She's a homosexual.

That was the thought that kept repeating in my mind, and from my perspective, it was incredibly good news. The potential avenues for manipulation had just grown tremendously. The whole prospect excited me quite a bit, and I found myself repeatedly getting lost in new fantasies.

I also needed to keep myself grounded, though. It didn't mean Katherine actually had anything going for me, or even that she would. There was another, related problem, which was that I didn't know how any of that—worked. Could it be as simple as just recycling the same behavior I already had experience using with a man? Or should I take the opposite approach, flipping things around and putting myself in the mindset of a mirror universe where I had been born the opposite sex and was attempting to manipulate women with my charms?

It was a true conundrum, a real head-scratcher. What do women even find attractive? Even that more basic question was a new kind of challenge. I couldn't exactly use myself as a good reference, and that was without the added complication of 'what do women find attractive in other women?' The more I thought about the whole thing, the more I ended up confusing myself. I felt like I was starting to see complex math formulae float and shift around in my vision.

There was only one way to solve all of this. There was no substitute for sitting down and putting in the effort to start doing research.

So, after being dropped off and taking the elevator all the way up to the penthouse, I planned to get started by just diving straight in. Ha! Straight in. It was funny because the whole point was that it wasn't straight, you know, straight as in heterosexual—okay, whatever. Regardless, I started by making tea.

It was still a few hours before either of us would normally go to bed, and by this point Katherine seemed to have mostly recovered from her stubborn embarrassment. She ended up hanging around, watching me from a distance. Which is fucking weird, can you please stop doing that? It was annoying, trying to focus on the tea and not on the awkward and skittish homosexual stalking me from the shadows like a fucking leopard.

By the time the leaves had sufficiently leeched their leaf essence into the hot water, I'd had more than enough of it. So, recalling Katherine's hyperbolic shock and distress at that cafe some time back, I brought my mug over to the other counter so I could face her directly. Then, I held her gaze while dumping spoonful after spoonful of sugar into the steaming cup. I kept my face flat and didn't even blink as I put in more sugar than I'd ever normally use.

Finally, I put down the spoon. Katherine looked like she was about to say something.

...And I picked up the spoon again and put in more sugar.

Katherine pouted at me. "You're messing with me on purpose," she said. "That's not very nice."

Slowly, I took a small, dainty sip. It was—you know, it might legitimately count as syrup at this point. It was hard not to notice the substantial increase in viscosity. "Who said I have to be nice?" I took another sip. "And besides, messing with you is fun. I'm pretty sure the amount of happiness I gain from messing with you outweighs whatever negative feelings it makes you, uh, feel."

"Are you seriously making a utilitarian argument in favor of bullying?" She wasn't very good at pretending to be upset, because it was obvious she was now enjoying it. I wondered how much that had to do with her sexuality or whatever.

I took a third sip. It honestly should have been cloying, even for me, but being an Anathema meant I could eat almost anything and enjoy it. "I am."

"You're a monster."

A fourth sip. You're right, I am a monster. I wonder how you would react if you found out? "A utility monster," I corrected. "Which I think is actually a really compelling argument against utilitarianism. Actually, there are a lot of those, because it's a pretty dogshit ethical framework." Is this the part where I start ranting at the heroes about Society? All it takes is Just One Bad Day, Katherine! I honestly hated people like that. "You know it's bad when your arguments are weaker than Kant, who was a massive fucking weirdo, or Aristotle, who absolutely hated women for some reason."

Katherine looked rather stunned for some reason. Whatever. Now that I had my tea, it was time to start researching some shit.

I ended up sitting in the living room with my laptop. I wanted to use my laptop because of the trip to Vegas—I didn't want to have to transfer any notes or whatever to another device in the morning. I soon realized I didn't really know where to start, though. After wasting several minutes just staring at a blank browser page, I kicked myself into motion by deciding to start at the deep end.

...And I soon realized I didn't know how to do that, either. The fuck do I even search? Should I just type 'pornography?' What would even come up? I was treading uncharted waters, here.

