A Practical Choice
Marvin’s standing on the opposite side of the corridor. Preparing a spell to counter the anomaly. Eta’s waiting next to him while Kei’s checking her transmitter behind me.
“How’s the spell?”
“I can make it work!”
His words echoed. The multiple gestures he is making while channeling and speaking the words glowed his eyes. Eta’s injecting herself with an auto-syringe, waiting for Marvin’s obfuscation spell to get thrown. He made the signal. Eta pulled the bolt handle of her machine-gun and dumped the mag on the anomaly.
Marvin twists his hands into an elegant gesture, throwing a beam of physic energy on the chest of the anomaly. The creature reeled in. Eta feinted forward, her two-handed cleaving the monster. The blade is stopped by the anoms endoskeleton.
Marvin followed after. His thin single-edged spellblade slicing the torso of the anomaly. Eta pulls the blade out and with a glorious swing, decapitates the anom’s head.
I put my boot down on the head and made sure it stopped moving. With the anom down, everyone settled down. Kei walks over, checks the anomaly, and then frowns. We’ve seen the usual anomalies the past week. But a call from one of our affiliates told us an anom appeared. A anom who has the head of a dog. With slits on the body where the creature can pull knives out to throw or wield it. Eta didn’t want to risk it and brought a light machine gun with her since the creature seems to be hostile. Unlike the anomalies we’ve encountered who are indirect on their threats or can be spoken to. This one enjoyed the slaughter.
Kei established confidently that anoms adapt to the environment and emotion of the one it is possessing. Every anon has a core and depending on the core. It can lead to strange effects. Honestly, at this point, all of this is guesswork since we lack compelling evidence. How do you understand them when from the start they are like creatures who do not follow certain rules? Yes, we can identify patterns and take note of variants. But after spending time on the archives of our office database. I came to realize anoms are simply too randomized. Too chaotic. Too many variables to conclude they have two or three patterns. Kei made note of this too and honestly she could probably dive deep into the cases and make a compelling guesswork from all of this. But our pay comes first and service to humanity is later.
Kei brings up her transmitter.
“We got it down. Mind if you keep the building sealed? We’ll have to make do with a field autopsy here.”
She turns off the transmitter and looks at me. I sigh to myself. Pulled out the tools and started dissecting the body. We started with the torso, cutting through the padded skin of the anomaly. The chest area of the creature is mashed up together. Organs squished together around the center and in the middle of it is the heart. Crystallize into this strange organ harder than a rock still beating loudly as I hold it.
“How did it summon knives?”
We cut on the area around the knife-slits and saw no storage area nor any indication of where the knives came from. Kei pulls one of the organs and finds no place for the knives. She almost palmed her face with all of the viscera on it.
“So it warped and made knives to throw. Let’s see the rest.”
The stomach is gruesome. Have you seen a soda can crushed into a thin disk? The heads we gutted out of the stomach are full of heads and from the looks of it. The anom loved the taste of heads and the texture of their bones.
Marvin vomited on the side. Eta crosses her arms and continues watching the operation, unfazed by the gore. Kei makes an incision below the crotch and we see the privates of the anomaly warped into something else. It’s like tiny needle-like bones pierced out of his privates and the tip has a reddish bone about 8 inches long. Kei examines the mutated organ before taking out a camera and taking pictures of the chest, stomach, and pelvis area.
After the examination of the beast. Kei wrote up on her field report the mutations observed and sent the rest of the data to the office where it’ll be chopped up into sellable parts. Because of the unique constitution of this anomaly. Members from the Shichinin no Ken entered the premises to retrieve the body. Eta stayed quiet on the side. Marvin composed himself from all the gore while Kei negotiated with the team leader of the recovery crew for the prize of the body and the compensation we’ll have for taking down the anomaly.
