[You have died]

  [Extra lives: 1->0]

  Space greeted me with the same cold, distant detachment from earth as it had the first time. Once again, I was without a body. Once again, I was rotating around my own axis.

  The first thing I did was gasp for breath. Immediately, I felt like an idiot. I was a ghost, a semi-translucent soul-construct or whatever. I didn’t need air, and even if I did, I would’ve just expelled all of the air in my lungs since, y’know, vacuum.

  So yeah. There I was. Dead once more. Magical Girl Ghost Samantha, ready for duty!

  [Are you?]

  I nearly flinched as the message popped up in front of my face.

  “Am I? Oh now you ask that?” I laughed a dry laugh. “What if I’m not? Will you send me back down anyways? And if I am… what difference does it make?”

  [Custodians are expected to fight against the odds. Sometimes they fail. Additional life resources are granted as a safety net.]

  “I did what you said. I thought that meant I had a chance. But against a friggin’ elder vampire, what am I even supposed to do!?”

  [Try again. Or choose an afterlife.]

  It was that simple, huh? I thought I was supposed to get therapy, or some time to, to… most people don’t get over dying. Now, I have to do exactly that a second time.

  People needed me. I couldn’t check if my family made it to the evac zone safely from up here. I couldn’t check in with Addy; the telepathy potion was far out of range. They needed me and I was going to fail them again, because I wasn’t prepared, because I wasn’t a full magical girl, because I just wasn’t good enough.

  [... deploying emotional support mascot]

  The familiar outlines of Mochi and Abyssl materialized in the airless void. They were staring at me, even the usually so outgoing Mochi remaining silent. Hah, they were worried. Why worry? I still had one real life left. Sure, I just blew myself up, but that didn’t really matter. I was a Custodian, and Custodians always stand back up.

  “Oh wow, she’s crying,” Mochi noted.

  “Is your cat ok?” Abyssl asked.

  “I screwed up again,” I blurted out. “I’m such a mess.”

  “I, uh, umm.” Mochi looked flustered. It was shedding sweat-emojis at a distressing pace. “L-look at it this way: You didn’t fail, you simply succeeded in reverse! I mean, at least not all of the ancient vampires are awake.”

  It didn’t help. I was openly bawling now, almost drowning out its voice.

  “Hey, uh, please stop crying? You’re killing my vibe. And you’re a Custodian, you’re not supposed to spread tears, but joy!” Wow, thanks envoy of joy. Really helpful of you.

  But that was the crux of the matter, wasn’t it? Custodians were here to save the day, and preferably look good while doing so. And I was… me. Lanky, awkward, oddly obsessed with arachnids, and only moderately self aware of how people around me think of me. I got better, but never fast enough. Being good at everything at once was just so hard.

  Do I really have what it takes to make other people’s lives a brighter place?

  “Am I a good Custodian?”

  “What? Pshh, of course not,” Mochi said with a laugh before Abyssl’s personal cloud decided to waterboard the envoy of joy.

  “What she means to say is that, sadly, we aren’t born perfect. Proficiency comes with practice. If it were easy to be good, everyone would be. Alas… everything is flawed. Even Custodians.”

  “So why me?” I asked with a sniffle. “What makes me so special that you chose me?”

  “We didn’t choose you,” Abyssl said. “You chose yourself through your actions. You’re friendly even to strangers. You put others above yourself. You are constantly trying to become a better person than you were yesterday, and even if you fail, inevitably, failure begets progress.”

  “Wow.” I sniffed. “You sure you’re not the envoy of uplifting thoughts?”

  “Hard truths are seldom uplifting. That yours seem as such should tell you more about who you are.”

  The smile on my face cut through the ghostly tears trailing down cheeks. The terrifying, visceral reality of beating back an invasion of mimics was hard, yes. But if I hadn’t made that first step back on the football field, I wouldn’t have had the chance to meet the true Addy, or find out about Clem’s witch business. And I wanted to know more. God, I wanted it the same way a curious cat wanted a string to play with.

  “I want to be a Custodian,” I said. “I want it. And even if I’m not a magical girl people can rely on, I’ll become one. I want to become someone I can idolize.”

  Mochi finally managed to ungag herself, slapping the cloud back where it came from. “Then what the honk are you waiting for!? Get down there, kick ass.”

  [Once again, you are given a choice, Custodian. Return to life, or ascend to Elysium.]

  I snorted and flicked the notification away. “What kind of choice is that?”

  [You have chosen: Revival]

  [Revival ETA 3m 2s]

  [Would you like to spend soulcoins to speed up your respawn?]

  “Depends. What’s the rate?”

  [1 Soulcoins = 2.24s]

  I shot Mochi a sideye. “Ripoff.”

  “It’s the going market rate.” Mochi mimed a shrug. “You should count yourself lucky. You wouldn’t even have access to magic if it hadn’t been democratized.”

