Mayor Mendoza was a Quimby-esque sort of figure, in that everything he did reeked of corruption. Between his self-aggrandizing plans to make things in Creektin bigger than they needed to be and the city council’s desperate attempt to reign him in without looking like a bunch of contrarians, compromises were made that no one enjoyed and everyone had to pay for. The mall was one such enterprise, made large enough to service a city twice our size, at four times the cost, and still only half-finished more than four years after it should have been. And it was all Mendoza’s fault.

  Or so I heard. Mom and Dad weren’t beneath a little exaggeration when it came to smalltown politics.

  God I hope they’re alright—

  [For continued operations, it is recommended to facilitate a smooth exchange between members of the Society and those embedded into mundane power structures.]

  And apparently I was obligated to be polite to this, this… individual. Great.

  No, no need to be so pessimistic Sam. You gave successful first aid to a man and a gnome. You exploded mimics. You’ve had quite a day, but you can do polite.

  “It’s the magical monster, er, Custodian, in the flesh,” he said in a jolly tone. “Apologies, my assistant has been filling me in on these unusual happenings. This catastrophe is terrible for many families, yes, but a sunny morning always follows a rainy day. Great things lie ahead of us, of everyone, but we must persevere, for the betterment of landlords, economic growth, and the furthering of general social concern.”

  I think I felt a vein pop somewhere inside my skull.

  It kind of felt like the antithesis of meeting an idol in the flesh. It felt like meeting someone you’d barely heard about, and then realizing that everything people said about them was somehow even worse in person. Everything from the fake smile to the clammy and soft-looking hands spoke of a man who let others do his job for him.

  I blinked at him, trying for a while to come up with a witty response, or alternatively some diversionary platitude. But from the moment he opened his mouth I knew two things: He didn’t know who I was and he sure as hell didn’t care to find out as long as I played my part.

  “Now that you’re here, miss Adelaide, we can finally begin the reclamation of our humble town in earnest.”

  I blinked all four eyes at him.

  He thinks I’m Addy. Which is just… what?

  He coughed. “Well, clearly not the most verbal sort, but actions speak louder than words. And you are the voice of liberty.”

  “I am?” I asked, still lying on the ground.

  He smiled, congenially, like a rat if rats could smile. “Of course. I know the, ah, Agency sent you. And why else but to show that Creektin is on the map that matters!”

  Blink blink.

  “Imagine, soon this will all be over, and once people come crawling out of their homes and the national guard has gotten rid of all these pesky critters, folks’ll want to rebuild — big time. They’ll need wooden beams, nails, the works. There’s good pine and some oak up here, and once our foresters get the go-ahead, with that wood from the northern forest, the gravel pit, and the steel mill nearby, business will be booming.”

  “I see.”

  “More than any of us, am I right, miss savior of our humble town?” he chuckled, before patting me on the back and leaning in to whisper. “And you’d get more than your fair share. Family home got wrecked? How about some prime real estate in our humble little city, right along the M-28? I’m sure there’s a chateau that can be repossessed somewhere. Whatever you need, just go through me, and I’ll get it for you.”

  Ah. I’m being bribed. With an entire house.

  The smile on his face was cordial. “So, whaddaya say? Ready to become Creektin’s first and preeminent superhero?”

  I stared at his offered hand until his smile grew strained. It was hard to keep a fake smile up for long unless you really trained those smiley muscles all day. Maybe if I avoided saying anything incriminating and stared at him some more he’d go away.

  But evidently, though he was born slimy, he was not born stupid, or he wouldn’t have made mayor. His smile dropped ever so slightly, and there was a tense sort of urgency that crept into his voice.

  “Listen, we have a bit of a fucking problem in Creektin. I don’t care which organization feeds and houses you or what experiments they did to make things like you, but I know that they’ve been using our tax money, so you better go out there and use whatever magic hullabaloo there is in the world to make my city mine again and…”

  Blah blah blah.

  That was what he said, or, well, the part that I caught. I’ll be honest, it was kind of hard listening to him when I could just grow a pair of eyes dedicated to counting every one of his nose hairs instead, or the folds in his sweetly smelling suit. Even during the apocalypse his style was impeccable; apparently part of our mayor’s skill repertoire was the ability to find a working washing machine in spite of the aliens tearing our town up.

  And now he and his secretary were staring me down like they were expecting some sort of spittle-licking ‘yessir’ response. Honestly, if this was how most people of authority treated Custodians, I was predicting a spike of ‘collateral’ damages in the near future.

  I braced myself.

  I want to tell him, politely, to screw off. I really, really do, but I shouldn’t, I really shouldn’t.

