“I remember that, it was very exciting on the television!” she exclaimed hesitantly. She would have been very young, and had probably seen lots of reruns of it. There were definitely enough newsreels and photos of it.

“Skrulls are shapechangers,” I went on. “If you’ve seen the news, you probably saw them morphing into all sorts of alien creatures while they were fighting, in addition to shooting things with blasters.” I paused significantly. “They can also shapechange and look like humans.”

She just waited for a long time, waiting for me to go on. “What, what does that mean for me?” she finally asked, not wanting to take the next step.

“We passed a small car that ran into your poison zone. Had the ID of two twenty-year-olds in it, the rest burned away. No dental fillings.”

She wasn’t dumb. Everyone got cavities in this day and age, unless they were superhuman or something. “They... were Skrulls?” she asked hesitantly.

“Look around.” She did. “See any copters, planes, military, police? Disaster relief? Powered of any kind?”

Lania looked again, more seriously this time. “N-no...”

“How many people you figure you killed?”

I felt her swallow as the road came up on us. “Dozens. Maybe hundreds... I didn’t realize what was happening until I got to my school, and all of a sudden everyone around me started to burn up...”

Lania’s voice had cracked again, reliving the horror of murdering so many of her fellow friends and students.

“That’s a Class-A disaster. Why isn’t there anyone racing here to investigate? You know how many psions and Powered the Tribes have. They could have teams here literally inside a minute. Then they’d go looking for the cause, and there’s no way they could miss you or the trail you left behind.”

She swallowed again as I got to the road, looked up and down it. She could see the road torn up by Mr. Hill, and the car off the road, which made her tense up. “There’s nobody...”

“That radio call was Mr. Hill probably finding another car or something, and they had a Skrull firearm with them.”

Lania clutched at me, but naturally that meant nothing, I was both far stronger than her and had more Damage Reduction than she could possibly get through. “What... what does that mean?” she asked, her brain refusing to take the next ominous step.

“There is a distinct possibility that the reason your power ignited is that you detected a threat to your life, and it just turned on, and killed everything that was a threat to you,” I said grimly, gliding in the direction of the town. “As in, everything in the town might have been killed and replaced by Skrulls.”

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“W-What?” she gasped.

“Don’t think they’d do that? It’s how they conquer planets. Infiltrate and replace whole populations, basically rendering other species extinct as they imitate their forms and natural abilities. The only thing they have difficulty replicating is Powered.”

Red Eyes began to float up in the back of my head, looking down the road ahead. My eyes narrowed as I began to pick up speed.

I had the feeling Mr. Hill was getting his hands dirty. He was too far ahead to see or hear anything, but I could feel minute vibrations in the ground.

“I have the ability to discern a thing’s natural Kirlian Aural field, and shapechangers stand out when they get close to me. The old fart I was talking to can sense warped mass changes in things, as he’s sensitive to gravity. So if, say, a Skrull was imitating a dog, which is naturally smaller than a Skrull is, he’d sense the mass offset, and I’d sense the Kirlian field being all wrong.”

Which I would, but only by piggybacking and using it as a foundation to extend the range of Detect Shapechangers IV.

Rep counts were still a thing, but one of the big things on this world was that magical reserves could be regained fairly quickly if you didn’t strain yourself Casting them. Siegecasting was actually possible if you took two or three times as long to Cast the spell... a good trade-off if you wanted to do lots and lots of rep counts, really.

I also had a really different way of recharging that I wanted to keep under wraps, as I hadn’t been able to find any mention of it in the various books about basic magical Traditions in the libraries I’d been in. Spellcasters of various types were known parts of Powered teams, especially here in the Tribes, and the standard abilities and spells parsed and analyzed, just like psionic and heroic abilities.

The native Sorcerers and Shamans didn’t seem to have any restrictions on Casting basic magic endlessly, and major spells could be repeated as long as you drew out the Casting.

Valences didn’t seem to be a thing here, and even a Spell Pool was a bit of a stretch. It was just more about willpower, concentration, and focus.

Mine didn’t work that way...

“I have to verify it, but it’s possible you might be the last human alive in that town, or one of them. Probably dogs and maybe cats, too.”

“Oh, oh gods...”

“My guess is that your folks and any pets got replaced, and you were about to be taken out when your power kicked on, maybe in your sleep. You probably woke up to an empty house, wondered what was going on, and headed to school. They were a little surprised to see you there, and then things went all to shit.”

Lania was silent as distance began to fall behind as I skated forwards on faintly sparking Repulse-waves, probably doing an easy 40+ mph despite carrying her. The town was still a couple miles away.

Two, three cars heading out of the town had gone off the road fairly close together. All three had broken windows where a big fist had gone through them, and all had open glove compartments.

They were also turned sideways and blocking off the road again.

I jumped right over them without stopping. Lania squeaked at the display of casual strength.

“I gather they were chasing you.” Two of the vehicles had the lights and black and white patterns of local police.

“Y-yes. I remember looking back and seeing them go off the road...”

“Your power transmutes the air into something extremely corrosive to living organic matter, which spreads to older organic matter in touch with it. It lingers for a while before breaking apart, so it probably got sucked into the cars via their air circulation systems.”

She shook again. “What an awful power!” she half-screamed.

“You think so? I think you can avenge your entire fucking town, which was probably murdered, disintegrated, and replaced by Skrulls.”

She hissed as she took in a deep breath. “They killed everybody? Really?” Her voice changed.

“I don’t absolutely know about everybody. They may have just taken some of them captive. They may be using some for food, as shapechangers have unusual appetites. They may be experimenting on others, as they love trying to crack the Powered puzzle so they can finally get super-powers.

“But let me say this: if there aren’t any humans left alive in this town, I’ll know pretty quickly.”

I went grabbing for Commune with Nature, but shifted it to with Genius Loci. I was going to ask the Spirit of the City a few questions, and despite the Skrull infestation, there was no possibility they had taken over a city spirit formed by generations of humans living there.

I tapped my com, and got nothing back. “Radio’s jammed, and likely telepathy.” Which might or might not stop magical Messaging, but I wasn’t going to rely on it. “This is going to be our fight, Lania. Something doesn’t want news about this getting out.”

“Will... will I have to turn that back on?” she asked softly.

“If everything around you is a Skrull wearing a human face and wants to kill you, dissect you, and replace you, do you have some other method of avenging the dead and protecting yourself, Lania? I’m from Cali, see. You Tribals got all sorts of surprises up your sleeves, I’ve heard.”

Her laughter was pretty broken. “Not all of us are Tribal Braves. Not all of us...” she trailed off.

A mile ahead of us, something exploded, and I was pretty sure a car went flying into the air a couple hundred feet. I felt her tense as she saw it, and then a whole bunch of little flashes of hot yellow light.

“That’s plasma fire from ray guns, in the hue used by Skrulls,” I said narrowly. “And a lot of it.”

“Who is your friend?” she asked, astonished.

“Mr. Hill? You probably know him as The Mountain.”

She almost squeaked, “You know The Mountain?!”

“I’m almost qualified to be his little sidekick. Maybe in a few years.”

“That is so cool!” she almost chirped, her horrified mindset beginning to bounce back as she finally began to realize that she was now in the middle of a superhero story. “Can you, can you take it if I turn my power back on?” Her one hand flexed, and she grimaced as she failed to bring back the mindblade. She tried again, and it hummed to life.

“Baby bladebelle. That’s no different from a steel knife,” I told her with a glance at it, and heard her sigh as she realized it. “Let it go. If I tell you to redirect your power back to where it was, do it, don’t question it. There’ll be nothing human around us.”