  “More like ‘commodified’.”

  I chose to wait. Three minutes wasn’t a short time, but I needed it, if only to come up with a plan of action.

  I was going to revive somewhere close to my point of death, but not in the exact same place. My body was probably being dissolved right about now by the anti-deathworm belts. Hopefully that didn’t damage any of my more expensive weapons, or my backpack.

  I’d have to summon the bazooka first thing, just to be armed. There was really no getting around the investment of binding my other weapons to my soul. Hopefully there weren’t going to be any major repercussions, assuming I ever got the funds.

  Once I was armed, I’d have to check my surroundings, find my corpse, and extract what gear I could before I could even daring to think of the next step.

  [Revival ETA 3s]

  [Revival ETA 2s]

  [Revival ETA 1s]

  The timer ticked to zero and gravity took hold of me.

  +++

  Cheetos and Cheezits. Pink gum and peppermint candies. Gatorade, coke, instant mocha. All the above hit me as I materialized six feet off the ground and fell, slamming face-first into a shelf, nearly suffocating under the avalanche of packaged sweets and cooled drinks.

  “Summon — akh! — Bazooka!”

  I spat out a package of barf- and stink-bug-flavored jelly beans, caught my launcher as it materialized in front of me, and pointed it left, right, up, behind.

  Nobody there. Just me, my pile of snacks, and one armor-piercing bazooka round.

  The quiet hum of air conditioning seemed awfully loud. Everything smelled of plastic. There was an odd smear on the ceiling nobody had ever bothered to clean up.

  Yep, I was back at the 7-Eleven again. By foot, it was a minute or two from where I’d died.

  A shiver ran through me from head to toe. Hopefully the ur-mimic didn’t get away unscathed.

  The quest was still there, as was the one for the vampires.

  Hey, at least I didn’t fail those.

  [Emergency quest failed: Pacify the Elders]

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  Three elder vampires have been suborned to the mimics. Weakened though they might be, they nonetheless pose a significant added threat.

  … Me and my big mouth.

  I stood up, which was the exact moment that something huge, dark, and decidedly fuzzy materialized right on top of me. For a moment, I panicked as I dropped my launcher, before realizing who or what had just squished me into the ground.

  “Samantha?” came Addy’s muffled voice.

  “Owww.”

  She got off of me. She was in her full weretanuki form again. Her eyes were wide like two fist-sized mentos.

  She’d died as well.

  “You didn’t move from the respawn point,” she said flatly. “Of course. Why would you?”

  “I wasn’t exactly expecting the system to drop you onto me,” I grouched as I got up. “Your fat butt almost squeezed my lungs out of my mouth. But on the plus side, I think you fixed a strained muscle.” I stretched like a cat until I felt my extra shoulders pop with satisfaction. “Mmmh, you should’ve become a chiropractor.”

  “Sam, this is not the time for jokes. We just respawned. We need to get up and get out and make sure those vampires are back in the ground or else everyone in this dome is going to die.”

  “That means it’s exactly the right time!” I said, or yelled, or shrieked. My own voice seemed off, like it was coming from under water. The hum of air-conditioners pressed in from all sides, boring into my brain like malicious tinnitus.

  Addy paused to stare at me. Perhaps I said that a bit too loud.

  “I’m not trying to make light of the situation,” I said, quieter. “But our magic runs on emotions. We run on emotions. A reset would be nice.”

  Her stare turned contemplative. Assuming of course I was reading weretanuki Addy correctly.

  “It would,” she finally said.

  “But you are also right. We can't afford to wait. And I’d feel much better if I could get my stuff.”

  Addy held up her hand. Her sword appeared out of thin air. Her outfit did as well, if slightly bloodied and torn in places. “I’m good.”

  “Cheater.” I stuck out my tongue at her before deflating into a sigh. The vampires could of course be guarding my corpse. Just one would be enough to keep me from my gear, which would seriously hamper my combat power. I needed that stuff back, but how to get around the guard that would obviously be there?

  “Addy, what are vampires weak to?”

  “Anything you’d expect, really. Holy water, wooden stakes, right angles. These elder vampires are being controlled by deathworms — they’re basically sleepwalking. That takes the edge off their powers.”

  I paused. “System, get me a Toothpick plus three battery packs. Also, I need something that can incapacitate a vampire, if briefly.”

  [HVAP - High-vampire astonishing projectile. An 85mm rocket propelled grenade with a cedarwood shrapnel glove. The shrapnel glove is studded with thumb-long blessed stakes, completely immobilizing vampires with an age <250 years and weakening those with an age of <500. Effective explosive range: 3-5m. Soulcoins: 25]

  Pricey. But it would do fine.

