S01E00 - Still Here

Season 01 Episode Zero

___

“Hey, where you going, beautiful?” The wendigo-like SEED hollered gleefully as he chased the fleeing girl, his booming voice overwhelming the clash of thunder as it echoed throughout the derelict alley that served as the service artery for these apartment complexes, half of which were mostly abandoned.

“Let’s party like you said!”

The girl he was chasing was soaked in the rain, her thick denim jacket and jeans having finally succumbed to the inevitability of rigorous motion and splashing water from all directions. Her dark ponytail flopping like a wet mop behind her head, her canvas backpack bouncing around as she ran, clinking along the way and giving away her position.

His planned follow-up quip was interrupted as his antler snagged on a fire escape ladder. From the darkness ahead, the alley erupted in golden light as the sharp report of an assault rifle peppered his body.

Despite the inconvenience of still being stuck, the wendigo brayed in laughter.

“Are you stupid or wha-BLFPPHHH!”

A thrown molotov cocktail smashed into his face, dousing him in fire. He howled in rage, the ladder clattering as he tried to jerk himself free. He hated how those alien numbnuts made him so tough yet couldn’t be bothered to add more muscle to this big wendigo body. What’s the point of making him so big and tough if he couldn’t yank his antlers free from some rusty ladder?

Another magazine’s worth of high-velocity slugs reminded him he needed to act soon. The fire was already feeling like a shower too hot and the bullets were getting too hard for a love tap.

The SEED growled in frustration as he finally broke free, wincing as he felt some of his own antlers breaking as the ladder finally snapped. The girl he was chasing continued shooting until his vision burned white-hot.

Flashbang! Fuckin’ flashbang again! He continued rampaging forward, flailing his long arms wildly. Parts of his mind was shouting all sorts of unhelpful advice on when to turn right. All of them guessed wrong and he smashed against the wall, the old bricks pummelling his head.

At least it helped clear it.

Loud clanging sounds to his right caught his attention, followed by another burst of bullets which was starting to feel like the hard kicks those bikers back then gave him after he and his “friends” gave them a piece of his mind on how people should learn to act around each other.

He wished he could’ve kept tabs on those wastes of excuses of people and gone for them first.

But first, he had to take care of this bad example before more became like them.

He wheeled around, his dark blotches still marred his vision but he could see now. The girl was now much farther ahead, taking pot shots at him in disciplined intervals.

As he charged, he noticed that the girl’s backpack was no longer there.

The last of the dying flames the molotov cocktail had lit on him had just gone out when the first dumpster he passed detonated. Adrenaline fueled his body just as the brutal explosion cloaked him in fires anew.

Damned Imperial Eggheads should account for vigilante shits like these! The wendigo thought, buckling against a fresh volley of slugs from the girl, who had introduced herself at the bar as Ingrid Blair.

“You’re running out of tricks, Ingrid!” The wendigo’s voice was ragged, desperate and enraged, “I can shrug this off in time, but you… there won’t be a next ti-”

A headshot missed slightly, shattering several front teeth. While his adamantine broke off the bullet’s inertia, it was still enough to painfully punch his throat and make him choke and cough.

“Sorry about that, Adrian!” Ingrid’s voice echoed with schadenfreude, “Girls aren’t supposed to deepthroat guys, my bad!”

More bullets were starting to hurt, his shields were starting to fail him. Adrian Keller, the wendigo-like SEED, knew that he had to get up and kill this country hick Ingrid before her gun became as deadly to him as it would to any human before the Dark Empire’s enlightenment.

“Guess I’m the one wearing the pants when we hitch, huh, honey?” Ingrid laughed as she continued firing in evenly spaced shots. Adrian felt his rib crack as the slug bounced off his torso, making his labored breathing harder, his expanding and contracting lungs aggravating his injuries more. Another caught him in the knee, stumbling him but fortunately not enough to make him fall over.

The way ahead was blocked by a dumpster, and Ingrid was perched atop it. Another booby trap? Adrian thought, No, it can’t be. There’s no way she could escape in time at the rate I’m coming at her-

He approached a T-junction in the alley, a mere afterthought considering there was someone gunning him down. The pain from the dumpster explosion, the fires engulfing him, the shrapnel that bypassed his shields and embedded themselves deep into his body, and the constant barrage of gunfire allowed the Dodge Ram pickup truck to T-bone him, squashing him flat against the wall.

Coughing up blood, Adrian felt more than heard the sickening crunch as his antler broke off. He grabbed the hood of the truck and recoiled as Ingrid plugged his wrist. It felt like someone had smashed a baseball bat against it while he was in human form.

The resounding click as Ingrid’s magazine went empty had Adrian crow in triumph as he took advantage of this and pushed the truck away. There was nobody behind the wheel, it must have been rigged in some way… a tripwire or something, a brick on the accelerator that jiggled loose after colliding with him.

Still, he was now badly beaten up and profusely bleeding.

Ingrid abandoned her reloading and ran further into the alley as he barreled towards her.

Damned Dark Empire quacks and their shitty dollar-store super-soldier formulas! Adrian thought savagely, I feel like I’m wearing a suit of bricks in this shitty body!