  “No,” I said.

  “No?”

  “I can spell it out for you if that’s too many letters.” The look on his face was priceless. ‘Oh no, my casual bribe and threat didn’t work and now I’m all out of options’.

  Wow, I didn’t know I was even capable of this level of sass. Way to go me.

  [Arms & Arms proficiency: Charged - 99% Joy, 1% Anger]

  Yup. Speaking my mind felt good. Now, time for the consequences.

  “You,” he said.

  “Me?”

  “You!” The mayor jabbed a finger right at my chest.

  I leaned over and whispered to my discarded backpack. “I think he means you, Moe.”

  “Mo!”

  “Ack! What was that?”

  That was when it dawned on me. He wasn’t an associate. He couldn’t see past the glamor, and even if he could, gnomes had their own ways of going unseen.

  The shadow of a downright devious idea began to take hold.

  “Oh, don’t worry, that’s just one of my pet talking spiders.” With my eyes I gestured at Moe to sneak around and grab the mayor’s pant leg.

  “Your pets?” he scoffed, looking around nervously. “I don’t see any pet spiders — eek.”

  “That’s ‘cause they’re invisible,” I said offhandedly. “Relax, there’s only, like, twenty of them on you.”

  Mendoza flipped the heck out, brushing himself down as if he was on fire. He let out panicked shrieks as he ran away, leaving me with Moe and his assistant who was frozen in place.

  Moe looked at me with his wide, un-emoting eyes. Then he threw his hands up, as if in celebration.

  “Waha!”

  “Waha indeed. You did well. Help yourself to some of the brownies I’ve been saving.” I turned to the mayor’s assistant. “And what are you still doing here?”

  “I-I-I, um, m-miss Adelaide, I—

  “I’m not Adelaide. She’s fuzzy, about yay high, and carries a sword. And your boss is not to make that same offer to her, are we clear?”

  The woman nodded vigorously.

  “Good. I’m Sam.” I offered her one of many hands to shake.

  She looked ready to cry. I almost felt bad for her. But in the end, she did shake my hand. Whoever had the guts to walk through a localized apocalypse on high-heels has at least enough pluck to shake a magical girl spider person thing’s hand.

  And despite making my general displeasure known, she hadn’t made herself scarce.

  [System handshake successful: Associate Laura Pallor]

  Ah. So she’s the one who handles the unnatural affairs of Creektin in place of the mayor.

  She looked as new to this as I was, judging by how she was nervously eyeing my gnome.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “There is, ah, an issue, I-I think, the kind that you are perhaps supposed to… know about?”

  “Is it pink and deadly?” I asked. “How large is it?”

  “I, w-well, it’s the mall and… if you would perhaps step out and inspect the issue yourself?”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose partly because I had done nothing but deal with pink issues all day, partly because I didn’t want to leave the idiot who’s life I’d saved in case of complications. But if I was entirely honest with myself, as I lay there on the grass with a pounding headache and three functional arms, I just felt a little bit tired.

  After a minute of contemplating my life choices, I got up with a groan and followed her out of the central park and onto the town square proper.

  Of what had once been a city-core of red-bricked buildings from the 19th century, now only three were left. Even those were in the process of being surrounded and subsumed by warehouses and dollar stores. The loss of town history aside, it was a good defensible position: Open parking lots for clear lines of sight, a nest of roads to funnel enemies into killing zones, and with enough hardware stores that someone could build an entire castle out of DIY supplies. And people had already begun fortifying the area. I saw roadblocks, tents, the beginnings of an ammo dump guarded by two plainclothes officers. The sun hung low in the sky. Wow, I must've passed out for a long time in between the tank museum and the gun range.

  Still, the response was quick and professional. Props to associates and everyone else here for setting this stuff up. Still no clue how the system thinks I’m going to evacuate people from here.

  I saw the problem that the mayor’s assistant mentioned long before we actually got there.

  The mall was a gigantic construct, a symbol of hubris only dwarfed by the Tower of Babel, the Hyperloop, or the Los Angeles public transport system. It was also covered in a giant murky membrane, pink coral polyps standing out like pimples on a tar-colored surface that seemed to cling to everything like chunky sludge.

  The more I stared at it the more the whole thing felt like it had an infinite depth, as if I was watching an optical illusion that just kept on repeating on and on and on—

  “Hey.” I grabbed the assistant as she took a step forward past the layers of construction tape. Her eyes were entirely unfocused.

  She blinked at me through her daze. “What?”

  “Wake up. You’re drooling.”

