A million questions warred for my attention. What was Tanya doing here, was anyone else with her, was she hurt? Why was she hiding in a toilet stall in Elsebelle’s Fashion Boutique? Her house was at the other end of the city, on the outer parts of the west side rather than north where we were now. Pointedly, that place was already evacuated two days ago. Assuming that people’s natural reaction to this convergence event was to either go home or go to the evac zone, it was more than a little odd why she wasn’t close to either.

  She could be the Ur-mimic. But the longer I stared at her, the more that idea seemed wildly outlandish.

  As I stood in front of the bathroom, her brows slowly furrowed as she counted my limbs and eyes. Her confidence seemed to slowly grow as she decided that no matter how weird I looked, I was still recognizably Sam, the girl she liked to verbally jab for no particular reason. Besides for clout and personal satisfaction of course.

  “Sheesh, you look a bit different. Is the werewolf like a hologram or — damn, that’s a weird gun. You’re really rocking cosplay in the middle of the apocalypse, Beanstalk?”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  Pushing back was always a bad choice with Tanya. It only egged her on more. “What, don’t be like that Beany-boo; it’s me, your best friend Tany—”

  I slammed the broken door in her face. “Welp, looks like there’s nothing important in there. C’mon Addy, let’s go check for people who need our help somewhere else.”

  Addy gave me a confused look. I turned on my heels, mentally counting down the seconds until my former tormentor caved.

  Three, two, one—

  “W-wait!” Tanya spluttered, tumbling through the door and nearly falling on her ass when it fell off its hinges. “Wait, wait, wait. I am so glad I found you — I mean, we found each other. I’ve had the worst time you wouldn’t believe, running, screaming, trying not to die and stuff. It’s the end of the world and I think — well, I’d like… can you like, maybe, not leave me. Please? I’ve been out here for five days and it’s not been kosher at all, Beany-boo.”

  Her smile was thin, lacking confidence and full of manic anxiety. She wasn’t having a good time, not now, not over the past week. She stank of desperation, and wouldn’t you know it, I recognized that emotion all too well. When your school friends are beating down on you, when you get a bad grade, when the resulting cocktail of emotions makes you absolutely fail the resulting presentation and lash out against the people that deserve it the least… that is when you become desperate enough to wish that you were sick, that you could just disappear and not exist for a while. So yes, I knew that smell. She reeked of it, and it just wasn’t fair.

  She is the one who kept on dunking on me as a kid to stroke her own ego, she is the reason I have all these damn insecurities. I wasn’t going to college in England because I liked the weather, but because with an ocean between me and my past, I felt like I could finally escape the daggers they’d planted in my heart. Her and Elise both.

  But that’s not entirely, objectively true. Everyone wants approval from their peers as a teenager; it just so happened that Tanya thought she could get hers from Elise by making her laugh. And Elise had a cruel sense of humor. She was always smart enough to have some degree of separation from every prank and jab.

  And now she’s a ghost. Dead.

  I shouldn’t feel this vindicated. They say karma’s a bitch, which means I’m not about to trust her with handing out fair does.

  “C’mon, let me tag along,” Tanya said. “We’re friends, right?”

  I looked to Addy, who I could absolutely not blame for not getting the emotional undertones of this simple request. She just looked a bit confused, maybe a bit annoyed at the prospect of technically being required to help civilians, but practically wanting to find something more generally efficient to do with her time. She’d probably have been happier if there had been ten people hiding there instead of one.

  If Elise is the supervillain of my backstory, then Tanya is mook #3.

  I beat a friggin’ mimic the size of a house. I can overcome mook #3.

  I am better than her.

  “Sit,” I said in a tone that brooked no argument.

  Tanya sat, tired muscles tense even after a wave of relief washed over her body. I got out my bottle of TidyBlank and began spritzing her up and down, eliciting squawks of surprise and indignity.

