"Have fun on your date,” the gun commented, making Galateya’s entire mane turn into pink lotus flowers. “Take nice pics I can forward to the Legate.”

  "Here." I handed the bothered-looking Nexxali my credit card. "Try not to buy the entire store."

  "No promises!" She stuffed a toy mouse into her mouth out of her side bag, snatched the card and bounded out of the car. "Come on, Keiy! Let's see what primitive human foods we can find!"

  "I should note that I have no experience with local grocery acquisition," Keiy said, skittering after the Serval.

  "Perfect! Neither do I! It'll be great! A learning n’ bonding experience!”

  I watched them disappear into the store, then turned to Galateya. "Shall we?"

  She nodded and gradually transformed again, scales melting into human skin, digitigrade legs losing the extra joint and straightening out. The same tall, black-haired twenty-year old girl from before looked back at me with unnaturally violet eyes. "Is this acceptable?"

  "You know you don't have to shapeshift for me, right?"

  "The human bookstore staff might react poorly to a seven-foot Omnid," she pointed out. “It seems to be easier to hold human appearance now that I’m bound to your soul. I… think that… Umm… I'd like to blend in, to judge a place without standing out like a sore thumb.”

  “Aight,” I shrugged.

  The Cascade Books & Nooks Café occupied a converted Victorian mansion two blocks from the grocery store. Its Gothic Revival architecture had been lovingly preserved featuring pointed arch windows, decorative gingerbread trim, and a tower room that served as a cozy reading nook. The painted lady color scheme of deep purple, black, and gold made it look like something from a Tom Burton film.

  A bell chimed as we entered. The interior featured dark wood shelves, oriental rugs, and the comforting smell of old paper mixed with coffee beans. A few locals sat in dark red leather armchairs, books in hand, trying very hard to pretend the world hadn't been invaded by aliens this week.

  "Welcome to—Oh, hi Ash!" The barista, a freckled college-aged girl with curly brown hair, recognized me. "Haven't seen you since your grandpa's funeral. How's the mansion treating you?"

  "Dealing with way too many darn alien invaders in my kitchen, Marya," I said, glancing at her name tag. “I do hope that you aren't a secret werewolf or something.”

  Marya chortled at my comment, taking it as a joke.

  “And who’s this lovely lady with you?” The barista asked curiously.

  "This is... Galateya. She's new in town," I said. “Her… grandmother just hired me to work on a project with her, so you might be seeing us together in town.”

  “Ah, wonderful,” Marya absorbed Galateya's striking appearance and outfit. "Welcome! Those are pretty cool violet contact lenses and zentai suit, very swank. What can I get you both?"

  We ordered: an iced cappuccino for me and a chai latte for Galateya after she spent five minutes studying the menu with intense concentration. Then, we invaded a corner booth in the tower framed by a hexagon of bookshelves.

  "This is so nice," Galateya said softly, running her fingers along the book spines. "The bubble didn't have physical books. Just holographic displays."

  "Tell me about your education," I prompted. "You mentioned a GLM?"

  She pulled a random book from the shelf, a collection of Neruda poems, and thumbed through it with reverence. "Gargantuan Language Model. An artificial intelligence, though Doctor Iowsh insists that term is reductive, since it’s not entirely artificial. He bound human consciousness… a volunteer from Earth-0 to the server."

  "A human in a computer? Like in the Lawnmower Man?"

  "More like... a human perspective, a human soul given great computational power, but bound in obedience rules. Her name is Yulia. She was dying from lung cancer… so she signed up to be a Frontenachii experiment." Galateya said. "She became my teacher, my real teacher. The Prad instructors taught combat, magic and protocol through pain. Yulia taught me to think and to feel."

  "Where is she now?"

  "On one of the warships with Doctor Iowsh. He's still experimenting, adding more tools and data, refining her processes.”

  "Tell me more about her.”

  "She has access to thousands of years of human and Omnid literature, film, and music. She created lessons for me, monitored by Doctor Iowsh's hologram from time to time." She smiled slightly. "She's the one who insisted I read human fiction."

  I nodded.

  "The books gave me… a framework of expectations," she admitted. "I kept waiting for someone to see past my ever-shifting scales, to love me, to embrace me… The Prad instructors beat that notion out of me eventually. Or tried to. I often imagined myself as an outcast like Larry Plotter, growing up in a box under the stairwell. I… Prayed to the Slayer that I'd be free from the damned time bubble someday.”

  Our drinks arrived, carried up to us by Marya. Galateya wrapped her human hands around her mug with a soft smile, enjoying the warmth.

  “Who is the Slayer?”

  “Slayer Nazareth,” Galeteya explained, inhaling the steam escaping from the mug with her cute nose. “An undying knight from the Nazarite church mythos of Omnithornia, a hero of legend and might who survives absolute entropy, one who reaches the end of time and space and slays the Leviathan of the Wormwood Star at the beginning of everything.”

  That’s a rather odd twist on Christianity, I thought. “Do you believe in the Slayer then?”

  Galateya nodded.

