The moment I selected the essence, the blunt force of eighteen stat points slammed me into the ground. A flame of desire lit in my senses, nerve-endings rewiring, growing, searching greedily for more, more, more information. The puddle of rainbow-colored excess of metabolized potion-stuff took on different hues, the spit in my mouth a new taste and smell. There was a sound like a million ants gnawing at the floorboards in my ear that just wouldn’t stop growing in intensity—

  And then, silence. All at once the sensory overload stopped. I put an ear to the floor. Yup, definitely ant infested. There were also six non-ant people in the other room — no, seven. I could hear them arguing and feel the echoes of their footsteps. It wasn’t a magical level of hearing, but it was more crisp. As if someone had taken a broom to the dusty ends of my nerves.

  “— could be anything, and you know it—” a woman’s voice said in the other room.

  “We don’t know,” said a deeper one. “We just don’t know.”

  “— normal? With all the extra bits and stuff?”

  They’re talking about me. Lovely.

  [Channeling emotion: Fear]

  I rolled over, the impression of wood all too unfamiliar on my skin.

  My vomit smells like artificial cherry flavor. How quaint.

  Now was probably not the right time to go trying new spells. But on the other hand… I really really really (really really) wanted to. It created flipping extra spider eyeballs after all! That was so cool. And I had to have already charged it with plenty of fear. Fear that I would have died were it not for Clem’s potion. Fear that the people in the other room might be discussing whether I should be shot. Fear that my family was dead, that everything I ever held dear was falling through my hands like sand.

  … ok, that’s enough charging. I wonder what type of eyes I should try first? Primary eyes, or secondary eyes — canoe, primitive, or grate type?

  In truth, for a true arachnophile there was only one choice.

  Spider eyes are cool. They come in many shapes, and many more sizes. They are arrayed with one or two sets of primary eyes, plus two extra sets of secondary eyes which allows for a huge field of view and insane depth perception. Jumping spider eyes are on another level. They are roughly equal to human eyes in their ability to see contours, objects, colors et cetera, except with the caveat that they did all that while being freaking tiny. The human eye weighs more than fifty entire medium-sized jumping spiders, including all their chitin, all their setae, and yes, all their eyes.

  So, what pray tell might happen if one reckless magical girl-spider decided to scale those primary eyes up to human size?

  A devious smile split my face.

  “More spider eyes,” I whispered and let the change wash over me.

  [Variable spell cost changed to: Major++]

  [Spell charge: <1%]

  [Reduce size, complexity, or efficacy to reduce spell cost]

  “Oh come on,” I hissed. “I just want some jumping spider eyes the size of my fists.”

  Alas, it wouldn’t let me. Stupid emotional magic system.

  Now, I could have settled for something less. Normal spider eyes were actually pretty bad, and their secondary eyes were barely adequate to discern smears of shapes and peripheral movement. But I was so close to greatness, so close to completing my spider theme with the ultimate eyeball.

  I couldn’t do anything about the eye’s complexity since I wasn’t a friggin microbiologist. “Could you reduce the size to around human eyeball size?”

  [Recalculating spell cost]

  [Spell charge: 5%]

  “Still not enough? Then reduce the efficacy until the spell costs, say, five times as much as [Arms & Arms proficiency].”

  Since my ECC efficiency for fear was more than twice as high as for joy, that meant that this spell would in effect take twice as long to charge as that one. Since I wasn’t planning on hot-swapping eyeballs like quick-fashion accessories, that seemed like a good place to start. I could always scale them up when I increased my ECC efficiency.

  [Recalculating spell cost]

  [Spell charge: 100%]

  The change coursed through me, for real this time. I felt my forehead fold, muscles and bones realigning to make space for a new growth. No idea where the brain matter went. It didn’t feel like I was giving myself a frontal lobotomy, so maybe the magic was just making everything fit neatly.

  There was a flash of light that slowly resolved into the room’s colors. I gasped.

  Everything looked real. More than real. The outline of the table was stark, each notch exquisitely detailed like a valley of ridges and cliffs. There was a new hue to everything too. Mainly, I noticed that this place was full of stains, and dirty as heck.

