I was having a bad Monday morning.

‘Or was it a Monday evening? After all my Monday morning technically starts on what everyone else would call Sunday evening.’ I mused to myself, as the plant thing that I was wrestling with attempted to find my head with its jaws.

Regardless of how the end of this shift was shaping up to be, it certainly hadn’t been a bad shift up to this point. Far from it, in fact it had nearly been exactly the same as all of the other 12 hour shifts that I had put in over the years on a holiday long weekend, watching over thousands of cars by myself.

Dead quiet, mind numbingly so, to the point that you had to find other means of helping you to stay awake. Be it reading, listening to a podcast, or writing about an idea that you had, as you almost never had any trucks come in to deliver or pick up vehicles during the darkest hours of the night.

Of course this shift had differed from the normal long weekend shift, as in the last 30 minutes of the shift, Bill, a local car hauler had arrived to drop off a vehicle for the auction.

I was on good terms with the vast majority of the car hauler’s that came into the auction. After all I treated them with respect and, attempted to get them back onto the road as quickly as possible, provided that they were adhering to the site rules. As I understood that they would only be making money well their truck was rolling down the highway.

So I let Bill onto the site, then popped back into the guardhouse to grab the thermal printer, and slip it onto one of my shoulders real quick, then came back out to do the stock in process. And as usual we shoot the shit about how things had been since we had last seen each other, in between my asking of questions about information that was needed to stock the vehicle into the system.

Nearing the end of the process, Bill had ended up asking “So how was this weekend’s shift, anything interesting end up coming in?”

Without really thinking about it, I had ended up replying, “Na Bill, it’s been as dead quiet as a well greased nail in a church during mass.” Not really realizing what I had said, until after it had already been cast out into the world.

Now for those who aren’t in the know, there’s a group of words that are generally forbidden from use, either when you’re on shift, or if you’re on site, as there use tends to upset Murphy and his law. And I had just spoken two of Murphy’s hated words out into the world, for him to use as he pleased.

Neather one of us heard the gentle popping sound, as the portal came into being behind me, how could we have hoped to over the sound of two vehicles whose engines were running in close proximity, not to mention the noise that was coming off of the highway.

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Luckily for the both of us, Bill managed to see the plant thing come out of the portal behind me, and reacted in a calm and collected manner. By screaming “What the fuck is that?” while pointing with one of his hands.

It was enough to get me to turn around though, just in time to see the thing start it’s leap towards me, eerily quiet but for the sound of its claws scraping on the pavement.

I didn’t really think at that moment in time, I just let myself move on instinct, counter charging the thing, well ducking my head low to avoid it’s jaws.

The thing was insanely strong for its size, are collision forcing me to yield a couple of paces to avoid losing my balance, and becoming pinned down underneath of it.

But even the strongest things are still subject to the laws of physics, and the thing was currently off balance, clearly expecting to have gotten the drop on me. So I kept up the pressure, by forcing the things upper body farther back, and by taking shorter, choppy steps, in an attempt to drive it back to the portal.

After all, the best way to deal with a sudden portal invader, is to toss them back into the portal they came out of.

Of course, the thing wasn’t just going to let me push it around, as it brought one of it’s front legs down in an attempt to break my grapple on it.

“I just had to mention how quiet it was.” I grumbled, feeling the claw dig deep into my right shoulder.

The universe was definitely not on my side that morning. As with a gentle pop, my plan to throw the thing back into the place it had come from was foiled, as the portal that it had come out of winked closed.

“Wh..”

Then, with another gentle pop, both me and the thing were falling, down through a portal that had appeared under it. The things claw coming free from my shoulder, as I tumbled headfirst through the portal, my forward leaning from my attempt to drive the thing back through the portal it had come out of, having thrown my balance off.

We both landed in, what felt like to me a large dirt tunnel, with no sign of lights anywhere nearby. At last though, a bit of luck was going my way. Not only had I managed to land on top of the thing, the thing seamed to have managed to, at least partially, land on its head, stunning it.

Not seeing anything else around, I came to the decision that I needed to thermally print this things death certificate. So I slipped the printer from my shoulder, and proceeded to make with the printing, not stopping until the thing had gone still, with it’s head now belonging to the 2D world.

As I began searching through my pockets, to see if the small pocket light that I carried, when there was sudden sharp pain in the back of my head. Like some had gabbed it with a hot poker, that disappeared just as quickly as it had arrived.

System Initialized! Congratulations, through your actions…

Having found my pocket light, I decided to check my surroundings before I paid to much attention to the voice that seemed to be coming from nowhere.

….Rise Ellis Johnston, and become a defender of humanity!

“So, do defenders of humanity get new shoulders?” I remarked, having found nothing that would want to sink its claws into me right away, I had turned my attention to my shoulder, finding a deep and bloody gouge in it.

My name is Eristryis, and I have a question for you Ellis.

“Sure, what’s chewing on your mind Eris?”

How have you managed to break things already?