His grin widened as his big meaty fist sent the dumpster Ingrid had been perched on skidding towards her, only to wane as a dull throbbing pain radiated across his knuckles. He had taken too much punishment and now his [Mana] was acting on its own and stretching itself thin between keeping him alive and keeping him super-strong.

A flash of lighting lit up the alley, revealing through the driving rain the big dent he made across its rusted surface. The only problem now was that his flash of anger had ended up making an impromptu barrier as it wedged itself between two more.

Ingrid leapt atop the wedged dumpster once more. With quick hands, she tore off the spent magazine of her SCAR rifle and pulled from her denim jacket a fresh one.

Dammit, she IS fast! Adrian thought.

“Open wide, asshole!” Ingrid yelled.

A burst of fire from her rifle caught him in the chest, with one smashing right into his nose.

Fuck, that stings! The wendigo’s attempt to hide his pain was undone by a howl of agony as his bare foot was suddenly shod in a bear trap.

Once again, Ingrid’s eyes barely registered the look of surprise.

She did have a good poker face after all.

He wondered when she found out he was SEED earlier that evening. Not that it mattered. The fact that he was running her SAW-like maze told him that maybe he should have taken a page from his own book and noticed the nuances and circumstances he was in.

“Augh! You bit-!” He was cut off as another burst caught him in the head. That [Mana] shielding was beginning to thin too much. A bullet smashed right into his left eye and while it didn’t go through his head, he saw nothing but blinding stars exploding in his head.

It felt like a heavyweight clocked him right in the face while he was in human form.

His knee buckled as the pain on his mangled foot shot up his leg.

The hell is this!? The wendigo thought, If I can shrug off bullets, then why-

A flash of lighting struck too close to the roofs four stories overhead, sending glowing sparks showering down along with the downpour. Despite having only one good eye now, he recognized the make.

“Is this titanium!?” The wendigo bellowed, “The fuck is wrong with you people!?”

He tried to power through the pain and take another step but his foot really hurt. He glanced back at Ingrid, whose rifle had jammed and was quickly clearing it. He dropped to one knee and tried to fumble it open, groaning as the pain only worsened.

“The fuck is wrong with you, Adrian!?” Ingrid yelled back, “You people selling us out to those goddamned aliens over a fucking fender bender! Go to hell!”

There was an ominous click as the lodged bullet sprung free from the catch.

Adrian, the wendigo-like SEED, roared in agony as Ingrid opened fire again. This time he felt a tearing in his arm as the bullet breached his barrier of [Mana]. The slug lost much of its inertia, but it was enough to lodge itself into his arm. His rage-filled scream amplified as now he had to deal with the pain in his foot and his arm as the severed muscle writhed while the rest took up the slack.

“Those titanium traps are for SEED bastards like you Adrian!” Ingrid yelled over the thunder, firing off another burst.

“It’s inhumane!” Adrian shouted as he threw the now-broken trap at her. Ingrid nimbly dodged and kept firing, retreating further into the alley as he loped at her in a now-broken gait.

“Preach, asshole!” Ingrid laughed as her voice disappeared around the corner.

“As I said…!” Adrian yelled as he barreled through the alley, ‘It’s all about nuance, and circumstance, if all perso- AGAIN! Damn you!”

He collapsed to his knees as his other foot received its new titanium shoe.

A bullet tore through his arm this time, cleaving through the bone, leaving it limp at his side. With a scream of despair he charged at Ingrid as she unloaded her magazine at him. Every step felt like hell but Adrian’s failing shields reminded him that becoming a SEED allowed him to recover with serious injuries with time.

But if he keeps taking too many shots, that will never happen.

Despite his faltering gait he was catching up to Ingrid. He allowed himself a chuckle as Ingrid did the most videogame thing ever by suddenly sliding low across the slick pavement. As she slid she quickly whipped around, keeping her body low while she opened fire.

Whatever snide remark Adrian was about to belt out was reduced to a wet gurgle as he ran straight into a web of piano wire. Dark blood spattered across the alley as bullets sang their taunting songs of pain, egging him to further mutilate himself now lest the more of their shiny, red-hot brethren rendered all his vaunted power moot.

Filled with rage, he broke free through and launched himself at her.

Lighting illuminated the dim alley. Adrian lay sprawled face-first onto the dirty alley. The weakening rain sluiced off the damaged gutters in a chaotic shower, bathing the concrete valley between condemned apartment complexes in uneven gouts of filth.

Ingrid Blair was panting heavily, slumped against the dumpster. The sounds of Riverdale City carried on as usual, the blaring sirens of a police siren echoing somewhere, no doubt in response to hearing the racket of gunshots and explosions she made taking this monster down.

The rain was beginning to taper off, washing away the wounds from her stomach, but the stabbing pains reminded her that Adrian had got her good. At least her legs were still working as she slowly got to her feet, grimacing as the pain flared more.

“Fucking bastard tore my jeans…” Ingrid murmured, looking ruefully at the unsightly tears that ran down her shin, exposing her thick woolen socks and prized sneakers. She was loathe to wear her prized clothes when on a hunt, but discovering Adrian Keller as a SEED was not in her schedule.

She had just met him at the Karma Klub bar, and he passed off as just one of those delusional idiots that were just the right amount entertaining. Like a trainwreck worth watching.

He was fun until she started noticing the signs.