  Ew. Why are there stains on the frigging ceiling!?

  Belatedly, I realized that what I was seeing was UV light. Bodily fluids, among many other things, reflected it. And now, equipped with spider eyes, I could see it too.

  No, this won’t do. Not at all.

  Suddenly, I didn’t feel like sitting anywhere, or touching anything really.

  Fortunately, I was in the mood to distract myself from any and all obligations, and I knew exactly where to find cleaning implements. I practically lived here during the three month period where my Wii 3 died and I was forced to tend my virtual islands, farms, and pizza-places elsewhere.

  Hooray for neurotic behavior.

  With a mop in hand and armed with the world’s most efficient instacleaner, I began cleaning. First was the pile of rainbow-colored sick that was still strobing on the ground. Then came the windows, the top of shelves, a wall with a splotch that looked like Homer Simpson eating a donut, then the rest of the furniture and the floor. Fifteen points in Body made cleaning smooth. Smooth cleaning made me happy. Happiness charged [Arms & Arms Proficiency].

  I think Buddhists call this a virtuous cycle.

  I looked it up. Apparently the term was coined in the 20th century, pointedly not by Buddhists. The more you know.

  But back to cleaning. I wasn’t just doing this out of the goodness of my heart, or because the mere idea of sitting down anywhere was giving me the shivers. No, this was training. I was getting used to my increased senses. Having four eyes arrayed in a square meant insane levels of three-dimensional vision. It was as if life had been a movie on television, and now I’d moved to an IMAX. The new eyes even had a zoom function! As a surprising side-effect of all these new sensations, cleaning was now the most interesting thing in the world.

  Ever gotten a new videogame, a new baseball bat, a new anything, and reveled in how novel it felt to just use it? Yeah, that was me, except every swish of the mop was as gripping as watching Indiana Jones punch nazis.

  Moe was all for it. He was walking around, two-handing a dustpan and getting into the nooks and crannies I couldn’t. I would’ve cleaned the entire lodge if it meant getting out of this situation scott-free.

  However, things were rarely that simple.

  Doo do doo, get clean get clean get—

  The door creaked open. Mo jerked up and at the snap of a finger he was gone under the floorboards.

  I froze in the middle of wringing out the mop. A heavy-set guy had squeezed himself into the room. It was Ted Backer, a regular of the gun range, an acquaintance slash friend of Dad’s who had a mug as mean as a bulldog. A carbon copy of the man followed after. Josh Backer had the same squat nose and brutal forearms, but smaller, younger, and without a look as if the world owed him satisfaction on his face.

  They both paused to look between me and the neat line between the side of the room that was squeaky-clean, and the one that still needed some work.

  “Hey Pops,” Josh said nervously, “your quote-unquote ‘monster’ is free.”

  “I can see that, Josh,” Ted grumbled.

  “She also cleaned the room for us.”

  “I can see that too. The question is: why?”

  His look implied he was waiting for an explanation.

  “I, er, had nothing better to do,” I mumbled. “It’s me, Samantha. You recognize me, right Ted? I mean, ‘course you do, but not everybody does. I mean, if I left the room, you’d probably shoot me. I’d prefer that didn’t happen. Did you know that there’s spilled juice all over the… no, wait, you can’t see that.”

  I devolved into an incoherent mumble as I tried to meet his eyes, but I couldn’t bring myself to. Something with the way he looked at me was making me feel self-conscious.

  C’mon man. I have four arms and four eyes, that’s cool. Don’t make me feel guilty about something I enjoy, please.

  “Uh-huh. I see.” You do!? “You’re trying to fit in.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Trying to show you’re one of us.”

  “Yeah!”

  “Trying to make us let our guards down so you can stab us in the back.”

  “Y-wait, what?” I turned and blinked at him with four eyes. “You think I’m a mimic.”

  “Well, in between now and an hour ago, you’ve vomited an improbable amount of rainbows, changed color twice, and now you’ve grown an extra pair of eyes.”

  “... I can make them go away if you’d prefer that.”

  “I don’t think that’s the point, Samantha,” Josh quietly opined.

