Demi-god

I continued running through the city, quickly getting the hang of this body along the way. It actually wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought. The speed and agility more than made up for the size, which was incredibly handy. But I still preferred my normal form, since that came with speed and a smaller frame. Plus, I preferred being a human sized and shaped girl, personally.

“I wonder if there’s a way to transform back.” I said to myself.

I knew for a fact that the bird girl I was dressed up as had the ability to transform back and forth between a human and a big bird at will, so I had to assume it was possible for me to do as well. I kept that in the back of my mind while I searched for my friends and other people in danger.

“Darn, I can’t use my map, so I don’t know where Yamin is…”

I had no access to any of my systems. It felt weird being such a squishy creature. At least the feathers were kinda’ nice and really warm in the cold.

*PWOOOF!*

“Wooah!” Suddenly I transformed back into my Exceed form and rolled across the pavement. “Ouch ouch ouch ouchy!”

“I’ll save you, I say!”

I dude in light metal armour and a spear dashed in and caught me heroically in his arms, then carried me away to safety like I was a princess. If I had an ounce of affection in me, this might have been romantic.

“Uh, thanks! I appreciate the save, but…” I was squirming to get out of his arms. “Please let me down!”

“How could I doeth such a thing? No, I say! I must rescue you, fair little angel!”

Wait a minute… I knew that voice, and those gold eyes slightly hidden under that wig of long blond locks and ponytail…

“Viro?” my face cringed. “Oh my gosh…”

“You finally recognized me, eh?” he snickered. “About time. How many people have you met with such a charming face, I say?”

“Why do I have such a strong desire to kick you in the crotch right now?” I glared at him, realizing something was tremendously off with his personality.

“This costume came with a really strong cod piece, so that wouldn’t do any good,” he grinned.

“Okay, gross… What are you doing here, dressed up like some spear guy?”

“What, just because I’m such a big shot, I can’t dress up too?” he chuckled with handsome, shojo level eyes glistening down on me. “Your costume is lovely, by the way. Makes me glad I picked this one to match.” He winked with a passion unlike I’d ever seen before.

Viro was never this 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓴𝔂, so that costume must have been making him act like an absolute weirdo.

“Put me the heck down or you’ll regret it, Viro!” I ordered, denying his romantic advances.

“Only if you say ‘please and thank you, handsome man...’” his brow bounced in a goofy superior way.

*PWOOOF!*

Suddenly he was holding about 400 pounds of bird in his arms. His legs were shaking, like a hippy paranormal hunter holding a cowardly great dane, while trying to support me.

His arms gave out and he dropped me for relief. I recovered with a roll and blew raspberries at him through my beak.

“Told you you’d regret it!” I laughed.

“Eeh!” he grimaced and backed up. “What happened to that pretty little angel I was just holding? What did you do to her, bird monster?”

Oh dear Lord. That costume must have melted his brain. I wish I had a camera, because this would have made great blackmail material at some point.

“Quit the freaky talk!” I squawked out. “You know who I am. Listen, Viro. There’s a fire dude with a demon in him named Prometheus heading for Mount Inai. He’s made everyone in the city take on the powers of their costume, and I need your help.”

“My help?” he raised his spear proudly. “I can do it, I say!”

I asked him if he happened to run into Yamin at all. Surprisingly, he did see her at some point, but didn’t say hi to her since he was looking for me.

“So you’re looking for Yamin, and you want me to help clean up the city?” he asked.

“If you could, I’d appreciate it.”

“I’ll do it if you turn back into a person and become my girlfriend…”

*KICK!*

Screw that metal codpiece. I sent him flying into a wall!

“Seriously!?” I shouted at him. “You’re such a jerk, Mr. Moriarty! How dare you speak to me like that?”

I didn’t care if it was the costume talking. Nobody says something that creepy!

However, I did feel really bad for kicking him so hard. Poor guy was under a pile of rubble in the street now. Maybe I went a little overboard.

“Viro…” I cautiously tried to kick away all the debris on him. “Are you okay in there?”

He raised up his hand and gave me a thumbs up.

“Yeah… Took you long enough to knock some sense into me, Miss. Asamo. How disappointing.”

There was the condescending jerk I knew.

“Did the cod piece work?” I asked, my face scrunching up.

“No…” he stumbled back to his feet, a hand over his groin. “But I just have to tough it out…” his normally deep voice faded into a squeak of its former glory.

I suppressed a laugh at that sound, because I knew he was toughing out some terrible pain.

A girl like me will never understand how much a groin shot hurts…

“A-anyways... I need to find Yamin. Meet me at the castle Inai in about an hour.”

He agreed and the two of us parted ways, anticipating the battle we undoubtably had ahead of us.

~🎃🔥🎃~

Thanks to Viro's intel, I was able to get a general idea of where Yamin was. After that, all I had to do was follow the sound of electric guitar music playing a combative tune, and there my friends were…

“Hyah!” Yamin performed an excellent round house kick to a zombie. “Hyah!” She punched another and sent it flying backwards. “Howa!” Then she upper cut a third one, and it went airborne.

Her form was incredible, like she’d been training in martial arts for years. That girl was not that fast or flexible, but the super warrior costume probably carried her skill heavy.

Jess was behind her, strumming an electric guitar like a rockstar to give Yamin a buff which appeared to be a mix of damage and speed. New magical runes scattered across her skin that vaguely reminded me of makeup that I saw on punk rock bands.

And behind Jess was a gathering of children, all in silly mascot costumes of super powered animals. A fire lizard boy, a frog with a plant on her back, a blue turtle boy…and they had a cat dressed up like a yellow mouse with pink dots on her cheeks.

"Peow..." went the cat.

