[Emperor of Earth ?_?]: I have Princess Aquillianne Quantivia Frontenachii in my custody. She appointed me as her planetary Administrator.

  I half-lied.

  The chat went silent for a moment.

  [Rasputin (?益?)]: ...you really have the alien Princess? The one they're looking for?

  [Rasputin (?益?)]: Did you CAUSE this invasion by kidnapping their Princess?!

  Napoleon (? ?° ? ?° )?: holy shit

  [Emperor of Earth ?_?]: No. I didn't kidnap her. She came to Earth willingly, seeking refuge from her family. She scrambled her Astral signature, hiding from the Scrutimancers and her family mistakenly presumed that she was killed on our planet.

  [Sherlock Holmes (?■-■)? ??]: You're harboring a fugitive alien princess and that's why they're here?

  [Emperor of Earth ?_?]: Yes. But also no. They would have come eventually anyway. As you’ve read from Napoleon’s report, Earth is a "Grade-3 resource world" to them. The Princess's disappearance simply forced them to reveal their hand early. Do note that their high lords look similar to Wendigos, known cryptids from Algonquian Native American folklore and that the Pradavarian Wolves who serve them are practically werewolves in their appearance. What does this imply?

  [Sherlock Holmes (?■-■)? ??]: That their scouts have been to our Earth centuries ago.

  [Emperor of Earth ?_?]: Exactly. The Princess sought refuge on Earth because she disagreed with her family disassembling human children into an arrangement of organs, kept alive forever as flesh batteries.

  The chat became quickly populated with shocked and angry comments. Dax muted everyone except for me.

  I switched to the voice>text narration as pasta required stirring.

  [Emperor of Earth ?_?]: Understand that I took the mantle of Emperor of Earth not because I desire power, but because their princess dropped herself on my lap. Even if I hand her over, they'll still classify Earth as harvestable. At least with her here, I have some leverage. More leverage than anyone else. I don’t really want this much responsibility, but that’s the situation.

  [Emperor of Earth ?_?]: As it stands now, I am the only person on Earth with personal access to a Frontenachii highborn and it is my job to unearth their deepest secrets just as it is your job to unravel the weaknesses of the Dominion soldiers, the Pradavarian Scruts.

  [Emperor of Earth ?_?]: We cannot fail. If we do, then Earth becomes a colony of the Frontenachii Dominion, humans become resources, and anyone who questions the Frontenachii rule will get to spend eternity as organic batteries in a suitcase.

  [Emperor of Earth ?_?]: Don’t assume things about the aliens, instead seek to understand how to best take advantage of their unique weaknesses. We humans are persistence hunters. Our ancestors chased prey for hours, days even, until it collapsed from exhaustion. That persistence is woven into every aspect of our civilization.

  [Emperor of Earth ?_?]: We write millions of books every year. Romance novels alone number in the hundreds of thousands. We produce thousands of movies, millions of Go-Tube videos, millions of songs, billions of images many of which are fake due to Photoshop and rise of generative AI. We have been creating art for over 40,000 years, telling stories around campfires that became myths that became religions that became franchises worth billions.

  [Emperor of Earth ?_?]: In war, we turned from clubs to swords to guns to bombs to viruses. We've poisoned each other with everything from hemlock to polonium. We've manufactured plastics that will outlast us by generations, created marketing campaigns that convinced people smoking was healthy, then convinced them it wasn't, then convinced them vaping was different.

  [Emperor of Earth ?_?]: We spent centuries figuring out how to cure diseases, then immediately weaponized those cures. We mapped the human genome just to see if we could. We split the atom. We went to the moon not because it was easy, but because it was hard.

  [Emperor of Earth ?_?]: The Frontenachii think they can occupy us? They have, what, around ten thousand Prad soldiers scattered across the entire planet? We have 8 billion humans who get bored easily and love to create problems just to solve them. We invented bureaucracy, for fuck's sake. We can drown them in our paperwork alone.

  [Emperor of Earth ?_?]: Every Pradavarian soldier MUST have a human friend or two within a week. If we achieve this goal, within a month, they'll be arguing about whether Arachnids Man can beat Garry Cotter. Within a year, they'll have favorite coffee shops and opinions about which Star Glades trilogy is best. We don't need to defeat them. We need to ABSORB them, to take them from their Frontenachii masters.