  “Josh m’boy, don’t call that thing Samantha. It’s one of them pink shrieking monsters. It’s just trying to lure us in before it gets to stab us in the back. You can’t be paranoid enough in this economy.”

  “But it was fighting other mimics when we met it,” he said.

  “I…” Two pairs of eyes met mine. “I’m not pink. I’m…” I looked down at myself. Covered in melted cloth and shredded armor as I was, I only noticed the discoloration when I tugged my glove-sleeve back.

  “... I’m mauve? Why am I mauve? Oh those goddang potion side-effects.”

  “Well?” Ted asked, a hand on his holster. “Anything else to add to your defense, miss shapeshifter?”

  “I, I-I — hic.”

  [Potion of Sound Judgement has worn off. Rebound effect: Short-term high-intensity hiccups for 37s]

  Really? Now!?

  “I’m n-not a — hic — monster. I’m a magical — hic — girl. I run — hic — and gun — hic — and shoot the bad guys with fun, fear, and fantastically fickle — hic — f-firearms. I — hic — haven’t hurt a person in my life and I don’t plan to. — hic — . I can see ghosts. I don’t — hic — don’t want — hic — want to die. Please, give me a — hic — chance to — hic —, to prove— hic — can this goddang hic — hic — hiccup stop already!?”

  Silence reigned for a moment. I hiccuped one more time, then it was gone.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “You good?” Josh asked.

  “I think so. Do you need me to repeat that or—”

  My eyes focused on a sudden twitch in the background clutter. I blinked it away, but my extra pair of spider eyes insisted that I look there and focus on that… what, that briefcase in the back? It was made of well–abused leather, an ugly splotch covering a corner, probably more than one that I couldn’t see from this angle.

  But my new eyes, they saw something else. The splotch was shifting with minute movements impossible for the human eye to catch unless they were literally touching it. The disguise was near perfect, but I was pretty sure that the dark scuffmarks hid beady blank eyes the size of pinpricks, observing us in secret.

  I didn’t hesitate. My body was still aching from combat and a dozen potion sideffects, but I had a mop, a bottle of TidyBlank, and a mightily convenient tool.

  “Summon: Bazooka!”

  The bazooka appeared with a tiny whoosh of displaced air in my hands as I let myself fall back onto the sofa, using my chair to brace the bazooka and aim it straight at the offending pretender.

  Josh just stared with a gaping mouth while Ted had his hand on his pistol.

  “Is that a—”

  “Bazooka,” I said, interrupting him. “That briefcase over there is a mimic. It’s my job to hunt them down, and help the population evacuate unharmed. That being said: Move, please.”

  Ted barked a laugh.

  “And you think you can use that indoors? You’ll blow us all to kingdom come, including yourself.”

  “I think that the grenade won’t arm before it hits the wall behind me, and that I can stun the alien asshat with the backblast in front of me.” I tapped the barrel. “I’m holding it backwards you see.”

  “There is no mimic in here but you,” Ted said in a low voice. “We’ve made sure of it; buddies of mine have been patrolling our base day-in, day-out. I trust ‘em with my life, nothing would’ve made it past them.”

  “Sure, nothing human sized,” I shot back, sweat pearling on my forehead. “Probably nothing as large as a dog or cat. But as large as a rat?”

  I turned to look at him and I could see him twitch. He was half expecting me to flag him with my bazooka. I didn’t give him the pleasure. “Have they checked every window? The chimneys? Toilets, faucets — these things are practically balloons of liquid, they can squeeze in wherever they want. I saw it happen, barely an hour or two ago.”

  The tense standoff continued as I wracked my brain for the right thing to say. I knew Ted more as the concept of my Dad’s friend than an actual person; I didn’t know what to say to get his hands off of his iron, and Josh was clearly letting him take the lead. Sure, I could blow the dang mimic to smithereens, but Ted could easily whip his pistol out and gun me down out of sheer reflex.

  Should I appeal to his sense of authority? Make him go and check, risking that the mimic might latch onto his face? Should I volunteer, given that I likely had a better reaction speed than anyone in the room? What role did I need to fill to get him on my side, or me on theirs, or to just have them leave me alone to do my job, dangit?

