"Hi," I said, hoping that the vial of mystery chemicals masking my true nature as a man-eating, interdimensional monster was doing its job, "I'm Veronica, but you can just call me Vonnie."
This might have been my new peer university mentor's first time meeting me, but it was hardly my first time meeting her. I knew Katherine very well by now, despite the fact that she'd only known the other me—the one with a different name and face—for like a month.
As the entire purpose of my new identity as 'Veronica' was to maintain a largely separate, civilian life that I could also use as a final backup or surprise card in the worst kind of emergency, meeting Katherine right away like this was a coincidence that was far from ideal.
You just had to choose the same major to start over in that she's in. And this is what you get for it. To be fair to myself, there were only so many engineering programs, and electrical was one of the most popular. I chose it because I wanted to, not because of Katherine.
But you still could have done something else, like nuclear or even computer science. Ugh. Whatever. In the end, what was done was done. And honestly, it wasn't even that surprising that Katherine would be the one to volunteer for some stupid new student mentoring shit like this. The original nickname I'd given her was Class President, after all.
"And I'm Katherine," she replied as she released my hand—a hand which I deliberately kept soft and limp throughout the duration of our sad little handshake, as a calculated contrast to my usual firm and assertive style. "Katherine Legato. But you can just call me Kathy. Or Kat! That one works too."
I wanted to roll my eyes. I knew with great confidence that she'd never offered to go by Kat prior to the current semester. That was an entirely new development, and I was the cause. Or rather, Alex was. I was currently Vonnie, a completely ordinary human woman who'd never met Katherine before and didn't even know who this 'Alex' person was.
"Oh, Legato, like the music term!" More obfuscation. As Alex, I'd pointed out that 'Legato' could be separated into 'le' attached to 'gato,' like the Spanish word for cat. I thought it was funny that her name could basically be 'Kat the Cat,' disregarding the fact that it would really be either el gato or la gata in actual Spanish.
That was the entire reason I'd taken to calling her Kat in the first place. Interesting how she's decided she'd be fine if more people end up using it—it made me wonder if she had some kind of gay crush on me after all. And if that were the case, it was also interesting that it still applied. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised—I'd inadvertently discovered her twisted, disturbingly toxic taste in fictional romance at the same time I realized she was gay.
But I was getting ahead of myself. The diversions from my other identity were all calculated to be less than subtle—to be entirely unconscious. It was less about trying to convince someone I wasn't who they suspected me to be and more about preventing them from ever considering such an absurd idea in the first place by consciously shifting my overall vibe.
For a fleeting moment, I remembered how Ted Kacynski got caught when his own brother read his published manifesto and realized that literally no one else he'd ever met said certain things in the particular way his brother did.
I didn't want something like that to ever happen to me.
But there was still an even bigger, looming question—because Katherine wasn't just problematic due to already knowing me under my original, now suspected serial killer and organized crime member identity.
No, the worst part was the way her own Star Guardian abilities played into this. Her ability to hear and communicate with 'spirits' would have given me away instantly if not for the masking elixir the Bouquet had the foresight to have supplied me. I had zero doubt the total appearance overhaul would have fooled her. She would have known it was me before I even entered the building.
But due to the elixir currently masking my spirit, inhuman nature, and esoteric abilities—well, I wasn't quite sure. I had no idea how things would play out—by which I meant not only between the elixir and Katherine's power, but also in the immediate future.
She'd given no indication that she thought anything was afoot—but I would remain on edge. The only rational path forward was to assume that both conditions were true. I needed to act like the cat was already out of the bag and act as if she were utterly clueless.
Don't give away anything—but more importantly—I needed to make sure that even if she knew, that she didn't know that I knew that she knew. God.
What a massive headache.
Katherine "Nekomata" Legato
Katherine knew something was up. In fact, she knew it before the supposed transfer student even entered the building. What she didn't know was what specifically was up, or whether the other woman was aware that she knew that not everything was as it seemed.
The logical thing to do, she reasoned, would be to pretend like I've been completely fooled. But she also had to consider the possibility that Veronica knew that she knew, in which case—I don't know. She was already starting to confuse herself.
What gave it away was how Veronica's entire spirit was so blatantly fake. From a distance, or when not given even the slightest bit of scrutiny, it wouldn't draw attention to her senses as anything other than a completely ordinary human spirit.
Even upon closer inspection, there was nothing to indicate that it was any kind of Guardian, Star Guardian, Anathema, or otherwise altered or nonhuman. There was, however, the fact that something artificial had been done to mask whatever was really going on.
Katherine recalled the way it was sometimes possible to trick an image recognition algorithm into confidently and completely misclassifying an object or person by just tacking on a written sign, exploiting the algorithm's ability to read text.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
That was kind of what was going on here. There was just a big, blank wall completely blocking the real spirit off, and it had the esoteric equivalent of big, bold letters loudly proclaiming 'totally ordinary human' on it.
It was hard to imagine something that would have been more suspicious.
Katherine came to the conclusion that the facade was designed to fool the more limited perception most mid or high tier Guardians had, as well as perhaps technological methods of detection.
But despite still having yet to reach Tier 2, she was no ordinary Guardian. She was one of the vastly rarer, far more capable, true Star Guardians—and more than even that, her entire core ability was all about deciphering and commanding spirits. Such a crude attempt was doomed to fail against her.
Yet as she gave the supposed transfer student a brief tour of the engineering buildings, her mind kept wandering back to the question of who and why. The more she thought about it, the more she began to doubt that this encounter was intentional.
