Becoming Monsters: In The Mirror 2, Chapter 56

This is still a story of the Becoming Monsters universe by Ai Loves, setting used with permission. All canonical and mechanical errors are my own. The yarrb is the exceedingly cute creation of FelisRandomis, used with permission.

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Chapter 56: History Repeats

The man in front of us was yelling something I couldn’t understand. “Ellen, since my healer seems to be busy, care to translate for us?”

The woman blinked, a departure from the confidence of a few moments before. “There isn’t much to say. They’re here to kill Emily, probably me as well, and since you’re defending a ‘dangerous criminal’ your life is forfeit to them as well.”

“Simple enough.” The two were still talking, though. I could recognize the tone in Emily’s voice, she was delaying. “Things are going to get hairy soon. I need to know your Class and level so that we can be ready to fight.”

Ellen shook her head. “I’m a Level one Human… um, I think the closest translation is Ascetic. I don’t fight.”

“Can you shoot a gun?”

She shook her head again. Okay, escort mission time. Nobody likes escort missions, especially when they’re this high-pressure, and I am no exception to this particular rule. The ten enemy combatants were patiently waiting for their leader’s conversation with Emily to conclude, which let me do some Scanning. Hm. All Humans, which was a bit odd when it came to ratios. The dude who did the initial attack was a Ninja, same with the two in the trees to the left. Behind the guy in front of us were a Monk and a Samurai, the group behind us being, again, Ninja/Monk/Samurai. Atop the building were two Monks. Look, I was TRYING to not stereotype, but really?

“Get ready, he’s talking about regaining their honor. I think I recognize him, that’s the guy who tried to kill Emily before we escaped the country.” Ellen’s voice was hard.

“All set.” I tightened my grip on my sword, invoking its ability to transmit my instructions to the women of my Guild. When I spoke, no sound came from my mouth, but I knew it would be perfectly audible. “Select targets, attacking in three… two… one… NOW!”

I launched a Lightning Net at one of the Ninjas in the trees to our left. Simultaneously, Lucy launched a Fireball at the trio behind us, scattering them. Sarah blasted a bolt of power from her wand at the group ahead. Emily? Well, she reverted to her Kitsune form, six tails swishing in the sunlight, and called her power to get into her bipedal battle form. About my height, with vicious claws and fangs.

Every last one of our attacks hit their targets squarely, leaving only half of our opponents uninjured. I don’t know why they were waiting for the speeches to finish, but when someone’s threatening me and mine with lethal intent I’m not too concerned with being polite.

The response was haphazard but immediate. All four Monks were still in action and began launching blue bolts of ki in our direction, while the two standing Ninjas followed those with very real diamond-shaped throwing daggers. Kunai, I think they’re called, but the difference is academic when one is flying at your face. Lucy raised her Shield against the kunai while I turned to cut the ki bolts from the air with a few well-timed parries. Sarah came with the save as one of the Samurai dove in, drawing a katana with incredible speed to strike at me from my sword side. Her shield charm flashed, stopping it cold for long enough to let Emily deliver a kick of her own to the side of his head, launching him into the siamang enclosure. She looked at me and shrugged. “What? I know they look down on Tae Kwon Do, but if it works it works.”

The other Samurai came at me from my shield side and abruptly discovered that the shield itself combined with my own powerful frame meant that he bounced off instead of making any real progress. One slash of my sword and a shoulder ram later and he was sent flying to join his buddy down in the enclosure. He was missing half of his katana, which landed on the ground at my feet. Both of them immediately tried to climb up the fence at the edge of the area to get back into the fight. Two things interfered, though. The first was that the sides were designed to be nigh-impossible for arboreal primates to climb out of. The second was when Emily let loose an inhuman screech, and five siamangs in the exhibit immediately started dogpiling them. She looked at me again. “Been meaning to try out Animal Speech…”

