I changed. I could feel it.
My features became sharper. My body became a little more mature, and most important of all, my fur darkened, becoming a deep black, with the tips of my fur still being purple. I looked like an older, scarier version of myself.
Well, I couldn't actually see myself, but it felt like such an innate ability — intrinsic to who I was.
“Wow! That's… quite the look!” Saoirse said, her voice a few octaves higher. “I'm very glad you were only joking about the scarf thing.”
I rolled my eyes, but didn't comment on her insistence on the scarf versus slippers debate.
Instead, I looked down at myself, twisting and turning to see how I looked with my real eyes, instead of those in my mind. There weren't any distinct differences between the two… so yeah, I guess it worked.
Gauntlette was going to look like a sharper, meaner version of me. The differences would hopefully be enough that nobody could connect the dots between my two lives. Assuming I continued to go out as Lette, of course.
Saoirse tilted her head — ears swivelling like little antennas. “So… now we go get shampoo?”
“No, now we go and deal with the problems happening in town,” I said, gesturing in the direction of the city centre.
She frowned. “I was afraid you'd say that.”
“Think you can keep up with my flying?” I asked, twisting my hand up into the strands of reality.
“Uh, of course? I'm very fast. Good luck keeping up with me, cousin,” she snorted, giving me a haughty look. The way her eyes flicked nervously to the sky, then in the direction of the city, sorta undermined her confidence. I didn't say anything, even if I really wanted to keep bantering with the hyperactive little spirit. We'd already wasted enough time fuckin’ around with disguises and negotiations and… yeah.
“Alright, follow me,” I said, and yanked myself up into the air.
The wind whipped at me, trying to pull my coat off my shoulders in a reverse of what my mum used to do when I wanted to go out and play in the snow. A smile curved my lips as I remembered the antics I got up to when I was younger. Making mum chase me around the house with the jacket while I squealed and ran into furniture was so fun.
Unfortunately, the sky was real fuckin’ angry, and my reminiscing was interrupted when I heard an eruption of gunfire from down near Carding street — the local shopping street… thing. I wasn't even sure what it was called for older neighbourhoods like mine. I know the outer ones had strip malls or whatever, but… anyway. Gunshots — probably bad.
The wind howled and tossed me about like a plastic bag. Now that I was in it, the sky felt angry — no, it felt… panicked, like a wounded animal backed into a corner. The clouds shifted and undulated like the exposed organs of a titan, spilling out and reforming as some sort of strange healing kept it intact. Every now and then, the chaos would birth one of those screaming meteors of shadow and smoke, and it would land with a dull, almost imperceptible boom.
Weirdly, though, there was never any damage to anything it hit. Most times, I didn't see the exact impact site as it happened, because it was obscured by a building or tree. The times I did see one land were… alarming — like, the kind of alarm that's screaming and screaming, but refuses to turn off because your neighbours are on vacation.
Why were the creepy sky-tears so alarming? Because fuckin’ monsters were crawling out of them, that's why. One of the two I saw land immediately turned into some sort of hideous vulture thing that screeched and flew out towards the shore.
Carding street came into view quickly, and it became immediately obvious what the cause of the commotion was. People were running down the street, or cowering in whatever nook they could find. All I had to do was follow the opposite of the direction everyone was running, right into the middle of the Carding street shops.
A screeching mass of tendrils was whipping around randomly between buildings, looking like the world's angriest ball of yarn. The center of the thing was a ball, too, but unlike the yarn, this thing appeared to have anywhere between ten and twenty loose threads at any one time. Each tendril was loosely controlled in its movements. Kinda. Mostly it was all over the place, ripping things up, throwing them around, and—
A body lay twisted at an odd angle against a parked car. This thing had already killed someone.
My landing at the ending of the street was harder than it should've been, and I stumbled to one knee. I couldn't stop staring at the body. It was an older gentleman in an apron — maybe a chef or something for one of the two restaurants on the street?
My breathing stammered and caught in my throat. He was obviously dead, but blood was still flowing from his broken body. He died… recently. As in… while I was fucking around arguing with a pain-in-the-ass fox spirit. A fox spirit that was nowhere to be seen, currently.
Three rapid gunshots rang out, snapping at the air like cracked whips, and their sound pulled my focus back in. Deal with the spirit… before it killed again.
Okay. Okay… come on Tia — come on Lette. Take it down.
My left hand twisted and I braided my fingers into the air, and I flew through the air — almost as uncontrolled as the monster’s tendrils. Except, I was in control. My flight came to an abrupt halt, making my vision narrow in protest at the sudden change in velocity, but I kept my balance and skipped to a stop right as the tendril monster rammed into a nearby second-hand bookstore.