  “Stop moving,” I ordered. “The black stuff isn’t good for you. Five freaking days… are you thirsty? Hungry? Is this all your blood?”

  “Some of it?” she said, then winced as one of my hands brushed over the left side of her ribcage. I felt it again and yep, that was definitely one giant bruise. I found a jagged gash running up her left arm — reddened skin, hot to the touch, definitely infected — and when I tried to clean out her hair a brittle lock just broke off.

  “So,” I started while ordering some antibiotics and antiseptics. “Haven’t seen you since the locker rooms on Sunday. What happened since then?”

  Tanya huffed. “What didn’t? It was a calm Sunday and then it wasn’t. I’m not smart, not as smart as Elise, so I just followed her along. She got us into her car — me and Rebecca — when the whole thing started, then crashed immediately ‘cause some jackass wasn’t looking where he was going. Pink aliens were everywhere and Rebecca had a concussion, but we ran anyways, from house to house, safe place to safe place.”

  She paused for a moment, her throat hoarse and dry. I offered her a bottle of water which she drank in one go. “We got attacked, like, a million times. Every group we joined was doomed right from the get go. I saw a guy shoot one of ‘em with a gun and then get swarmed by like, twenty of the little fuckers. We ran, again, and didn’t look back. I don’t know what happened to the guy. I think he’s dead. I—”

  Her voice stopped entirely for a moment. I stopped brushing through her hair, staring, waiting intently.

  “I don’t know where Rebecca is. She was in the car last I saw her, but then Elise took the car and revved the engine and I was there, but she didn’t stop, she saw me in the side mirror but instead of stopping she just… just…”

  Something inside Tanya broke. Her words were choked off in a sob long overdue.

  I thought I’d be happy seeing my bully cry. Maybe I would have been, under different circumstances.

  “That’s grim,” Addy said.

  “Yeah, well, fuck her. Elise is a selfish bitch,” I said, causing both Addy and Tanya to stare at me with gaping mouths. It wasn’t nice to talk about the dead like this. “Like, I knew she didn’t care about me, but I thought she had at least a mote of camaraderie leftover for her favorite henchwoman.”

  “Hey, I’m not…” Tanya pursed her lips. “I don’t do everything she says. I’m not her slave.”

  “What were you doing out here then?” I asked, pointedly staring at the bunch of designer pants she had been gripping like a lifeline all this while.

  “... Looting.”

  “Looting?”

  “Bitch, do you know how much it costs to keep up with the latest fashion? I need to look fabulous, or grunge-chique, or whatever if I want to be invited to Elise’s parties.” She bit her lip. “I… maybe I am just doing whatever she wants. Fuck. Man, self-exploration sucks ass.”

  “Any other insightful comments, oh wise one?” I deadpanned.

  “Well, I suppose I can’t call you bitchless anymore?” She looked between me and Addy. Her grin fell the moment she saw the look on my face. Because yes, while I was happy that she was finally realizing what kind of company she was keeping, the line of questions directed at herself ended at a disappointing ‘man, shouldn’t have listened to that bitch Elise’.

  “You shouldn’t give anyone the nickname bitchless over a relationship you helped actively destroy. Do you know what hearing that every single day did to me, to my sense of self worth? I thought there was something wrong with me, that I was somehow at fault, that I somehow deserved to be insulted in whatever way you thought might get a chuckle out of your best friend.” I jabbed her chest with a pointed finger, causing her to shrink back. “You were oh so happy to say anything, do anything, if only to please her. And I suffered through all of middle and high school. So next time your sorry ass accidentally attaches itself to a group of friends, instead of looking at the people who laugh at your ‘jokes’, maybe look at the ones who don’t.”

  I didn’t even want to see the look on her face. I turned away, stomping grumpily over to the front entrance to make sure the mimics hadn’t found us yet and were setting up another ambush. There was a stupid ‘I luv u’ mug sitting on the sidewalk. I shot it. It wasn’t a mimic.

