Katherine and her Aunt continued staying with us for the time being. Their house wasn't destroyed or anything, although there was a little bit of damage. More important was the fact that her area was still experiencing all kinds of power outages and plumbing and gas difficulties, not to mention all the cleanup activity and associated chaos.

  Once they finally finished installing a new window in my regular bedroom, I moved my important stuff back there and gave Katherine and her Aunt the main guest room. As the days passed and we got closer to finally starting the new trimester, I worked on getting a bunch of important shit in order. The first thing was to sort out any problems with the AAG. To that end, I had a couple more meetings with that Guardian law Guy—Keither Nelson, right.

  Even he was rather flabbergasted by what happened—obviously, he didn't know the full situation that I did—you know, that I was actually an Anathema and all the associated bullshit. Anyway, that was one of the things I worked on, or rather, had someone else pay someone else to work on for me.

  There was also the matter of those stupid biological samples. I eventually got those taken care of, though, once again with Nelson's help. Whatever strings my Red-colored benefactors needed to pull had been pulled, and it looked like everything was how it needed to be with respect to bureaucratic AAG stuff.

  None of that was the most important development, though. What was far more important than squaring things with the AAG was that I'd finally secured a better solution to my constant hunger than eating an unholy amount of hardware pieces and hunting down small game in the nearest park. I was rather proud of myself for coming up with it, and so far, it was working even better than I'd expected. Basically, I bought a boat.

  And holy shit, owning even a small boat was fucking expensive. It was also obnoxiously complicated, from having to get a special boating license, to special paperwork, to maintenance and figuring out how to store it. Sure, there were a lot of people I could pay to make things easier in that respect—like keeping it docked at a place where they'd take care of a bunch of shit—but it was still a bit overwhelming.

  It wasn't even some giant yacht. It was just a small little boat.

  Anyway, I'd barely gotten things started when it came to the actual boat, let alone my longer term plans. Still, I put a lot of effort into getting things in motion. A steady and dependable, reliable, and discreet food source was essential to everything else working out. Also, Kevin already had a boating license—because of course he would—and that was super useful in the near-term.

  It was now Friday, and Kevin, Chloe, Katherine, and I were drifting along the coast in my awesome new boat. Well, Kevin, Chloe, and Katherine were. I left them behind about ten minutes ago.

  How did a boat help satisfy my hunger? Well, the boat itself didn't. The ocean did. Living so close to a touristy coast made me wonder—why not just go prowling around on the ocean floor? There was a fuckton of stuff to hunt and no one around to see me do it. After stripping down, I just jumped straight over the edge and shifted into my armored form.

  The lack of air was a bit of a problem, but not a critical one. It turned out that yes, I could suffocate, and yes, I could regenerate through it. The experience was odd, to say the least, but it worked. After a certain point, my body would just give up entirely and the burning would go away. That was the most confusing part to me, at least initially. Looking things up later, though, I learned that the burning feeling that came when you held your breath for too long was actually a response to accumulating CO2, not a lack of Oxygen.

  As a result, you could suffocate someone in, say, a pure Nitrogen atmosphere, and they wouldn't even feel it. They'd quickly grow tired and dizzy or whatever, but there would never be the feeling of gasping for air. My hypothesis, then, was that my body eventually hit a point where it just stopped bothering to try respiration, instead relying purely on Anathema regeneration to keep everything going.

  It was still far from ideal. The constant regeneration sink was actually quite large, and it came with a new and far less familiar kind of discomfort. It would also rapidly increase my hunger—well, it would if I wasn't eating anything. As it were, there was a lot of marine life close to the shore, and it wasn't very hard to net a hunger 'profit,' so to speak.

  I'd shifted to a full chamelium form by this point, and an initial inspection revealed that the wings remained. They'd grown even larger and more impressive, and they also looked basically identical to every other chamelium picture I could find. We all looked super similar, it turned out. After waking up with God damned wings, I'd gone back to researching my kind. The picture on the main wiki article had them, as did most of the other pictures I managed to dredge up. I also finally found this weird, ancient looking forum devoted to rare Anathema sightings, and they had a surprising number of chamelium pics. The latest one was even of me.

  It seemed like someone managed to take a picture of me during my rampage across the university campus. It was after the incursion had already started, so I was no longer feral at that point. Honestly, seeing what was definitely a picture of me getting a relatively large amount of attention on an Anathema image board was equal parts cool and upsetting. It creeped me out at the same time that I relished in the unconventional attention.

  The fact that multiple users commented on my lack of wings confirmed that having them was normal. I wonder why they weren't there from the beginning? Regardless, they were oddly helpful when it came to navigating the ocean floor.

  My ultra-dense, metal body was both a blessing and a curse in this aquatic environment. In some ways, it made moving far faster and easier. I could cut through the water around me with a speed and ease that my normal, human form would struggle with. Having seen divers move around at the aquarium, I could imagine how annoying it would be to try walking along the bottom with my normal weight.