She had to act. There was no telling if she would ever see this psychotic freak ever again. She had to take him down tonight, before God knows how many he’ll hurt in his deluded rampage.

Ingrid Blair would be damned to wait like sheep for one of those dumbass Starchaser girls to show up.

Fortunately, her leg only had slight scratches on it. Unfortunately, she had to do something about her pierced gut.

A small part of her did wish she was like those Starchasers who could tank a crashing plane to the face thanks to their silly frilly dresses acting as a shield generator. That said, if that ever happened she was sure as hell she wouldn’t be caught dead looking like a damned frilly fairy like Star Tulip did.

Now Star Lotus on the other hand, I’d wanna tap THAT. Ingrid thought with a smile, before turning her attention back to the dollar-store wendigo before her.

Her battered SCAR-H lay half-hidden opposite, half-wedged between two tin garbage cans, long divested of anything useful by scavengers and raccoons. She made a mental note to pick up the gun later, she had discarded it when she had no time to reload. Her hand was steady as she continued to train her pistol, heavy Desert Eagle at Adrian, just in case it was playing possum. Hopefully, those one too many shots on his head after his voodoo magic barrier had failed him and a rusty pipe jammed into his body finally did him in.

She kept her gun trained on Adrian, not the blue slime creature that perched atop the pipe. The adorable blue blob had dropped onto him with full force. As it did so, it had pulled an air conditioning unit from a window and used it as extra weight to ensure the long pipe breached Adrian’s tough hide, went in from his neck and all the way into the heart. The boxy window appliance now lay crumpled several feet away, spattered with blood as it had smashed against the SEED’s head before tumbling away.

The slime creature tentatively extended a pseudopod and wrapped it tightly against Adrian's neck. Whether it was to strangle him, snap his neck, or check for a pulse, Ingrid hoped it was all three.

“It’s already dead.” The slime said, looking at her with cute beady eyes, “Can you not point that gun at me, please?”

“S-sorry…” Ingrid gasped, holstering her pistol. “I was aiming at its head, not you… uhh, you alright? That AC unit hit you pretty good.”

“I’m fine!” The slime squeaked, reaching out a pseudopod like a handshake, “Cecil, by the way… come on, I’ll help you get to a hospital…”

“Y-yeah, about that…” Ingrid laughed, shaking Cecil’s tendril. He felt cool to the touch, and surprisingly, “dry”, she was sort of expecting her hand to be covered in some nasty residue, or it being sticky like gum but he was merely wiggly like rubber.

“Ingrid by the way…” she continued, “Ingrid Blair. My van’s nearby, I can stitch myself back up, no worries.”

Without needing to say anything, Cecil stretched out a tendril and took her battered SCAR, handing it to her.

“Thanks…” Ingrid smiled, “Umm… wanna come along? It’s cold here and… there’s a chance I might not make it, so…”

“Yay!” The adorable slime squeaked, shrinking in size as he hopped onto her shoulder.

“I’m guessing you’re the one that rammed him with that Dodge.” Ingrid said as she staggered back the way she came, her breath misting up.

“Yup, and those bear traps too.” Cecil said, “Got them from this really cool chick who hustles anthrax on the side.”

Ingrid chuckled, her laughter causing her gut to remind her it was punctured deep.

“You alright?” Cecil asked in a concerned voice.

“No…” Ingrid grimaced, “I ordered some extra spicy salsa and now all those chilies are marinating my insides.”

“Yeowch!” Cecil said, stretching out tendrils along the wall to help Ingrid brace herself, “Bet that stings really bad, but don’t worry, I can call in a favor…”

“What favor?” Ingrid wheezed, “You got your spaceship nearby too?”

“Spaceship?” Cecil chuckled, stretching out a tendril to grab a discarded mop for Ingrid to use to further steady herself, “No, I’m not an alien. Well… technically not a space alien. I was summoned here by those Starchasers, but uhh… let’s say we had a falling out and I didn’t want to go home anyway…”

“Oh, those guys…” Ingrid nodded, “Screw them, I refuse to be a Saturday morning cartoon hero…”

“Yeah…” Cecil replied with a distorted voice as the alley around the two began to crumble. It wasn’t with the rumbling of rocks, but the quiet rustle of flaking paint.

“That’s not how this happened…” Ingrid remarked easily, coughing a bit as she straightened up and fixed her gait, Cecil retracted his tendrils, shaking them free of the peeling paint.

“I’m done with this place.” Cecil’s voice had dropped several octaves lower, “What about you, Ingrid?”

“Agreed.” Ingrid said, handing her mop to Happy Dino who began using it to sweep the marble floor of confetti.

More Happy Dinos were tapping at the alley walls with candy canes, causing the flimsy facade to crumble away. There was no stone behind it, just the swirling mass of flame-like clouds seen in stylized traditional Japanese art. The view had a peculiar quality to it. It wasn’t like animation where every frame was drawn, but rather a real camera trained on a diorama of layered paper cutouts. Each sheet slowly spun at different speeds to induce the image of parallax and depth.

“Tomorrow was supposed to be your 5 million subscriber video..,” Ingrid sighed.

The winding alleyways had become straight, leading towards dancing godrays constantly stirred by the roiling sharp clouds.