  I felt more than heard the heavy steps of my weretanuki friend carrying her right next to me.

  “You okay?” Addy asked.

  Silence.

  “I’m… I think I’m angry. All the anger that I’ve bottled up and diverted someplace else is coming back.”

  “Catharsis is good for you,” she muttered, though it was clear she wasn’t talking from experience. “It’s what my mentor used to say.”

  I huffed. “Really? How?”

  [Your ECC-efficiency for [Anger] has permanently increased by 1%]

  I opened and closed my mouth, working my jaw. Did I get that prompt for other emotions as well?

  After scrolling through my log, apparently I did. Joy plus one percent, fear… plus three.

  “Huh. That puts me at how much total?”

  [Anger efficiency: 19%]

  [Joy efficiency: 29%]

  [Fear efficiency: 45%]

  “Woah, that’s a lot — right, the extra Soul.” One point in soul increased the efficiency by a flat one percent. Not that I was planning to get an anger spell any time soon. I already felt entirely spent on that front, and besides, I didn’t like being angry. Anger wasn’t me.

  Belatedly, I noticed that I had been charging one of my spells when it dinged to full.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  [Spell charged: [Arms & Arms proficiency] - 54% Joy, 46% Anger]

  “Oh fudge.” Slowly, I turned to Addy. “If I charge a spell with the wrong emotion, can I just dump it?”

  “You have to use it,” she said, and I groaned. “That’s why you need emotional training. Some spells can backfire really nasty-like if you screw up the components.”

  “Components as in multiple emotions?” I asked.

  Addy shrugged. “More advanced spells sometimes need a mix. It won’t become relevant until your first essence uptier, probably.”

  “So level thirty then.”

  “No, level… I forgot that you got a free one at level zero.” She scrunched her nose, and I laughed.

  “Oh, you really don’t like that I have that little advantage.”

  “It’s unfair! If you wanted to, you could pivot into the same path I’m taking and you’ll overtake me five levels sooner because of a stupid, lucky circumstance.”

  “Maybe tell me more about your build then so I can grow to complement it instead.” I stuck out my tongue at her. Addy turned away in an indignant huff. Behind her I noticed Tanya, looking more than a little bit shaken by my earlier chastisement.

  “I… fucked up. Big time,” she said. “I mean, I can be pretty stupid at times, but I can tell I did.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And that kind of makes me feel like I’m… a bad person?” Oh no, she’s discovering empathy. “I’ve been an ass. I’m sorry. I don’t really know what people say at times like this, but, er… could you maybe just forgive and forget?”

  I pursed my lips, arms folded, fingers tapping on my elbow. The anger was there if I needed it. This was a potent source, possibly infinite if I just allowed myself to stew and stew and twist my entire being around this singular, unfair moment.

  But that wasn’t me. I acknowledged the anger and I let it pass.

  “I’m the forgiving kind, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget,” I said, and that one sentence was enough to make her flinch. “I’m in the business of lifting people up nowadays, not kicking them while they’re down. And as far as apologies go, yours was adequate.”

  As far as I could tell, Tanya’s grin was genuinely relieved. “I think I get why you were trying to become a doctor. You and Rebecca were always a bit nerdy… er, I mean, too smart for someone useless like me.”

  “Don’t lift someone up by putting someone else down, especially if that someone is you. It’s unhealthy.”

  “See! This is what I mean. Wise shit like this is, like, something you say when you’re forty, or a psychologist or something.”

  “I did go to therapy to get over my issues, so I am familiar with some core concepts.”

  That caused another flinch to ripple through Tanya. Dang, this was kinda fun. But also, I shouldn’t make it a habit. Down that route lay turning from bullied to bully, the route of ultimate evil.

  “And I’m sure you’re not useless. We haven’t talked much, but I’m sure you’ve been doing something these past few years, right Tanya?”