She was cut off by the four Ninjas all leaping into the fray simultaneously, and all four were going after the target they thought was most threatening: me. I know I’m the main tank and all, but that was ridiculous. As they descended upon me, though, I figured something out fast. They were all slippery and evasive, diving in at the slightest opportunity to attack… but they kept getting in each other’s way. I’d strike at one, he’d evade, and another would be where the blade was going and get hit. One would see an opening and try to stab me, but find himself bouncing off of his buddy who saw the same opportunity. If any one, or maybe any two, of them had come at me they might have won. If they had just conserved their ninjutsu. Instead, I barely got scratched before Sarah called out “OVERLOAD!”

That word coming from her at that volume is one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever encountered. With a panicked beat of my wings I leapt back towards my group just in time to see a small flash of silver flying towards the spot I had just abandoned. It looked like a roll of coins, almost… a Silver Battery, all lights lit, and sparking in a way I had never seen them do before. It landed, Sarah cast one last Siphon on Ellen, and sent the mana she grabbed straight into it. Battery, meet assault. Loudly and explosively. I hadn’t managed to quite land when the shockwave from it sent me flying a lot further than I’d intended to, straight at the monk from the group behind us.

Then I realized there was a major threat left unaddressed. Atop the roof, only one of the Monks was still launching ki bolts at us, now being stopped by force shields from my wife. The other had taken a wide stance and was yelling as he gathered power. To what purpose, I could not fathom a guess, but if it was taking this long then letting him complete it was the opposite of a good idea. We just had two main combatants to deal with between us and him. And the length of the clearing.

The Monk who found himself dangerously close to a rampaging Incubus was quick off the mark, I’ll give him that. He slid under my flying trajectory, near-instantly turned to face the threat, then launched himself at me with a flying, spinning hurricane kick. Even yelled something when he did, which I’d likely have found useful if I could understand it. Instead, I had to settle for blocking five kicks aimed at my face, three more low sweeps, and a frankly excessive flying uppercut.

He came down in an uncontrolled ballistic trajectory, which made it easy for my hand to find his neck. The next sound out of him didn’t sound like Japanese, more of a “glurk” as I slammed his entire body as hard as I could onto the concrete, followed by plastering him with a Lightning Net as he bounced. That should keep him down.

Lucy turned to the threats on the roof, called power, and took aim at the one firing at her. The assailant spotted what she was doing, stopped launching small bolts, and called serious power of his own. Both fired solid beams of power at each other, and the two attacks met in the middle. The Monk had one problem, though. Lucy was both angry and had a MUCH deeper power well than he did. The beam clash held still in the center for about four seconds before Lucy tilted her head, gave an amused giggle, and put her back into it. The point of contact pushed back towards the Monk rapidly, and didn’t stop until it blew her assailant off the roof. He likely wouldn’t be getting back up any time soon, either.

One problem remained. The man gathering power had started to glow. I was off balance, Sarah was out of range, and Lucy looked like she was out of mana. It looked like it would take precious moments to get to him to attack, and those were moments we simply did not have. If we didn’t interfere with what he was doing it was going to end badly. Feet on the ground, I dropped my sword to reach for my pistol… but on reflection, I needn’t have bothered.

In a blur of golden fur, Emily leapt over the monkey-infested Samurai below us. She landed at the top of the siamangs’ climbing tower, stopped only long enough to gather herself, and leapt again. This one brought her to the roof of the building, about a foot away from the last remaining enemy Monk. I saw his face contort in terror, the process of gathering power one that could not be safely interrupted. Emily brought one enormous claw up as she flew at her opponent, a claw that grew to more than twice its normal size and glittering like diamond. The momentum of the strike was such that it carried her entirely past her opponent. For a moment, there was stillness. A drop of blood hit the ground. The Monk fell to his knees, and upon landing exploded as his gathered power escaped uncontrolled.