  [Soulcoins: 91->29]

  I waited for the special ammunition to appear in my hands, loading it into the bazooka while gripping my self-defense laser pistol. A necessity; after all, what was I supposed to do with only a bazooka if a mimic decided to engage me in less-than-honorable melee?

  “You really like those trashy laser guns,” Addy commented with a snort.

  “They saved my life once.” I paused. “They also did the opposite. So far, I think they’re alright for their cost.”

  “Even if their batteries keep on exploding?”

  “Especially then,” I said, turning to her. “Addy, I need you to scare me.”

  “Surprise-scare or fear-scare?”

  “Fear-scare.”

  Addy turned, then strutted right over to me, making herself as big and imposing as possible. She showed her teeth and growled, a low rumble that reverberated through my bones.

  Kinda tickles.

  Wow, her teeth are so shiny and white. Not a single speck of cavities.

  “I said scare me. This isn’t scary.”

  She opened her mouth and closed it around my head.

  “Smelly. Not scary.”

  She spat me out, coughing and looking mildly insulted.

  “Global warming isn’t fixed, just slowed down. Your government can sense where you are in a room by how much your body weakens the wifi signal. Most deepsea lifeforms are mimics that are kept below 2000 meters due to the heightened microplastic concentration near the surface.”

  I blinked at her and asked in a quiet voice. “What do you mean the ocean’s full of mimics and… microplastics?”

  “Oh yeah, the stuff’s like poison for them,” Addy said with a big nod. “More poison than to us, mind you. ‘Like worldwide chemotherapy’ is one of the excuses countries still use to justify dumping their waste into the ocean. Not like there isn’t enough waste to keep them at bay for the next hundred years. They probably wouldn’t stop if there weren’t any mimics down there either.”

  I looked up at Addy with quivering eyes. “That’s not true… is it?”

  “Giant squid are extinct in the wild. It’s the mimics’ fault. Sperm whale custodians were the answer to hunting the things that replaced them. It’s why their faces look so fucked up all the time.”

  “Oh.” She was being entirely serious. “That’s… less than ideal.”

  I thought of all the times I’d spent at the beach happily digging holes and building sandcastles. I’d gone windsurfing a few times as well. Dad promised we could go next year as well. Now that idea was ruined forever, because I knew that beyond the abyssal depths there be horrors beyond any spider girl gunslinger.

  [Channeling: Fear, sadness]

  [Spell charged]

  [Illusory Double: 79% Fear, 21% Sadness]

  I winced at the distribution. Hopefully this would be good enough.

  An illusory double appeared next to me, sluggishly, like a video that had been set to 0.75 speed. It looked back at me as I looked at it, slowly mimicking my movements with considerable delay.

  “You. Follow me.”

  “We’ll need more than a single distraction to get to your body,” Addy said. “You got a workable plan?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe isn’t good enough.”

  “I could lie and say ‘yes’, but I feel you’d appreciate that even less. Maybe is what we got. Here's what we’re gonna do…”

  +++

  After buying some much-needed replacement clothing, we walked back down to Jerome’s street where we took up position in the house opposite of my own. The blinds were down and half-eaten dinner stood cold on a glass table.

  I took a peek outside, checking to make sure that it was as I’d thought it was. Indeed, out there was a vampire, sitting cross-legged on my front lawn right next to a smoking puddle that used to be me.

  Anti-deathworm belt. Right.

  The vampire’s head lolled to the side unnaturally, eyes closed tight. Faintly, I wondered if it was aware that its body was being steered around like a puppet. Maybe it was having nightmares. Maybe vampires just didn’t dream at all.

  Regardless, we needed to re-seal it, even if we just did it quick and dirty. The ur-mimic didn’t have any extra deathworms and couldn’t produce any since we’d destroyed the nest. Just sealing the vampires would be enough for the moment.

  I checked my weapons, loading the HVAP grenade into my bazooka. It sort of looked like an oversized pinecone.

  Extra points for style, I suppose.

  Addy looked at me and after an exchange of nods she disappeared out the back. She knew the plan. I’d told her on the short trip here. My double was already working its way around the left side, but it sure was taking a while.

  I peeked out between the blinds. My backpack was still just lying there, looking oddly untouched by acid and explosion. I didn’t see Moe’s red hat poking out anywhere, so I assumed that he’d done the smart thing and stayed hidden inside of it.

  That was the moment when a laser blast cracked through the air. The vampire immediately got up. It only had one leg and one arm, I realized.

  Yes, this can definitely work.

  My double, slow as it was, was shooting fake lasers at just shy the speed of light. They impacted all around the vampire before the double turned and started running away in slow motion.

  The vampire tilted its broken-necked head, a green shimmer growing around its only arm. Her. The vampire was a her, wearing a nightgown that would’ve been see-through if it wasn’t stained brown with blood and dirt. Crucially, she didn’t take a step towards the distraction. She wasn’t buying it. But that was fine. All I needed was to catch her attention for a brief moment.