“I have my number one fan right here.” Cecil replied.

“Awww…love you, you cute little slime!”

Ingrid craned her neck to rub her cheek onto the slime’s plushy body. The path ahead was both narrow and wide, guiding her to walk a straight path without a single angle of deviation. At the periphery were more life-sized dioramas where tap-dancing Happy Dinos in her stage voice narrated memories they already knew.

“Love you too.” Cecil said.

The Happy Dinos were talking loudly like carnival barkers but all he and Ingrid’s ears could register were quiet little buzzing sounds, more calming than the chirping of crickets.

The two of them continued on, pausing only to see an unfamiliar scene.

Two Happy Dinos were pantomiming a different kind of diorama, but the cutout wasn’t Ingrid.

“I’ve never seen this before…” Ingrid frowned, but Cecil covered her eyes with a tendril.

“Just keep walking…” Cecil said quietly, his voice having returned to normal, “Let me keep a few secrets.”

“Only if I keep you, Cecil.”

“Deal.”

___

Ingrid’s fist just stopped a hair’s breadth of hitting the ground.

The sheer force of her halted earth-shaking punch carried on however, sending a massive spray of sand everywhere. Just then, the incoming waves crashing on her and the shore around her rinsing off the sand from her body, flooding her nose with the scent of the ocean.

High above she heard the squawking of birds.

She could see and hear, but it took her mind a while to process that she was on some beach.

She definitely was not anywhere close to home.

Riverdale, North Carolina was far from the coast and she had been there enough times to know this beach was not anything like it. The sun was more than halfway down the sky, the horizon beyond was half-obscured with mists but she could clearly see past them the silhouettes of tall islands.

And then there was the colossal statue lying half-submerged in the sea some hundreds of feet away. It was the size of the Statue of Liberty, and judging from the weathered stone and the odd-looking seabirds using it as a nesting site, it was something that had been there for a long, long time.

The colossus wasn’t a reclining Buddha, and its head was that of a falcon like Osiris. The headdress and accoutrements however, were all wrong; it didn’t look Egyptian in any way. Nonetheless, the carvings of the deity’s apparel suggested a four-digit bill at Tiffany’s if anyone tried cosplaying that with any respectable fidelity.

Between the statue and the mists, she could see sailboats and masted galleons lazily drifting windward, suggesting that there had to be civilization somewhere.

“Galleons?” Ingrid thought, ignoring the crabs cautiously scuttling around her. Their bodies were as big as a wok and their pointy feet made clicking sounds on the glassed sand. “I could understand recreational sailing, but are those guys LARP’ing the age of sail or something?”

A jetty extended out from the beach, the wood was well-lacquered. It looked old, but without any signs of corrosion as if it was well-maintained. The posts holding up the jetty were painted bright red like a Japanese torii gate, the comparison came to Ingrid’s mind courtesy of fringed rope tassels dancing in the breeze below jetty’s edges.

Mussels the size of smartphones clung instead to nearby rocks that didn’t look like they were dredged from the sea, no doubt placed there by people. Poles along one side bore heraldry straight out of “Arthur’s Ye Oldey Knighte’s Taverna”, a popular spot for LARPers and historical buffs between Crawford and Graham street.

She had been there a couple of times, partly because Star Rose herself LARP’ed when she wasn’t chopping down SEEDs trying to cause trouble.

A small part of her always wondered if the other LARPers knew that the Valkyrie-like knight that joined them every other weekend was the leader of the Starchasers herself.

The bigger part of her brain told her that she wasn’t in Kansas anymore, or anywhere on Earth.

Besides the crabs, those seagulls looked wrong. Some looked much bigger, but not dramatically man-sized. Raptors that looked too much like harpy eagles squabbled over a still flailing catfish, which took the advantage of the scuffle to flop back into the sea.

Further ahead, komodo-sized monitor lizards with golden stripes basked under the sunlight, throwing sidealong glances at the eagles which Ingrid thought were looks of annoyance at seeing food wasted. Ingrid reckoned the lizards must be at least ten feet long yet unlike the opportunistic komodos of Earth, any that looked her way regarded her with indifference rather than hunger.

Then, there was the matter of two moons hanging in the sky.

Even stranger was that they didn’t look industrialized at all.

Arek, a friend of the Starchasers, was a shrimp-like Gulan living in Kansas and often gave the troupe insight on life beyond the stars. In most jurisdictions, entering a planet directly was illegal (which technically made Arek’s residency on Earth legally gray for most space lawyers).

Instead, a planet’s moon served as its “airport” for off-world travel. This allowed the space TSA to safely contain any contraband along with any invasive space spiders crawling into space bananas.

That neither moon looked like Coruscant, and the fact that none of the seafaring craft looked motorized suggested she might be on some pre-industrial planet left alone in accordance with Prime Directive rules. There was a small chance this was probably the case. But the conveniently rich oxygen in the air and the planet’s identical gravity to Earth (probably) felt too wrong.

She and Melrondia never left Earth. Philia ensured that the Dark Empire’s invasion was doomed. The Stellar Fortress was probably rigged to self-destruct once Philia’s timed exposé of her atrocities came to light. The US Airforce was dominating the skies and the only thing coming from the Dark Empire at this point would probably be ordinance to scuttle their FTL technology.