It wasn't even like I was prudish or anything. I'd seen a lot of crazy stuff on the internet, but I never sought out sexual stuff, because I wasn't interested in it. Eh, whatever. I decided to just do simple searches and see what came up. So, two minutes later, I was watching one of the most bewildering scenes I'd ever seen in my life. I kept squinting at the recording, unsure what I was supposed to be feeling, here. Is this seriously it? This is just two naked women awkwardly touching each other. Frankly, I didn't get it. Also, wait. Is this even for gay women? I think this might be intended for straight guys, actually.

"Alex?"

I slammed that laptop closed so hard and fast that I cracked the plastic shell. Fucking damn it! Not just cracked—crushed. God fucking damn it. I tried to act calm as I rotated around.

Katherine looked mildly concerned. "Is something wrong?"

I shook my head. "No, I was just checking bank stuff." I left it at that and left it to her to fill in the rest. I was extremely pissed, though. My fucking laptop. First my phone and now this? I could buy a new one, sure, but we were leaving on a trip tomorrow morning. I couldn't order a new one, and that meant either having no computer or finding somewhere to buy one in person.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Or actually...

My genius plan had been to go out in the middle of the night and buy myself a new laptop, after confirming that yes, my current one was very much ruined, as if I'd been struck by God as punishment for the sin of pornography. Unfortunately, I soon realized there was a critical problem—none of the stores that sold laptops were open at this time of night.

So, I did the reasonable thing, which was to wander around in the middle of the night until the closest electronics shop opened. I'd confirmed early on that I technically didn't need to sleep at all anymore, but I still did it out of habit and because it felt like it did improve the performance of my 'human side' by a small amount. Right now, though, I was in the mood to just roam around and see if anything caught my attention.

And oh boy, did things catch my attention. The sheer amount of food and drink of all kinds I consumed over the next hour was truly ungodly. Junk food, more tea, alcohol, an entire large pizza at a 24 hour pizzeria, and more. Yeah, I basically ended up doing what my kind usually did—wander around and eat anything in sight. The major difference was that I was only eating 'normal' food and also paying for it.

Eventually, though, I settled down at a shitty 24 hour diner and started reading on my phone. I found a so-called 'yuri' web novel, and it was—not what I expected, in many ways. Like why is this so messed up and weirdly violent? To be fair, a lot of 'normal' romances also had extremely questionable actions by the male love interest, so maybe I shouldn't be too surprised.

I also found myself actually enjoying it. I didn't really care for the useless, perpetual pining—honestly, it was kind of funny, since the overall dynamic was 'I would do anything for you I love you so much' versus God 'you are so pathetic, wow.' Mostly, though, I liked all the surrounding stuff—you know, the wild plot, the absurd misunderstandings, the incredibly fucked up situations, and so on.

Regardless, I wasn't so engrossed that I would fail to notice a pair of rowdy, troublesome looking guys come prancing through the entrance and start placing orders. One of them was a Guardian—only Tier 1, though—and the other—hmm. The other one was something I wasn't familiar with. Again? Seriously? How many times could new shit happen in one stupid night? That being said, his taste was different in a completely different way than Sadboi-slash-Monstergirl's was. Some kind of augmentation tech?

It didn't take very long at all for people to start thinking about the possibility of artificially constructing Guardian-like capabilities in ordinary humans. Kind of exactly the sort of thing the so-called Red Faction would also be interested in doing, I realized. At least in the United States, a small number of comparatively minor technologies had been approved for use, although the scope was still quite limited and there was very strict oversight—at least for legitimate, licensed operations. I got the vibe that this guy had gone above and beyond the regulations—or perhaps it might be more accurate to say below and beyond.

They also noticed me, of course. I was still lounging in one of the plastic booths, my legs up on the table. You know, like the hot, trashy bitch I was. Yeah, totally, Alex. Regardless, I felt like this was going to be trouble.

I was right.

The leader of the duo was already sliding up to me before the other one had even finished placing their order. Well, here we go. Already at this point, I would have been extremely uncomfortable, had this happened before the whole Anathema reveal. Granted, I probably wouldn't have ended up in this kind of situation in the first place. Now, though? I wasn't worried.

