Picket fences and abandoned cars rushed past as I picked up speed. I was already running plenty fast with 82 in my Body stat, but the extra boost from optimizing my muscles via [Elasticity] meant I was shooting down the road back the way we’d come at unsafe speeds for a suburb, let alone a human-spider-hybrid.

  Maybe traffic laws didn’t apply to me since I was only half human now. The laws of physics were already doing their best to bend to my whims. That was describing it a little dramatically, but there was honestly no other way I could put it. Actually, no, there was one:

  It was magic. I was magic. A magical girl. With guns. So many guns, but never enough.

  [Channeling emotion: Fear]

  [Spells charging]

  The thought would’ve made me feel giddy if I wasn’t overwhelmed with dread. My senses and processing speed were both just about holding up, but I was under no illusion that I could do anything but focus on where to put my foot next. I was going too fast for comfort, but hopefully fast enough to see my fears unrealized.

  Please be wrong, please.

  My foot hit an uneven concrete plate on the sidewalk. I tripped over a white picket fence, folding and splintering it as I bounced off of the lawn. I caught myself with three arms, and kept running.

  Still got two eyes in the back of my head. Need more Mind, to better keep up, and more Soul for better access to my spells… everything would be so much easier if I just had a thousand points in Soul and a flight spell.

  I had two free points. One into Mind, one into Soul then.

  Mind: 45->46

  Soul: 25->26

  A pink blur to my right almost sent me tumbling to the ground again. The leaper’s severed upper half flew past me even as I dodged and ducked around its lower one. Addy flicked her sword, twirled it once, then threw it at a 3kg mimic dropping from a street light I had just been about to run under.

  Right. She could keep up with me. She had nearly twice as much Body as I did.

  “Why are you going so fast?” With a flick of her wrist, the dagger was back in her hands. God that was cool. “Slow down, you don’t have the stats to keep running like this.”

  “I need to,” I huffed.

  “Then tell me why you’re running as if, in your mind, the world will end if you don’t.”

  “My world just freaking well might!” I gasped, gulping down lungfuls of air, pushing them back out under the strain. “You know how every barrier has its weakness?”

  “Yeah? It’s how they can be so strong and cover a large area at the same time.”

  “Well, I was just thinking. The old barrier around my neighborhood. The coffins. There’s gotta be something in there that generates all the energy to keep the barrier up, no? What if it’s not, like magical uranium, but instead—”

  “Vampires.” Addy muttered. “If they’re asleep… they’d make a good battery. Unethical, by today’s standards, but they would.”

  “That’s the problem. We might be using them as batteries,” I huffed. “But the mimics would love them as ideal hosts.”

  [Emergency quest created: Pacify the Elders]

  Description: An ancient evil was turned into a battery. Now, a different ancient evil wants to acquire their bodies and twist them to their own ends. Do not let this happen. Pacify them by any means necessary.

  Success: x1 Essence coupon (Rare)

  Failure: Death, another ancient evil released.

  Time limit: Unknown.

  Even the system thinks so— wAGH!

  Two hands clasped around my waist. My heart skipped a beat as Addy threw me over her shoulder and kicked off the ground.

  And oh boy could this girl run. The impacts of her steps weren’t exactly setting off any car alarms, but they were throwing a cupped handful of lawn up behind us with every step. She was used to rushing like this, all too used to it.

  “How are we going to get inside the barrier?” I yelled, watching a small army of mimics start to emerge from surrounding houses. They were trying to slow us down.

  “I don't know, I don’t know!”

  The barrier shimmered just ahead, superimposed over a scene of pandemonium. Car engines were stuttering to life, people yelling, slamming doors shut, and motoring away from their homes, either in panic or due to a system warning. I tried to wave at them. If four arms were more likely to catch their eyes than two, it didn’t show in the results. Not a single person stopped for us.

  “Dammit,” I hissed. “Dammit!”