After all, if someone were trying to get close to her undetected like this, surely there would have been better avenues. The idea that they somehow knew she would volunteer as a junior mentor and also be selected was slim at best. Similarly, she seriously doubted anyone who knew that she was both a Star Guardian as well as her specific abilities would bet on her being fooled like this.
No—the more she thought about it, the more it seemed like an unfortunate coincidence for this Veronica and whomever else she might be working with. Katherine was unfortunately well acquainted by this point with Anathema cultists, Guardian crime rings, and even other, more powerful and experienced Star Guardians conducting horrific human experiments.
Two of her close new friends were even victims of that last one—both Luna and Alex were the result of illegal experiments that deliberately inflicted ordinary people with Anathema seeds in an ill-considered attempt to synthesize new Star Guardians on demand.
And while Luna was working on integrating into Katherine's Tier 1 Guardian team, Alex, who'd briefly served as their team's main frontliner, had gone missing at the hands of a criminal organization that recruited unscrupulous Guardians and trafficked illegal esoteric material and technology.
Katherine hoped Alex was okay. The only assurances she got came from the same immoral Star Guardians who'd experimented on her—and all they could tell her was that Alex was still alive. That at least gave Katherine the tiniest amount of hope.
Alex is so strong. She didn't mean powerful—she was thinking about strength of character. She can get through whatever they're doing to her. I know she can.
All this to say—Katherine didn't know what specifically this Veronica was aiming at, but it couldn't be anything good. But, since she was beginning to believe that meeting like this was an accident, it presented an opportunity.
I imagine cultists or criminal guardians need a way to be stealthy most of the time, Katherine reasoned, so she's probably just trying to attend college like normal, despite being an Anathema cultists or something like that.
So really—this is actually an opportunity, isn't it?
The miniature tour of the engineering college, and specifically the electrical department, was about to come to a close. So, Katherine decided then and there to use Veronica as an unexpected lead.
She still remembered Alex's former enthusiasm to go chasing down gangs and cultists—something that Katherine initially hesitated to participate in. But now? Now, she was committed. She would do whatever it took to take them all down—and to save her friend.
Veronica would be her new starting place. Later, Katherine would ask some of her own contacts about something that could mask a spirit like that—but right now, it was time to swallow her anxiety and commit to her new plan.
I need to push Veronica to be my friend. If the other woman didn't even realize she'd been exposed, that would make things easy. But even in the other case, Katherine was confident she could manage.
"Vonnie"
This fucking bitch.
Inside, I was fuming. The whole time Katherine prattled on about lame, useless crap that I mostly already knew, I was just itching to get away from her and possibly even phone home to Cassandra, otherwise known as 'Anchor,' and one of my main contacts within my new criminal family.
But now that the stupid tour bullshit was finally ending, Katherine just had to be her obnoxious self by blatantly pushing for me to become her friend or something. The worst part was that I genuinely couldn't tell if it was a sign that she knew I was really Alex.
There were three main possibilities here—case one, she knew I was Alex and was trying to reconnect with me. I considered this one the least likely. Second, maybe she really had no idea anything was afoot and was just trying to adopt the nervous introvert persona I'd constructed for Vonnie. I thought this one wasn't much more likely than the first.
The third and most probable case, I thought, was that she knew something was weird with me but had no idea who or even what I was.
In any case other than the first, she was being way more extroverted, confident, and assertive than she ever would have been when I first met her. Which is kind of annoying. I'd much rather her to have stayed meek and indecisive.
Unfortunately, I didn't really have much room to maneuver a way out of her advances. The bounds of Vonnie's persona wouldn't allow for it.
Over the past month, the lines between my old persona's had become increasingly blurry. Frankly, by the end of week one, circumstances had changed so much that my old rules of appearances and behavior had broken down.
Perhaps that was partially to blame for the increasingly reckless behavior leading up to my eventual escape to Vegas and subsequent surrender into the grasp of the Bouquet.
Regardless, it was past time to return to a new normal. Interestingly, it would be the first time where I had not only multiple persona's to manage, but two entirely different people as far as the government, people I'd already met, and almost literally anyone else was concerned.
I continued to look forward to it.
But god damn it, Katherine, could you please just not? The way she trapped me into exchanging phone numbers, and address, and course schedules, and a bunch of other bullshit made me want to throttle her or at least start ripping my own newly longer and darker hair out.
Objectively, I could have just stonewalled her and cut any future contact—but that wasn't something Vonnie could do, and as it currently wasn't a life or death situation, neither could I. Maddening.
We'd ended up close to the so-called 'student union' building where a lot of people went to get shitty food while on campus, among other miscellaneous services. The delightfully gray and misty skies were steadily giving way to a clear, sunny winter day, which just added to my mounting irritation. I liked when it looked all dark and brooding.
"Well, goodbye, then," Katherine said, "it was nice to meet you!"
"...You too," I said somewhat absentmindedly. My attention was taken up by the subtle sensation of a faint pressure washing over me—a pressure that wasn't quite physical, and which I'd come to associate with events like breaches forming or people awakening as part-Anathema.
It was so faint, but…
I realized Katherine had stopped talking. She wasn't even looking at me or her phone—rather, she had been staring off in the same direction that caught my own attention. At nearly the same time, she also turned to look back at me, and our gazes ended up locking.
Then several distinct flashes of frozen, violet light streaked through the sky.
It was quite easy to see, as the whole campus had gone dim again, as if the clouds had instantly come back. They hadn't, though—aside from the violet streaks and the sudden, uncanny dimness, the sky was clear.
It was an incursion.
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