Costumed Chaos!

Never in my life did I expect to end up turning into a bird the size of a small car, but that impossible situation had become reality. I was like if you took a monster sized chicken and made it very round and fluffy. They humans called these borbs from my understanding.

“Don’t you just look precious, Eighth Star.” Prometheus taunted me by rolling me to my side. I hardly had any strength to fight him off, let alone stand on my own two chicken legs. “Even if you fail as a defender of mankind, you might make a nice attraction at a petting zoo.”

“Why you…” I grumbled as I attempted to stand again, but just ended up rolling helplessly to my belly. The aches and pains all over me were agonizing as my anatomy adjusted to this new size.

“Sorry, fluffy, but this titan’s gotta’ find a nice place to set up shop to watch the fireworks…” He looked around the whole region from his vantage point. His hot blue glowing eyes set onto the castle atop the nearby Mount Inai. “Hey, that’s got a lot of mana. Could probably snack on it for a while.”

“Why are you doing this?” I shouted. “What’s your problem anyways?”

“Isn’t the whole reason you all dress up this time of year to feel like someone else? To play pretend, like your gods for a day? When in reality, most of those humans are weak as flies.”

“And you’re just a kind soul making dreams come true?” my bird brow furrowed. “Sorry, but you’re about three novels too late for that, pal.”

“It’s not so much kindness as it is an experiment.” He took a few dainty steps back, almost like he was dancing with joy. “I want to see what happens here tonight. What sort of hell spawns from granting powers to humans? Do you deserve the costumes you’re all wearing, or will the power they grant you leave civilization in ruin? I can’t wait to find out!”

That certainly had to have been the demon half of him talking, because Jess seemed pretty confident that he wasn’t this sort of person.

He called himself a titan. From my understanding, those were beings of extraordinary potential and power. Even they weren’t immune to the darkness, it seemed.

“Anyways…” he held one foot off the other end of the building. “My rides here, so I’ll be taking my leave…”

He took a final, confident step off the building and began to plummet to what I thought would be his doom. But a crow flew through the air, fire following it like a tidal wave. He landed on her and took the reins to lead her across the night sky toward the mountain.

“Darn it!” I cursed as I watched his bird fly away, mocking me with a chuckle *caw*

I tried to get a grasp on my newfound transformation. The wings I now sported as arms were almost completely useless, unable to take me up into the air due to my orb shaped body!

“What kinda’ bird doesn't know how to fly? I feel like a fat pigeon!”

Was I going to be stuck like this forever? Oh no… Lord have mercy!

“Just gonna’ have to work with this…” I tried rolling back to my chicken legs to stand up properly. “Alright, Yalda…” I began my pep talk. “Just like standing on stilts! Balance is key!”

My feet flattened and I did my best to stand up straight. This borb body was wobbling like a bobble head, but I put every muscle it had into keeping standing.

“Get used to it! Get used to it! That’s it! Stand up! Don’t fall! Rise back up if you do!”

A few more moments went by and I began to acclimate to the strain.

I took a breath, feeling a large wind blow from my beak… Oh man, I had a beak. Dang it… I really was a bird now!

“No sense in crying about it,” I sighed, finally pushing my worry aside. “Those humans are probably going through a lot worse transformations than me.”

Just thinking about some of the costumes they were wearing fueled a new kind of fright that I didn’t think possible. Some of those guys were dressed up like monsters, many I’ve had some epic battles dealing with. If they were even half as strong as some of those enemies, holy moly we were screwed.

I peeked over the edge again to notice things were getting worse by the second. Flashes of light were followed by panic stricken people rushing away from any hint of chaos. I couldn’t zoom in anymore with my eyes, but I had good enough sight granted by this form to know things were bad.

“How am I supposed to get down there like this?” I wondered. “What can this body do?”

There were a lot of muscles supporting the legs. Which gave me the impression that I was going to be a speedy gal. But did that really help me much here, since I didn’t know how to take advantage of that yet?

*BOOM!*

An explosion erupted and blasted through the roof of a nearby townhome.

“No time to question it!”

Without any more worries to slow me down, I took a few ungraceful paces back to get a running start, then bolted fast off the side of the building.

Just my speed from that running leap was incredible. I cleared way more air than I intended to and wasn’t showing any signs of losing altitude.

“Oh great, I’m going to jump right over the building!”

With all my borby might, I angled my body toward where I needed to go and nose dived straight into the flaming building below.

*CRASH!*

My huge figure crashed right through the roof, but I managed to land with enough stopping power to not collapse the whole structure.

“Gees…” I uttered as I turned to see a man completely engulfed in crackling flames, his body torching the walls beside him. “Oh boy…”

“Ah! A man eating bird!” he shouted. “Get away!”

*BOOM!*

His body exploded with hot plasma my way, blasting away chunks of living room wall and window. I was caught in the heat and singed my left side feathers.

“Crap!” I uttered as I blew out the little flames on me. “Sir, calm down!” I shouted, trying to use a rational voice. “I’m not a man eating bird. I’m the Eighth Star.”

“No you are not!” he shouted, but looked very confused and panicked at the same time. “Please, just leave or I’ll…” he looked at his hands. The crackling energy in his palms grew by the second as he seemingly gained control over his power. “I’ll deal with you myself…”

“Daddy, no!” shouted a child's voice. “Don’t do this! That really is her!”

A little lizard boy scurried out into the open from a closet. His mother made a snatch for him with octopus tentacles and dragged him back in.

“Kido, stay here,” his mother whispered. “It’s not safe with how your father is right now.”