  Unfortunately, that exact effect made swimming difficult. I also found myself constantly sinking into the sand and silt as I walked on it—a better word than 'walked' might be 'trudged.' Fortunately, my immense, biologically implausible strength in my current form meant it wasn't a big deal. It was just a minor nuisance. Another benefit of my chamelium body in this environment were the Anathema senses.

  Even though this part of the ocean wasn't very deep at all—we were still super close to the shore—it was both way deeper than a normal beach goer would ever be able to dive and also way farther out. I didn't know if it would even be safe to swim out here without a boat nearby—at least for an ordinary human. As for the depth—I didn't know exactly how deep it was, but it sure felt like it was moving into 'professional pearl diver' territory. I seriously doubted even a decently athletic swimmer could go this deep without scuba gear.

  That meant that it was actually kind of dim down at the bottom. Oh, it wasn't too hard to see things right in front of you—but trying to look out into the distance? That got hard. The ocean floor reminded me of the surface of the moon in a way, and with the reduced light level, as well as the way the water faded visibility in all directions, not just up—well, it was remarkably similar to playing an old video game with a small render distance.

  But like I said, there were a lot of fish.

  Oh hell yeah! Score! The trick with the turtles, I found, was to act calm and slow, plodding along the ground without reacting to their passage. Only when they swam close would I suddenly twist my lengthy neck and snag them. Or, if that wasn't viable, I could pin them with a leg or—surprisingly the most common method—I could bludgeon them with my heavy tail.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  The turtle I just caught was a big one, and I ripped into it with pure joy. Yummy yummy yummy yummy. The continental shelf was a giant, open buffet, exceeding everything I got from the previous incursion in mere minutes. It couldn't compare to the incursion before that—the one on the university campus—but it was still really, really good. I'd already eaten more than my own volume—not weight, I was way too fucking dense for that—in just a quarter of an hour.

  I wonder why more Anathema don't do this? It was an interesting thought. This was only my second time diving like this, and it was already proving its worth. Why don't more of them just wander out into the ocean? Maybe they did, but I was pretty sure I would have heard something about that if it was a common phenomenon. Maybe it's just because only humans get seeded? So the incursions only really start on land, and they're too busy fighting and eating humans to ever make it into the water?

  I felt like that was way too simple an explanation, but what else could it be?

  It didn't really matter. It was what it was, and the upside was that it meant there was no competition and very little scrutiny down here. Hell, here I was, hunting in my full, six legged, completely inhuman chamelium form with three other 'Guardians' nearby.

  I continued a wide circle around the boat, devouring bottom-dwelling crustaceans and opportunistically pouncing at anything large that swam close enough. When it came to anything that swam, I only ever went for the larger animals, like the turtles and the bigger fish. The smaller ones were way harder to catch—almost impossible, actually—and they just weren't really worth the effort.

  Things like crabs and lobsters were much easier, though, and I munched up at least several dozen by the time I made a full circuit. Even with the massive, flat cost of shifting my body back and forth, as well as the ongoing, moderately steep cost of using my regeneration to power through, I was already at the point where I'd made a decent net profit on my hunger. Hmm. Maybe another fifteen? Make it a half hour total?

  I didn't want to stay too long. While I doubted I was putting any significant strain on the local ecosystem right now, I was conscious that I was still eating a lot. It was way more than even a large ocean predator probably ate in any given day, and this was supposed to be a weekly thing for the foreseeable future. If I spent hours wandering along the shallows, chewing up everything in my way—well, even if it didn't massively fuck things up, I was pretty sure someone would start to notice.

  That was the primary reason for moderating my consumption. There was also a much more minor consideration, which was that my friends would get freaked out if I stayed under for too long. They already found my sudden obsession with ocean walks a bit peculiar.

  For that reason, I plodded my way back to the metal chain hanging down from the side of the boat. The chain served several purposes—it wasn't a real anchor, so the boat would still drift a bit, but it was slow enough that the chain was an easy way for me to keep track of the position. I could look up and see the hull, sure, but that only really worked when I was already directly under it. Get too far away, and the angle against the surface made seeing it almost impossible.

  The chain was also hard to see from a distance, which was why I'd installed several reflective bobs along the length, as well as some waterproof, battery powered lights after the first time attempting this.

  There was also a waterproof clock thingy near the end of the chain. Upon reaching it, I confirmed that it had been pretty close to fifteen minutes since dropping down. Alright. Ten to twenty more and we'll head back. The last major feature of the chain was to help me climb back up.

  Technically, I could just swim to the surface once I shifted back to a fully 'human' form. It was a lot easier if I also used the chain, though, so why not?

  I had to venture a bit further out in order to continue hunting effectively. Something that I'd noticed early on was that the precise location mattered a lot. There would be one area with a bunch of stuff—bottom dwellers, small fish, whatever—and then a dozen yards away it would be completely barren. Hmm—I should probably learn more about shallow water ecosystems. Seems like that might be helpful. I wondered if there were any highly detailed maps of the area. There probably were, and I'd just have to figure out how to find them.