Emily stood, fur ruffled, and turned to face the remaining combatants, all six tails spread, their tips glowing. “I know you can understand me, Shi-en, so I will say this in English to include my guild,” she yelled across the space. “Your honor is dead. Go back to Japan and beg your masters for forgiveness. The only man of yours who has died today did so by his own actions, if you continue this fight then you will find no mercy from us. Leave, and never return! Tell them the next team to come for me and mine will not receive an opportunity to leave alive.” There was silence on the battlefield as her tails started weaving a complicated pattern behind her. This was a power I recognized, if their leader agreed then it would be magically enforced. What that enforcement looked like, I had no idea. Nobody in my experience had been dumb enough to try.

The Ninja leading the strike team considered for a moment, then called something out in Japanese. His people struggled to their feet then limped, climbed, and sulked away from the battlefield. Ellen looked at me again. “He told them to retrieve their wounded and retreat.” I was thankful for the translation this time. The context clues were clear, but I didn’t want to find out later that I missed something important. Their emotions were a mix of pain and shame, alloyed with fear at what was coming when they got home. They left, and I did not think they would be back.

My own team got back in one place… under the roof of the building. For some strange reason I felt that the open sky might not be the best place for it. Someplace with fewer ways to get in felt a bit better. We took stock of our injuries, the fight had not been clean. I had several scratches and cuts from getting buried in Ninjas, even besides the detonation and bruises on my forearms from blocking attacks. They weren’t poisoned, thankfully, so the rest I could probably leave to Regeneration. Assuming Emily let me, which she was not at all interested in doing. She had some strains and bruising from withstanding an explosion of her own, but was back in her Human form. Lucy was on her last legs on Stamina and critically low Mana, but had only taken glancing hits from the bolts launched by the enemy Monks. She would be fine with a good night’s sleep, and our daughter was far away from any of the bruises. Sarah and Ellen were unmarked, though Sarah was irritated in the extreme at having to blow up one of her Batteries. Overall, acceptable. We would be fine as long as there wasn’t another strike team on the STOPPING THAT THOUGHT PROCESS RIGHT THERE, THANKS!

We started making our way to the zoo administrative offices. Regardless of what else happened, we needed to let them know it had happened. It would be on them to fix the concrete and check the monkeys for injury. It would be on me as the Guild Leader to file the report to appropriate authorities while we were waiting for zoo authorities. Either way, the second half of our walk around the place seemed to be well and truly over. The admin was near the front entrance, but before we’d gotten more than a third of the way there both park security and police came running with weapons drawn.

Right. Cameras. Security and observation things. Hard to miss an entire ninja strike force dropping in on the monkeys if you’re watching the cameras.

All of a sudden, there were absolutely no problems at all finding the people we needed to talk to. Especially once I made it clear that we did not blame the zoo for anything, and apologized profusely for any damage we caused during our self-defense. To that end, the director said he wouldn’t press charges as long as I verified where we’d had the fight, since he figured the traffic boost would be better for him and it wasn’t THAT much damage anyway. The police were not nearly as happy about this whole event. Neither were the FBI, CIA, and DHS when the police realized it was out of their league. Kind of glad these weren’t monsters, that would have risked the Office of Public Protection and thus a couple of people who may or may not have it out for me in person. In the end, all five of us had to fill out statements for all four of the groups who needed them, a fact which took a lot of time and necessitated getting lunch from the zoo restaurant via a runner.

They eventually accepted that they’d gotten all they could from us on the spot not long after the food, demanded several points of contact (which I provided), and let us get to the bus stop. The adrenaline was long gone, lemonade could only make up so much of the difference, and Lucy looked like she wanted to take a nap right there. To be fair, so did I. I couldn’t do that, though. Too much could still happen until we got home. I took another steadying breath, then turned to Emily and Ellen. “Sorry about all of that, Ellen. I wish I could say that fighting for our lives was atypical, but the only atypical part of today was the fact that they were people and we were at a zoo.”