Kei talked them up and got us bonuses. As we left the building, Marvin stopped and looked at the civilians being cared for by the associates of ours who managed to get them out. We aren’t running a charity, so at best we can convince them to keep this quiet. The 7S will do it for us. He clearly doesn’t like some of our ways, but this is Changye, and I doubt these people will care about the ‘truth’ when they are facing an associate as large as the 7S.
After retreating back to the office for a quick cleanup. Marvin left the office on time as always while I took the time to sort out and update our database. Eta cleaned up her weapons stoically before leaving them in storage, carrying only her two-handed. She got out of the office and probably went to her usual dive to mope. Eta’s been silent and seething. She’s acting like some insomniac soldier on watch duty and kept her face as dull as she could instead of the usual smile. I kinda missed it, but she has her own issues and I’m not the kind of person who’d pry on someone’s issues without them saying it's okay to poke my nose into it.
So after they clock out it’s just me and Kei in the office now. She’s typing on her work computer while I’m tapping the keyboard away and arranging the data on our database.
Around 8 PM I was done with my task. Kei is watching the television, sipping on a fresh drink, biting into a food she ordered minutes ago. She took a glance, picked up the can of beer, and threw it. The beer can did a parabola and almost hit a wall.
“Sorry.”
“No problem.”
I caught the beer can. She takes another bite of her food and then leans back.
“We never did get time to get to know each other, Akun.”
“And y’all never bothered to know my name. At this point, I think you’re doing it to fuck with me.”
Her quick and easy smile said it all. They all got into the joke and honestly I’m just letting them now.
“An astute deduction, Assistant-kun. Well, it’s for fun anyway. Don’t be too angry.”
Never did pissed me off and I’m not that petty. I sat casually on the couch and took pieces of her food. She gave me the wild eye, but is clearly too tired to react.
“Eta’s going to undergo more augmented procedures.”
“Why?”
“Cope. You know we have some past, but the thing about Eta is she’s a soldier. A damn good soldier.”
Soldier? But she told me they spent years together. Long enough at least.
“She’s one of those child soldiers, Akun. We had a shitty time you know? All of us got shitty pasts and we don’t say it out in the open casually. We’re hardasses like that. But she’s even worse. She’s been augmented since young to fight monsters and the likes. When I met Eta, she was cold and frosty. Like living ice starting you down. She has murder on her face and Elvira got into her. Dug her way into her heart and pants.”
“Pants… So they were like that?”
“Yup. They were. And before you ask, no, I dig both sides. And we weren’t in some love triangle, okay?”
Didn’t really need to know about her sexual preferences, but it’s nice to know.
“Anyway, she melted Eta’s heart. Two stuck together like glue and believed me it was nasty. Hell, I felt like a third wheel all the time.”
“So, how did it turn to shit?”
Kei tried to light a cigarette, but she smelled her breath and then tossed it, instead taking another sip of her beer can.
“Greed. Basic human greed. What else? The two were good together, ya know? But the thing is they got into a disagreement. Eta wanted to keep their normal life, stay with the crew, but the thing is Elvira ain’t the kind who’d stay comfortable. She thought Eta would understand. Both were fucked in the heads, and got their own reasons. Thing is, Elvira never really did know Eta’s tired. She’s been fighting all her life and she wants to maintain a casual life.”
“Casual life? In the state of our world? In this city?”
“In some normal way, what we have here is an okay life, but ambition is fiery, Akun. Elvira doesn't want an 'okay' life. It’s the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Only the pot of gold is full of monsters and abominations guarding it. It’s an impossible dream and Elvira knew it, but tried anyway. They broke up and it was over.”
She leans back and changes the channel to international news. Countries are fighting their own battles, and many of it are holding on to hope despite every sign telling them it’s fucked. Humanity’s not on the corner, we’re adapting, becoming monstrous as our foes are.