None of this mattered.

Ingrid knew that there was no way a stray interceptor managed to pick her (and possibly Philia up) and took them off-world and crashed somewhere.

She shouldn’t be alive anymore.

Not after she had tapped into her own soul, the very fires that fueled her existence. There was no turning back once she had gone down that route. The Dark Empire was far more knowledgeable in the arcane arts than Earth could possibly be and they, of all people, should know that once Ingrid tapped into this power all was lost.

Once Ingrid had tapped into this power, a feat so rare that the numbers threatened to breach the negatives, there would have been no point in sending anyone to retrieve her. The outrageous energy readings she emitted would not only have short-circuited more than a few sensors, but also made it obvious even to the most brain-dead pilots that all they would find once everything was said and done, were a few useless ashes of Ingrid scattered across the devastated ground.

Yet here she was, alive and well.

Ingrid took stock. She was quite surprised her heart wasn’t even pounding wildly, like one would expect from waking from a nightmare. Instead, it felt like she had just awakened from the most refreshing beauty sleep ever.

Even if she never tapped into her life force and managed to kill Melrondia, she should be feeling like hell right now, after all that [Mana] she had poured in to overclock her body. Her muscles should be burning, no amount of decompression could have ever paid back all the strain she and the other Starchasers had gone through that day.

Especially now that Cecil and the other familiars weren’t around to help her heal. Transforming back while she still had a “debt” to pay meant cracked bones, torn muscles, and injuries manifesting haphazardly wherever her [Mana] fluctuated. She would heal in time, quicker than most people but even that would take a day or two.

That clearly did not happen here.

If she was lying here for days unconscious and recovering, surely the people here would have taken her to their town and she would be waking up in a bed. Instead, she was left here, which would have meant that while she was vulnerable and recovering, those wok-sized crabs would have long turned Ingrid Blair into Amelia Earhart.

Assuming the striped komodos and seabirds didn’t get to her first.

The collapse of the Osiris-like statue could have happened hundreds of years ago, but the jetty and the boats, along with the sheds and cabins assured her that she arrived only recently. Fishing nets strung up on frames looked to be in good condition, just like the banners flying in the breeze. The presence of the ships in the distance suggested that the usual people that should be working here were probably attending some festival further inland, or just all happened to be out fishing at the same time.

There was still the possibility that her arrival here might have spooked the local populace, judging from the glassed sand beneath her. The neatly hung nets probably could have taken too much time to take down, and the boats could have been abandoned. But there were no overturned baskets with fish bones strewn about after the scavengers took advantage of the exodus. Big earthenware jugs stood where they should, not a single one tipped over and broken.

She rose to her feet, the glassed sand cracking under her weight as she stood. It was still warm to the touch. The vitrified layer was thin and hardly extended ten feet around her, suggesting that whatever caused this probably wasn’t such a dramatic sight either. Glass that thin didn’t stay hot for that long, which meant she couldn’t have been out for hours, much less days.

Her legs took her upright without the usual soreness experienced after a brutal battle of that magnitude. The last time she fought long and hard, it meant being sore for days. She was feeling none of those consequences.

The salty sea-breeze wind blew, dramatically billowing her hair. Her Raiment was gone, leaving her completely nude yet her aura instinctively wreathed around her in an invisible shell of protection. She could feel the coolness of the wind, but her aura instinctively held back the last few degrees that would’ve made her break out into goosebumps.

It felt like her aura had become her new Raiment.

Gingerly, she walked towards the ocean to see her reflection, her soles hovered barely an inch off the ground, it felt like she was back at home wearing her Onitsuka Dragon sneakers, the prized footwear of every rebellious yanki gyaru regardless if they’re Japanese or not.

The unparalleled traction and the softness wrapped around her feet matched the Onitsuka Dragon, while the protection against the razor-sharp flakes of glass mirrored her Starchaser boots. Even the marks on the sand matched her sneakers' custom, pompous kanji that declared the ground had been tread on and sanctified by one "unparalleled under Heaven.”

Approaching the sea, what surprised her as she leaned forward was her hair.

Somehow, Star Lily’s rebellious violet streaks were still there, more vibrant than she had ever seen them. Her black hair was lustrous, shiny, and terrifying on her wallet. She would be so mortified passing by Wilma’s Salon. She could only imagine them interrogating her on who gave her such a luxurious makeover, eager to learn this master’s secrets.

With an amused snort, Ingrid wondered why she didn't wake up on a styling chair.

Still, there was the pressing matter that the face looking back at her was neither Star Lily nor Ingrid Blair but an amalgamation of both; Ingrid with the trappings of her heroic alter-ego.

Her eyes however, were now a brilliant crimson.

Ingrid shook her head. Even how she felt was a little disorienting. She felt invigorated, brimming with energy, her very cells yelling in exhilaration that she was Star Lily, a superhero. Her aura was a controlled wildfire swirling furiously around her body. With that maelstrom of power came a quiet, gradual drain of energy, a reminder that her heroic form could only stay for so long.

As Ingrid Blair, a theme park employee living her dream job as Happy Dino, she had come to appreciate the form she had spent most of her life in. The human aura was calm and cooling, like sinking into a refreshing cool pool after a fun, playful romp beneath the blazing sun. Transforming back did not leave her feeling lacking, weak, nor vulnerable. It was always a welcome feeling.