  We almost ran head-first into the barrier. The pileup of trash and old cardboard boxes on the street was our only warning. As it was, Addy stomped her feet into an unmowed lawn, tearing it up until she slid right into the barrier.

  And slid on right through.

  I blinked. Addy blinked. I looked behind us where the mimics were surrounding the invisible membrane, tap-tap-tapping at it with their pointy legs. One of them pushed a tendril through, and it did go through, slowly, as if swimming through jelly.

  “The barrier is weakened,” Addy said. “They must’ve already reached one of the vampires.”

  “Isn’t that—”

  “We still have time. Deathworms need time to flood their host with their necromantic energies. Before then their control is weak, making their hosts even weaker.”

  “Except these are vampire elders.” I just almost had my neck clawed out by the equivalent of a baby vampire. “Do we even stand a chance?”

  Addy sniffed the air, eyes laser-focused on the road ahead of her. “We just need to kill the worms.”

  For once, the system provided concrete directions, pointing out the five locations we needed to check on my minimap. Yes, five. My neighborhood was using five elder vampires as batteries, and one of them was sleeping below my house.

  “You take the two on the right, I’ll take the three on the left.” Addy said as she put me down. “We meet up the moment we’re done. Victory is a question of speed, understand?”

  I nodded mutely at her. Then she turned left and immediately tore through a head-high wooden fence. The moment I started running I was already calling my parents, calling Lily, calling anyone who’d pick up.

  Mom picked up first.

  “Mom, are you—”

  “Sammy, oh my gosh, are you alright? We heard the news — there’s an army of pink monster-critters coming from out north, isn’t there? That’s where you went, we were so worried, I was worried—”

  “Mom, one moment. I’m fine. There is something like an army over there.” If you could call a hundred-odd 1.5 and 3kg mimics an army. They were more of a swarm. I could run circles around them, which was no comfort to everyone with baseline physical ability. But something stunk, something else. “Mom, where are you at right now?”

  “We’re in the SUV, on our way south. We’ve got everyone here, plus our emergency kits — your Dad’s paranoia paid off.”

  Good. If people were evacuating on their own then that was going to make things easier, hopefully. “Mom, listen. I want you to tell Dad to floor it until you're in the evac zone. Windows up, don't stop, don't go slow around corners. Tell everyone else too.”

  “Oh believe me, he’s flooring it alright.” She laughed nervously. "By the way, I saw… I think Lily saw one of your school friends snooping around the neighborhood earlier. If she hasn’t gotten a ride yet, make sure she gets home safe, ‘kay?”

  I blinked in confusion. “Who? Tanya? Rebecca?”

  “No, the snobby girl. The tall one. You know who. Ah, what was her name again… Alice? Ellis?”

  My blood ran cold. “Elise.”

  Elise, who was last seen driving off with Rebecca. Elise, who was dead. That Elise.

  Ur-mimic.

  I bombed down Paddler’s street, grabbed the sign pointing to Saint Jerome’s Street, then twirled around it. My house was coming up right ahead. I leapt the fence, tried the door.

  It was unlocked.

  My heart was beating in my throat as I slowed down, and took a few seconds to think. Dad would never have left the door open. The door was an obvious point of entry. It could be a trap. This mimic was clever, dangerous, incredibly so. It could have a gun.

  I checked my Spab-4, loaded a fresh canister into the Goop Gun, and found a funny little overload switch at the bottom of my Pricklers, which I also flicked.

  [Ammo consumption doubled]

  [Your warranty for Prickler Mk4 has expired. Further tampering may lead to undesired discharges and self-harm. Note: Fire rate may automatically sink as heat buildup increases.]

  “Oh, now you’re concerned about my safety,” I whispered, cocked my shotgun, kicked in the door, then leapt right through the window.

  Glass shattered, tinkled, and then the room was quiet. I couldn’t hear a single thing besides my ragged breath. The air was frigid. The coffin was downstairs.