The bits of normalcy we have seems so fragile. You can always shit-talk the city of Changye, but honestly it’s one of the few cities of the world where you can earn the right to live as freely as you could, earn money, eat good food, and raise a family. You’re given a chance here and it’s why many are trying their best to get inside Changye and live a secured life. Yes, there are monsters, and anomalies even in the districts, but not enough to make it a bother. Although there are havens outside of Changye; villages and towns and small cities that are thriving, none of them give as much as Changye does.
I do understand where Elvira’s coming from. Eta’s not wrong either and honestly it is hard to decide sometimes. Stick to this okay life or try to find a better position out there. Elvira did sure try, and is now among the many who got fucked trying. But despite all the hurts. I guess there’s still a part of Elvira left behind in Eta. A part she’ll have to think of as just memories. A part making her chose a path.
“You think it’s okay for you to tell me this?”
“Yeah. She probably doesn’t give a shit anymore. Eta’s my friend, a very good friend, but nonetheless it’s her damn life. And I knew better than to stop her. Believe me, I tried already.”
Honestly, I wonder if she really did or this is the limit of what she’d try to do. I did think of them as best buds, and yet Kei is still kei. Oh, I think she cares about Eta, but not enough to persuade her to stop what she’s doing.
“Ain’t I a bitch?”
“Maybe. I really have no opinion about it. I do agree it’s her choice and honestly I think you know how beneficial it is for the office to have someone with extra augments.”
She didn’t need to say or do anything for me to understand her reasoning here. Augment procedures are costly, dangerous, but if Eta gets an upgrade, it will make life easier for Kei and the office as well. Eta's strong, but she's still mostly human.
“Always the businesswoman, eh, Ma’am.”
“Don’t be mistaken though. I let her do it because it has more pros than cons. I'm a practical woman, Assistant. If it’s going to fuck her over, do you think I’d stay still? She’s still my friend, I respect her choices, and I ain’t a purist. If this will help her in some way, then go ahead.”
Hearing all of this made me reassess Kei again. It’s hard to know what’s in her head while saying all of this.
Does she really mean it?
A Practical Choice
Marvin’s standing on the opposite side of the corridor. Preparing a spell to counter the anomaly. Eta’s waiting next to him while Kei’s checking her transmitter behind me.
“How’s the spell?”
“I can make it work!”
His words echoed. The multiple gestures he is making while channeling and speaking the words glowed his eyes. Eta’s injecting herself with an auto-syringe, waiting for Marvin’s obfuscation spell to get thrown. He made the signal. Eta pulled the bolt handle of her machine-gun and dumped the mag on the anomaly.
Marvin twists his hands into an elegant gesture, throwing a beam of physic energy on the chest of the anomaly. The creature reeled in. Eta feinted forward, her two-handed cleaving the monster. The blade is stopped by the anoms endoskeleton.
Marvin followed after. His thin single-edged spellblade slicing the torso of the anomaly. Eta pulls the blade out and with a glorious swing, decapitates the anom’s head.
I put my boot down on the head and made sure it stopped moving. With the anom down, everyone settled down. Kei walks over, checks the anomaly, and then frowns. We’ve seen the usual anomalies the past week. But a call from one of our affiliates told us an anom appeared. A anom who has the head of a dog. With slits on the body where the creature can pull knives out to throw or wield it. Eta didn’t want to risk it and brought a light machine gun with her since the creature seems to be hostile. Unlike the anomalies we’ve encountered who are indirect on their threats or can be spoken to. This one enjoyed the slaughter.
Kei established confidently that anoms adapt to the environment and emotion of the one it is possessing. Every anon has a core and depending on the core. It can lead to strange effects. Honestly, at this point, all of this is guesswork since we lack compelling evidence. How do you understand them when from the start they are like creatures who do not follow certain rules? Yes, we can identify patterns and take note of variants. But after spending time on the archives of our office database. I came to realize anoms are simply too randomized. Too chaotic. Too many variables to conclude they have two or three patterns. Kei made note of this too and honestly she could probably dive deep into the cases and make a compelling guesswork from all of this. But our pay comes first and service to humanity is later.