“Please there is no need to apologize. I should be the one apologizing to you, I haven’t been in this much danger since that vampire monster infestation in Forks. Glad that young blonde lady came through with her team to clear them out, still can’t believe how strong she was.”

Ellen’s bus was pulling up, but Emily pulled her into another giant hug. “Please don’t let us go this long without seeing each other again Mom, okay? Even if you just drop by the apartment and wait in ambush. I missed you.”

The older woman was somewhat misty-eyed as she hugged her daughter. Then she smirked. It wasn’t a smile or a grin or a beam. It was definitely a smirk. Her feelings beneath the surface confirmed it. “I will make sure of it, Emily. I want you to go home today, look at yourself in the mirror. Look closely and be proud of yourself. I know I’m proud of you. Now, I need to get on the bus, but you stay good, okay?”

“I will, Mom. I love you.” Emily’s eyes were as misty as her mother’s as Ellen turned and got on the bus going north. The one that was going our way came a handful of minutes later, and we gratefully took the chance to rest as it took us back home. Sarah and Lucy leaning on me made for a remarkably comfortable blanket, even if Emily spent the time staring out the window instead.

The bus slowing down and making stops again woke me up from a doze I hadn’t quite realized I’d slipped into. Thankfully, that was a couple of stops before ours, so by the time we got to the hospital stop my gentle nudging managed to rouse the others. Slowly, we made our way to our building, to the elevator, and up to our own apartment. For once, it was just an elevator ride. No pausing for conversations, no pausing for sex. Just a couple of moments, then we were entering our home.

It was… oddly quiet. Whitney was still at work. So, for that matter, was Paige. Gloria was probably out getting groceries or supplies with Amber. That left us to slowly remove our equipment and put it away. For myself, I took it one step further and changed into pajamas. I had no plans to leave the house until the next day for work. Might as well be comfortable. And, for that matter, easily accessible. It was still quiet when I heard Emily gently call out “Jay? Can I talk to you in the changing room?”

“Sure.” That room was in a state of flux. A lot of the baby furniture would be going here, so the dressers had been shifted around to allow it. In one corner, though, was a full-length mirror. Emily, nude and in her petite Human form, was standing in front of that mirror. She seemed curiously vulnerable, for a woman who had just been on point repelling a ten-person strike force.

“Thanks, Jay. I… I need you to see this.” She began to grow. Starting from her fingers and toes, golden fur began to cover her. It traveled to her torso, the hair on her belly staying tan. Her muscles firmed, her breasts and hips grew, her face gained more and more fox-like features as it gained its own fine layer of fur. From the base of her spine, her tails emerged. Just as golden as the rest of her, fluffy and tipped with tan.

There were seven of them. She had earned her next tail this day.

She began to cry. “I did it, Jay. I’ve entered the top one percent of all Kitsune to exist. Seven tails, and this one is giving me the ability to cast major illusions. Mom told me to be proud, but how can I be proud of this? I have killed again. For the third tail in a row, in less than a month.”

I took a moment to frantically gather my thoughts. Under the surface, her soul was in turmoil. Her emotions were a kaleidoscope, joy and pride combining with shame and pain more than equal to the strike team we sent packing. “I may be a bit biased, Emily, but I’d like to point out that you saved lives all three of those times. First were myself and Nathan. Then you helped defend our entire Guild when the battlefield was my soul. Today you saved your mother’s life as well as your own. I would be willing to bet that if I Scanned you now, you would not have that Hunted status anymore. You ended a threat that has followed you for more than four years. Then you fussed over the rest of us to make sure our injuries weren’t dangerous.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath, her tears still flowing. “I want to believe you, Jay. I really want to. But… I can’t. At least not yet. I know it’s me. My own magic isn’t responding as well since I stepped in here to think, I can’t focus on it.”