  “O-oh, sorry.” She wiped her face on her sleeve. We had passed four separate layers of construction tape by now. “This is the mall, or what’s left of it.”

  “I can see that. What I want to know is why this freaking—”

  [Cognitive hazard detected]

  “—cognitive hazard is just allowed to exist here with nobody guarding it.”

  “We tried to guard it, but by afternoon all three guards were gone. A group of armed volunteers went in against our recommendations. Most of our first responders throughout the city have stopped responding to radio, a-and we don’t have anyone left to enforce safety protocols or go in after so… nobody did.”

  I squinted at her. “So after feeding this place people, you just decided to quit?”

  “It’s not that easy,” she said in a shrill, desperate voice. “People reported that a large meteorite hit the mall, and that shortly after it was like this. I keep on getting e-mail after e-mail telling me that I need to do something before it pops like a bubble, but I can’t, I really can’t, everything I tried has only made things worse and there’s just nothing I can do, nothing I can… where are you going?”

  “Checking something.” I poked a pink goopy pustule slowly dripping down the membrane. “Hey system, what is this?”

  [Terraforming membrane detected]

  [Analyzing sample]

  [Preliminary analysis complete: Alien terraforming ward, colloquially known as ‘Nightmares’. Estimated magical strength of 530 kilothaums, divided into 1:529 for external:internal strength. Entry is remarkably easy. Once a subject has entered, exit becomes impossibly difficult. A level 70 custodian with a Mind/Spirit focus may destroy the barrier from the outside. A pair of level 20 Custodians with a combat focus may find and destroy the elite mimic inside responsible for keeping up the barrier. Failure to do so will cause the irrevocable transfiguration of all objects and creatures inside in: 54 minutes]

  [Warning! Area exceeds Custodian level by a factor of (2). It is recommended to retreat and seek assistance.]

  I could hear my teeth grinding against each other as I read the description. Because of course, the one time I took an involuntary eight-hour power nap, it had to be while some other horrifying stuff was going on at the other end of the city. But no, that wasn’t really true either. Clem had no way of knowing how hard those potions were going to hit me, and their power had been absolutely instrumental at the time. I needed it to take out the elite mimic.

  Now would’ve been a great time for the third Custodian to show up, but it was becoming frighteningly obvious that the barrier dome was counting the gnome I’d fed this morning. There was no third Custodian coming to rescue us. The dome just had the astronomic misfortune of landing on top of not one, not two, but three unprepared Custodians. And now none of them could get out.

  Would it have been better if I… hadn’t accepted the call? Am I a burden?

  “I, uh… aww man.” Focus. Do your best. You fucked up one part, but you can still finish with a passing grade.

  I took in a deep breath and focused on the associate with all four eyes. “You want to talk evacuation plans? Are there even any, or are we just supposed to hunker down here and wait?”

  “T-the latter, I’m afraid.” She looked the part. She was shivering harder than an olive tree in the middle of being harvested. I watched a video on that once; people use a net and these little grabber machines to shake them until all the olives fall on their own. Neat stuff. Also, wildly inappropriate to think about right now.

  I’m trying to deflect. That usually happens when I don’t think I can handle the situation. Thanks therapist.

  I took another deep breath. “I’m… sorry, I’m not mad at you. Thank you for telling me. You said you lost communication with everyone inside?”

  The assistant nodded a bit too quickly. “Oh yes, most barriers block everything — radio, wifi, telepathic satellite phones. Downright unpleasant that — you should have seen the eyes of everyone at the office when the emergency wards kicked in and… is everything alright, Miss?”

  I was staring at my phone, at yet another call that refused to go through.

  “I’m going in there.”

  “A-are you sure? I mean, of course, thank you, thank you so much. We are missing anywhere between one and two hundred people, including everyone who entered later on. I thought they were all, y’know, goners, but then you showed up! It was honestly a relief.”

  My chest tightened.

  “Yeah, well, don’t thank me yet.” My family might be in there. Them, plus two hundred people. So much pressure.

  I can’t fail at this. I’m not getting a second chance this time.

  My heartbeat was thundering in between my ears louder than when I was fighting for my life. I swallowed heavily. The goopy membrane reached at least a hundred feet up, covering the central dome entirely besides the gleaming metal pinnacle.

  I grunted (or maybe squeaked) something non-commitally towards her before walking off, making it clear that I didn’t want to be followed right now. I had less than an hour to clear it and with no chance to scout ahead or know what I was up against. Going through my gear and possible purchases didn’t invite joy, only more terror as the grim realization set in that I was not equipped for this.

  It was set for two level twenties after all, and I was not even half that.