Kei brings up her transmitter.
“We got it down. Mind if you keep the building sealed? We’ll have to make do with a field autopsy here.”
She turns off the transmitter and looks at me. I sigh to myself. Pulled out the tools and started dissecting the body. We started with the torso, cutting through the padded skin of the anomaly. The chest area of the creature is mashed up together. Organs squished together around the center and in the middle of it is the heart. Crystallize into this strange organ harder than a rock still beating loudly as I hold it.
“How did it summon knives?”
We cut on the area around the knife-slits and saw no storage area nor any indication of where the knives came from. Kei pulls one of the organs and finds no place for the knives. She almost palmed her face with all of the viscera on it.
“So it warped and made knives to throw. Let’s see the rest.”
The stomach is gruesome. Have you seen a soda can crushed into a thin disk? The heads we gutted out of the stomach are full of heads and from the looks of it. The anom loved the taste of heads and the texture of their bones.
Marvin vomited on the side. Eta crosses her arms and continues watching the operation, unfazed by the gore. Kei makes an incision below the crotch and we see the privates of the anomaly warped into something else. It’s like tiny needle-like bones pierced out of his privates and the tip has a reddish bone about 8 inches long. Kei examines the mutated organ before taking out a camera and taking pictures of the chest, stomach, and pelvis area.
After the examination of the beast. Kei wrote up on her field report the mutations observed and sent the rest of the data to the office where it’ll be chopped up into sellable parts. Because of the unique constitution of this anomaly. Members from the Shichinin no Ken entered the premises to retrieve the body. Eta stayed quiet on the side. Marvin composed himself from all the gore while Kei negotiated with the team leader of the recovery crew for the prize of the body and the compensation we’ll have for taking down the anomaly.
Kei talked them up and got us bonuses. As we left the building, Marvin stopped and looked at the civilians being cared for by the associates of ours who managed to get them out. We aren’t running a charity, so at best we can convince them to keep this quiet. The 7S will do it for us. He clearly doesn’t like some of our ways, but this is Changye, and I doubt these people will care about the ‘truth’ when they are facing an associate as large as the 7S.
After retreating back to the office for a quick cleanup. Marvin left the office on time as always while I took the time to sort out and update our database. Eta cleaned up her weapons stoically before leaving them in storage, carrying only her two-handed. She got out of the office and probably went to her usual dive to mope. Eta’s been silent and seething. She’s acting like some insomniac soldier on watch duty and kept her face as dull as she could instead of the usual smile. I kinda missed it, but she has her own issues and I’m not the kind of person who’d pry on someone’s issues without them saying it's okay to poke my nose into it.
So after they clock out it’s just me and Kei in the office now. She’s typing on her work computer while I’m tapping the keyboard away and arranging the data on our database.
Around 8 PM I was done with my task. Kei is watching the television, sipping on a fresh drink, biting into a food she ordered minutes ago. She took a glance, picked up the can of beer, and threw it. The beer can did a parabola and almost hit a wall.
“Sorry.”
“No problem.”
I caught the beer can. She takes another bite of her food and then leans back.
“We never did get time to get to know each other, Akun.”
“And y’all never bothered to know my name. At this point, I think you’re doing it to fuck with me.”
Her quick and easy smile said it all. They all got into the joke and honestly I’m just letting them now.
“An astute deduction, Assistant-kun. Well, it’s for fun anyway. Don’t be too angry.”
Never did pissed me off and I’m not that petty. I sat casually on the couch and took pieces of her food. She gave me the wild eye, but is clearly too tired to react.
“Eta’s going to undergo more augmented procedures.”
“Why?”
“Cope. You know we have some past, but the thing about Eta is she’s a soldier. A damn good soldier.”
Soldier? But she told me they spent years together. Long enough at least.
