Recovering from my sudden laughter, I realized I needed to figure out what to actually do from here.

My mind raced. This new Anathema bitch was strong. Not nearly as strong as me, but still far above any ordinary human. It was actually a bit tricky to keep her pinned like this—honestly, it would be way easier to just kill her.

But that would be such a wasted opportunity. There were many different reasons why bringing this new bitch on board, so to speak, would be a unique advantage for me. There were also many related reasons why it was a terrible idea, of course, one of which was that it introduced a massive risk to my cover that I couldn't directly control.

But there were so many potential opportunities. This would give me massive leverage with the Red faction of Star Guardians, could play out in an interesting way with the cultists, and also, it could be generically useful to have another intelligent Anathema under my thumb. I decided I would just go for it. In the worst case, I'd just end up killing her anyway. Same result but with an added risk of her causing at least some amount of extra damage before I put a stop to it.

"Alright, listen." I cut back on the scary monster tone and talked a little bit more normally. I still kept a small amount of intensity to it, of course, just so she'd stay focused on me and treat what I had to say seriously but without being overwhelmed. "I have no idea what's going on with the massive knockers, but as far as this is concerned—" bending rather awkwardly, I ripped her weird, spiny tail off of my leg where it was still attached. "—Congratulations, you're now an Anathema."

Her eyes widened even further—something that shouldn't have been possible—and I realized there were now more of them. The fuck? There were now multiple, much smaller spots encircling both of her 'normal' eyes that I swore were small, compound sensory organs. Weird. I continued before she could say or ask anything, though. "Also congratulations, you're one of the lucky few to stay sane. And I'm not the one who did this to you. You were already seeded, I just—helped things along a little, you know?"

Alright, now what? I need to emphasize that no one—especially the AAG or whatever—is her friend now, see if she can also shift back into something that looks human again, and then get both of us the fuck out of here. That sounded like a good enough plan to me. I'd improvise things from there—oh, right. I also needed to deal with her newfound hunger. I didn't want her going feral and causing me trouble on the very first day. The more I thought about it, the more of a pain in the ass this whole thing started to seem.

I realized I could hear the sound of someone running towards us. Shit. There was no time—someone was heading over, and even if I shifted back, what was I going to say? I decided to kill whoever it was and use them to feed the new girl. Two in one deal, yeah? Maybe I'd even take a few nibbles for myself.

I had less than two seconds before the person ran around the side of the big AC unit, so I quickly released my grip on the new girl—hoping she wouldn't just run off at the first chance—and of course, she immediately decided to run off at the first chance. Fuck!

I also realized that it wasn't just anyone running towards us. It was Katherine. With barely any time to formulate a real plan or even consider the options, I threw myself down to the ground beside the AC machinery and concentrated on returning my face and hands to normal as quickly as possible.

"Alex?" Alarm and confusion tinged her voice. "Alex! What's going on?"

Unlike a full transformation, reverting my claws and mouth back to something more human was a fairly trivial task by this point, which meant I was already finished and able to roll over and act injured. "Some Goddamn fucking Anathema bitch jumped me, that's what."

"What?" Katherine looked distressed and bewildered—a common enough appearance for her, I realized, and one which she wore well. "Again? Was it that metal dragon?"

Oh, it was absolutely that metal dragon. Katherine was more right than she knew, since really, I was the Anathema that had jumped someone. Not that she needed to know that, of course. As far as she would know—wait. I realized there was a much more believable way to play this, as well as one that would, almost ironically, get me more sympathy. "No. No it wasn't that."

I acted more hurt than I actually was while letting her help me back to my feet. "It was my fault, actually. I felt something... weird, and when I came to investigate, I—I'm not sure." I frowned, looking off into the distance where the new Anathema had run off. "It was this guy who was acting super weird, like he seemed super distressed, and then all of a sudden he was mutating into some kind of Anathema." I took another breath. "I think he might have been seeded."

I left out the whole gender flip part, because frankly, it wasn't relevant to what I wanted to accomplish here, and was still just really confusing and unexpected even to me. Katherine of course hugged me—well, she gave me a pseudo hug. She'd started doing this thing where she just barely leaned on me, apparently realizing that I didn't like full physical contact or being restrained.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Alex, it's not your fault." I had to remind myself not to snicker, because actually, it totally is. "It's not your fault, if that poor person was already..." She trailed off, seemingly too caught up in the ethos of someone being taken over by an Anathema. Or is it pathos? Fuck. I forgot what the difference between those was. I vividly recalled something from one of my classes back in middle school about logos, ethos, and pathos—but what was the actual difference between those second two? That was going to really bug me.

"Did you feel something too?" I asked, shifting the focus slightly. "Is that why you came running over?"

It wouldn't surprise me if Katherine's power detected the effect of Sadboi's seed sprouting and turning him into—damn, I needed a name. Monstergirl? Sure, why not. Anyway, since I could feel it just by existing, I would be surprised if it wasn't akin to a bomb going off from the perspective of Katherine's spooky power.