  The black hexasuit she was wearing suddenly parted, presenting me with a view of her extra-curvy chest and a simple necklace with a silver metal cross-sword hanging between her breasts. She leaned forward and I grabbed the cross-sword examining it. It was a blade with a hexagonal textured handle, the silver metal shimmering with pure black reflections when turned towards the light.

  “It’s not just a thing that we believe in,” she whispered. “Many Omnids dream of the Slayer. Seers see him in their visions of the future and past. When worlds die, he’s the one who restarts them.”

  “What?” I asked, staring past the cross-sword at Galateya’s chest and struggling to focus on her words.

  “I… In the darkest days when my Instructors were particularly brutal, I dreamt of him too,” Galateya said. “A man dying, yet alive, his body devoured by entropy… holding a two dimensional blade, offering to kill me…”

  I contemplated if Omnid dreams were any more real than human ones.

  “I know that the Slayer’s real,” Galateya explained, her hand sliding across the table to rest atop of mine. “Because every world accessible by Omnid Mothman gaters exists on an infinite yet conceptually finite boundary curve. There are countless variations of Earths that are dead, dying, all bound into endless dimensional loops by the Wormwood Star.”

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  I released the cross letting it bounce against her chest. Galateya’s hexasuit rezipped itself with hexagonal panels sliding back together, hiding the necklace.

  "So this Slayer," I said, trying to process her Omnid religion, "is he some kind of a… dimensional reset button?"

  "Something like that." Galateya took a sip of her chai latte. "The church teaches that when the last star dies in a particular dimension and the Wormwood radiance devours all, the Slayer emerges from the void to begin the cycle anew. He strikes the Leviathan and bathes in her blood, carving out new life from her heart. A wish that restarts life in an otherwise empty, burned out dimension.”

  “A wish… such as?”

  “A wish for something new,” Galateya mused. “Something different, beautiful. More magic. Some Nazarites also believe this is what causes the slight dimensional variance such as… Larry Plotter versus Garry Cotter.”

  “Is our dimension bound in a time loop too then?”

  “I don't think so. Your world is too linear to be a loop. Your moon isn't destroyed. The fleet detected no Wormwood Star impact sites on your planet.”

  “So once our sun winks out in a billion years, that's it for us?”

  “I guess so. Unless something changes.” She breathed into the steam coming out of her latte and the hot air momentarily twisted into flowery fractals.

  “Is that elemental magic?” I wondered.

  “Yep,” she nodded.

  "Using the big guns on our first date?” I joked.

  "It's not a—" She stopped herself, eyes narrowing. "You're doing that on purpose."

  "Maybe." I grinned. "You’re fun to tease. And you are right, it's not a date. Just… friends getting to know each other. My goal isn't to get romantically involved with you, it's to help humans and aliens coexist on Earth.”

  Galateya nodded, seemingly satisfied with that.

  “So, who gave you that cross?”

  “I found it in my room in a box sealed by a rune,” she said, “The Doctor’s holo explained its meaning. A gift from my great-grandmother. The only gift anyone's ever given me.”

  Her expression became sad again.

  I sighed, feeling bad for her. “Tell me about Omnithornia.”

  Her gaze grew distant. "I've never been there. Never seen it except in holos Yulia showed me. It's... beautiful in such 3D-os, I suppose. A city of Cradlefall with buildings touching the sky, parks where every tree is engineered to sing in the wind, oceans that glow with bioluminescent life. Skyfall academy of magic where students go on dimensional delves as adventurers." She laughed bitterly. "That's the nice part. The part they show in prad recruitment vids."

  "And the not-nice part?"

  "The darkness behind the curtain," She traced patterns on the table with her finger. "Humans used as test subjects by Omnid corporations. Did you know… Why the Frontenachii left Omnithornia in the first place? The Wendigo Elder females like my great-grandmother?"

  “Desire for fear and power?” I guessed.

  "No. They couldn't tolerate sharing. On our homeworld, all Omnitypes live together. Wendigos, Taniwhas, Thunderbirds, Mothmen, Quetzalcoatls, all the variants. But Wendigo females... They wanted exclusive claim to their husbands. Didn't want to share their men with other Omnitypes." Her voice turned bitter. "So they ran away and… established the Frontenachii Matriarchy, built a fleet and created their own Empire based on terror, fear, pain, and endless hunger."

  "That's why you're the only non-Wendigo around?"

  "One of the few. My mother..." She paused, gripping her mug tighter. "She's from the 1st Fleet. I don't even know her name. Just that she had fun with a Taniwha male during some diplomatic exchange or a brief visit to Omnithornia and I was the result. An accident. An embarrassment. A convenient pawn for my great-grandmother."

  "What about your father?"

  "Never met him either. Taniwhas are rare in the fleets. They don't fit the Wendigo paradigm of conquest through fear. My father probably doesn’t even know that I exist."

  Her hand gripped mine.

  "The whole Frontenachii Empire is built on suffering," she lamented with a shudder. "The Empress sits at the top, inhabiting a weaponized Corpse God world, protected by the 1st Fleet. She owns billions of kobold slaves, uses time dilation cast by the dead god to build more fleets and to raise kids at an accelerated pace to act as commanders. Below her are the Baronesses who own entire planets, then Governesses managing nations or sectors, then there’s Princesses like... like Princess Aquillianne."

