Solving my nudity problem would be simple enough if I could just figure out how to recreate the partial transformation that gave me the appearance of wearing armor. It was also something I really wanted to figure out in general, not least because I'd already gone and chosen a Guardian alias based on it. Come on. It can't be that difficult, right? Like seriously, what's the big hold up?

  A quick test revealed that shifting my hands into metal claws and back again was as easy as ever. Oddly, come to think of it—is the night playing tricks on me, or does it look shinier and lighter in color than before? It definitely seemed smoother. What's up with that?

  The best answer I could come up with was that I was simply seeing things that weren't there. The second best answer was that something about the material really had changed, and that would almost certainly be related to feasting my way through the recent buffet. With all the different Anathema I'd just eaten, especially multiple Tier 3s and even a couple titans, this unexpected and artificially induced incursion had provided me with a truly staggering amount of food. The total sum of it completely dwarfed everything else I'd consumed over the prior week.

  Anathema are supposed to get stronger by devouring things—I guess it could be possible that it would be reflected somehow in my appearance. That was all super interesting, but I still needed to figure out how to recreate that exoskeleton-slash-armor. Come on. If you can turn from a big fucking metal bug dragon back into a human, you can definitely shape some metal skin. Seriously, what the hell is the hold up?

  I decided to just try it. I had no idea if there was some particular mindset I needed, so I started by just doing the same thing I'd tried at least a dozen times over the past couple of days alone. As always, my claws returned, and as was becoming increasingly common, talon-like 'boots' accompanied them. That was going to be super inconvenient for wearing any actual shoes, but thankfully wasn't a problem at the moment.

  Nothing else ever happened beyond this point—except this time, something did. The pale, burnished gold material of my claws began to shimmer and shift. Before my very eyes, small streamers of it flowed out and away, twisting and braiding over my forearms and even continuing past my elbow and up to my shoulder. I knew the same process was happening to my head, neck, and legs, and that was because I could feel it. Just like every other transformation I forced, I wasn't just referring to the sensation of the material snaking over my exposed skin. In fact, I was mostly talking about the tactile feedback coming directly from the metal.

  I still wasn't used to that, and unlike devouring raw blood and guts, I actually found it a little creepy and uncomfortable still. Regardless, I willed the changes to continue. Branching out in a way remarkably similar to textbook drawings of major arteries and veins, the metal streamers continued weaving together and even sinking back into my skin. None of it was painful, and I didn't really feel like anything was actually puncturing me. Weird.

  Finally, that other dark, dull metal I was coming to expect suddenly welled up all over my skin, thickening and almost completely sealing me within a matter of seconds. During the brief transition, though, I felt like my 'normal' skin had taken on an impossibly smooth and polished, whitish and almost silvery sheen. Interesting. I was pretty sure that was the same way the skin around my eyes and upper face looked in this state. Very interesting.

  Also interesting was the way that the swell of dark gray metal formed straight into something that closely approximated the Valkyrie 'armor' I designed on the spot during the first incursion. It was like it remembered—or maybe it's just because I'm directly willing it to happen in the first place. Either way, it was all very convenient, and it only took me another minute of self inspection to declare myself stylish and ready to face the crowd. A few things still hadn't come naturally—for instance, my helmet still wanted to form chamelium-style horns, and I had to will them into the wing-like shape from before. The 'skirt' was also missing, but that was even easier to reproduce.

  The last thing I noted before climbing back out of the ditch was the pattern of thin, golden 'conduits' worked throughout the surface. They were very similar to the ones that had been there the first time, and now that I'd gotten a chance to actually witness the formation process, I had a much better idea of what they might be.

  It almost feels like—well, I had this instinctual suspicion that the gold-like stuff was the actual 'tissue,' so to speak—the living part of my alien biology—and that the darker metal was just bulk substance. Or, at the very least, the gold was a more critical, core component, like some kind of nervous system equivalent. Sure, it also tips my claws and whatnot, but no one said it had to be an exact one to one. I was pretty sure Anathema biology wouldn't correspond perfectly to regular earth biology.

  Very interesting. But actually, that was far from the most important bit. There was still the obvious question—what allowed me to successfully conjure the 'armor' this time while it completely failed for all the others? I had another suspicion, and it was confirmed by a small but sharp spike in the constant hunger tugging at my core. While the process might have gone quickly and smoothly, it was far from effortless. There had been a constant drain on me, like I was rapidly using up my current stamina.

  Something about doing this must be super costly—but why? I didn't know the answer to that, but it did do a little bit to explain why I'd struggled up to this point. I simply hadn't been eating enough, and my body didn't want to let me spend the effort. I couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if I did succeed. Would it have accelerated the rate at which I ended up going feral? There were so many unknowns, and I suddenly found myself wishing I could just track down my dad and grill him about all of it.

