Over the course of my one-day misadventure, the thought that this was all a bit like a videogame had come to me twice: Once when I spent my first soulcoin, and the second time when I consumed my first essence. There was something jarring about it, as if this was all a dream, as if having unquestionably evil enemies to shoot that rewarded you with money just didn’t quite fit into reality, or into how I imagined magical girls were supposed to be.

  But it wasn’t a videogame. It was only like one, superficially. No sane game designer gated revives behind the hardest fights in the game. And no sane videogame had a boss appear right above you.

  I ran. I had to. There was no bone in my body that could get a word in edgewise that maybe running at full-tilt across a freshly soapified stone floor was a bad idea. Of course I fell on my ass, sliding into a tangle of cheap wiremesh chairs, knocking them and the plastic table over as I tried to get back up. Ted wasn’t doing much better; he was currently reenacting the brave retreat of a figure skater without skates.

  Then the chandelier mimic fell, shattering the marble floor.

  My heart jumped. That thing was heavy.

  Bronze alloy and crystal glass turned deep pink, tiny pinprick eyes growing everywhere. Ten spider legs held up a spheroid body with ten octopus tentacles sprouting out of the top, each floating as if sampling the air. It was a chimera, and it was huge.

  [9 ton Elite Caster Mimic detected]

  [Warning: Area level recommendation raised to: lvl 30]

  Nine metric tons. Over 22,000 pounds. Why the heck were mimic’s casters so friggin’ big!?

  The answer was obvious of course; it needed all that mass for casting spells. Theory turned into practice when it chopped off one of its own tentacles. Said limb started floating, turning inside-out until it was a wet, dripping ball of void.

  Black was not an emotion on the emotion wheel. Confirmation that mimics didn’t use emotions to cast spells like Custodians did. How nice.

  It’s getting closer.

  Get up. Get up!

  A chair behind me fell over. In my rearward eyes, I saw Elise running away full tilt, trailing falling tables and spilled drinks. Some ghosts could interact with physical objects. I called them poltergeists. And she had just chosen the worst time to reveal that she was one. The worst for me, that is.

  Suddenly, every eye was focused on me, or seemed to. The mimic had a 360° vision with that many eyes. They probably didn’t have to move, which meant the white spot that was moving across them was probably an optical illusion similar to the one in the eyes of a preying mantis. Those also didn’t move. Fun facts for moments like these, where I was about to be atomized if I didn’t think quick.

  Maybe I was already thinking quickly, as if my brain was recognizing imminent death and looking for some single piece of memory that could still save my spidery behind? Oh, things were speeding up again. Shit.

  Get up get up get up!

  Something in the air changed. I couldn’t put it any other way besides that the air at my back, seemingly smooth and familiar, suddenly turned jagged, as if someone had plugged an electric current into it.

  I activated [Arms & Arms proficiency], curled up, then pulled myself over a nearby heavy planter box, pushing off the side to shoot across the slippery floor like a fish on a trawler’s deck. A black orb of warbling something was following me, guided by an invisible hand.

  I grabbed a table leg, fumbled as it slipped away, then caught a parasol that was set into an artful concrete cube. I swung, redirecting myself in the blink of an eye. The angry orb missed me by four feet, hitting the ground with a splash and a hiss. I caught a glimpse of metal chairs and plastic tables sinking into the crater it was eating into the ground, much the way my Goo Gun did.

  Now there was a crater at least ten feet deep in the middle of the mall filled with super acid. I was definitely steering clear of the vapors coming out of that.

  The caster mimic, seemingly frustrated, pulled a long sign made up of multiple mimics off the floor. These were 3kg variants. They were also turned inside-out, though each of their individual orbs didn’t even reach a tenth of the previous one’s size.

  It was time to not find out what they would do if they hit me, so I legged it towards the nearest candy store since it was both behind a dry patch of floor, and also not on fire. I zigged, because if it worked for rabbits evading hawks, it would hopefully work for me as I attempted to evade lethal magical ordinance.

