Katherine "Nekomata" Legato

The mall conference room where Katherine had all of her formal meetings with senior Star Guardians was a completely mundane looking meeting room in a small, equally mundane office building on the northern outskirts of LA proper. It wasn't even a high-rise, not by modern standards, as the ugly, squat building was only four floors tall, assuming you counted the lower parking garage.

It had only been a few days since the disaster at Club Purple and her subsequent escape from captivity, and it felt both longer and shorter in equal parts. It felt longer because so much had happened and shorter because Katherine had barely stopped worrying and working.

The escape itself went shockingly well. Katherine never even had to unleash the rats or bugs on another person, to her immense relief, and once she was out of the building itself, she spent more time worrying over what to do than actually avoiding any pursuers.

It was a half hour or so after that when an unfamiliar, high tier Star Guardian stepped into her path and escorted her back to safety. Now, she was finally having her first 'official' guidance meeting, but she'd had plenty more interactions with other, more experienced Star Guardians in the time between.

David and Luna were there too, as well as Katherine's own Aunt Stephanie. The relocation wasn't so much for their safety as it was for them to all have a temporary place to stay. There was nothing wrong with Alex's rooftop apartment thing, except that her dad would have just slept in his actual work office just to avoid remaining in their usual home.

He was too worked up about Alex, and Katherine could relate to that.

Aside from the fact that she was still held hostage, on the run, dead, a combination, or somehow even all three at once made for a distressing few days. There was a lot of news coverage going around, and the media seemed just as confused about things.

Was Alex a Guardian serial killer? A vigilante who'd bitten off more than she could chew? An experimental human bioweapon gone wrong? The whole debacle was quickly degenerating into something that looked less like a major regional story and more like the blossoming of half a dozen new conspiracy movements.

But no matter how ridiculous some of it sounded, Katherine was beginning to believe that there was at least a little bit of truth in almost all of it. The disaster was exactly the kind of thing that she'd needed to consider everything—really consider it—and realize what both of her fellow 'Star Guardians' really were.

That was why she brought Alex's dad and Luna along to the meeting. They were already in the building, of course, so it wasn't very challenging to go grab both of them at the last minute and drag them to the room where she knew to expect a meeting with several other actual Star Guardians.

She recognized only two of them before even opening the door. One of them was Eigenmacht, the Tier 8 with whom she'd had the largest number of interactions. He was also the one who'd retrieved her and Alex from that fateful incursion where she'd first received her core.

Another was a Tier 7 known as Bootstrap. He'd been there the other times as well. Usually, though, Eigenmacht was the most powerful in the group. This time, however, there were two additional high tier Star Guardians present, and one of them was even more powerful than the familiar Tier 8. Much more powerful—for a moment, Katherine wondered if it was Saber again.

She discarded the thought. The overall feel of the spirit was completely different.

Finally, there was an unfamiliar tier 7.

When they entered the conference room, Katherine made sure to usher the other two in first, as that way, she could close the door behind her and prevent them from leaving too quickly when everyone realized what she was doing.

The less powerful of the two unfamiliar Star Guardians stood up immediately after they entered. Getting her first look at him, Katherine saw that he was a surprisingly young Indian man with a sparkly, dark indigo top hat. Wait, I do know him—Merlin! Katherine knew Merlin very well—or rather, she was well aware of him. This was still her first time actually meeting the man.

Under slightly different circumstances, maybe she would have felt more excited.

"What are these two doing here?" Merlin asked. "I thought we were only meeting with Ms. Legato."

Katherine prepared to seize control of the conversation and start dropping bombshells—only for her gaze to finally land on the other unfamiliar Star Guardian. Holy shit. Much like with Merlin, Katherine already knew this face. Fabrica. No way.

Despite the fact that she recognized the woman, and that it wasn't really out of place for her to be here, Katherine still felt like she needed to confirm it. "Fabrica, right?" She nodded as well at the other Star Guardian she was meeting for the first time. "And Merlin?"

Merlin looked like he was trying to figure out how to respond. Meanwhile, Fabrica did it for him. "Correct on both counts."

Katherine idly noted that it was a rather multinational assembly. Between Bootstrap, Eigenmacht, Fabrica, and Merlin, there were four completely different countries of origin—namely Holland, Canada, China, and the United States. Fabrica studied Luna and Alex's dad for a moment. "I presume there's a specific reason for including the present company?"

Katherine steadied herself. This is it. You can do this. Don't back down. "Yes," she forced out. Stiffly pointing to her side at Luna, Katherine steeled herself to continue. Sorry about this. I know it's not your fault. But I have to. "She's not a Star Guardian, and neither is Alex. They're part Anathema. You did something to make a cross between humans and Anathema. Why?"