  Tanya scratched the back of her head. “Well, I was never gonna make it into college so I tried to become a youtuber for a while. The kind that ragebaits and makes drama content. Getting paid for gossiping would kind of be the life, y’know? But all the gossipers are actually big already, and getting in is so freaking hard. How do you grow if nobody knows about you or cares who you are, y’know? Ads of course, but they didn’t help, and then I had ad debt on top of everything. I tried to become a short-form streamer then. Didn’t work out. And now after my parents kicked me out I’m sort of… unemployed?”

  “Is that normal parent behavior?” Addy asked, whispering to me.

  “I wouldn’t say normal, but painfully common.” I turned to Tanya. “So. Where are you sleeping now?”

  “... Elise’s guest room?”

  Well dang, looks like Elise isn't entirely an incorrigible bitch. After all, she couldn’t be that bad for letting her friend stay over after what was clearly a string of poorly planned life decisions coupled with bad luck and frankly asocial parenting. My estimation of her character went up by one point, which only moved her from ‘worst person in the world’ to ‘possibly not the literal worst’.

  I paused, sorting all the information into a new view of these people I once called friends. “So, you’ve got experience in video editing and content marketing…”

  A plan started to form, another addition to the complicated web of things happening to me over the past week.

  I nodded. “Alright. We’re helping her get to safety, Addy.”

  Addy looked reluctant, as if she wanted to desperately foist this off on some unfortunate associate. I empathized. Escort missions sucked in every game, but hey, if the neighborhood around my home had a barrier that hadn’t been breached so far, maybe we could just drop her off there? It wasn’t that far away. And from there I could give her access to my laptop and the footage we’d gotten so far, preparing our counterstrike against Medusahead.

  Yes, this sounded like it could work. Now I only had to keep Addy close by without spoiling the surprise for her.

  I clapped my hands. “Alrighto, I have a mission for both of you: Look through the fashion boutique and find something that Addy likes.”

  Two pairs of eyes stared at mine.

  “Sam, is this really the time to—”

  “Yes! It is exactly the time,” I interrupted Addy. “This is about your debut to the world, Addy. Even if you want to present yourself as casual and approachable, you can’t just wear one vest and one pair of pants.”

  “But I like my vest,” she said, plucking at its hem. “It’s soulbound and one-size-fits-all, but with magic. It doesn’t tear when I go big, and doesn’t fall off when I go normal.”

  Normal being her tanuki form.

  “It’s fine to like familiar styles, but does that mean you’ve only ever worn that vest, plus some throwaway items from the system shop?”

  “It’s convenient,” she said. “And it fits.”

  “Anything can look good if it fits,” Tanya chimed in with a quiet voice, as if looking to see if it was alright for her to join in on our conversation. I gave her a reassuring nod and she continued on. “You can make a fit fit in many ways, y’know, but there are some rules you always gotta follow: Two to three colors per outfit, only one big accessory, oh, and shoes. You need good shoes. Those worn sneakers need to go.”

  Addy relented when I gave her big puppydog eyes, submitting herself to the whims of Tanya. She immediately got to work piling on clothes liberally while I had my back turned to them, keeping an eye out for trouble.

  “There are no clothes your size.”

  “I can go smaller?”

  “Really?” Pause. Sped-up transformation music. Another pause. “Oh wow, you’re adorable.”

  “Fuck off.”

  They seemed like they were handling it, but as the minutes ticked by I only grew more nervous. People needed our help out there, possibly now. I wanted to visit my parents. But Addy assured me they were safe, that the barrier around our neighborhood was holding.

  I supposed that Medusahead and her army of drones could have helped us scout around, but she didn’t seem like she wanted to lighten our burden at all. Maybe competition like this did breed the strongest Custodians, the kind that could go and fight at the bottom of the Mariana Trench and save Earth from total invasion.

  Right here, right now, Creektin needed local heroes. Said local heroes ran on emotions. In light of that, some light shopping could be excused.

  “This better be worth the half hour we spend on it,” I grumbled.