  One splashed to my left. I juked, twisting my upper body just enough for a shot or three of return fire with my Toothpick. One of the shots even hit, popping the bubble of black mimic blood like a zit, splattering it onto the floor.

  The final glob impacted the sign at the entrance to a store before I could find cover inside, forcing me to run in the other direction, which was back out in the open. Exactly where I didn’t want to be.

  Sure, it meant I had a free line of fire to shoot back. But it was huge, and it only had to hit me once.

  Against the main body, my Toothpick did less than nothing. Oh sure, it exploded a roughly fist-sized hole into whatever pink mimic bit it hit, but that was barely a fleshwound for a creature this size. The small lasers were better relegated for interrupting its casting, which I was sure had to be quite annoying. Maybe I could force it to make a mistake. Maybe I was just making it angry enough to stop holding back.

  It whipped out a head-tentacle that suddenly extended three times longer than it was supposed to, slamming into the ground and smashing chairs everywhere. One of the chairs hit me in the chest with enough force to knock the air out. This wasn’t some specialized attack like with the mimic before, it was just an improvised bludgeon.

  My chest still friggin’ hurt though.

  I launched a couple Goo Gun globs in retaliation. An entire canister of slime hit easily in four tightly-clustered places. The living acid slime ate at the mimic gleefully, oozing its way in through one of the eye sockets. The caster stopped momentarily. And I do mean momentarily. Its magic froze as it lifted its affected limb off the ground, shot a glob of its own black acid onto itself, washing the slimes off and leaving the pink limb intact. Because of course it was immune to its own acid, for some god-forsaken reason.

  But it’s not great at working with multiple targets. It’s moving its tentacle limbs every time it casts too. Maybe if I shoot enough of those off, it won’t be able to cast at all.

  The caster let out a warble-screech and suddenly, mimics were climbing all over its body, dissolving into a sheen of black liquid that covered the entire mimic, top to bottom. The next next slime shot and even my laser bounced right off.

  “Motherf— ack!” I dodged another slam, this one spraying acidic blood everywhere, by vaulting a food stand. What if this wasn’t even the right mimic? What if it was another sub-boss? So far, it hadn’t even used a single illusion. Was it just playing for time, was it toying with us, had we even seen its true power yet—

  I forced those thoughts away, gunning it to the side before I could get squished.

  Taking the escalator would have been a bad idea since it was exposed and narrow, so I took the stairs for people who weren’t lazy. They were built next to two storefronts, looping up and around again, leading to the second floor. Since the fires didn’t reach up to here, the ground wasn’t slippery in the slightest, giving me the grip I needed to run, dodge, and vault as I saw fit.

  How about you try a load of this?

  “Summon: Bazooka!”

  Two hands held the bazooka comfortably above my shoulders as I heaved myself over to the glass railing. My breath came heavy, forcing a steady rhythm unless I wanted to miss one of my few shots. As I gathered a bead on my target, shooting two more black orbs out of the air with my Toothpick, I realized a small issue:

  The bazooka’s barrel was damaged.

  I wasn’t a bazooka expert. I just knew that structural integrity was compromised from holding it in my hand and giving it a glance. [Arms & Arms proficiency] for the win.

  Using it to block the whips of the giant fake tree earlier had caused two deep gouges to form in the metal. They didn’t quite reach down into the interior. But as things were, I’d be lucky if it held for all of my shots.

  The barrel held for the first.

  The caster mimic had probably never seen a bazooka in its life. It wasn’t trying to block it per se; all my other attacks had been minor inconveniences at best, so why should it fear for its own life? It was trying to squash that annoying bug that was flitting around at the edge of its tentacle range, the bug that just wouldn’t die no matter how much it tried.

  The explosion ripped clear through one tentacle and halfway through a spiky leg-limb. The giant caster recoiled, stumbling back with steps that smashed tables and flung plastic plants everywhere.

  Two. That was two limbs down.