Yamin was preoccupied going Bruce Lee on those zombies, so she failed to notice several killer robot skeletons stomping up behind the group she was defending. I raced over there, but was shocked to see Jess make a move against them first…

She tilted the head stock of her guitar toward the robots and strummed it. A feral, scratchy sound blasted out on a green echo and hit the robots, loosening up their bolts and causing them to crumble into a pile of scrap metal.

Assuming they were finished, she was surprised when one of the robots upper torsos was still fully intact and lunged up into the air toward her and the children.

“Kykyukyu!” I came in with a spiral strike and ripped that metal sucker up! “Figured out a special attack! Oh yeah!”

“Woah!” Jess said as my tail wind caught up and she was force to hold down her skirt. “That’s one big bird!”

I landed on my feet and posed proudly toward her, glad I got to show off a tiny bit here.

“Am I a pretty bird?” I said, unsure why I cared so much to voice that question out loud.

“The prettiest!” Jess replied, running up to me and eagerly hugging my feathers. She was grappling me so tightly that she actually started to sink into my plumage. “I could fall asleep here…”

All the animal monster children gathered around me too and dove right into my feathers, almost swimming in them like I was some kind of comfy sea of endless fluff.

How deep do these feathers even go?

“Uh, please don’t do this,” I requested all of them, but couldn't stop the children from making me look like a brooding chicken. “Are you guys alright?” I asked.

“We’re fine, Yalda, now that you’re here.” Jess said, somehow recognizing me.

“What?” Yamin kicked out another zombie before looking my way. “That’s Yalda? How could you tell?”

“Her voice,” Jess said. “I can recognize anyone by their voice, even if they’re making it sound different. I can also tell you everything about them just by hearing it once...”

She went on a small tangent about how the sound from someone's voice could give her a clear picture of their height, weight, age and bust size. Her nose started to bleed a little after that last part, and I avoided her so she didn't get any of that on my feathers.

“As long as we’re all together, I guess we need to make a plan here.” Yamin said. “Yalda, I’m guessing you couldn’t take out the demon?”

I explained the situation. Yamin was shocked to find out I was affected by the demon's domain as well.

“So, he’s going to the old castle on the mountain?” Yamin asked. “He probably wants to strengthen his domain with all the mana there.”

“That’s why we have to get there and stop him quickly,” I said. “Yamin, do you still have your stardust powers?” I asked, since we’d need that power to exorcise Prometheus.

“Mmm…” she poked her chin. A simian tail behind her began to wiggle back and forth. “I don’t think so. But I can kick some serious butt now!”

That wasn't good. We didn't have any stardust weapons that could actually defeat a demon in that case. We were going to have to improvise.

“Speaking of butt…” I peeked behind her. “You have a tail…”

“What?!” she twisted around to look, then wagged the tail back and forth. “Oh no… she cried and fell to her knees. “I can’t believe this! No boy wants to date a monkey! I’ll be single forever!”

Is that honestly her biggest worry right now?

Jess’s instrument transformed into the world's smallest violin and she played a sad tune on it, which gave Yamin some much needed emotional support.

“Thank you, Jessette…” Yamin cried into my plumage as she calmed down, soaking these feathers in her tears.

“Get yourself together, Yamin.” I picked her up by the very tail she was lamenting, and placed her back upright. She made a series of very funny noises that almost made her sound kinda' dimwitted and weak. “At least you're not a bird the size of a moon who can’t control her transformation.” Once she was back on her feet and I let go, she seemed to get back to normal.

“I guess. *sniffle sniff* We have to deal with this Prometheus guy and fast! Otherwise, this may be permanent.” Yamin said, which I hadn’t even considered.

Upon hearing that name, Jess started to sulk a little. Clearly she wasn’t too pleased to learn that someone from her past was causing this much havoc.

“Jess, it would really help if you told us what this guy's deal is,” I told her.

She was still reluctant, but decided to spill some beans.

“When I was very little, I lived in a place known as Olympus. I was kinda’ a slave being farmed for my powers over the wind element, much like all the other demi-gods.”

“You’re a demi-god?” Yamin asked.

“I am,” she nodded. “All my other sisters are too. It’s thanks to Prometheus unlocking our potential that we were able to escape into your world. Mother Baba Yaga raised the nine of us up after that to be witches that protect nature and the spirit world.”

So, Prometheus was a sort of abolitionist for demi-gods, I suppose. And if he had the power to unlock people’s potentials, then it made sense that he’d be able to create a city wide costumed power up with the aid of a demon.

Now that I knew Jess was a demi-god, her natural powers over wind made a lot more sense. And even more so her magical musical talent.

“I’m sorry about your past,” Yamin gave her condolences. “I’m sure Prometheus was once a nice person, but that’s all the more reason we need to figure out a way to stop his plans and bring him back to who he was.”

Yamin was right. Demons had a habit of turning good men bad, and that was unforgivable. But that didn’t mean there was no way to bring someone back from that evil pit of despair.

“Don’t worry, Jess,” I announced with a prideful voice. “We’ll get that demon out of your friend, and he’ll be one of the good guys again in no time.”

It had to be possible. I hadn’t seen a case where someone possessed by a demon couldn’t be turned back, and I wasn’t prepared to have that happen here.

Jess had wistful hope in her eyes and placed trust in my words.

“If we can do this, I’m writing you a theme song, Yalda,” Jess said, strumming her instrument, which appeared to morph back into the bouzouki from before.

“Sounds good,” My bird head nodded. “Yamin, you ready?” I turned to her. "We gotta figure out a way to beat this fire guy."

“Sure am!” She was going to have to do a lot of the heavy hitting going forward, since her costume gave her incredible strength and power. “Let’s go pumpkin smashing!”