  Slowly, I approached the door to the cellar, eyes flicking left and right with nervous apprehension. I grabbed the worn door knob, counted to three in my head, then tore it open.

  Nothing but darkness.

  I flipped the switch. Something fell from the ceiling.

  The blurred shadow fell onto my illusory double, and then right through it. It was little more than a torso, a head, and a too long arm with grasping claws. The blur bit into the stairs and tore a chunk of stone out of them.

  My double fizzled, then instantly reverted to a lying-on-the-floor pose, jittering between fighting the thing off and dying horribly with a muted scream, like a glitching videogame character. Then the illusion disappeared in an electric fizzle and two blood-red eyes snapped to me.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  I opened fire.

  My Spab-4 barked once, pushing my feet back on the carpet, and sending the creature flying. It hit the ceiling, then the stairs, tumbling down into the dark with the hiss of a predator denied its prey. My mind felt like a razor as the adrenaline and threat of death overclocked every sense and thought.

  Vampire. One arm. No legs.

  I swear I hit him right in the heart. No penetration. High Body-Stats? No, shadow armor… magic. Shit.

  He’s fast. Keep him pinned at all costs.

  He hit the ground. I heard it more than saw it. His one arm punched into the stone as if it were clay, bending in an unnatural way with a clack-a-crack. Then, he flexed it, and like a catapult it flung his entire body up and towards me. I didn’t even have time to switch the flip to full-auto.

  Life or death was a question of milliseconds. It was one hit, or none at all.

  I shot him again, just barely clipping his shoulders. He veered off course, hitting the living room table behind me, smashing through it, then continuing on straight through to the kitchen where he slammed right through the fridge door. For a brief moment, he was wedged in there next to pastrami, milk, and a caved-in honeymelon.

  Finally, I switched to full auto, and unloaded everything I had on the thing.

  Should’ve done this at the start.

  Lasers cracked, slime globs flew in lazy arcs as shotgun pellets of inordinate size pelted every inch of his body to the rhythmic boom-boom-boom that was shaking me to my core. My shoulder was numb, even with the extra stats. The kickback was throwing off my aim, but he was close, a sitting duck. The Pricklers slowed down. One of them got too hot to hold, then the next. And even throughout the bombardment, I didn’t get a kill notification.

  Why is he not dead yet!?

  My Spab-4 clicked empty. I let it fall out of my hands, not even wasting the time to have Moe reload it. By the time he was done it would have been too late. Instead, I played the one card I still had.

  “Summon: Bazooka!”

  It fell right into my hands. God, this was a stupid idea. At least the armor-piercing ammo was loaded.

  We’re in an enclosed room. He’s fifteen feet away. Will the warhead even arm?

  It has to.

  It did.

  The instant I pressed the trigger I was filled with a sense of dread. It might’ve been my extra Sense stat, or maybe I was developing a sort of sixth spider sense for danger. Either way, the kitchen exploded. Shards of broken glass, splinters of wooden cabinets, and jagged pieces of good china showered me as I was tossed back — and nearly down into the damn basement. Instead, I hit the doorframe right next to it.

  Ow.

  Head swimming, ears ringing, I dabbed my face and noticed the blood pouring from my eyes, my nose, and my other eyes. Overpressure popped bloodveins. One step forward and the same would’ve happened to my brain. Maybe a part of it was popped, and I just didn’t notice it oozing out of my nose yet. People could survive without substantial parts of their brains and—

  Focus.

  I wiped my hand on my legs, pushed myself up to my feet, and staggered forward to inspect the target.

  No friggin’ way.

  The vampire was still in one piece, mostly. The shadowy armor covering him was gone, torn to shreds that still clung to the back and sides of his body. He was sitting there in what once was a really nice fridge, head lolling, mouth agape, showing off his needle-like teeth. They reminded me of an anglerfish.

  Ugh, I thought they were only supposed to have, like, sharp canines or something.