  How many to go?

  I counted them and my stomach fell.

  I don’t have enough ammo.

  That is, unless I got creative.

  The river of black mimic blood coating the giant octopus-spider-thing was annoying, taking the oomph out of my already lackluster Toothpick and completely negating my Goop Gun. But, and here’s the kicker, when confronted with a couple pounds of high explosive, it was as effective a protection as coating your skin in water.

  The pink skin and innards of the mimic were wide open for a moment before its living shield flowed into the hole I’d just blasted.

  “Moe, reload, high explosive,” I said as I shoved my bazooka into my spider backpack. Carrying the thing in my hands made running around cumbersome, and I needed to reposition anyways.

  Its tentacles were savaging the floor where I had just been moments ago, glass and wooden furniture flying everywhere. I kept my grip steady on my goop gun — half a canister — then decided to reload that as well before putting my plan into motion.

  Moe was on point. The moment I reached the third floor my launcher was ready. This time I ran around and attacked it from the left instead of right, blowing chunks out of the core of its body where three limbs connected, then immediately followed up by emptying an entire canister of living acid into the wound.

  Oh yeah, it’s time for some synergy.

  +++

  Ted had seen many things in his life. A pod of beached humpback whales off the shores of Miami. Winners in life losing it all to a bad gamble in Vegas. Dead kids lying on the road to Kabul. The humanitarian work in Gaza was what finally did him in, and Martha was the person who built him back up when he was looking down the end of a gun barrel.

  “It would have been nice if the world were just a little bit kinder, but in its place, we can choose to be kind too,” she had said.

  Even after she died, that idea stuck with him, that smile of hers that was like a middle finger to the nihilists of the world. He had a son now, and that meant something, even if that something meant further sacrifice the boy would only come to appreciate much, much later in life.

  He almost didn’t recognize Samantha as the awkward girl that sometimes played videogames with him at the range when he first saw her, running away from one of the giant pink fuckers trying to kill it with pinpricks. That single minded determination and indomitable spirit reminded him of Martha, and of Josh.

  I’m getting sentimental, he thought as he ducked for another piece of cover.

  Taking potshots at the giant mimic she was currently distracting didn’t seem like a good idea. She had it well in hand by the looks of it and his 5.56mm bullets — silvered though they might be — were barely enough to tickle the thing. It hadn’t even noticed when he tossed a glass of holy water at it. And the crosses, well… these creatures weren’t bloodsuckers, just aliens. If he attracted the big kahuna’s attention he was just going to get himself killed, or worse, get Samantha killed as she tried to protect him.

  The murmur of a dozen people turned into yelps and cries at every crash and bang. They had to relocate to a boutique while giants tossed balls of acid and missiles at each other above. So far, no casualties.

  But Ted still had a job to do, so he stepped out, taking cover behind a stone pillar.

  “Give it up,” a gray-haired man in a ruffled business suit yelled. “You’re just going to get yourself killed like the others.”

  Why was this idiot yelling? He was giving their position away.

  “If you don’t have anything to contribute, please shut the hell up.” He reloaded, ducked out of cover, then behind the next piece, and peeked back over a planter box.

  Protecting the next generation is a choice, he pondered, sighting two mimics crawling on the ceiling above her. Shielding them from stupid mistakes, as an example.

  A quick burst and both of them puffed into smoke. His brows furrowed.

  Illusions. It’s trying to distract our hero of the hour. That means it's desperate, I hope.

  Gonna get the last people over to safety, then help her out. No playing the hero girl. Play it straight.

  He dashed ahead, slipping in through the door to the fast food chain. One person was left, a woman in her twenties with an injury underneath her raven hair.

  “Can you stand?”

  She stood.

  “Good. Stay between the wall and me.”

  They moved back out. He shot a glance three stories further up where Samantha was repositioning after blasting the damn thing a new one.