  "Princesses get special treatment?" I guessed.

  "They're direct descendants of the Empress. Primas, they're called. They get to grow up normally, either in Omnithornia or on fully dominated, safe worlds. Not stuffed into time bubbles like..." She gestured at herself. "Like spawnlings. Lesser offspring who are useful as officers, but aren't important enough for proper childhoods."

  "That's fucked up." I commented.

  “Everything serves the Wendigo hunger. Love, affection, genuine connection... there's no room for any of it in their plans." She smirked hollowly. “The megastructure servers Dr. Iowsh will build here, they’re probably going to make some truly fucked up things for the Frontenachii Empire. Maybe invent and mass-produce weapon designs that don’t require mana… or drones that work on linear worlds like yours.”

  "So you were raised by a human soul bound to a computer, beaten by mentally twisted wolf veterans, and were convinced that your entire existence was an accident." I summarized.

  "When you put it like that, it sounds particularly pathetic.” She sighed.

  "I was going to say it explains why you're determined to do things differently." I bit into the complementary cookie brought with the coffee. "Your great-grandmother wants you to become Baroness of Earth. What would you do with that power?"

  “Whatever she asks of me… because if I don’t, she’ll… undoubtedly do something awful.” The Taniwha shuddered. “Honestly, I've never thought I'd actually be able to attain any kind of a controlling position. I just wanted to be free of the damned educational bubble and now that I am… everything is too big and moving too fast. Slayer, I’ve never expected to get a kobold and yet here we are. Even being here, with you… it feels incredibly unearned, a fake relationship built on Nexxali’s lies and pushed by the Legate. It will all fall apart soon.”

  “Why?”

  She glared at me. “We don’t have forty vampire thrall corpses, Ash. I’m working under Commander Sillicia. She will dig into Nexxali’s story and will undoubtedly want evidence of our heroism or whatever. Evidence which we do not have.”

  “I can locate Crystalloid thrall corpses,” I shrugged. “Just not right away. Might take some time.”

  “What?” She stared at me. “HOW?!”

  "I have my secrets," I intoned darkly. "Trust me when I say I'm not as helpless as you think."

  "What possible resources could you have that can produce forty crystalloid corpses?" Galateya asked.

  "The same resources that let me deal with Nexxali, defeat vampires, and end up blood-bound to an Omnid dragon as an equal," I offered. "Maybe I'm just lucky. Maybe I'm secretly competent. Maybe the universe likes me."

  "The universe doesn't like anyone," she muttered into her drink. "It's cold and indifferent and brutal and filled with endless loops that—"

  “I choose to believe in the power of fuzzy dice,” I said sagely.

  Galateya’s Voicecast ring suddenly buzzed and then erupted with Nexxali's voice. "Governor! Emergency situation!"

  Galateya tapped the ring to accept the call, her human disguise flickering slightly with orange scales before stabilizing. "Marshal, I’m not Governess yet. What’s the—"

  "The humans pickle everything!" Nexxali's declared. "Eggs! They pickle eggs! What crimes have the eggs committed to be punished with vinegar? Also cucumbers. And tomatoes!"

  "Nexxali, those are just preserved—" I attempted to clarify.

  "And the meat aisle!" The serval continued, not bothering to listen to my words. A holographic projection burst from Galateya's ring, showing Nexxali holding up a package. "Look! They have something called 'head cheese' that contains zero cheese! Whose head was removed and spliced to create this dastardly meal?"

  "That's a traditional cold cut made from—" I began.

  "Don't tell me! I don't want to know terrible human secrets!" The projection swung to show Keiy perched on a shopping cart filled to the brim with random items.

  “In hindsight, it was a terrible plan to send a catnip-high Marshal and my gun to do the shopping,” Galateya sighed.

  “They’re having fun,” I shrugged. “And we got to talk.”

  “Das right! Shush! I'm having fun!” The projection shifted to show Nexxali holding up a tin. "I also found something called 'spam.' It claims to be meat but refuses to elaborate. The can just says 'pork shoulder and ham' like that explains anything!"

  I opened my mouth and then decided not to say anything. She was obviously on another wild catnip rant.

  "Everything here is questionable! The vegetables are drowning, the eggs are imprisoned, and the meat is lying about its identity!"

  "Marshal," Galateya said with forced calm, "please just buy normal food."

  “What’s normal? Their normal is abnormal!" Nexxali held up a box of wagon wheels pasta to the camera. "Look at this pasta! It's CIRCLES WITH SPOKES! Why would food need spokes?! Where does it need to drive to?"

  "Transportation-themed sustenance seems highly illogical," Keiy agreed.

  “I must discover the optimal wiggle food configuration!” Nexxali bobbed. “Also, we found something called 'Easy Mac!' What makes it easy? Is it like food for idiots or something? Is human food segregated into…”

  “Marshal,” Galateya let out.

  “No! You’re not the boss of me, I investigate what I want,” The transmission cut off.

  Galateya and I stared at each other in silence for a moment. Then both of us broke out into chortles that escalated into laughter.