He was obviously about to start—honestly, hell if I knew whatever sleazy shit he was likely to start off by saying. I wouldn't let that happen, obviously. I needed to be the one to take conversational initiative. "Tell him to get another order of waffles," I said, jerking my thumb at his lanky beanpole of an accomplice.

And he did as told, hollering back at the Tier 1 Guardian to get me some waffles. That was one interesting thing I noticed. The obvious leader of the two was not the one who was an actual Guardian. "Hungry little thing, aren't you?" He said as he turned back to me, his gaze lingering on the empty, syrup-flooded plate, as well as on multiple other things. He tried to push the plate off to the side in some weird 'so I can see you better' gesture that didn't even make sense with the current table layout. Of course, his hand also brushed my leg, which was still up on the table as part of my power display.

I grabbed the edge of the plastic plate just before it was too far out of reach. There was a brief moment, right after his surprise, where I felt his true strength start to engage—and he quickly stopped it, letting me drag the plate back over to my side. Smart boy. I was pretty sure now that he was stronger than even a fit man of his general size ought to be—it would have been within reason, had he been putting more visible effort into it as opposed to it being a casual and reflexive thing. Interesting.

Meeting his gaze and never breaking it, I picked the used butter knife off the plate—and ate it.

I did it all in one bite, but I also made sure to make a slow, slightly drawn out display of chewing and swallowing. To his credit, this particular player just raised an eyebrow at my whole display. "Wow. Hungry indeed."

I snorted. "So what's even your deal? This guy's an actual Guardian—" I jerked my chin at Beanpole, who'd finally finished things at the front and was just now sliding in beside Sleazebag, much to the latter's tacit irritation. "—but unless I'm mistaken, you're not exactly 'stock' yourself." I tried not to grin stupidly after saying that. I felt like some kind of Guardian mafia don right then. So silly.

Sleazebag's eyes narrowed, and there was a tiny, almost imperceptible shift in his whole posture that nevertheless changed the overall feeling of his body language. But before he could say anything, the door slammed open again, and a very anxious, very out of breath lad came running straight towards our booth. Beanpole immediately sat up and twisted around, but Sleazebag kept his attention focused on me even as he also sat up.

"Boss! Boss, some kind of Anathema bitch just killed and ate Terry!"

Oh? I finally took my own legs off the table and sat straight. You had my curiosity, but now you have my—wait, shit. Is it that way, or is it the other way around? Fuck, which one actually makes more sense? I realized I was pointlessly distracting myself, and the new schmuck was already rambling at his 'boss.'

"No, no, like she looks mostly like a human, but with weird monster bits, and I know she's not a Guardian 'cause she fucking ate him! Ripped his head straight off!"

Hmm, I wonder—who could this possibly be? We were pretty far from the area where I'd inadvertently awakened another intelligent Anathema, but it was also well within reason to cross the same distance in this amount of time, even for a regular person on foot. Also, even if Monstergirl was already on the rampage, it seemed logical enough to me that she'd somehow end up fighting it out with some kind of Guardian or illegal augmentation tech gang.

By this point, everyone had gotten up—myself included—and it sure looked like the 'boss' was about to head out to deal with the sudden bullshit. Sorry, not sorry. But he hadn't forgotten about me, and I knew he was curious—so once again, I made a decision and decided to take my chance. "Let me guess, tall, kind of stacked white girl with big fuzzy horns and a spiky tail?"

Everyone suddenly looked at me. The out of breath guy—Mr. Asthmatic, I decided—looked confused for a moment until my words connected to something in his scattered brain. "Oh yeah actually, that's—wait, who are you?"

"A new ally." God that sounds so fucking cheesy and lame. You're going to need to work on that. At the same time, I willed my 'armor' into existence, now complete with massive, blade-filled wings. It startled two of them—but not Sleazebag, who instead studied me closely—and this time, it wasn't in a gross way.

"So," I said, now morphing my voice slightly into a stronger, more aggressive growl, "you're going to bring me to her."

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