  One of the larger 3kg models was trying to set a trap behind her, hanging from a ceiling lamp with extended limbs ready to choke her out should she ever retreat. She had to retreat eventually, the huge octopus tentacles were dangerous enough that she could only attack while hidden. The small mimic was sneaky, but it didn’t count on it itself being ambushed from behind—

  He couldn’t finish that thought as icy cold spikes dug into his back. People cried out. His gasp died in his throat as he felt icy cold hands wrap around his spine. The raven-haired girl’s tinkling giggle rang out from behind him as she rested her chin on his shoulders.

  “H-how?” he wheezed.

  The girl grinned an inhuman grin, too wide, with the wrong muscles peeking out from under her skin. Then he noticed the other incongruencies. Her skin was sallow and pale and her gums were pulled too far back. All of her skin was dried, desiccated, as if someone had flayed the face off her corpse and was wearing it like a costume.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Her face turned pink. For a moment, it turned into something like an octopus. Then it morphed into a more heavyset face with a dense stubble, thick brows, and a thin look to its eyes.

  It was Ted, perfect down to the hair. No, not perfect; the small burn scar he’d earned in Afghanistan under his chin was the wrong tone, and his eyes were slightly uneven in shape. But it was, on first and second glance, a near perfect copy.

  A boom shook the mall. Two stories above, Samantha leaned over the railing, aiming the next shot of her bazooka. Ted was a goner, he knew that, but if he could just cry out and warn her then maybe, maybe she could do something about the real monster. But he couldn’t say a word because there were still ten sharp fingers jabbed right through his lung.

  She was a mere thirty yards away, but her eyes were all focused forward. The girl took her shot, then repositioned like a good little soldier, out of sight.

  Dammit. Dammit! Samantha, watch your back!

  He tried to wave, but the thing grew another arm and held him down. He tried to cry out, but it just tossed his strong body into a pile of tables and chairs with contemptuous ease. The sound was lost among the cacophony of the battle.

  +++

  My limbs were aching. The joints in my legs clacked with every step. I could feel my body finally running out of energy, could feel the imperfect seal around the barrel sear my shoulder with every shot. But I was this close.

  Magical girls don’t cry. Get. Up.

  With shaky legs and burning pain, I heaved my body over the next railing and aimed my next shot. The elite caster mimic’s greatest strength was also its greatest weakness. The thing was too big to dodge. The hunt was on.

  I blasted another bundle of limbs off the caster mimic. Two flickered and turned into dust. The thing was finally using its illusions, though it was not enough. Maybe if it could make a full body double then I’d miss a few shots but as it stood, in this closed area it was too large for me to miss.

  Those few shots were enough. The mimic was staggering instead of flowing across the ground in smooth strides, three out of ten legs missing, and missing twice as many tentacles. It was only a matter of time until it died. The acid slimes were burrowed deep inside of its main body, dissolving the insides of the giant mimic into a black slurry that made my mouth water.

  Wait, what?

  I paused behind one of the clunky scrubber-drier machines used to clean the mall floor during open hours, but not before giving it a good stab. Not a mimic. Great.

  Now, why was I thinking about drinking my enemies? That was not a Samantha thought. That was a spider thought. And hold up, I wasn’t on the hunt either, this was a serious hostage-extraction slash ward-cracking operation.

  Maybe I was being paranoid. Maybe it was the exhaustion. Or maybe the spider leg that fused with my soul was having unwanted effects on my mental state.

  … this might be a problem. Evidently, I needed something to curb these intrusive arachnid thoughts. Maybe more points into Mind would help?

  “Mo!”

  “You’re right Mo, not the time nor the place. I just… need a moment.”

  The moment passed. I hefted my bazooka, checking the time once more as I got out of my hideout. And then it happened.

  My second to last shot did the mimic in, sending it crashing to the ground, limbs still fidgeting and twitching. One of the tentacles that had been resting on my floor snapped towards me, but I saw it coming and backstepped just in time—

  Small tendrils snapped around my neck, twisting, clawing, sawing, trying to choke and cut and kill and—

  I shot the mimic hiding on the ceiling with the goop gun, the increased surface tension of the upgraded projectile preventing most of the acid from splashing onto me. The knuckles on my upper left hand still got splashed quite hard.