  “You’ve got one thing right, Ted: you can’t be paranoid enough,” I finally pressed out.

  He mulled it over. The hand on his revolver remained in place.

  In the blink of an eye, he unholstered his revolver and pulled it out.

  Ted whirled around and shot at the briefcase. Once, and the thing twitched visibly, twice, and it coiled and grew spindly limbs. He dumped a third shot of that loud, ungodly sixshooter before the thing exploded into a splatter of black tar.

  [Assisted in killing: 3kg Coral Pretender - 1 Soulcoin]

  Oh hey, he didn’t shoot me. Also, I got a soulcoin from that — yippie!

  Holy fuck oh thank god my heart is beating so fast.

  “Well damn, you were right,” he said as the doors burst open and some other people I vaguely remembered seeing at the range poured in. “Hold your fire, folks. We got the mimic.”

  They muttered and milled about, probably confused as to why I was still sitting on the couch then.

  “I thought she was an alien,” one of them said.

  “Whatever she is, she just saved yer incompetent asses.” He vaguely gestured at the smoking pile of pink and black. “The girl’s got guts, and she’s a damn sight more perceptive than you lot. Someone coulda sat next to that and gotten choked — lights out forever. So instead of complaints, I only want to hear one thing: Thank you Samantha.”

  There were a few muttered thank yous. Some of them shook my hands. Others made a point not to. There were questions asked about my arms and my eyes, and one particular comment about how of course I wasn’t on the mimic’s side because I was clearly salmon-colored and not a mix of puce and watermelon color.

  I’m mauve, thank you very much. Boy, I sure hope being pinkish-purple isn’t permanent.

  People weren’t exactly cordial, but when Ted said jump they asked how high, so yeah. After trying and failing to memorize everyone’s faces and names, I turned to the man in question, who was busy looking at a map on a tablet. The way he was carrying himself, he had to be ex-military.

  He motioned for me to follow him, in case anybody else didn’t get the memo. There were a lot of people at the shooting range, much more than I’d expected. This wasn’t the evac zone; that one was only a mile further downtown.

  We had just walked past a priest dappling magazines with holy water when the need to say something overcame the need to not step out of line.

  “Thanks for trusting me.” I blurted out. “And not shooting me.”

  We left a hallway and walked through a room before the fresh outside air greeted me, hot and heady.

  “Rule 101 of combat in enemy-controlled territory: Make sure that the enemy isn’t making decisions for you. Take the initiative. I’d say with this we’re a tiny step ahead. We have yet to see the little critters turn into anything with more life in it than a leather purse. And since you talk and act a lot like your old man I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt for now.” He paused. “Though if you walk even an inch out of line, I won’t hesitate doing what needs to be done.”

  “R-right.” Not the warmest of welcomes. But hey, there was an invasion going on, the first on American soil since the freaking war of independence, and he had people to protect. Some of the people camping out in the middle of the parking lot were still wearing football uniforms or hats with ‘Go CockaDudes!’ emblazoned on the front. Almost everyone had a gun, a knife, or some other weapon. Despite the very real risk of friendly fire, it was safer to have one than not at the moment.

  Still. That’s a lot of civilians. A hundred just from what I can see here.

  I turned back to Ted. “So, I was going to offer to guide survivors in your direction, but it looks like you already have that handled — handled suspiciously well. You’ve got food, weapons, a fleet of cars ready to go.” No ghosts, no corpses, no sign anyone who made it here has died yet. “Are you, y’know… in the know? How long have you been anticipating this?”

  He paused, freezing as if caught out. We’d reached a set of foldable event tables set out in between a number of pickups and SUVs like a small castle. Beyond that the parking lot was empty, offering perfect sightlines. This was the frontline, but also a sort of commander's tent.

  “‘Been prepping for something to happen for twenty years — economic collapse, world war three, zombies. And no, I am not part of whatever federal black-ops team you or that werewolf are part of. I just like to be prepared.”

  “What then?”

  “Neighborhood watch. Son’s part of the football team. Wife helps out in the soup kitchen. Was surprisingly easy to get people together through those connections.”