“Thankfully, you already took care of the worst of our injuries. You know, like the life-respecting healer you are. Please pardon the phrasing, but this one was obvious.”

In a golden blur, my arms were suddenly full of fox. Emily was sobbing into my chest, all seven tails held low. “What if I don’t get it back, Jay?” She sniffed, then kept crying. “What if I can’t heal again? What if I’m just a killer now?”

“First of all, that’s nonsense. You are going through a low point right now, but our little fox will be back soon.” She lightly smacked my side at the use of the nickname, but since that was the goal I paid it no mind. “Second of all, so what? You are still a trained medical professional, so between tearing apart monsters you’ll bandage us up and tell us how to take care of whatever curses come our way. Just like you do at work.”

There weren’t any more words after that. Just one long hug, a lot of tears, and the reassurance that simply being there could bring. She let go eventually, though how long it took I didn’t know. I wasn’t exactly checking my watch. “I’ll be out as soon as I’m dressed. Are the others doing alright?”

“Last I checked they were both crashed out on the couch. Lucy’s using her energy growing somebody thirty times faster than usual, and Sarah’s never exactly been the peppy type. Other than her enchanting table and particular giant fluffy Red Pandas, of course. You save your focus and your mana for tomorrow, I can cover you for one evening of healing. Oh, and if you want more hugs or cuddles at any point, just ask. They’re free. Snuggles are extra.” With a grin, I left the room to go check on the other two.

As predicted, they were both on the couch in the living room, in front of our little-used television. A feel-good thing, something about a massive wedding over in Harvardtown that would be starting in about fifteen minutes. That wasn’t important, though. Both Lucy and Sara were on the couch, leaning back and arms splayed in a position that could be best described as “splatted.” They were both more than happy to readjust themselves to cuddle with me as soon as I sat down between them. To be fair, I was perfectly fine with them doing so as well. Emily came out to join us a few moments later. Although it was a bit of a squeeze on the couch, none of us minded.

“Ladies, how are you all doing on Health and Stamina? I know we’re relaxing, but since I recover mana quickly I can share some wealth.”

Lucy snuggled in closer. She got those for free, though, so I couldn’t blame her. “Ninety percent Health, and my stamina is really low.”

Sarah nodded from my other arm. “Full health, half Stamina.”

“Alright. Emily, hate to ask you to stand, but can you grab some snacks? I’m kind of trapped.” I smiled, and so did all of the others.

“I know you could lift both of them and walk, but then how would you reach for snacks? Be right back.” Emily stood and walked to the kitchen, tails swishing. Not quite her usual pep, but a lot better than ten minutes prior. I’d take it, more could come as it would. The little victories were important, and this beat her crying in front of a mirror by a mile. She took maybe sixty seconds to come back with a selection of snacks that were probably healthy or healthy-ish, but tasted sweet enough that we could ignore that. “Alright. Make sure you have some food on your stomach, this will use it.”

In my head, I called my Status screen. I saw the words, but it took me some real effort to bring myself to mentally select what I was here for. Finally, I did it. I activated Sapphire Radiance. With a hazy blue glow, I gave the others the Regeneration ability I had picked up from Whitney. “Okay, I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to hold this, but until I’m out of gas it should help.”

Lucy looked up at me quizzically. “You haven’t used that since the day you picked it up. Are you okay, love?”

“I just want to make sure you all are.” Truth be told, no I wasn’t. I knew, intellectually, that my ability wasn’t responsible for the terrible curse that night. The things that made that go so far sideways were no longer present, either in reality or in my head. That didn’t keep my mental finger on the ability from feeling like it was on a bomb. It was still a step forward, though, and I knew it. Every minute I held on, every percent of mana I put out, would make this easier for me over time. The only way to get there, though, was the hard way.

From the television came the sound of bells. The wedding was about to begin. Maybe watching that would help me keep my mind off of what I was doing. With a little bit of a wiggle to get into a more comfortable position, I settled in to do just that.