  I screamed. A bottle of tidyblank met my upper right hand as I dropped the bazooka. A few sprays and then, sweet relief. The pain was still there, but it wasn’t spreading. I dared a glance at my hand. Bone was not white unless it was bleached, but a dark ruddish brown. It was living tissue after all, full of blood.

  Still alive. Despite it all.

  I pushed myself up. I couldn’t afford any more breaks. I still had a lot riding on winning in…

  [2 min remaining]

  …two minutes’ time.

  Gotta deliver more slimes inside the damn thing. Finish the job. You or me, mimic, you or me.

  I leaned over the railing. One bazooka shot remained. The squash head had exploded. The boomerang round got stuck in a wall. All high explosive and armor penetrating shots were gone too. Now I only had the thermobaric left, whatever that was.

  I suppose I won’t die at least. Haha. The two hundred plus other people might.

  I was dizzy, my mind still reeling as my rear eyes noticed a familiar outline riding the escalator up. I turned just enough to confirm it was who I thought it was.

  “Oh, hi Ted. That your blood?”

  Ted waved. His gun looked slagged and twisted. Probably got hit by an acid blast or something.

  A string of doubt ran through me as I aimed at the central mass of mimic tendrils and spiky legs. It was the easiest shot in my life. [Arms & Arms proficiency] claimed the bazooka barrel could hold for a couple more shots, but also that I needed an immediate replacement once this fight was over.

  I pulled the trigger, and then—

  An explosion. Pain. A ringing noise in my ear. I was… on the ground? Ow, my face hurt. Of course, just my luck that the damn bazooka barrel would crack open on its last shot.

  And below me, the world was on fire. That was when it came to me. Thermo. Baric. Temperature and pressure. A fuel-air explosion that turned the air into a physical wall with enough force to liquify organs. If that didn’t do it, I didn’t know what would.

  [You have slain: 9 ton Elite Caster mimic]

  Oh hey. I won. Yippie.

  Pain. Everything hurts. Fuck. Magical girls don’t cry. C’mon. Think happy thoughts.

  That was an insanely stressful fight. Surprisingly doable, considering the area supposed to be triple my level. Then again, the recommend threat level implies Custodians of that level aren’t fighting tooth and nail to win. A lvl 30 Custodian in a lvl 30 mission was an even fight at best, considering the one type of person that can risk coinflips is the same type of person that isn’t stopped by death in the first place.

  [Silver Soulcoins: 73->173]

  [Ivory Soulcoins: 0->1]

  [Extra lives: 0->1]

  [Congratulations! You have reached level 11]

  [Congratulations! You have reached level 12]

  [Congratulations! You have reached level 13]

  [Body +3, Sense +6, +3 Free Stat Points]

  I suppose even if that wasn’t the core of the nightmare, I won’t stay dead at least. Haha. The two hundred plus other people might.

  [Nightmare destabilizing]

  Oh. Nice.

  I did it. I saved the day. I did a magical girl thing. This is irrefutable proof. No more nagging from the voices in my head that I’m a failure. Goodbye Girlfailure Sam, hello Magical Girl Spider person… thing Sam. Wohooo~.

  I think… I think out of all the big quests, the Elite-Hunt quest is the most doable. There are thousands of people in Creektin. There can’t be that many elite mimics left in Creektin.

  [Elites left: 5]

  Addy had been busy. And I did my part. That settled it. System, I choose quest #2, the elite hunt. If Addy and I can’t delete the five remaining mimics from existence over the next six days, I don’t deserve to get my cat back.

  [Acknowledged]

  What a day I’ll let Ted carry me to safety. He deserves a promotion to associate, if he wants it.

  Ted was staring at me. Why was he staring at me?