  I texted Dex to unmute the others, having run out of clever, motivational thoughts.

  [Cleopatra (????)]: So we're going to... befriend them to death?

  [Emperor of Earth ?_?]: We're going to do what humans do best: we're going to persist and outlast them. We're going to be so aggressively helpful, so overwhelmingly friendly, so loving and absolutely confusing that they'll either give up or join us.

  Every Scrut who accepts a drink from a human is one step closer to questioning their orders. Every novel they read searching for "magic secrets" is another layer of our cultural mire. Every tour through “David Copperfield’s International Museum of Magic” will erode their understanding of our world.

  [Sun Tzu ( ?°_? ?°)?]: ah. The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

  [Emperor of Earth ?_?]: Exactly. They expect armed resistance or cowering submission. They don't expect billions of humans doing random irrational things in the name of their religion while some of us are actively trying to be their best friends while simultaneously using fiction to gaslight them about the nature of local reality. They came looking for a conquest. We're going to give them an experience.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  [Galileo (????-)?]: Emperor, what about the Corpse Seekers and sentient guns? We can't exactly buy those crystal centipedes or metal spiders drinks.

  [Emperor of Earth ?_?]: Why not? According to the Warsaw report, the Corpse Seekers and guns are bred tools, not soldiers. They respond to threats, make dry jokes and take care of their drunk owners. This is behavior of another sapient, enslaved species. Let's befriend their guns too. Don't be threatening. Have children draw chalk art around them. Have street musicians play near them. Play magic series audiobooks next to the Corpse Seekers on loudspeaker. Show them card tricks or other basic ‘magic’.

  [Emperor of Earth ?_?]: Test their reactions carefully. Maybe they like certain frequencies of sound or light patterns. Everything has a weakness. Every system has a loophole. Figure out what interests and distracts them the most. Put on costumed shows next to each Corpse Seeker that never end around the clock. Maybe they have a limit of RAM that we can fill up with fictional nonsense.

  [Emperor of Earth ?_?]: It's your job to understand exactly how sapient their tools are. Maybe treat them as special, in a way that no subjugated species would treat a gun or a tank. Find someone brave and weird enough to ask a gun or a Corpse Seeker out on a date! Because the aliens can sniff out human thoughts, any attempt at relationship deception will fail. Pretending to like the aliens won't work. All 'contact agents' must not know that they're working for the resistance and actually be genuinely attracted to the appearance of the pradavarians or their weapons on a deep, personal level.

  The chat descended into a brawl of shocked comments.

  "PERSISTENCE CIRCLE!" Shady announced, wrapping her tail around my waist. "Emperor persists! BEEP BEEP!"

  I absently patted her head and reactivated my microphone.

  [Emperor of Earth ?_?]: Remember: We convinced people to pay $5 for coffee that costs a few cents to manufacture. We made pet rocks a million-dollar industry. We turned watching other people play video games as 2.5D anime girls on Gwitch into a career. If we can do all that to ourselves, imagine what we can do to confused aliens who think that cultivation is real. Convince them that our V-tubers are magic beasts that are hiding amidst human civilization!

  [Emperor of Earth ?_?]: Our vast numbers are not something they know how to deal with. There are people out there who are incredibly passionate about guns, cars and planes. The diversity and weirdness of humanity are our advantages in this war. The furry larper agents succeeded because they are humans who genuinely appreciate anthropomorphic aliens. In mundane times they exist at the boundary of our civilization as a cultural deviation bubble, but now they are our living weapon against alien invaders who can read intent!

  Dax posted the [Modern problems require modern solutions ??] meme.

  [Emperor of Earth ?_?]: Document everything. Discover what makes them laugh, what confuses them, what they find attractive. Create a shared database of alien responses. This is anthropology in real-time. We're going to science the shit out of this invasion, just as we scienced the shit out of plants, animals, bacteria and viruses.

  [Cleopatra (????)]: The velociraptors are asking about "Jurassic Park" and whether we really brought dinosaurs back to life.

  [Emperor of Earth ?_?]: Tell them yes, but the dinosaurs escaped and are hiding really well in deep forests because they’re clever girls. Send them on endless wild goose chases. Every hour they spend searching for fictional things is another hour they're not dissecting humans and putting us into boxes.