  “Hey, I’m keeping things short ‘cause I’m also not too hot on staying here,” Tanya said. “But I dare say I outdid myself. She looks so much more refined. I turned her from, like, rock into a polished metal statue or something.”

  Your comparisons could use some polishing as well.

  To my surprise, Tanya hadn’t undersold it. There stood Addy in her human form, wearing long dark pants that flared wide at the ankles and a white sleeveless crop top that left just a little bit of midriff exposed. The blue hues of her belt were repeated in her sporty shoes, giving her a general airy, ‘don’t fuck with me’ look.

  “I’m not used to being dressed up like this,” Addy muttered as she plucked at her top to make it go lower.

  “It looks great on you,” I said, fully intending the compliment.

  She scrunched her nose. “I suppose it’s fine then.”

  “Do you like how it feels?”

  Addy twisted her upper body and jumped. “Range of motion is nice. Pants are a bit flappy.”

  “Alright, but how does this make you feel?” I steered her towards a mirror with two hands at her sides.

  “I… don’t know. I think it’ll tear easily if I wear it in combat, but it would be comfortable to wear while I’m running from city to city.”

  I suppose that’s the best we’ll get. “Sold! Tanya, I assume you didn’t just find one outfit, right?”

  “‘Course not. Follow me, weregirl, and we’ll get you stuffed into numero dos.”

  The second outfit was the complete opposite of the first one. The first thing it made me think was that Addy looked really good in a flared dress. It was red and plaid, with a long sleeved blouse tucked in under the belt. The belt buckle had a brassy color to it, reflected in her yellow eyes. Pointedly, Tanya had somehow found pink belt leather, which mirrored the XP-share choker Addy wore around her neck.

  She bounced back and forth on her sneakers. “‘S kinda cold. Think I can go outside like this?”

  I watched the bobbing hem of her dress. “Hmm. No.”

  “No?” Tanya said, agasp. “Girl, she’s like five foot two, this cutesy sort of look absolutely gromps.”

  “Gromps?” Addy whispered.

  “Means its good.”

  “It fucking better be,” Tanya said with pride. “It’s got symmetry, style, repetition, everything. It’s perfect.”

  I looked to Addy, who I caught mid-twirling herself into a dizzy mess.

  “I’m not doing backflips in a thigh-high skirt,” she said.

  I waved Tanya away to get the next fit before whispering in Addy’s ear. “You could still keep it as a non-combat fit. For when you’re out with your friends on a weekend.”

  “I don’t have friends,” Addy whispered back. I gave her a death glare. “... I don’t take weekends off?”

  This dang workaholic.

  I was about to whirl away when she grabbed me by my sleeve.

  “Hey. I appreciate what you’re doing for me. I’ve… never shopped like this before.”

  “It’s called thrifting. Do you like it?”

  She paused for a while before nodding, and then Tanya was back and whisked her away into the changing room. When the two returned I almost choked on the bottled instant-coffee I had found in the system shop.

  “Tanya!”

  “What?”

  I gave her two spritzes of TidyBlank.

  “Ack! Fucking — what was that for!?”

  “Look at her!”

  Fashion-wise, the last fit was probably the most understated out of the three of them. Black boots with big buckles were clamped tight around form-fitting beige pants, establishing the theme for her lower half as ‘neat, but secretly kickass’. Her top was an awfully standard looking black t-shirt that Tanya had remedied by stuffing it under her waistline, highlighting her waist and moderate chest. She looked especially proud about the image plastered onto it. It was a humanoid wolf tearing his clothes off of his body.

  “I’ve got that dog in me?” I said, reading the inscription.

  “There’s more at the bottom.”

  “And he’s not neutered? Tanya, what the hell?”

  It was one of those joke t-shirts, the kind people loved to post about on social media for funny misprints or intentionally zany, whacky lines.

  Tanya’s grin was between nervous and shit-eating. “If you’re already this upset, you might, maybe, possibly not want to look at the back.”