  I blew into the doggy whistle Clem had given me. But there was no response, no heroic weretanuki jumping out of the brushwork to save the day with friendship and teamwork.

  I swear, if I get my hands on that girl I’ll, I…

  I put my head between my legs and groaned. Why malls?

  Ever since my parents first took me there and I dropped my ice cream on the floor, malls have been a place of bad luck to me. They were the place where I got left behind on a school trip once, where a pigeon crapped in my hair, where a creepy dude ruined summer dresses for me by catcalling me, repeatedly, when I’d just wanted to enjoy some fast food with friends. This mall was the place where I realized that my interests weren’t like those of most other people, and that that was why Rebecca dumped me.

  She didn’t do that at the mall. But as far as I was concerned, it only proved that this palace of casual commercial consumption and I had irreconcilable differences. And this time around I wasn’t feeling any luckier about coming out on top.

  But I still have to do it. I’m a magical girl. And magical girls… they damn well face their fears.

  I checked my weapons. The Toothpick and Goop Gun were ready to go. My launcher was still somewhere in the pickup, but that literally didn’t matter. Every time I summoned it it was in pristine condition, not a hint of dirt or dust on it. Dirt wasn’t teleported with it. That would just add to the cost.

  Then I checked my ammo. Six full Toothpick batteries and a whole lot of empty and nearly empty ones. Four Goop Gun canisters. Zero high explosive missiles.

  “What do they even cost?”

  I checked the shop. Four soulcoins per standard high-explosive grenade. Nine for something called a squash head, for whoever was interested in high velocity pumpkin rounds I guess. Twelve for an oversized rubber bullet. Eight for high-explosive anti-tank, which came with a neat little diagram on how they worked.

  A mass of plastic explosives was placed around a cone of copper, then ignited. The resulting pressure condensed the copper into plasma, which shot forward in a short-range stream that could cut through even tank armor. There were even more exotic shots, way more exotic, and probably marked as illegal in the Geneva Convention. Some of them were as expensive as one of my entire weapons. Laser-guided ammo for long range precision strikes. Phasing ammo that went through the first obstacle before detonating. Boomerang rounds — which sounded like a terrible idea, until I realized that they didn’t have any explosive mass, being giant hunks of metal that were basically rocket propelled darts.

  The bit of window shopping was enough to switch my channel from fear to joy, but not enough to fully charge a spell.

  Whatever was in the mall, it was best handled by a spread of ballistic options.

  I bought some basic high-explosive, armor-piercing, and some of the interesting ones I could afford. On top of that was another time bandaid, all of which I stuffed into my backpack, which gobbled it up. Moe was doing that thing again where he wordlessly stared at me with wide eyes. My bandaged hand ached.

  “This might be a rough one, little buddy. Promise me you’ll run if I don’t make it.”

  His silent stare could’ve meant anything.

  I shouldered the last of my gear, fiddled with the scorched tears in my gloves, then turned to see someone else prepping their gear right behind me.

  “Ted?” I tensed. I hadn’t noticed him at all. Was he that quiet, or was I just seriously crashing hard?

  “That’s me, yep.” The big man looked like he was gearing up to fight god for trespassing on his lawn.

  “What are you doing.”

  “Reloading.”

  Obviously. “Don’t you have some other responsibilities to look after? Where’s your buddy?”

  “Hunter threw out his back getting out of the pickup and Alex is basically in a coma, so me’s all you’ll get. Why?”

  “Because you look like you’re gearing up to come into this murder-barrier with me. The ward which nobody came out of yet. Have I mentioned how lethal this thing is yet? Wait, were you listening in on me?”

  “Enough that I got the gist of things.” He checked his gun, a black rifle with so many attachments that looked a lot more suited for military use than for civilians.

  “I was kind of expecting to go in alone.”

  “Good thing your expectations were upended, eh? Consider me intruding on this field trip as taking up a bit of the bad luck the fate intended for you today.”

  I blinked at him. “Bad luck. Yeah. Right.”

  Take the windfall. It’s the only one you’ll get.

  “What’s the plan, rookie?”

  “So, er, I was thinking we just mosey over to the front and… enter it?”

  He gave me a look. The look said many things, none of them supportive of my impromptu plan.

  “I can see you’ve never breached a building.” He cleared his throat. “Lesson number one: The front is always the most heavily defended…”

  Edit:

  - Due to reasonable complaints about the [Proprioception] passive ability which Sam got recently, I have tried to make the reasoning behind why she didn't take it more reasonable. This boils down to reducing the scaling from 5% to 1.5%, plus the basic problem that Sam doesn't have a lot of Sense now.