  I ended up only hunting for about ten minutes longer. I'd exhausted the easy pickings in the immediate area by that point, and it seemed like the larger swimmers were avoiding the area. Oh well. Returning to the chain, I focused on shifting back into my human form. It took a frustratingly long time. Looking at the attached clock, it was almost a minute and a half. Damn. That would be inconvenient if I ever needed to switch back real quickly for some reason. It was also annoying because it meant more time burning through my regeneration to survive the lack of gaseous Oxygen.

  Kind of interesting that I still need to breathe in full chamelium mode. Not only that, but it had to be air—obviously, there was plenty of dissolved Oxygen in the water that the marine animals used. I guess that makes some amount of sense, given the whole air concept I'm supposed to have.

  Finally, I was able to pull myself along the chain back up to the surface. Along the way, though, I managed to grab what I was pretty sure was a large catfish. I held onto it instead of immediately eating it, though, and there was a very important reason for that. I can't believe I actually did that. Catching the 'smaller' fish, especially with hands instead of reptilian jaws, was hard. They were fast and slippery—slippery as a fish, hehe—and there was no way I could have done it without pushing my superhuman strength close to its limit.

  The increased strength was necessary to brute force my arm through the water fast enough to catch a natural swimmer like, well, a fish. Regardless, I managed to catch it, and I kept hold of it all the way to the surface.

  Breaching the surface, I spent a few long moments just treading water while I greedily gasped for air. One side effect of relying on Anathema regeneration to fill my respiratory requirements was that by this point, my entire body was super deOxygenated. Visibly, that meant I looked disturbingly pale and even bluish. That would fix itself quickly enough, though.

  "Hey guys." All three of them were leaning over the railing of the boat to look at me. "How's it going?"

  "Abysmal," Kevin replied. He pointed at the fishing rod attached to a cup-holder thing nearby. "I think the fish are starting to wise up. I would say they're 'catching on,' but uh, that's kind of the problem, isn't it?"

  "What, you're not catching anything?" His somber nod and morose expression were too great to be anything but intentional. "Damn, that sucks. Kind of sounds like a massive skill issue to me, though." Finally lifting my hand above the water, I tossed the still-wriggling catfish into the boat. Immediately, all three of them whipped around. Katherine made this stupid little squealing noise and tried to get as far away from it as possible. Wow. Such a scaredy Kat! I could hear the fish flopping around on the inside of the boat.

  Whirling back around at the same time as I started climbing back over the edge, Kevin jabbed an accusatory finger right at my bare chest. "That's cheating! You—you—uh..."

  Ha! I idly wondered if he'd ever seen a naked woman before. You know, like, physically, in person. Asking if a twenty-something guy had ever seen a naked woman before without qualification was a bit of a stupid question. Katherine was also just staring at me, which meant Chloe was the only one who acted unfazed by the whole thing. "Quit staring," she growled, whacking her cousin over the back of the head with a cheap sandal.

  "Ow! Hey!" He tried to grab the sandal, but Chloe just used her power to float out of reach. "Hey! That's cheating!"

  I left them to it. I had some dry towels ready, and I quickly dried off and changed back into proper clothing. Now that my hunt was over, we would probably start heading back to shore. Everyone might be enjoying the unexpected vacation, but I had places to be. It was still an hour and a half until my first meeting with a special new instructor—but we still had to head back to shore, dock the boat, and drive through the glitzy hellscape known to the wider world as the LA Westside.

  I didn't want to be late, and if the others wanted to just hang out and go clubbing or something, that was fine—but me?

  I would be studying the blade.

  inner strength anima.

  Dawn of Hunger Spotify Playlist. These are:

  12. Rock Lobster by the B-52's - this is basically the theme for today's chapter specifically, lol.

  13. Cold as Ice by Foreigner - basically just another Alex "love" song.

  14. Catch Me If You Can by Alan Walker feat. Sorana - this one is also an Alex relationship song, but also has more Alex vibes in general.

  15. Boom, Like That by Mark Knopfler - this one is interesting. It's actually about McDonald's, the hamburger place. Specifically, it's a ballad about Ray Kroc, the ruthless "founder" of the chain, written as solo work by the guitarist and singer for Dire Straits. If you know the origin story of the Golden Arches, or just pay close attention to the lyrics, you'll see how it relates to Alex (and to her eventual plans--for those of you who followed when this story still had the original MGAAD title, well, you know.)

  16. Snowblind by Au5, Tasha Baxter - this one is, IMO, the most sonically intense song currently on the playlist and the one I think is most likely to be actively disliked by the largest number of people. I love it, though, and it's kind of how I feel about Alex when she's at peak mania. (Also, you could say it very much has super aggressive and intense "monster" vibes, so... (you'll know what I mean)).

  17. Masters of the Galaxy by Gloryhammer - another Gloryhammer song. This one is for those ultra high tier Anathema out there.

  18. You Belong With Me by Taylor Swift - this "old classic" (lol) is a shoutout to Katherine.

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