  Addy turned around trying to look over her shoulder, which of course gave me a full view of the other setpiece.

  “Bark for me, bitchboy? Who the heck is making these kind of t-shirts?”

  “It’s not that bad,” Addy said, stomping about with her boots and giving a few experimental kicks to the air. “Boots. Big fan.”

  “And she likes it,” I groaned, grabbing Tanya with all four arms. “Now she’s going to look for joke shirts every time we go shopping. She’s a respectable, if slightly unsocial weretanuki, not… what have you done?”

  Tanya blinked. I blinked back with my extra eyes. “Oh, those eyes are real. Haha. I, uh, can I sit down for a minute?”

  “Of course these are real. Everything here is real. What, you thought that pink shapeshifting aliens were real, but me and the weretanuki are holograms?”

  “I, uh, am trying to not think about a lot of things right now,” she said and oh boy did that sound like some trauma I would have to help unpack later on.

  Dang, I really am starting to feel bad for my own bullies. Must be a sign of personal growth.

  Eventually, Addy finished gathering her assorted stuff. I checked the price tags, then spent some more time to try and get the dang payment terminal to accept my card. I squinted at the thing hard. It wasn’t revealing its secrets to me, but then again, I did have magic.

  “Arms & Arms proficiency - aaagh, cramp, cramp, cramp.”

  All four of my arms shuddered as I cast the mischarged spell, muscles contracting at random intervals. Coordination was impossible. I was definitely going to feel this later, but hey, a small price to pay for experimenting with magic.

  With four arms I hefted the register off of the counter and on to my shoulder. The proficiency part of it didn’t whisper any sweet secrets about its function into my brain. It was a register after all, and a register didn’t register under the category of ‘arms’.

  But what are ‘arms’? Weapons, I mean; what are they defined as? Is a brick a weapon? What if I threw it at someone? It was definitely a weapon if I killed someone with it.

  Going down that line of reasoning, I ignored Tanya and Addy’s confused stares as I tried to infuse the register with my magic.

  C’mon, I’m trying to brain mimics with this register, that makes it a bludgeon and a bludgeon is a weapon, no?

  The magic inside me lurched. I could feel it circle the question, considering it from multiple angles. Then, as if coming to a consensus, the tiniest piece of its power flowed into it. Within seconds, I had an instinctive understanding that the issue was that the dang thing was unplugged.

  A slightly manic smile split my face as I put the register back down.

  What is and what isn’t a weapon is up to interpretation. Non-weapon objects are still weapons if I can throw them, but in exchange [Arms & Arms proficiency] is less effective on them.

  The register was useless for the purpose of paying with card. Luckily, I had a bit of cash on me. Didn’t have much incentive to spend any these past few days.

  “You’re really paying for this?” Tanya asked.

  “Of course.”

  Addy nodded wisely. “It’s theft, otherwise.”

  Tanya looked tiredly up at the two of us. “You know what… whatever.”

  “I’ll get these soulbound and auto-size-adjusted in a bit,” Addy said as the clothes teleported away.

  They returned within ten minutes, which was just about the time I needed to pay, and for everyone else to gather their bearings again. I was certainly feeling ready to go bust some more mimic heads, and to show Medusahead what’s what.

  “Guns: loaded. Magic: charged. Everyone ready?”

  I was greeted by a chorus of yes’s and nods. I peeked out the front of the boutique. No mimics to my left, none to my right.

  Proudly, I opened the door, strode out onto the road, and ran head first into a tall-ass girl.

  She looked kinda like me. Kinda exactly like me.

  The girl phased right through me. It was my illusion after all, cut up and glitching in parts. And she had brought a veritable army of mimics right on her heels.

  Magical Girl Mechanical Heart and can see how she inspired Trigger happy, not least because I suspect that we're both using Plutchiks wheel of emotions to color code our magic. If not, give her works a look.