  I twirled into the open doorway, sighted her, and let [Arms & Arms proficiency] guide my hands.

  120 feet. Bullet drop negligible. Fire away.

  The vampire turned the moment the grenade left its launcher. She was quite quick, but a friggin’ rocket-propelled-grenade was quicker.

  She dodged. Instead of her leg, the projectile hit the dirt two feet behind her, exploding and sending tiny shards of wood in every direction. Most of them hit the vampire, who buckled over. With all those stakes littering her body she looked like a porcupine.

  Addy sprang into action. In three large leaps she was across the street, sword transformed into a cleaver. She kicked the vampire in the chest once, flipping her over, and buried the cleaver into her stomach.

  There wasn’t much blood. Vampires were, as I understood, not the liveliest of creatures. Their skin was leathery, bordering on iron the older they got. They weren’t just dangerous because their bodies were as strong and resilient as that of a high level Custodian, but because of their experience. Hundreds of years were enough to perfect the use of any number of abilities. And all vampires only ever had one.

  It reached up at Addy in the same moment as she cut the deathworm in two, a sickly green mass of roots growing out of her palm and into Addy’s chest. The vampire twitched once, twice, then fell back into its long-lasting sleep.

  We didn’t have to kill the vampires. That was impossible. We only had to kill the mimics controlling them.

  I ran out to meet Addy, almost forced to catch her as she took two drunken steps backwards.

  “I’ll be fine, I’ll be fine. It’s just a stamina drain.”

  “Just a stamina drain?” I asked. “Addy, she touched you for less than a second. You can barely stand.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Do you mean it or did you just cast your spell three times in a row to not fall unconscious?”

  She had the decency to look a bit chastised. “It’s my magic. I get to use it how I want.”

  It was a counter of sorts, but by the look on her face she knew that it wasn’t going to fly with me.

  I approached her from the side, gently sitting her down on the grass supported by three of my four arms, and handed her some dogwater.

  “And I’m not trying to say you can’t. I just don’t want you to hide when you’re hurting because you don’t feel like sharing the pain. I’m here. I can share it with you.”

  “I’m flattered,” she said. “But no. You’d probably keel over with your low amount in Body—”

  “ — I have over a hundred now —”

  “— and regardless, I’m not keen on sharing this burden of mine.”

  “Why?”

  She grit her teeth. “Because you don’t deserve to suffer through it.”

  “So that means you do?”

  “I…” She frowned. “You’re using words to put me into a corner again.”

  I held up my hands. “Just trying to figure out why you think how you think.”

  “... it’s hard, sometimes. I take the hits. It’s what I do. But sometimes, I don’t know why.” She closed her eyes. “Why did my partner take a hit for me when I’m so much better at it than he was?”

  She was talking about her old partner. The one in the hospital. Mason.

  “Because they didn’t want to see their friend suffer?” I hedged. “A bird twittered to me that all Custodians choose themselves through selfless acts. I’ve seen you go through more than your fair share. If I were your partner, I’d think: No one deserves to suffer, least of all this girl who’s trying their best.”

  Her jaw clenched and unclenched as she chewed on my message that she needed to stop being selfish and start trusting me, dangit! “... why are you so nice to me?”

  “Would you believe it if I said that I think you deserve it?”

  “... no?”

  “Then you need my help more than you think,” I said flatly. “And until you’ve had enough I’m not leaving your side. I’m your helpful neighborhood girl… spider… thing. Man, I need my own punchline. Something snappy that’d look good on the back of a t-shirt.”

  “Is now really the time to be worrying about that?” Addy asked as I searched the house for any signs of the fish woman the ur-mimic had used to lure me into the basement. No sign of her, no sign of struggle either. For a moment I thought some mimics had abducted her, but then I noticed the open garage, and the faint smell of burnt gasoline. She’d gotten away on one of the bikes stored inside. Good.

  Returning to Addy, I offered her my hand with a grin. “You’re right. Image can come later. We’ve got some mimics to kill. And I think we might be able to finish this sooner than later.”

  “What makes you think that…” Addy trailed off as she noticed the chunk of gooey mass sitting on the sidewalk, right where I’d died. It was pink, charred, mimic-y, and not at all dissolving yet. Her eyes focused as she walked over and gave it a whack, then a sniff.

  “A piece of Ur-mimic,” she said. “You wounded it.”

  “You have its scent?”

  “I have its entire social security number, plus the numbers on the back of its credit card.”

  “You just made another joke.” My grin grew wider. “She is cured!”

  “I wasn’t… I’m not…” She huffed, eyebrows knitting together as she followed the trail. Then, suddenly, her ears shot up straight. “It’s going towards the evac zone.”

  really too long, even for my own tastes, and this just sort of... happened.