In my peripheral vision, I saw more movement, and my eyes flicked to it. Two cops stood hiding behind a partially smashed car, weapons raised towards the shop where the beast vanished. Their eyes widened when they saw me, and their aim wavered like they both couldn't choose if they should be shooting me instead.
Books flew everywhere, vomiting out onto the street in a spray, and then the monster was coming at me — fast.
“Fuck!” I yelled, flicking my right wrist up and out as I threw myself backwards in an attempt to dodge the failing ball of nightmare yarn.
My shockwave pulse erupted from my palm a split second before the monster would've slammed into me. The air rippled, and there was a dull whump. The shockwave made the difference — the spirit flew over me with even less control than it seemed to normally have.
I landed on my back — all the air exploding out of my lungs in one explosive burst, but I didn't have time to fuck around being winded. I rolled over and shoved myself to my feet. The monster screamed, loud enough to hurt my sensitive fox ears, and I flinched.
It saw that flinch, and it punished me for it. Vine-like dark grey tendrils hit me, three in quick succession. Pain flared in my stomach, shoulder, and thigh. Crack. My vision flickered, and my thoughts turned into mush. My back hurt — more than where the tendrils hit me.
I coughed. Then sucked in a gasp of air and opened bleary eyes. O-oh god. What—
Gunshots rang out again, then I heard a fading scream. No! Sh-hit. Shoving myself to my feet, I looked around… but the scream wasn't from any horizontal direction. It was above, and it was getting louder.
A blur was coming down towards the ground. I had one, maybe two seconds. Twist. Clench fingers. Throw my hand out.
A stasis field hummed to life in the middle of the street… just in time. A dude, maybe twenty years old, hung surprised and still screaming in the field. I gasped out a breath and sank to one knee, trying to suck air in and out of my lungs like that was all that was wrong with me.
My thoughts still felt… mushy, and I turned to look back. What did I even hit? Oh. An outdoor free book stand. I guess the books were why my back wasn't broken. Thank fuck they didn't put any hardcovers out.
Rotating my wrist, I drained the excess momentum from the man in the stasis field, and then clenched my hand into a fist, repurposing the energy into mana. Finally, I dropped the field and stumbled properly to my feet, looking around.
The monster was nowhere to be seen, but I could definitely hear it inside the cafe that was joined with the book store. It'd apparently gotten into the cutlery drawer, judging by the insane cacophony coming from within.
Limping, I placed myself in front of the large smashed window and readied my gauntlets.
Then, I turned and addressed the cops. “Hey, wanna do something helpful for a change?”
They were both dudes, one in his mid-forties, one in… maybe late twenties. Both looked like they wanted to put me in cuffs, but my helpful antics were at least buying me some leeway.
The younger one eyed his partner, then looked at me. “What is it?”
“I'm gonna put up a stasis field when that thing rushes out,” I explained, still gasping for breath. “When I have it trapped, empty your guns into it. Won't be long, but we can surround it with… ‘paused’ bullets.”
“Yeah, I think we can manage that,” the older guy grunted, lifting his weapon with more determination.
I wasn't happy that I needed to ask for help from some cops, but it was the best idea I had right then. I didn't have any doubts that they'd try arresting me — if not now or after the fight, then further down the road.
My reservations became unimportant in a flash, as the horrifying eldritch ball of yarn tumbled out of the cafe at mach-jesus. I barely had the time to put the stasis field up in time, and to my utter relief, the cops immediately opened fire. Both dumped an entire magazine each into the field, all aimed at center-mass on the monster.
Concentrating, I closed my hand into a fist slowly, flickering my fingers as I did so. I pulled just enough momentum out of the field, without pulling too much, which would've turned the deadly projectiles trapped inside into nerf bullets. The strain of holding a living creature in the field was like trying to draw a bow using your teeth, but entirely in my mind. I wasn't able to hold through the cops reloading — it was too much. I released the field.
Two dozen or more bullets hammered into the spherical core of the monster at the same time, and it popped like rotten orange. Pulp flew everywhere.
Thank. Fucking. God… or, thank the gods? I knew for a fact that the latter were real now, so…
The sound of sharp, panting breaths slowly closed in on me from the direction opposite the cops, and I looked over, curious. There, padding lethargically down the street, was Saoirse, my spirit fox… acquaintance.
“I— girl… I might have underestimated your, uh… your flight speed,” she wheezed, her tail barely held up off the ground. “Oh man. How does breathing even work? Do I still have lungs? It feels like someone filled them with frozen bees.”