She felt like she was both. A deceptively placid lake, yet deep beneath the calm, mirrored surface was a raging maelstrom, an inescapable undercurrent as undeniable as a black hole.

She had to test it out. A small thought at the back of her mind told her she should cover up, but the idea of tearing off some of the fluttering spare sails by the jetty never crossed her mind. Sails were the lifeblood of men who lived and died by the sea and she would not do harm to their livelihood.

Furthermore, with her aura as it is right now, her state of undress in an unfamiliar world was as of little consequence as her streaking in her own campus for fun. Besides, she reasoned that if some passerby was to come along she was sure that he or she would probably give her a towel or jacket to wrap herself with later.

Ingrid selected an open stretch of sand, noting that further inland, the sparse growths of grass soon gave way to a rich carpet of emerald leaves bordered by shrubbery and trees. Here and there, banded outcroppings of rock where plate tectonics pushed up chunks of the planet’s crust further broke up the mostly level terrain she was in, one of which bore the fossilized spiral shell of some nautilus like-creature… if was the size of a truck tire, yet another indicator she wasn’t on Earth.

She cleared her mind with a deep breath, slowly pushing her palms down as she straightened her stance. Her aura flared around her as easily as it did when she was Star Lily, creating a mild vortex that pushed the sand away as if an industrial fan was directly above her blowing down.

[Ether] flowed into her limbs and she spun around, stepping forward to launch a vicious uppercut.

“Kongō Shōtensai!”
金剛昇天裁
[Wrathful Guardian God ~ Skyward Judgement]

Arcs of raw lightning crackled around her body as she moved. Her fist was wreathed in spectral blue flame, making a loud "WHOOSH" sound as it sliced through the air. The shockwave shot forth a crescent-shaped blade of wind, blowing a spray of sand in its wake big enough to blind several people.

Erupting from the ground in front of her was the spectral divine image of a Nio guardian god. The Eidolon of righteous fury struck its signature pose, setting forth an almighty shockwave skyward. A second later, a sonic boom declared its might.

“No way!” Ingrid gasped, her heart was pounding in surprised excitement.

There was no way she could do this as Ingrid Blair.

This was Star Lily’s strength at work.

She held her pose, eyes darting around her body as best as she could. It was all there. The tell-tale magic circles and rings of runes on her joints and limbs were that of her [Automata Precept], a feature unique to Star Lily that allowed her to perfectly move her body.

Despite the strength and speed of this move, she didn’t spend a single calorie as [Automata] puppeted her body.

___

“Ready?” Star Lily called as she finished her short warm ups.

“I’m ready!” Cecil squeaked excitedly. The little slime hopped onto Star Lily’s shoulder, in response, the patted him, making him let out cute slime sounds.

“Give me a bit.” Star Rose called back, adjusting the camera a bit, “Still trying to calibrate this camera to capture [Mana]!”

They were in a secluded spot somewhere in the North Carolina wilderness. A couple of hours away from Riverdale, with more gravel and rock than greenery, it was a place the troupe used to train their abilities without burning more than a few shrubs or avalanching more than one mountain or valley.

A series of hard tents and modular structures formed a loose cluster on one side. Although an array of generators were assembled close by, they were silent, on stand-by. Hardened conduits from these structures snaked into the forest and disappeared, emerging inconspicuously to a common junction leading to Riverdale Power’s dam.

Neith, occupying an adorable, cat-sized spider-bot body, made a mechanical warble followed by a cute little tap dance, her little feet making drumming sounds on the crate she was perched on.

“All clear!” Neith called, “Ready when you are, Star Lily!”

The Starchaser and her slime familiar took a deep breath before the former exploded into motion.

“Takemikazuchi: Tenmei Danzetsu”
建御雷: 天命断絶
[Divine Sword God: Absolute Severance]

Brilliant arcs of electricity danced around her body as she quickly spun around then took to the air with a rising kick. As her leg sliced through the air, an icy-white shockwave unfurled in its wake, carving the figure of a crescent moon that mirrored the exact arc of her deadly strike.

Still rising, Star Lily performed a series of multiple spinning kicks. As she performed this feat, an imposing Eidolon in the divine image of the sword god Takemikazuchi himself manifested and mirrored the path of Ingrid’s kicks with masterful slashes of his own great sword.

All the dummy targets around Ingrid lay devastated. What should have been a tornado around her was concentrated into the colossal crescent shockwaves that persisted for a few seconds like a buzzsaw.

As Star Lily landed, she looked to the rest of the Starchasers looking back at her wide-eyed.

“What do you think?” Star Lily grinned, holding a thumbs up, “Pretty good, huh? Huh?”

“Missed one!” Cecil squeaked, quickly pulling his Beretta pistol and plugging the lone standing dummy right in the chest. A heartbeat before the bullet flared out of the barrel, a magic circle manifested in front of the muzzle. The bullet, once passing through it, created a small nova of energy as it accelerated through the air.

The dummy exploded spectacularly. Meanwhile, ribbons of energy left behind a glowing helix in the bullet’s wake.

“Best slime.” Star Lily giggled, craning her head to give the little slime a smooch.