"Yes." Finally separating from the pseudo hug we'd been in, she finally took a moment to properly appraise our surroundings before continuing. "At first I thought an incursion might have started, but it was so small and close by—" She blinked. "I wonder—was that when the person was seeded, or when they changed and attacked you? i think—"

"It was when they attacked me," I interrupted. I knew that because I was there and already confirmed that it felt remarkably similar to the formation of a breach. Katherine didn't know I had that kind of ability, of course—much like she didn't know about my new, esoteric sense of taste—but there was another, even more obvious reason for being as confident as I was. "It takes a lot longer than that for there to be any signs of infection. They had to have had that seed for quite some time now."

Katherine looked lost for a moment before realization dawned on her. "Oh, you're right." She still looked oddly sad—pensive, that was the word. "Well, I guess we should probably go find the others."

"What is that you're reading?"

I just barely managed to stop myself from reflexively lashing out when Katherine leaned close to me and fucking spooked the shit out of me. The two of us were in the back of Kevin's car, heading back towards the main city center and thus my and Katherine's current lodgings. The two cousins were also going to be spending the night in a building right across from ours—tomorrow, the four of us were heading to Vegas.

Not the most opportune time to visit the City of Sin, one might think—and for the most part, that was right. It was the first weekend after the delayed start of the new trimester, and also, almost the whole state was still going through the end times. There were several different factors that made it an opportune time for us, though.

First, we were Guardians, and the initial rush was starting to die down and thin out—to some degree, quite literally. We weren't going to be venturing out into the desert, fighting high tier Anathema—we'd just fucking die if we attempted something like that, myself included. I may have proved myself a match for other powerful Tier 3s—and titans at that—but there was a big difference between fighting Anathema in my own weight class and surviving an area where Tier 4, 5, 6, and even 6 Anathema were the norm. As I understood it, I simply could not hope to fight a Tier 5 due to the aura disparity.

And all of that wasn't accounting for the massive number of high tier Guardians—and Star Guardians—or the massive amount of advanced weaponry being shipped in courtesy of Uncle Sam.

But Las Vegas? The City of Sin was now the island of hope in a sea of calamity—and also still the City of Sin. That being said, there were still smaller incursions trying to take root in the city, and those also needed to be dealt with. That was one reason for going—a solid shot at consistent, frequent experience. Even though Guardians ultimately grew stronger by cultivating anima, the combat was an important component. Even just entering and exiting an incursion was better than nothing in that respect—the whole 'cultivating' schtick wasn't to produce, but to consolidate and refine.

As for me, well, I'd hopefully get some good opportunities to eat.

There was also the first full-scale test of the Liberty's Zenith that was finally confirmed to take place. Vanguard Technologies—lovely name—was involved in the development of the network of orbital weapons, and so David himself was actually going to be in the city. I asked him if it would be possible to actually see the 'Roast Beast' in action from somewhere within the city, and his very helpful and informative answer was 'maybe.'

We'd also likely stay longer than just the weekend. The current trimester was looking like it was going to be a bit of a joke, so none of us really cared about missing the second week. Surprisingly, even David didn't really care, which was a pretty damning statement considering his usual attitude towards things.

"Logos, Ethos, and Pathos?" Katherine read off my screen. This bitch was nosily leaning over to snoop on what I was doing on my phone. "Why are you reading about that? Isn't that a debate thing?"

It was, in fact, a debate thing. Evidently I'd gotten the entire concept wrong, because it was a way to categorize rhetorical techniques, not actual situations or whatever. Specifically, 'ethos' was about establishing the character and credibility of the speaker—something with which I was naturally well-acquainted—while 'pathos' was about playing the audience's emotional response—also something that was familiar. Quite so, in fact.

Also, Katherine deciding to stealthily spy on my phone activity pissed me off. Her own phone was open, so I quickly reached over and snatched it. "And what are you looking at?" My eyes were met with a wall of text. "Wait, what is this?" It was in the middle of a long web page, so I tried to see what the page itself was. "Oh, is this a fanfiction site?"

"Hey!" Katherine was suddenly very desperate to get her phone back from me. Naturally, I batted her away with one arm while moving the phone to the other and keeping it out of reach. Being way fucking stronger than her helped a lot, there.

"Zoe x Reader toxic yuri Murder Medic AU—what does any of that even—hey! I was reading that!" It seemed like Katherine had finally recovered from her initial shock enough to use her stupid power to make her phone close the browser. Scowling, I handed the phone back, as there was no use trying to get anything else out of it. "Also, were there seriously 47 chapters of that thing?"

Katherine had turned red—and more than that, she'd plastered herself against her own side of the backseat, staring out the window and acting like she couldn't see me. I rolled my eyes. "Fine, be like that."

As for myself, I opened my phone again and started searching some keywords. I was very curious to witness Katherine's particular taste in trash web fictions.

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