  He looked kinda concussed. Not gonna lie, but I thought I was going to run out of ammo and die there for a moment. As it was, I could breathe a small, measured sigh of relief. Whatever deathworm mimic had been controlling him was busy oozing from the hole in his stomach, thoroughly dead.

  Then, I noticed the stake in his heart was missing.

  The vampire twitched.

  [Do not let him resurrect]

  “W-what?” I asked the empty air. “How do I do that?”

  [Stake him]

  Oh, now that was just great. This was a kitchen, not an anti-vampire armory. Where the heck was I supposed to find a dang stake sharp enough to—

  I looked down at Dad’s maple cooking spoon lying on the floor among splintered doors, strewn-about forks and knives, and parts of the ceiling. Without skipping a beat, I picked it up.

  God, please let this be enough.

  I walked up to the vampire, checked his chest for the stake hole — it was closing in front of my eyes — and jammed the spoon handle-first as deep as it would go. The ancient vampire shuddered once, then grew still.

  For a few moments I just sat there aiming at his chest, waiting for his eyes to shoot open and for him to lunge at me for screwing it up. But I didn’t. It was enough.

  Slowly, I leaned my head back against a wall and heaved a sigh. Moe clambered out of my backpack, gathering discarded weapons and reloading them one by one. Meanwhile, all I could think of was how close I’d come to biting the dust.

  “I had a six-to-one limb advantage. And he almost got me.”

  It didn’t even give a lot of soulcoins. I was only killing deathworms after all, and then putting their vampire meat-mecha back to sleep.

  No matter how ridiculous that was, no matter how much I wanted a break, I couldn’t take a rest. There were four more of them potentially being turned into living weapons right this moment. And then there was the Ur-mimic.

  “Wonder how Addy’s doing.”

  [Congratulations! You have reached level 23]

  I suppose that explains it. Xp share for the win. I must’ve been really close to lvl 23 after destroying that nest. I think I might be close to breaking some sort of record with this leveling speed.

  No matter the opposition, the slight dopamine hit from leveling up did wonders for my confidence.

  It was not over, not by a long shot. But I was also not quite done yet.

  “System, I need some heat-proof gloves, the thinner the better. And get me some solid slugs for the Spab-4.”

  +++

  I hit the second house the system was pointing me to within minutes of leaving the first one. It was a run-down hovel that belonged to the only crotchety old hag on the entire block. Kids used to make a game out of who could sneak up to her house the closest before running away screaming. The mailbox said her name was something polish, or greek. Something with weird letters the system was adamant translated to ‘Miss Watson’.

  I found her lying in a pool of her own blood soaking into the living room carpet. Spent shotgun shells lie scattered around, but there was no shotgun in sight. She had eyes twice as large as the average human, and a set of gills I almost mistook for stab wounds. Her ghost was nowhere to be seen. No help from beyond the grave here.

  There was a thud. I whirled around to the basement door. The system was pointing a yellow arrow at it.

  “How incredibly helpful,” I hissed, but in spite of that, I was actually quite thankful. The subtle hints and tailor-made comments made me feel less alone.

  I grabbed the door and tore it open, flicking on the lightswitch to a damp cellar. I didn’t have a charge of [Illusory Double] ready this time, so I took the plunge myself.

  Nothing on the ceiling.

  The smell of mold was in the air, and of other things gone bad.

  The vampire was almost laughably easy to find. Its coffin was just sitting where it had fallen off of an old wooden table. There was shuffling and groaning, and all around it sounded like it was sort of… stuck?

  I flipped the lid with the tip of my shoe. A gagged and bound ol’ Misses Watson stared back at me.

  … what?

  She seemed to recognize me, huge eyes practically falling out of their sockets as she yelled into the tape covering her mouth with increasing distress.

  [Associate Watson]

  What is it, who, how, why, what?

  My brain arrived at the answer before I’d even fully ripped the tape off of her mouth. One of my rear eyes caught the glint of a gunbarrel at the top of the staircase, plus the vague outline of a Watson-shaped person.