“Awww, quit it! That tickles!” Cecil laughed, rubbing her cheek.

“Well, as you can see…” Neith began dryly, “She even cut down the titanium struts. Those dummies are completely trashed.”

The Starchasers were gaping at Star Lily not with awe, but abject horror.

Star Rose’s coffee mug lay shattered on the floor.

“ARE YOU INSANE!?” Star Rose screamed.

“Ingrid, what the hell!!?” Macy shouted, “And Cecil, don’t co-sign her into that!”

“Have you not watched SAW, you idiot!?” Star Tulip half-yelled, clutching herself.

“Lunatics…” Julius was chuckling to himself, the theropod's shoulders shaking in a low rumble.

“You’ll Springtrap yourself, dummy!” Star Juniper shrieked.

Terry sighed and slapped a flipper to this face in a turtle-y equivalent of a facepalm.

“Don’t do that ever again!” The three chorused.

Star Lotus, Philia, however, beamed approvingly.

“You’re really taking this ‘Anime Aura as an Iron Man suit’ seriously, haven’t you, Star Lily?” the blond girl said, holding up her glass of Coke in toast.

“You got guts, I’m starting to like you more.” Taffy the dark unicorn smiled, nodding his head approvingly.

“Yeah, well…” Neith sighed, “We’ll be seeing her guts pretty soon once she twists herself too far and wrings out her insides.”

“Oh come on, it can’t be that bad!” Ingrid laughed, her muscles did feel a little strained, but that was just from her body reflexively tensing when it should be relaxed.

Cecil quietly, flowed some of his [Mana] into her body, while continuing to hum excitedly. Ingrid reached up and patted the cute little slime.

“I’m detecting a 10% reduction in your range of motion.” Neith warbled, “You pulled some muscles.”

“Talk some sense into her, Neith!” Star Rose barked, “That’s suicide!”

“You should really do more yoga and get your body more limber if you wanna take it further.” Neith advised dryly.

“Star Lotus,” The dark unicorn nodded his head in Star Lily’s direction, “We should expand her library. Start beating her up in fighting games. Some of her kicks were recycled, like a poorly animated Ranbu.”

“Perfect.” Star Lotus’ eyes twinkled, she jogged over to Star Lily and guided her back to their HQ, “Come along, I got a whole library of special moves you’d love to have!”

The remaining three Starchasers looked back at the laptop, replaying the footage of Ingrid’s attack. They all winced.

“Goddamn…” Star Juniper grimaced, “She’s using her aura to twist and pull her body around?”

“Star Lily said she’s practiced the motions beforehand.” Neith chirped, “Her [Automata Precept] as she calls it, records these motions’ playback at her behest. The result is that she exerts... mostly zero strain on her bones and muscles as far as the ability puppets her body.”

“Mostly zero,” Julius growled in bemusement, “Which means she’s literally going through the motions but without any meaningful resistance.”

“A muscle suit…” Terry mewled, watching the recording of Ingrid’s painful looking spin kick, her spine twisting a little too far for his tastes, “On paper, this recorded motion shouldn’t twist her body too far but if she tenses at the wrong time then…”

The turtle’s words trailed off.

No one finished the thought. Or at least wanted to speak it.

“This is Star Violet all over again…” someone said in a quiet, strangled voice.

___

Ingrid opened her eyes, her brief meditation felt like she had been rooted to the ground for days.

Performing her Kongo Shotensai uppercut caused her to perceive a dilation of time, allowing her mind to process everything around her in slow motion. The rustling palm trees, the birds flapping their wings in mid-flight, the crash of the waves against the rocks, even the lightning-fast flicking of the monitor lizard’s tongues were things her mind was able to grasp in full detail.

The world around her did not collapse into a dizzying spiral of blurs. Instead, it stretched into a clear, deliberate pace that allowed her to observe everything with absolute precision.

There was more. Lenses, modified barriers that rather than deny access, accelerated those passing through them with the right frequency. These too were used strategically to increase her speed and strength.she passed through one as she took that one spinning step forward, and another her fist passed through as she swung her arm skyward.

At the same time, while her arm was still chambered at her side, she formed a repulsing barrier at her elbow on the exact moment her fist entered the accelerating lens. The barrier levered her arm while the lens amplified the motion, the two effects in perfect sync to launch her strike into a perfect, explosive ascent.

This was the work of [Aegis]. It, along with the lenses, was the result of her own experimentation with her aura. Among the Starchasers, and anyone trained in the use of [Mana], shrouding their bodies in a protective layer was common sense, a fundamental practice drilled into instinct.

Ingrid took that principle further. Instead of confining her [Mana] to her own body, she projected it outward, generating barriers at precise points in space. She used it as a bounce pad to leap higher, she generated them mid-air to abruptly change direction, pinballing herself in confusing zigzags to throw off even the most alert enemies.

It was the same principle that let her walk about in invisible sneakers.

Her footwork was enhanced by generating a barrier where her foot landed, it caught and redirected her momentum, generating the explosive torque that powered her attack. This barrier’s ability to redirect force into something more advanced than simple repulsion was a modification of her [Typhon Aura], which, unlike [Aegis], enhanced and directed force.

Everything seemed to be working fine. Everything she had in her previous life had carried over into whatever world she had manifested in.