Katherine noted that Luna's spirit was signalling an intense desire to shrink out of sight or completely flee the room—but she also noted that the half-Anathema made no moves to do so, and her human face didn't show any signs of true fear or even surprise. She knew. She knew that it was them who did this to her. Have they all been hiding this from me?

Katherine rounded on Alex's dad, David, who had by this point sat himself down in a chair off to the side. "Did you know about this? Is she even your actual daughter?"

It was hard to interpret either the look on his face or the sound of his spirit. It was tired, as it had been for the past several days, but more than that, it was almost—relieved? "No," he said quietly, "but at this point I can't say I'm truly surprised." He glanced at the row of Star Guardians—one angry, two concerned, and one entirely disinterested.

None of them gave any indication that they would stop him. "And—well—I guess it depends on what you mean. I'm not her biological father, if that's what you're asking."

Katherine realized she didn't have it in her to be angry with him. If anything, he was the only other person in the room who seemed genuinely distressed by everything. Merlin looked tense and angry, sure, but it was in a righteous, principled sort of way. Katherine realized that she and Mr. Huntingfield were the only ones who had a personal stake. Even Luna, who was nice enough, wasn't really invested in any of it. She was just along for the ride.

"Why?" Katherine didn't think before asking a second time. "What is the point? What is actually going on here? Why lie to me like this?"

For an uncomfortable, still moment, no one said anything. It was ironic, then, that it was the least emotionally invested person in the entire room that broke the silence. "You got tangled up in politics," Bootstrap said. "Spooky, top secret politics."

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He wiggled his fingers for emphasis. "The Canuck is one of the top brass in a whole secret club that wants to do crazy experiments with the Anathema, yes, but also other things. And then you have the rabbit-puller over there—he just joined up with a whole other faction of weirdos who want to overregulate everything and make doing those experiments super illegal." Finally, he jerked his stubbled chin at Fabrica. "Meanwhile Ms. Can't Pick a Side loves playing mediator. Frankly, we wouldn't have any of these problems if we instead just let the free market—"

"Oh would you please just fucking shut up," Merlin snapped at Bootstrap. "No one wants to hear you preach about the stupid fucking non-aggression pact, so why don't we just—"

"Principle," Bootstrap interjected.

Merlin froze. "Come again?"

"You called it the non-aggression pact," Bootstrap explained. "It's actually the non-aggression principle. Frankly, I think the way that the whole lot of us have so far avoided going hog-wild killing each other is solid experimental evidence in favor of the NAP. Unfortunately, due to the power disparity with the rest of society, the very strength of the principle is preventing us from breaking the grip that authoritarian states have over the rest of the world—"

The whole time Bootstrap continued talking, Merlin became visibly more enraged. Eigenmacht and Frabrica, meanwhile, looked respectively irritated and mildly concerned.

"—which is why the efficiency of the free market—"

"Alright, that's it," Merlin declared, angrily grabbing his tophat and rummaging around inside of it. "You really think the non-aggression principle is so great? Huh? Well I'll show you just how much I care about non-aggression. O-ho-ho, just you wait…"

"Okay, this has gone on long enough," Eigemacht declared. Unlike Merlin, he sounded largely indifferent, like he was just stating a simple fact. "Bye-bye." With a twisting, yanking motion of his hands, reality itself rippled—and then there was no trace of either Merlin or Bootstrap.

"Was that really wise?" Fabrica asked him. "This is a bit of a situation for the Blues. I'm not sure that removing Merlin like that was the right call."

A gunshot, followed by the sound of shattering glass, drew both of their attention back to Katherine. Well that worked pretty well. Stuffing the stolen handgun back into her purse, she pinned both of the vastly more powerful Star Guardians down with a firm gaze. "No more interruptions. No more internal arguments. Tell me what is going on."

Alexis "Valkyrie" Huntingfield

"Ugh," I groaned while rolling and twisting over on my back. "You're completely spoiling me."

"Oh, good. I was wondering when we could finally stop," Mr. Bones mused.

I don't know if I'd ever felt so much regret so suddenly for something I'd just said. "Nononono, I didn't mean literally, I was just expressing my tremendous gratitude." I rolled back into a sitting position with my legs tucked under me, lowering my neck down so that I could look upwards with big, gold, innocent, monstrous eyes. "Most people wouldn't do anything for a poor, starving Anathema like myself. I was being hyperbolic, there. In fact, I think I might just keel over from malnutrition at any moment now."

The Tier 6 Guardian studied me from a towering throne of carved bone. "...Right."

With a wave of his boney hand, a shoddy gate—made out of bones, of course—opened in the colosseum-like fortification he'd constructed—also out of bone—to house both of us in the middle of the desert.