  [Joan of Arc ?(?'?-'?)?]: The owl Scruts are now convinced the Louvre contains statues and bones that come alive at night because someone's memories of "Night at the Museum" were too vivid.

  [Emperor of Earth ?_?]: Perfect. Encourage that. Tell them that things come alive on our planet when they’re not being directly observed, aka the Toy Story plot. Take them to the Louvre and play snippets from Night at the Museum film on your phones to them.

  The pasta sauce started to bubble over. I quickly turned down the heat, stirring frantically.

  "BUBBLE CIRCLE DANGER!" Shady helpfully announced, hopping around me. "BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! This is a PASTA EMERGENCY!"

  [Emperor of Earth ?_?]: Make our Earth the Florida of the multiverse - too fucking weird to understand. Make them perpetually preoccupied with dissection of our mythos instead of dissecting us. Understood?

  [Rasputin (?益?)]: Understood! My men will show them illustrated children's books about Baba Yaga and Koshei, tell them that both are hiding in Siberian taiga.

  [Emperor of Earth ?_?]: See, now you’re getting it. Add a logic loop that cannot be easily disproven. Example: Koshei’s citadel of bones is packed with magic artifacts that cast a spell that makes many people believe that he’s not real. Baba Yaga brews potions that make people who encounter her forget that she’s real. The wizards from Garry Cotter use memory-modifying magic spells to hide from muggles. Men in Black is a real government agency that uses special flashlights that make people forget that there’s a fuckton of magic critters and alien monsters hiding amongst us. Apply this principle across the board and watch them freak the fuck out.

  A chorus of acknowledgments flooded the chat. The lieutenants seemed to understand their jobs, promising that they’ll do their best to expand the resistance in all sorts of directions and to boggle the aliens down in a fictional mire.

  My tablet buzzed with a private message from Dax.

  [Zorro(╯°Z°）╯]: Great speech, my Emperor, the people are hell-a-motivated now. How are u doin otherwise? Need anything?

  [Emperor of Earth ?_?]: Running low on food and funds. Can't exactly leave to look for work now or even visit a shop as I need to stay with the Princess 24/7. She's... high maintenance Wendigo who eats more than five people and she forgot how to appear like a dog on camera.

  [Zorro(╯°Z°）╯]: on it

  He went offline without another word. Classic Dax—all action. Maybe he finally fell asleep.

  I turned my attention back to the stove where the pasta had finished cooking. Shady was now hanging upside down from the kitchen stool, antlers scraping the floor, making submarine periscope noises.

  "PING! PING! Submarine circle detected PASTA coordinates!" she announced, rotating slowly upside down, spine bent at an absurd question mark angle. "BEEP! Engage eating protocols!"

  "Right side up first," I said, pulling her to sit up. "Can't eat upside down."

  "Can't eat upside down!" she repeated in my voice, then added in some news anchor's tone, "Breaking news: gravity exists! This is PASTA!"

  I served the pasta onto two plates, watching as Shady examined her meal with intense concentration. She picked up a single spaghetti strand with her claws, held it up to the light, and declared, "WORM! Circle worm! Very suspicious!"

  "It's pasta, not a worm."

  "PASTA WORM!" She slurped it up with a sound like a cartoon vacuum cleaner. "Acceptable worm!”

  I watched her attack the pasta with excessive enthusiasm, getting sauce all over her muzzle. After being shown such, she eventually understood how to twirl the pasta on the fork but kept missing her mouth by several inches, decorating her cheeks with marinara.

  "You've got sauce on your... everywhere," I said with a sigh, grabbing a napkin.

  "Everywhere is a circle!" she announced proudly, slapping the plate and exploding the pasta all over her front. "Hard circle tastes of BEEP!" She added, pawing at the pasta on her chest and stuffing it into her mouth, getting even more coated in sauce.

  The doorbell rang, distracting me from the pasta and sauce coated Wendigo.

  "DING DONG!" Shady mimicked, stealing pasta from my plate. "This is bell circle! EMERGENCY sounds!"

  I glance at my tablet. 6:43 PM. Too late for deliveries, and Jake the internet tech had fled hours ago. Maybe he was back because he forgot some tools or something?

  I walked from the kitchen across the hall to the entrance.

  Through the stained glass panels of the front door, I could make out a distinctive feminine silhouette. My stomach dropped.

  North.