  He opened his mouth. And opened it. And opened it.

  Oh god, oh fuck—

  A mass of pink tumors and tarry void hit my face. Then, I could feel myself being pulled towards something clammy.

  I need to get this stuff off. I need to breathe. I need to get up before it swallows me whole.

  I need… I…

  Air…

  +++

  Darkness. Tired. How long did I sleep?

  I can’t see. Front eyes see nothing. Rear eyes see nothing.

  I can’t move. I’m moving, but I can’t move. My arm swings. My legs jerk. Up, down, up, down, up, down.

  Where is Ted? Addy?

  Mom?

  [Reconnection with system failed. Retrying in 30 seconds.]

  Something just yanked my arm. It hurts.

  I’m scared.

  Where are my hands?

  [Reconnection with system failed. Retrying in 30 seconds.]

  [Warning. High level mimics may be able to spoof system identification and communication.]

  There’s a membrane around me. Around my body. Around my face.

  I can’t see.

  I can’t see!

  I can see... something, from one eye only. Light. I’m in the evac zone.

  A woman. Josh. His mother?

  “Oh, miss spider woman. Busy day?”

  Nod. Forced to nod. Don’t look at it, look at me.

  “Will you be staying for long?”

  Shake head. Shake your head or let it break it.

  I swear, if you do anything to these people I’ll—

  Darkness. It wanted me to see that. It wants compliance.

  My legs are moving again. It hurts less this time. I can feel myself crying.

  Why won’t anyone help me?

  [Reconnection with system failed. Retrying in 30 seconds.]

  [Last successful connection attempt: 43 hours ago]

  +++

  I hate these things.

  Adelaide winced as she pulled a giant pink leg shaped like a harpoon out of her thigh. The headless hexaped had given her no end of trouble, but now it was dead and she could breathe easy again.

  [You have slain: 15 ton Elite Barbed Devil Mimic]

  [Silver Soulcoins: 492->592]

  [Ivory Soulcoins: 0->1]

  [Extra lives: 6->7]

  [Ding ding! Mission #2 Cull the Strong has been completed in record time. All participants are granted an additional (100) Silver Soulcoins. Fight on, Custodians!]

  [Congratulations! You have reached level 35]

  [Body +4, Sense +5, +1 Mind, +2 Soul, + 1 Free Stat Point]

  Finally, the chaos around this podunk town was starting to settle. There were fewer groups of survivors left, most of which were now crowding the evacuation zone. Wherever she showed up, people stopped dying. Wherever she showed up, mimics fled by the dozen. Her kill count went up. Her levels too. By all measures, she was succeeding as a Custodian. Maybe if in a few days she completed the entire convergence event on her own — mostly her own — then she would finally feel something akin to relief.

  Until then, Addy felt terrible.

  Not only did she miss an entire nightmare bubble centered on the mall during her frenzied hunt, but she left a newly minted Custodian behind to deal with it, alone. No matter how she justified it to herself in the moment, the truth was that she didn’t want to escort a newbie around when there was so much to be done.

  She had done the calculations. The Ur-mimic was a threat-level equivalent to a level 45 Custodian. Even with just a tenth of the over a thousand tons of mimic biomass trapped inside the dome, she could reach a level that would allow her to pose a credible threat. Another tenth and she could well surpass it, even with the exponentially increasing xp demands.

  From The Society’s perspective, her being here would probably look like she’d planned to get trapped and suck up all the resources for herself. But future cooperation with other Custodians — any Custodian — was not on her mind. As always she only had eyes for what was right in front of her.

  The barbed devil’s corpse was beginning to dissolve. In aggregate, seventy-two tons of mimic lay dead, and yet that meant nothing if the evacuation didn’t finish on time. It was going to be a close one.

  “I’ll be fine.” Her wounds healed. They always healed. No matter what happened to the people around her, barring disintegration or obliteration of her brain, Addy was guaranteed to live to fight another day. Thus her system-granted moniker, Undying Adelaide.