“She’s one of those child soldiers, Akun. We had a shitty time you know? All of us got shitty pasts and we don’t say it out in the open casually. We’re hardasses like that. But she’s even worse. She’s been augmented since young to fight monsters and the likes. When I met Eta, she was cold and frosty. Like living ice starting you down. She has murder on her face and Elvira got into her. Dug her way into her heart and pants.”
“Pants… So they were like that?”
“Yup. They were. And before you ask, no, I dig both sides. And we weren’t in some love triangle, okay?”
Didn’t really need to know about her sexual preferences, but it’s nice to know.
“Anyway, she melted Eta’s heart. Two stuck together like glue and believed me it was nasty. Hell, I felt like a third wheel all the time.”
“So, how did it turn to shit?”
Kei tried to light a cigarette, but she smelled her breath and then tossed it, instead taking another sip of her beer can.
“Greed. Basic human greed. What else? The two were good together, ya know? But the thing is they got into a disagreement. Eta wanted to keep their normal life, stay with the crew, but the thing is Elvira ain’t the kind who’d stay comfortable. She thought Eta would understand. Both were fucked in the heads, and got their own reasons. Thing is, Elvira never really did know Eta’s tired. She’s been fighting all her life and she wants to maintain a casual life.”
“Casual life? In the state of our world? In this city?”
“In some normal way, what we have here is an okay life, but ambition is fiery, Akun. Elvira doesn't want an 'okay' life. It’s the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Only the pot of gold is full of monsters and abominations guarding it. It’s an impossible dream and Elvira knew it, but tried anyway. They broke up and it was over.”
She leans back and changes the channel to international news. Countries are fighting their own battles, and many of it are holding on to hope despite every sign telling them it’s fucked. Humanity’s not on the corner, we’re adapting, becoming monstrous as our foes are.
The bits of normalcy we have seems so fragile. You can always shit-talk the city of Changye, but honestly it’s one of the few cities of the world where you can earn the right to live as freely as you could, earn money, eat good food, and raise a family. You’re given a chance here and it’s why many are trying their best to get inside Changye and live a secured life. Yes, there are monsters, and anomalies even in the districts, but not enough to make it a bother. Although there are havens outside of Changye; villages and towns and small cities that are thriving, none of them give as much as Changye does.
I do understand where Elvira’s coming from. Eta’s not wrong either and honestly it is hard to decide sometimes. Stick to this okay life or try to find a better position out there. Elvira did sure try, and is now among the many who got fucked trying. But despite all the hurts. I guess there’s still a part of Elvira left behind in Eta. A part she’ll have to think of as just memories. A part making her chose a path.
“You think it’s okay for you to tell me this?”
“Yeah. She probably doesn’t give a shit anymore. Eta’s my friend, a very good friend, but nonetheless it’s her damn life. And I knew better than to stop her. Believe me, I tried already.”
Honestly, I wonder if she really did or this is the limit of what she’d try to do. I did think of them as best buds, and yet Kei is still kei. Oh, I think she cares about Eta, but not enough to persuade her to stop what she’s doing.
“Ain’t I a bitch?”
“Maybe. I really have no opinion about it. I do agree it’s her choice and honestly I think you know how beneficial it is for the office to have someone with extra augments.”
She didn’t need to say or do anything for me to understand her reasoning here. Augment procedures are costly, dangerous, but if Eta gets an upgrade, it will make life easier for Kei and the office as well. Eta's strong, but she's still mostly human.
“Always the businesswoman, eh, Ma’am.”
“Don’t be mistaken though. I let her do it because it has more pros than cons. I'm a practical woman, Assistant. If it’s going to fuck her over, do you think I’d stay still? She’s still my friend, I respect her choices, and I ain’t a purist. If this will help her in some way, then go ahead.”
Hearing all of this made me reassess Kei again. It’s hard to know what’s in her head while saying all of this.
Does she really mean it?