  “Ah.” I paused. “We’re not exactly a government agency, I think — wait, you met Addy?”

  “Sure did.” He raised a hand with a familiar bandaid on it, a time bandaid. “Saved my hand, and my son’s life. Heard she helped some people on the playing field.”

  Helped? She carried the whole thing!

  “It would’ve been a bloodbath without her.” I said. “Any idea where she is now?”

  “Up north. Some folk who came from there said there’s bigger, meaner buggers that way. Can’t say more than that. She disappeared right after setting us down.”

  That… was on the other end of Creektin. Disappointing. But knowing that she was out there helping people was uplifting. It made me want to help as well. Hoping to find her in this camp was too optimistic anyways.

  She was probably going after the elites one after the other. The counter on the quest had ticked down by two since this morning. That was possibly the best quest to choose if I wanted to revive Foggy as a reward.

  Foggy…

  “So. What’s the plan?”

  Ted wetted his mouth before gesturing at a few places on his tablet’s map.

  “There are too many of them and too few of us,” he said after a moment. “We can hold the gun range, and this bar, but we’ve got an unfortunate gun-to-food ratio. A day or two, and people’ll starve. Some want to go home, but that just scatters the problem everywhere. Better to stay as one, and move as one. Safer for everyone.”

  “And you can’t leave the city because of the dome.” He blinked. I pointed upwards. “Y’know. The magical dome. The one keeping the mimics from populating Lake Michigan, Superior, and Huron. If they get there, we’ll have worse things to worry about than hypoxic dead zones.”

  “Hypoxic?”

  “Lack of oxygen. When huge algae carpets die, the microbes that consume their bodies deplete the surrounding water of oxygen and… you know, it doesn’t matter. Point is, you can’t leave the city that way.”

  “But there’s food and shelter at this ‘evacuation zone?’”

  “Probably.” I glanced at my minimap.

  He snorted, crossing his meaty arms. “I’m not risking my people on a ‘probably’.”

  “Well, waiting for a ‘definitely’ might be even worse. I can probably make it over there on foot, and maybe make it back alone too, but I have no clue in what state I’ll be in when I do, or how long it’ll take. I’ve got a computer in my head telling me that it’s not far by car, but that won’t matter if we let the mimics set up even more ambushes than they naturally are.”

  We stared each other down. It was terrifying. I was running on a lot of bluster and not a whole lot of bravery potion. A good half of my potions had worn off by now. If any one of them hit me with a bad side effect, I might not even make it to the evac zone myself.

  A small smile grew on his face.

  “I like this new confident you, Rubens,” he said and I nearly spluttered like a downed helicopter. “We’ll do a recon run, in force. You’ll be in it, so you’ve got some skin in the game.”

  I already do, buckaroo. Yippie for quests and the tiny voice of conscience in my head screaming at me that if I fail, people are going to die. Oh the joys of magical girl-ing.

  Ted’s voice tore me away from my mental catastrophizing. “What are you staring holes in the air for? Those legs are for walking. Get out there, be ready in fifteen. Dismissed, soldier.”

  He waved me off and I took that as a sign to leave. I’d barely taken two steps when Josh walked up to my side.

  “Hey, uh, Dad said I should show you to our getaway vehicle.”

  “Lead the way.” I shot him four fingerguns. My stomach roared. “But, er, could we get something to eat first?”

  +++

  “Why are these plastic bottles labeled ‘holy water’?” I asked.

  “Dad thought the end of the world was gonna come as a vampire invasion, or ghosts, or some other occult crap. He had this whole club. ‘The Vamp Watch’ he called ‘em, but I think they just used that as an excuse to get together, watch football, and drink beer.”

  “Huh. Does this holy water stuff work?”

  The system was the first to answer me.

  [The average mimic is held together by 78.3% magic. Wounds created by certain materials, such as blessed steel, silver, or wrought iron have an outsized effect on their physical and metaphysical coherence.]

  [Physical ammunition provided by the system shop adheres to the Silver Guarantee*.

  *0.7% Silver content by weight.]