  What a joke. More like the Kookey Tanuki. The One-Track Tracker. The Eternal Runt.

  She was spiraling. She knew it, and yet it didn’t matter. She was tired and hungry and annoyed and wouldn’t you know it, there was yet another family who thought taking the car into the city would get them far. Except that’s what everyone else thought too, and now they were stuck behind a pile up, and that meant Addy was obliged to practically carry them to the evac zone.

  It took minutes. Minutes for four people. Not an effective use of her time. But vital.

  At least they had the decency to thank her instead of taking the time out of both of their days to give her a lecture on how important it was to look people in the eye when you were addressing them. Or subtly hinting at her that a sword might not be the best weapon if she knew how to do magic. The latter only really happened when she showed up in her small human form.

  It still sucked the dregs of joy out of her acts of heroism. If she’d been a joycaster she would have told them her opinion on how dangerous messing with an actively deployed Custodian’s mental state was. It was the next best thing to checkmate them outside of exhausting their reserve of extra lives.

  Why does everyone think they know exactly what to do during the crisis I trained literal years for? I’m doing fine. I’m getting results.

  Just this morning she had saved: an old man trying to send a letter at the post office, a dog whose owners thought he was a mimic (he wasn’t, he just ate one and was covered in unhealthy goo), and a cat that was begging for food from a little boy despite reeking of tuna and jellied duck. The mayor’s office wasn’t pulling its weight; it had written off wide swaths of the city, which meant it was up to her and the other Custodian to corral the innocent towards safety. She didn’t just have to exceed, she had to set an example.

  She stared at her extra lives for another moment.

  I don’t deserve a reward for merely adequate performance.

  [Timer for: (Eat food - IMPORTANT!!!) has run out x3]

  [Timer for: (Check on overly friendly newbie) has run out]

  Addy eyed the notifications. Neat, now she could do two at once. That was efficient.

  A turkey sandwich materialized in her hand as she followed her minimap towards the last known location of the weird spider girl. She ate the sandwich in a single bite, then got another one. [Wonky Wardrobe] had an odd way of counting objects. It could carry seven things in total, but if a thing was similar enough to another they only took up one slot. Addy had 736 turkey sandwiches. She could refill her stock for cheap by combining convenience store meat, lettuce, and untoasted white bread. Affordable and convenient. Only the taste was… mediocre.

  If I add Mayo, I’ll have to open a new stack, she thought, munching as she jumped from rooftop to rooftop. Wouldn’t want that. The other stuff’s too important.

  The new Custodian hadn’t stayed inside the evac zone as Addy had sternly recommended. She’d gone on a rampage and killed two elites — two! — on her first day, then gone to save some civvies from the mall. Addy had been busy uprooting proto-nest-mimics and murking anything larger than a football to notice until one associate had notified her of it. The news had surprised her. It was well-above average performance, especially for her first day.

  But ever since, the new girl’s efficacy had dropped sharply. She avoided the evac-zone like a plague, seemingly more at home in the overrun city than anywhere where she could get a night’s sleep in safety.

  Not unlike yourself, Addy mused.

  Except of course, staying awake for extensive periods had to be justified. Without the necessary training or points in Body, doing what she was doing was simply not possible. The newbie couldn’t be that high level. Addy was going to grill her to discover how she’d even managed to survive her first day. And then she was going to order her to go to sleep.

  Such a hypocrite.

  Ah, there she is.

  Addy landed with a heavy thud, the public lawn cushioning her landing, and stifled a yawn.

  “So,” she said, “Custodian Sam—”

  Sam bolted.

  … did I say something wrong?

  Addy looked down at her matted fur. Yep, that was a lot of mimic blood. The 27 bottles of TidyBlank in her wardrobe could only do so much. Man, she really wished she could ask Sam for another shower.