Through it came a whole contingent of skeletons hauling an angry, bellowing smasher. The way it was being wrangled and corralled by spear-wielding minions bellied the true power level of the newest offering. A flick of my silver tongue revealed that this newest sacrifice was an upper tier 4—the equivalent of a strong Tier 3 Guardian, and a single full tier stronger than myself.

For the past hour or so, Mr. Bones had been staging monstrous gladiatorial fights—dragging in interesting beasties and making them fight each other, groups of his weaker minions, or myself. Why? Because he can, I guess.

I certainly wasn't going to complain. What could have been the worst day of my life was now shaping up to be the best. It was fun, it was entertaining, and best of all, I was eating very, very well. The amount of high-tier food the arena strategy let me consume was—it was incredible. Mr. Bones' help in pinning down defeated enemies such that I could eat as much as I could before they died and lost all flavor was a massive cherry on top.

And it wasn't just tasty. I could feel something starting to build up, churning and digesting. I could tell by pure instinct that I would come out of this substantially more powerful than I came in. And to think—all it took was a bored and slightly psychotic Tier 6 holding down monsters twice as powerful as me so I could conveniently feast on them!

I didn't want to get too far ahead of myself—but I think I might even be able to hit Tier 4. I wondered if any other Anathema in history had it this good.

The smasher occupied a bit of a weird spot, though. It was more powerful than something I would ever feel confident taking on by myself at this point, yet it wasn't something that was remotely challenging for someone like Mr. Bones, even when he was heavily restricting himself in any of the ways he had been, such as only using cheap, fodder minions or fighting without using his legs.

That second one was one of my favorites to watch.

And finally, the big, angry ape-thing wasn't all that interesting. There were some much weirder, rarer variants that he'd brought in before. Why even bother retrieving something like this? Rising back up to a 'standing' position—you know, I think I need to figure out a new way to think about posture and position for this form—I kicked sand off of my fore-talons and plodded closer to the throne. "Is this one just a snack or something? I'm certainly not complaining, just curious."

The Tier 6 Guardian stared down at me with a hard to read expression. Strictly speaking, he only had one expression to begin with, which would make him hard to read indeed—but I absolutely could not shake the subtly disconcerting effect. The frequency and strength of the impressions I got from his featureless skull convinced me that something supernatural was definitely going on.

"No. I can tell you're approaching the next tier. Also, I'm bored."

I blinked. At the same time, I realized my tail was starting to twitch and lash a bit. I forced myself to reassert control over it. I'm not going to waste all the work I put into controlling appearances just to give everything away while in chamelium form. "So what are you saying?" I glanced at the struggling smasher. "I'm not ready for something that strong."

"Ready?" Mr. Bones laughed. "Girl, there is no ready. Do you know why fresh, starry-eyed young Guardians are encouraged to go running around in ridiculous costumes, fighting in incursions that any proper Civil Guard unit could handle five times more effectively? Why new teams are placed with leaders who are at best just two tiers higher than themselves? Have you ever wondered why it wouldn't be better, smarter, more efficient to send the kiddies out with a Tier 6 and power them up safely?"

He pointed at the restrained Tier 4. "Because it doesn't fucking work. They don't power up. You only get a Tier 6 in the first place by legitimately challenging and endangering them. And sure, maybe Anathema are a bit different—but do you really think you'll ever attain true strength this way?"

I paused. He might have a point. He was a Tier 6, after all. There really weren't that many of those—in general, Tier 6 was the cap. While there were regular Guardians who reached Tier 7, they were so rare as to have a mystique and celebrity status directly comparable to true Star Guardians. Many active Guardians never even breached the Tier 3 to 4 gap.

All of that was to say—I think I should actually listen to him.

Relaxing a bit, Mr. Bones sighed. "Look, that's not to say that it should be sink or swim at all times. There's a lot of room for safer forms of hands-on training, and at the end of the day, somewhere in the middle is usually best. You can't get high tiers without real danger and struggle—but you also won't get any if they all end up dying before they make it there. It's a balance."

He pointed at the Tier 4 smasher again. "Which is why I was okay with feeding you like this. I'm not opposed to boosting you a bit here and there. But now that you're getting closer to the edge?"

All as one, the minions stopped trying to contain the smasher. I mentally chuckled to myself. Can't say he doesn't have a sense of theatrical timing. I estimated I had a few seconds at best before the angry, brutish Tier 4 locked onto me as the obvious target.

"Now, you have to push yourself—and discover for yourself a new way to take on the heat."

I was only half listening to him at this point. You've got this, Alex. You've got this. I might have focused on metal up to this point—but I latched onto a specific word in his little motivational speech. And you know what else chameliums are good at?

"I won't just handle the heat," I growled, casually shifting my synthetic voice into a deep and gritty growl. "I'll make it."

The smasher roared—and so did I. Let's see if you can smash this.

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