All except the one thing that mattered most.

She resisted the urge to reach for her shoulder where he used to perch. Up until now, it was easy to forget that Cecil was no longer perched on her shoulder. The cute little slime’s presence was so strongly woven into her aura that it was enough to make her mind turn her thoughts away from his absence.

She had been lying to herself that the bravest little familiar in the whole universe was still sitting right there.

A tear rolled down her cheek as she reached with a trembling hand to find nothing on her shoulder. Cecil had gone silent when she underwent her final transformation against Melrondia, pouring all of his life force into her until the very end.

Her vision blurred as the tears began to flow, her throat welling up as she failed to stifle her sobs. Her aura subconsciously flared, not out of anger, but just so she could feel more of Cecil’s presence around her.

A scream of inconsolable anguish tore from her lips, echoing throughout the beach. Her agony manifested as a firestorm of raw [Ether] that glassed the sand around her for a hundred feet.

___

Adrian let out a gasp, breathing heavily. It felt hot and suffocating wherever he was. His brain still felt hazy, as if he had just got off of some really good drugs. His mind was racing with what he could remember, the fight with that horrible person Ingrid Blair, and now this suffocating hell he was in. Wherever he was in was tightly packed with some foam-like material.

He was completely paralyzed. The strangest part was that he could feel padding pressing halfway where the rest of his arms and legs should be. He could feel the heat, the padding, the itchy sweat running down his body, but he couldn’t move a muscle.

“What the hell?” Said a familiar voice.

It was that Blair person!

“Philia, this is just an ordinary gym! I thought it was going to be some high-tech ninja hideout!” Said an unfamiliar squeaky voice.

He recognized the voice that spoke next.

“At least it’s away from Athena’s prying eyes. Trust me, you’ll enjoy this.”

Star Lotus. He recognized that voice. So Philia was her name, huh? If he gets out of here, he’ll…

“Let’s start with this punching bag here.” Philia said.

Adrian felt his world swing to and fro.

“Alright…” Ingrid said.

“Hit it hard, Ingrid!” said the squeaky voice.

Despite the thick padding, Adrian retched, spewing whatever concentrates were used to keep him fed, the hot, stinking regurgitate splashing all over his face and flooding his nose. A second, breath-stealing impact smashed him from behind as the punching bag he was in slapped against the ceiling.

“Woohoo!” cried the squeaky voice, “Homerun!”

“It’s pretty tough. What’s in this thing? Lead?” Ingrid said, her voice dancing around the bag as she began weaving and punching hard through the padding.

Philia’s reply to Ingrid was cold. Despite the suffocating heat he was in, it felt like a blast of antarctic wind on a naked body.

“Your control of [Mana] is improving Ingrid. What you need is a tougher punching bag.”

Adrian didn’t have vocal cords to scream for help as he felt more bones fracture, phantom fingers clenching into phantom fists in his mind as Ingrid unloaded onto the bag.

“If I become a Starchaser…” Ingrid grunted between bone-breaking punch after another, “I’m going to use my fists instead of guns.”

“Attacking with fists is a primal desire.” Philia observedly with mild amusement, “Very therapeutic i might add. Also, it lets you feel the pain you’ve inflicted onto your opponent’s body. Some schools of martial arts use this principle to confirm they’ve done enough damage to end the fight, or to confirm their nemesis is dead.”

“So those who use weapons do it to psychologically shield themselves from the guilt?” asked the squeaky voice.

Ingrid paused in her punching. Adrian could feel some of his broken ribs now poking into his pulsating organs, each pulse meant to keep life flowing into his body a treacherous stab like Julius Caesar’s own “friends” on the Ides of March.

“Man, what’s in this thing?” Ingrid frowned, “It’s so tough! It’s like there’s a SEED in here.”

“Stuffing people into a punching bag would be cruel.” Philia said.

“Is that why you do it Philia?” The squeaky voice asked, “Using magic guns because it helps maintain emotional distance from your opponents?”

“I wouldn’t string up a SEED and beat it down.” Ingrid said as she ruptured a couple of Adrian’s organs with a fierce punch. “If my opponents have had enough then they should book it. Think about what they’ve done and hopefully not do it again.”

“I agree. I would be very uncomfortable killing people.” Philia said easily. “On the other hand, I hunt animals at my uncle Jack’s farm. I don’t hesitate to shoot coyotes or bears that try to break into the chicken coop. So I have lots of experience in shooting anyway. Might as well make use of it.”

“Good point.” Ingrid said, peppering the punching bag with a wall of lightning quick jabs.

“If only the SEEDs you took down before this could only see how much stronger you’ve become now.” the squeaky voice quipped.

“I’m sure we’ll have plenty more to see how strong Ingrid will be.” Philia remarked, “What will you call yourself once you become a Starchaser, Ingrid?”

Adrian was choking on his own blood, but a quiet mechanical hiss denied him his escape as it began to suck up the fluids.

“Star Lily.” Ingrid said after some silence, “What do you think Cecil?”

“I like it!” said the squeaky voice.

___

Author’s Note:
“S01E01 - Nemesis Stalker” is now due for a rewrite.
Philia opens her mouth and I hear Mads Mikkelsen’s Hannibal Lecter talking.