  After climbing out of the ditch and making a few turns to orient myself, I started heading back home. Mostly, I just wanted to go to bed. Ideally, I would then wake up, go about my day relatively normally, and then start working on getting Katherine on board with my cult investigation plan. Sadly, I knew that wasn't how things were going to play out. Ugh. I had a dreadful feeling the aftermath of my lapse in control was going to be far worse than anything I'd experienced in the past few hours.

  Well, maybe not worse—really, what I meant was closer to 'way more irritating and boring.'

  I was right.

  The university wasn't just closed for the rest of the week, but the next two—and that was at a minimum, just based on the official statement. It would probably be even longer. The area as a whole was also reeling a bit from the events of that Monday night and Tuesday morning. Last I checked, the latest figure was that fifty-seven people had been killed. That was shockingly low, actually, and I personally attributed it to the fact that the majority of the campus wouldn't have any people on it at the time, and only a few tiny, concentrated areas had people sleeping at the time. It was also the night before the semester resumed, so those numbers were even lower than normal.

  This all also meant that there were good quality bunkers very close to most of the people affected, so it really wasn't nearly as bad as a Tier 3 incursion near the center of a large city usually would be. Still, that was a lot of dead college kids. Sure, not all of the fifty-seven were students, but the majority were. It was still a major disaster for the school, and also for the people who died, I supposed. Shame.

  I did have to wonder if that had anything to do with why those 'not Anathema cultists' chose that location to set the whole thing up in the first place. I still didn't understand what their goal was, but I wanted to find out. For that reason, I was already working on putting my secret investigation plan into motion. Also, it turned out that David did think I was a Star Guardian—or, at the very least, he did a good job of pretending like that's what he thought.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  I doubted he knew I was an Anathema, though. If he did, why wouldn't he say something about it? Daniel hadn't been shy about doing so. Regardless, it meant I got to use the exact same story for both of them, which was convenient. David was also aware of the whole stupid secrecy thing, and it was kind of amusing to see that he seemed about as irritated by it as I was. I took that to mean he didn't get any real explanation for it either.

  It was now Friday, and not much else had happened in that time. I got another reminder from the AAG about those biological tests—yet another thing I needed to figure out, and unfortunately one that I hadn't made any real progress on solving. I still had a bit over two weeks, though, so I still had a decent amount of time left to procrastinate on it.

  Most of my time, then, was spent with Katherine and the four other Guardians who had pretty much unofficially absorbed us into their team. We'd mostly just been hanging out, getting acquainted and all that icky stuff—but we'd done a little bit of training, too. David basically had me completely locked up—super annoying, but I logically understood where he was coming from. That meant we were either at the penthouse, Katherine's house, or one of the better AAG 'gyms' in the area. The latter was basically just a big, standardized warehouse and outdoor lot with the minimal amount of equipment and oversight needed for Guardians to dick around with their abilities 'safely.'

  For the two of us, that ended up mostly just being exploring our basic powers, 'cultivating anima,' and doing some basic drills and combat training. The former was pretty fun, especially where Katherine was involved. Her power had all these weird little restrictions—technically, she said they were all derived from the same two or three fundamental rules, which I begrudgingly tried wrapping my head around.

  For instance, Kevin had an electric guitar, and we spent what felt like the whole afternoon on Thursday making Katherine screw around with it. The way her power hit different barriers was super visible there—for instance, she couldn't do anything with the guitar itself, even when it was plugged in. She could play around with the amplifier, though, which she claimed was because its spirit had 'agency,' whereas the guitar itself was utterly passive.

  She couldn't do anything if the amp was unplugged, though, and she couldn't get it to do anything far beyond what it could do 'normally.' I wanted to make the point that dead people typically weren't able to get up and walk around again, but I held my tongue. The few times I tried bringing up the necromancy aspect, she got super uncomfortable and effectively shut down on me.

  She wasn't the only one to make progress with her power, though. In private, I was getting better and better at replicating arbitrary sounds. I'd pretty much mastered chords and harmony, so now I was pushing myself by attempting polyphony with multiple different types of instrument. I ended up learning some basic music theory stuff in the process, which was actually kind of cool.

  More publicly, I also started to make progress on more general metal manipulation. So far, I hadn't had any luck when I tried controlling nearby metal with my mind. Controlling it by touch was a very different beast, though, and earlier that day I finally managed to mold a big steel bolt with my bare hands. The critical part was that I hadn't relied on superhuman strength for any of it. It was all just pure, esoteric matter manipulation.

  It was super fucking cool, and I still felt like I was justified in getting visibly excited when I first managed to pull it off. Naturally, I ran around showing it off to everyone, and Katherine and the rest of the team were genuinely very congratulatory. I liked the feeling that part gave me.

  I also liked snacking on the lump of misshapen metal a few minutes later, but I didn't let any of them in on that part.