“But, mommy, that’s the real Eighth Star. She must have gots’ turned into a bird!”

Good on the kid for actually recognizing me, but his parents didn’t seem to be half as convinced.

“Even if she is…” the dad spoke, now a growl of prejudice in his tone, “Why should I care? She’ll burn… Just… Burn like everything else… I want to watch the world burn!”

“Huh?!” my eyes went wide as I watched his mood dramatically alter. “What’s up with that?”

He raised one arm up against me, then the other toward his family in the closet. Their screams were blood curdling as they feared the blaze he was preparing to unleash.

“No way!” I shouted as I slammed my entire body into him. His arms shot up and flames plumed from his palms, enough to devastate the ceiling all the way to the open sky.

He landed on top of a flat screen TV and it shattered and melted. The rug under him set on fire and he was dazed.

Touching him burned a lot, but my feathers seemed a little resilient, so I had the strength to put all my focus on the two hiding in the closet.

“Hey, don’t mind me, plucking you guys like worms…”

I reached my beak in, and despite the mothers very hefty protests, which looked like suction cup tentacles slapping my eyes, I managed to toss her and her son onto my back.

“Hang on, you two!” I announced, lowering my body to leap high into the air.

“Woah!” the lizard boy cheered as we went jumping into the night.

Once we were on the roof, I stumbled fast across several townhome rooftops until we reached a deeper area in the city where the church was.

As we fled, I saw the chaos unfolding all over the place was getting worse. People with villainous costumes were raging against civilians who either had weak looking powers of their own, or no costumes at all. It was not a pretty sight, and the guards were getting overwhelmed, but did their best.

The only safe place appeared to be the Saint Kensington cathedral, protected by a barrier of stardust energy.

*PWOOOF!*

I dropped the mother and son off there and watched as we all turned back temporarily to our normal forms. It was nice to be back in my normal body for even just a few seconds. Then I prepared to dive back into the crowds to rescue more innocent souls forced to deal with this plight.

*PWOOOF!*

Sadly, the moment I left the barrier, I was back to being a bird again.

“Wait!” the boy grabbed my tail feathers the moment I was outside the barrier and yanked them to get my attention.

“Hey, please don’t do that!” I scolded. “Not nice to yank a girl's tail, young man.” I had to wonder if my disciplinary look translated well in this bird form.

“I’m sorry…” the lizard boy said. “But, please don’t be mad at daddy. He was dressed up as a bad guy from my cartoon. He isn’t actually a bad guy, just playing pretend.”

The kid kinda’ confirmed my suspicion that people took on all the attributes of the costume they were wearing, including personality. Was that going to happen to me too? What exactly could I expect in that case from this bird girl I was cosplaying as?

“Don’t worry, little guy…” I leaned down and gave him as happy a face as I could muster with a beak. “I’ll make sure everything gets back to normal. So just hang out at the church for now with your mommy, okay? Stay strong and protect her.”

“Right!” he reeled in his fists to give a serious look. “You can do this, Eighth Star! You’re the coolest, even as a borb!”

Huh, I guess he’s calling me a borb too.

I did a subtle wave with my wing and went running off down the road.

First thing first was to quell the chaos as much as I could, but there were over five million people in this place and counting, and at least a few thousand were dressed up in some sort of costume. Even for me and this body's incredible speed, that would be way too much to deal with on my own.

“I’ve gotta’ find Yamin,” I said, heading for the cafe I left her at. “Oh no, what exactly happened to her? She was in an interesting costume…”

Before I could entertain the idea of a super powered Yamin, I stopped at a shriek of terror.

There was a girl in a skimpy magician outfit, waving a long wand at a group of people dressed in colourful, yet matching power trooper costumes. They were trembling as the magician girl blasted them with orbs of pure dark energy.

She cackled, clearly not understanding the ramifications of her attacks.

“Hyah!” I flew in and hit her with a heavy kick to the back. She went flying into a wall and right through it! “Sorry! That’ll probably hurt in the morning!”

Just to be sure, I checked to see that she was still alive. That kick was incredible. Way stronger than I was expecting it to be.

The power troopers were cautious as they all faced me. I couldn’t tell their expressions through those plastic looking helmets, but obviously they were very conflicted.

“You know…” I tried to smile. “Power troopers are defenders of justice, not cowards. Mind if I ask you guys to help me out a bit?”

“J-justice?” the red power trooper guy stepped forward. “You mean… Defenders of the people who can’t defend themselves…” his fists clenched and he stomped forward with newfound resolve. “Everyone, what are we doing, acting so afraid like we don’t have power now? We have to help save the city, like the Eighth Star would!”

They all held their heads low in shame, but the blue power trooper partook of the reds resolve and stepped forward. “Count me in, bro. I’ve got family here who need help.”

The pink one made her approval known with a cheer. “Let’s do it! Oh yeah!”

The Black and yellow ones joined in the cheer after. All the power troopers huddled up and placed their fists together before throwing them proudly up in the air.

“We can do this!” the red one announced. “Power Troopers, go!”

“Ho!” the others cried.

The five of them all bolted off in every direction to go assist in fighting the evil costumed people, as well as rescuing those in danger. If I got them motivated to help, there were probably others I could convince too. That would go a long way to helping everyone in the city, for sure.

The night was only getting started, and there was a whole city's worth of souls to save, plus a demonic titan to take care of.

“Sssss…?” Samael hissed as he popped out from under my plumage and circled around my head crest feathers.

“I was trying not to worry about that, but yeah. It’s only a matter of time before someone with really bad powers pops up, and then we’re in real trouble.”