  “Who’s to say?” Josh said. “Nobody really thought vampires, werewolves, or aliens were real until today.”

  I waved the message away. Good to know that my ammo was slightly more effective than average.

  The old bar next to the gun range was already filled with movement, people loading whatever they couldn’t do without onto pickups and into family cars. Everyone who didn’t have a gun was either carrying stuff, keeping an eye out for trouble, or handing out ham sandwiches.

  I took one, then three when I realized how dang hungry I was. Ted and the woman handing them out looked at me a bit oddly as I scarfed down one after the other, holding them with one hand each.

  “Can you even tell what you’re eating like that?” Josh asked as I gobbled them down, then went for three more.

  “Bacon, lettuce, tomato, no sauce. Mayo, swiss cheese, supermarket ham. The last one is smoked salmon, horseradish sauce and… pickles?”

  “Old family recipe,” the matronly woman who’d been handing them out said with a profound nod.

  I chewed a bit slower. “Ish good.”

  After about a dozen wedges, I was satisfied enough to move on.

  [Potion of Sure Steps has worn off. Rebound: Wildly unsure steps for 25 min 32 sec]

  My next step sent me face-planting into someone’s car.

  Of course the alarm goes off. “Ugh.”

  “You doing ok?” Josh asked.

  “No.”

  “Is this… related to the reason why you have extra eyes?”

  “Tangentially. I’m a magical girl. And I’m kinda bad at magicking.” I took another step that nearly twisted my legs into a knot. “Crap. Some help, maybe?”

  Josh looked more than hesitant to come anywhere near my extra bits. This was the genuine spider experience, ladies and gentlemen.

  He took a deep breath and let me sling two arms over his shoulders. “Only as long as I don’t have to carry you.”

  “I could negotiate a stumble.”

  Josh nodded, looked me in the eyes, then tried to find somewhere else that was polite to stare. “Can you really make those, y’know, disappear?”

  He gestured vaguely at my eyes.

  “I can also make more y’know.”

  He shuddered. Hehe. This was kinda fun. Maybe I should make some surprise-eyes on the side of my cheek or the inside of my mouth. Hah, I could totally do that, which wasn’t to say that it was a good idea. It was terrible, in fact.

  “Everyone here looks like they’re up for a fight,” I said as we navigated the lot. Even just looking at the mimics has gotta hurt them.

  “People were hurt where they thought they were safe,” Josh said. “That leaves an impression. Makes people want to hit back, even if it’s just once.”

  “I’d prefer if they got out of dodge.” Maybe then it would be easier to decide whether nuking Creektin was the right choice or not.

  “Yeah, well, that’s what we’re ultimately here for.”

  “We?” I asked. “You’re coming with?”

  “Me? Oh god no, I’m staying here to watch over the flock. You on the other hand have a job and a half ahead of you.”

  We stopped and when I looked up I saw the most ramshod, zombie-movie-ass pickup truck idling happily away in the parking lot. It had a snow plow, obligatory plates of metal and planks reinforcing the front and side-facing windows, and an entire freaking steel bunker sitting on the truck bed. Small slits pockmarked the hull for shooting and looking out of, the same slits the driver had to drive. Someone had glued a hawaiian bobblehead figure to the bonnet, evoking that ancient tradition of vikings attaching grisly carved figures to the front of their ships. Except, y’know, a bit shittier.

  “This… is The Beast,” Josh said dramatically.

  More like The Abomination.

  It was a patchwork mess.

  “I’m awed by the fact that you could,” I said, “but confused why you should make anything even remotely like this. It’s basically a tank on wheels.”

  “Cool, isn’t it?”

  “The suspension is maxed out, the wheels are under a lot of pressure, and to top it all off, the center of mass is so high up that this… thing might topple over around every corner.”

  “Only if you go above fifty with it,” Josh said.

  “That’s what I mean! I get that people like to feel safe, but why the heck would you ever need this much armor?”

  “Say, Samantha, are you familiar with the term recon in force?”

  I blinked. “It’s what we’re gonna do, right? What exactly does that mean?”

  Josh licked his dry lips. “Well, you see…”

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