  The Ur-mimic. It was screwing with me again. Compared to Addy, I was an easier target.

  The first shot clipped my left arms. The second one hit dead center. My shroom armor absorbed it, dousing the room in a cloud of spore-smoke, making any return-fire highly inaccurate.

  “Fucking-FUCK!” I held my arm while dragging the bound associate out of the line of fire. It hurt like hell. But that was a double barrel shotgun and those were its only two shots.

  My turn.

  I sent two shots of shotgun slugs at roughly where it had been standing. In response, the lights went out and the door slammed shut. Suddenly, I was bathed in darkness. I could feel the spores clinging to my skin like a blanket, like the coarse and clammy insides of a mimic while it puppeted me around like, like…

  Oh no. Oh no oh no. Keep it together Sam. Keep it together.

  I stumbled over something metallic, shortly before my head slammed into a wooden supporting pillar. Everything hurt and if I didn’t get up now that bastard was going to seal me in a barrier again.

  “S-system, buy me a flashlight.”

  [Soulcoins: 92->91]

  [Delivery time: 3m 34s]

  [Spike in delivery requests may extend delivery times. Please be patient and remain calm.]

  “God-freaking-dammit you stupid freaking—” I tripped over something hard. It hurt. Even magical girls with lots in Body could still stub their toes.

  “Girl, calm your breathing, I can hear it over here,” the old woman said in the dark. “You’re one of them Custodian-people, arent’cha?”

  “I-I… what?”

  “Deep breaths girlie. I didn’t watch over my husband’s collection o’ curiosities my whole life just to have some whippersnapper put me in his prized coffin and let me die here. So breathe. And go do yer magic. You need a calm mind for that, no?”

  “I think, I mean, I… how do you know so much about that?”

  “Honey, I’ve been a Society associate for fifty years now. I’ve been watching ya’ll on the secret TV-channels — one-oh-double-nine, triple-six, and four-twenty-squared — ever since I accidentally rear-ended bigfoot on my Yamaha.”

  I paused. “You met your first cryptid in a car accident too?”

  “It’s dang hard to swerve when they’re invisible,” she muttered. “Point is, I see people like you doin’ a lot, and I just got this to say: You’ll figure it out. You always do. You’re doin’ great.”

  Of course. Because the TV could never lie, could never show the parts where Custodians did fail, did die, and didn’t come back. Extra lives were a necessity, else they wouldn’t have been here. People didn’t need to know that of course. And so the impression of our immortality could only grow.

  I stood back up, feeling around the dark more slowly. “I feel like I barely deserve to call myself a Custodian. All I’ve done is run screaming from one fire to the other. What if that’s going to be every day of my life from now on?”

  “Some days are like that, some days ain’t,” the old fishwoman said. “Move forward. It’s all you need to do. And to do that, all you gotta do is breathe.”

  A disbelieving huff died in my throat. “You’re a lot nicer than the rumors say.”

  “What rumors?”

  “I, uh, err…” My feet hit something solid, made of wood instead of metal or stone. It was the stairway. Once I reached the top, I’d have to be ready for heaven or hell. And oh boy was I going to be ready.

  [Illusory double] needed fear. Fear was easy in the dark, easier than ever before.

  [Spell charged: 99% Fear, 1% Anger]

  [Arms & Arms proficiency] was harder. Being locked in a pitch-black basement did not inspire joy. But I managed to charge my biggest spell just now. That was a cause for joy.

  [Spell charged: 89% Joy, 7% Fear, 4% Anticipation]

  Good enough.

  I breathed out, calmly, trying to center myself, trying to clear my mind. Each step up sent a creak through the air, uncomfortably loud and crisp. The mimic would know that I was coming up. If it had extra shells it would likely have reloaded already. All I could do was make sure that it missed the shot.

  I crouched down, trying to glean any information from the thin slit of light inching past the bottom of the door.

  “Arms & Arms proficiency,” I whispered beneath my breath as I twisted the doorknob.