  Addy caught up to the four-armed Sam within less than a minute, cornering her in the ruins of a house that had burnt down because someone forgot to turn off their stove. That was easy enough to infer given where the smear of soot hinted at the fire’s path, easy for Addy at least. She had good eyes, easily multiple times better than the average human’s despite starting off worse.

  “Let’s try that again,” she said.

  Sam had her back to a wall. In the halflight, her smile was nervous and wide. Globs of sweat pearled on her skin. A muffled whistling noise was coming from her backpack, a high-pitched noise. Short, long, short.

  Quietly, Sam put a finger to her mouth and gestured behind Addy. Her body posture alone should’ve tipped Addy off.

  There existed a mimic recorded for the first time in 1987 dubbed the ‘voicestealer’. As with many advanced mimics, it didn’t merely copy a part of an object or creature, but stole it entirely. People who talked in its vicinity for just a couple minutes would find their voice going hoarse, dying in their throat like a scream underwater while the thief made off to spread its bounty among its mimic friends.

  Hocchi materialized in her hand, the blade gleaming with anticipation as she rubbed a special oil on it.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll handle it.”

  Addy smiled, feigned a 180° turn, then twirled around to cut Fake-Samantha right along the midsection.

  Sword met hardened mimic-steel. Fake-Samantha had a hard time keeping up its smile. Its features twitched, sagging and deforming.

  “You really thought this was going to work a second time?” Addy growled, feeling her sword dig an inch deeper through the steel as she put more weight into it. “You already tried this trick in Capua! You—”

  When Addy next spoke, her voice was cold. “Where is she?”

  The thing pretending to be Samantha spat a cloud of tar-mist in her face, irritating her eyes and blinding her temporarily. Addy growled, continuing her sword-swipe but meeting no resistance.

  “WhErE is sHe?” The ur-mimic mocked with its warbly voice. “WHeRe Is ShE? WhERE iS SHE SHE iS wHeRe Is wHeRe, WhErE, wHeRe?”

  “Cage of Zeus,” Addy said, grabbing a handful of tiny pillars out of the air and tossing them around. The sweet hum of an electric cage purred to life from every side. No easy escape for either of them.

  The Tanuki Custodian remained quiet, ears twitching in short intervals. Left? Right?

  Below.

  Addy struck, an eldritch screech telling her she hit true. She could feel it struggle to morph around her midnight oil blade.

  “I prepared this one specifically for you,” she said with a growl, driving the blade deeper until it was pinned to the floor. “Midnight oil. When inside the bloodstream, causes intense pain when casting illusions.”

  Her heart beat fast.

  Next step.

  Slashing an Ur-mimic was a poor idea. They were slimes of a sort, with tentacles and too many ‘brains’. They regenerated too quickly to guarantee a kill unless they were literally disintegrated, or burned alive. Even burning carried a risk of missing a piece of the damn things.

  But it being here and wearing Samantha’s face and Samantha not being around meant…

  “I will teach you pain,” she growled through tears as she grabbed a metal rod from her [Wonky Wardrobe] and popped the cap off. A bassy brrrt tore the air as an arc of two-hundred-thousand volt poured freely from it, filling the air with the smell of burnt car tires every time she hit the damn thing. “I will make you hurt and scream and I will feast on your bones—”

  The Ur-mimic spat her in the face with more black acid. When she next managed to open her eyes, the thing was gone, somehow, past the electric field she paid five hundred soulcoins for. All that was left of it was a volleyball-sized gob of mimic goo twitching around her sword.

  And beneath that, also skewered on her sword, was Samantha.

  Addy froze. “... you’re alive? — can you hear me?”

  Samantha coughed, looking down at the mixed black-and red phlegm on her chest.

  “Y-you stabbed me. In the boob. How dare you?”

  And then she passed out.

  Addy’s field of view narrowed to her sword and the bruised, battered, and beaten person she’d just stabbed through the heart with it. Her breath came short. The smell of iron was overwhelming.

  This wasn’t like Capua. This was much, much worse.

  Because once again, it was all her fault.

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