  Not forgetting what the wiki article said about heat and air concepts—not to mention the picture with yellow-hot claws—I resolved that I would also experiment with heat at some point in the near future. That being said, I was still riding the high of both finally managing to reproduce my 'armor' and now my first success in manipulating 'external' metal. So, feeling like I had gotten a form of momentum going, I decided to keep focusing on the metal concept for the time being.

  As for the 'anima cultivation'—well, I was pretty sure that was something only the other five could do. It was part of how Guardians were supposed to increase their overall power, but I sincerely doubted the usual techniques would do much for me. It seemed a lot simpler and more effective to just go around eating things.

  So that's what I did.

  Katherine lived with her aunt—a nice, quiet lady who didn't at all mind her adult niece suddenly bringing people over. The property was in one of those inner city 'suburbs'—one of the nice, gentrified ones—but there were still plenty of small animals around, and I quickly established a habit of frequent solo 'walks' around the neighborhood. There was a surprising amount of stuff to catch, though I made sure not to go for any cats or dogs. Those were plentiful, but I felt like introducing a mysterious pet serial killer into the area would be a bad idea.

  So far, it seemed like it was doing just enough to keep me stable. It was a thin line, though, and I knew I needed to come up with a more sustainable solution. I definitely couldn't have a repeat of the last time I lost control.

  So, to that end, it was finally time to make my first real move. With that in mind, I patiently waited for Kevin and Chloe to leave Katherine's place while I stayed behind in the living room, a large duffel bag and a cheap backpack at my feet. The two cousins had been curious about what was inside, but I said it was just stuff for a trip. Katherine knew I was lying, but she also knew better than to call me out on it.

  It was at 5:12 that they finally left and Katherine came back inside to talk to me. It was obvious that I was up to something that involved her—she probably already assumed it was 'Star Guardian' related, and she would be right. Obviously, she already knew my whole story about the cultists and them wanting to experiment on us, and I'd succeeded in convincing her to keep it between the two of us. Now, it was time to proceed with the next step of my plan—it was time to kickstart our actual investigation.

  So that's what I did. Once we made sure her aunt wasn't listening in, I started laying out my overall plan. "There's no way these guys aren't connected to at least some part of someone else's organized crime. If you were a bunch of Anathema cultists who'd been sneaking around the city's underbelly for at least several years, you'd definitely have some kind of connections, right?"

  Chewing her lip, Katherine really did think about it. Slowly, she nodded. "Yeah, I think you're probably right—but how would we find those people? I don't even know where there are even gangs around here."

  "A good question." I grinned. "I don't know either—well, I mostly don't. I did find one gang though—you remember how I said there was just one small hiccup when I was finding my way back home after I escaped?"

  Katherine nodded. There had been a 'small hiccup,' although that particular phrase understated it slightly. Wandering through the inner city, I'd inadvertently stumbled into some kind of gang turf. For some reason, they assumed I was someone else—I guess a rival gang also had a short, female 'Guardian' who wore metal armor. Whatever the reason, things got a bit tense, and I ended up promising not to beat up the three ordinary human members I'd stumbled across in exchange for stealing all the shit they were loading into their shitty van.

  Most of it was useless crap I either didn't want or didn't know what to do with, but they had a surprising amount of weapons. It was mostly just probably-illegal firearms, which was kind of handy. There wasn't exactly a lot of ammo, though, which was a shame. Fortunately, I wouldn't really need it. The only reason I kept a duffel bag full of guns was because I thought it would be useful for appearances. Rich girl walking into some crime boss's turf with zero connections and a bunch of questions? Lame.

  Rich girl walking in with zero connections, a bag of stolen guns, and a bunch of questions? Now we were talking.

  That still didn't answer Katherine's question, though, which is why I held off on unveiling the surprise for a bit longer. "Well. I sort of got into a bit of a scuffle with some random gang members. I think they thought I was someone else—no idea who, but anyway, I found a gang."

  For a long time, Katherine didn't say anything. She just sort of stared at me. When she did say something, it was just two words. "You—what?"

  Rolling my eyes, I kicked the bag and also the cheap backpack I bought. That one was full of something else. "Anyway, I figure we roll back up to their area with these, figure out who's the boss—they definitely have some low tier Guardian criminals by the way—and then we just kind of play it by ear from there." Reaching down, I started to unzip the bag. "Anyway, they probably don't know anything about Anathema cultists, but they can definitely start pointing us at other gangs and stuff, right? It'll be a start."

  Many different flavors of worry and concern flashed across Katherine's face. She started to say something, but then froze when I dramatically pulled open the flaps of the bag. For another few seconds, I just stared at her, and she just stared at the guns. Then she looked at me with a completely unreadable expression. "Alex."

  I blinked. "...Yes?"

  "Alex. What the fuck?"

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