  The door exploded open as my double jumped out into the living room, shooting in every direction while I was peeking out between its legs. The mimic was ready, now fully in the form of Mrs Watson, likely to prevent suspicion from passerbyes. It stood in the doorway straight ahead. Its first shot took my double’s head off. The double mimed a few convincing post-mortem steps before falling to the ground and dissipating.

  The look of triumph on the ur-mimic’s face morphed into a comically exaggerated frown as it realized its mistake.

  Victory seemed so close as its silhouette matched into my sights.

  I pulled the trigger. The Spab-4 barked and the Ur-mimic flew back a couple steps. I’d hit dead center.

  A lance of pain ran up my upper left shoulder because ow, I’d used this shotgun a lot today. The part that cushioned the recoil was probably a single purple bruise by this point. But the pain was worth it.

  I clambered to my feet, sweat pearling down my face.

  A firefight. I was just in a firefight. I was shot at and I didn’t flinch because I couldn’t, I had to take the shot and I did and…

  I stood in front of the mimic’s body, its form slowly turning into goo, but not dissolving into black smoke like all the other mimics. There was no blood either. It was just turning liquid, bloating, waxing and waning in all directions. As I sighted my weapons on the foaming mass, a chill ran through my body.

  Where’s the vampire?

  An emaciated hand shot out of the human-shaped pile of goo and grabbed my throat. A gust of wind whipped past me. The mimic had oozed around the vampire like it had once oozed around me. Even though I’d been standing a good twenty feet away, it took less than a blink for it to breach that distance. This vampire lacked the black shadow armor of the one-handed one, but it made up for that with a frankly physics-defying speed. Pointedly, it was not missing a single limb.

  Life or death was once again a question of milliseconds, and this time I was too slow.

  I’m screwed. Shit!

  The puddle-mimic cackled, or hiccuped; it sounded like it was trying to approximate a laugh. It reformed into an indistinct human shape, making a weird face before spitting out a heavy metal slug.

  Come on… my shots didn’t… do anything…?

  I was beginning to understand why Addy was having such trouble catching this one. I was also beginning to see stars, because the vampire was anything but gentle with its grip around my neck.

  I tried to struggle against the chokehold, but the vampire just crushed my windpipe harder. One of his arms was many times stronger than four of mine, with stats and everything. I thought I heard my spine crack for a moment.

  This was it for me then. Shit.

  Then the Ur-mimic was next to me and its gooey body started to envelop me, taking on the exact skin tone of my arm once again. My heart skipped a beat.

  It's happening again. Not again.

  The mimic had enveloped both of my left arms now. I could feel tiny pinprick needles enter my skin, numbing the limbs. Its disturbing face was deforming, melting over my chest like a wax figurine sitting by a bonfire.

  My right arm twitched, but the vampire grabbed it by the wrist before I could shoot my Toothpick at either of them. Three shots were wasted against the ground, the wall, and a tree that was now missing a branch.

  And I was all out of options. Almost.

  Cracks filled the air as I shot my Toothpick one trigger-pull at a time. Four, five, six shots disappeared among the clouds. With any luck, Addy would notice them as a distress call.

  Seven, eight, nine followed. The mimic was oozing down to envelop my legs by the time ten, eleven, and twelve shots left the barrel. The laser pistol was unbearably hot in my hands, and if you listened closely you could hear a faint crackle coming from the battery pack.

  Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen.

  The mimic reached the tip of my toes. One of its amoeba-like tendrils reached up, past my chin, and into my mouth.

  I pressed a tear out of my eye and fired the sixteenth shot.

  Then, an explosion, and darkness.

  Rating or Review. We're hanging on to the bottom of page #5 of the Best Ongoing list, but we can still climb higher... is what I'd like to say, but honestly just coming this far is already a huge surprise. I didn't expect people to like my silly little story so much, but I'm glad they did. So yeah, Rate and Review!

  . Come have a look, we just finished book 1 last week over there.