Dawn of Hunger [Nonhuman FMC Progression]

65 - Away and Back Again


"Do you think we should try fighting it?" Chloe asked.

"Probably not," Kevin replied, as much to Chloe as to the rest of the team, "But unfortunately," he continued, teal light gathering around his wrist, "I never was very good at making the right decisions."

"Oh please," Luna, the newest addition to their team, scoffed. "Stop trying so hard to do the humble badass thing. This is real life, you aren't some kind of main character."

"I don't know what you're babbling about," Kevin retorted. Meanwhile, the remaining three—Laurence, Maria, and Katherine—shared a thinly amused look.

"It was a pretty good line though," Maria acceded. Laurence nodded, and Katherine tittered somewhat nervously. "But seriously, what do we actually want to do? Laurence, any thoughts?"

As the official team leader, it was Laurence's responsibility to coordinate the team, something which the Tier 1 Guardian took quite seriously—too seriously at times, according to some.

As they were all students and all happened to be on campus at the time that the incursion first appeared, it wasn't hard for the whole team to gather up at the nearest bunker. In particular, Katherine's abilities proved quite useful there, helping to track down and communicate with the farther flung team members until they were all together.

The only one absent was their former, briefly serving frontliner—Alex, whose current status as a Guardian, team member, student, or really anything else was murky at best. In her absence, none of the other members were capable of serving the same role, although with both quantity and quality of members, they were doing more than okay in the kinds of lower tier incursions appropriate for a high caliber but low tier team.

At the moment, they were camped out a block or so away from a Tier 3 titan. The kraken was by far the most dangerous foe they'd encountered up to this point in the incursion, and for most teams, the idea of intentionally engaging it wouldn't have even been a consideration.

That being said, this particular team had grown both skilled and strong, and they had experience fighting an Anathema just like this not too long ago. That being said, the previous encounter had gone rather terribly, and only a last-second push by their missing frontliner had saved a number of them from an early end to their Guardian careers.

"I don't think we should," Laurence decided. "We all know how poorly it went last time, and we had two other teams with us at the time. Our abilities haven't grown enough to make any real difference here. Katherine, is there anything else nearby we should be aware of? Any people or other Guardians?"

"...Yes," Katherine confirmed after a moment, though her attention remained distant, fixed on either the towering, Tier 3 Anathema or perhaps something else. "No civilians and just one Guardian—fuck, did she seriously tier up already?"

Understandably, her commentary left everyone else even more confused—everyone except Luna, who'd also come to a similar realization using her own esoteric senses. Luna, much like Alex, could taste nearby threats—and food—although unlike Alex, she used insectoid antennae instead of her usual tongue.

Those antennae were usually kept concealed, but she could briefly unfurl them when no one was paying much attention, as they could easily blend in with her long, dark hair.

"It's Alex," Katherine clarified, much to the surprise of everyone else. "She's here, and she's already fighting that titan." A strange, complex look crossed her features. It was hard to tell whether she was angry, upset, frustrated, concerned, or something else entirely. "I think she's already winning."

"Wait. Hold on a moment." Kevin was the first one to speak after a brief, but heavy, pause. "What do you mean she's fighting it? From where?"

As they continued to talk, the massive kraken continued to stumble and flail ineffectually, seemingly at nothing anyone could see. It was acting rather strangely, even by the usual, crazed standards of Anathema.

Finally, Katherine turned to actually look at the rest of the team. "From the inside."

Alexis "Valkyrie" Huntingfield

~Yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy,

Rip and tear and fill your tummy,

Blood and gore and guts are great,

They make me want to...~ Oh fucking hell, seriously?

It couldn't have been more than a minute or two, yet all of my delicious food had just gone utterly bland and tasteless! It was like eating rocks! Which admittedly was something I could actually do—and derive a meager amount of nutrition from, no less—but I would argue the analogy still held.

It was like the Anathema equivalent of saying that your delicious prime rib randomly transmuted into a dry as fuck hard tac cracker that didn't even have salt. You could eat it—I think I recalled that pirates ate something like that—but it was arguably not even a step up from nothing.

Well, fuck. Party's over, time to wrap up, folks.

A heavy tremor shook through my dark and meaty surroundings, indicating that the titanic Anathema had just hit the ground. That made sense, because I wouldn't have expected it to remain upright once its seemingly boundless regeneration finally failed and the whole thing kicked the bucket.

The process of extricating myself was slow and messy, but overall not too bad. The worst part was honestly that I still needed to breathe, even though I technically didn't.

One of the things I'd wondered about my Anathema biology from early on was whether I still needed to breathe. The answer was—well, it was hard to give a simple answer. Strictly speaking, my body—even monstrously altered as it was now—still liked to respirate, and failure to do so invited the usual burning sensation so familiar to me as a kind-of human.

However, my incredibly potent real-time regeneration turned out to be capable of just shouldering the burden for as long as I needed it to. The upside was that I could, in fact, get away with just not breathing.

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But there was also a downside—it was a constant regeneration sink that would make it harder for me to recover from other kinds of damage. That was the same reason so many Guardian teams included at least one member whose abilities were capable of dealing continuous, sustained damage—even if the regeneration didn't fail outright, like this kraken's just did, there was only so much ongoing hurt that any particular Anathema could sustain.

The other downside was that I still felt the ramping, burning sensation and the instinctual thirst for air. It would go away if I remained this way long enough—but until that point, it was just fucking irritating.

Finally, I knew I reached the outside when I wedged up against unreasonably firm and tough skin.

Oh, now this is gonna be a real bitch.

That was the funny thing about skin—one of the little quirks of being the kind of person who regularly ended up fighting monsters from the inside out. Skin was equally thick no matter which side of it you were currently on.

If you couldn't pierce a hide or carapace from the outside, well, good fucking luck doing it from the inside either. Killing it was one thing—the deeper insides were often much softer, that was true—but getting back out? Yeah, good fucking luck.

At least I already knew I was capable of it.

The trickiest part was just poking a small hole to get the process started. I ended up summoning my sword, which was buried somewhere else in the mass of dying kraken flesh. The intangibility feature was very useful in situations like this.

From there, puncturing a hole was a lot easier. Then, once I had a hole to stick a claw or two through, ripping an opening that was wide enough for the rest of me was a fairly straightforward affair.

As I slid out of wet, bloody viscera, I realized that a small crowd of people had gathered around and were now watching me. Well this is certainly one way to make a reunion.

"Uh, hi."

I wasn't far more concerned with the social aspects of this encounter than anything else. I wasn't remotely worried for my own direct safety. Even if every single one of them attacked me, I would win, or at the very least, escape with ease.

Even Luna wouldn't be a problem. I knew instantly that I was still way stronger than her. Actually, the gap seemed to have only widened, courtesy of my own rapid growth and reaching a higher tier.

Standing up and letting all the gross shit slide off of my metal body like a nonstick frying pan, I stared at each and every one of them. No one had said anything yet—they were all a mixture of curious and concerned to some degree, although Katherine was overwhelmingly the most emotionally invested.

"Well, unless you have something specific you want to tell me…" at the same time as I spoke, my mind raced to figure out how to play things. This was the first time I'd seen them as Alex since that night at Club Purple—a lot had happened since then, and I'd even been all over the news.

I decided to present it like I was under the control of the Violt Bouquet, but unwillingly so. I was now their enemy—but not by choice.

There were various reasons for that, but it was largely just instinctive. I kind of let a creepy, religious tone slip into my voice and body language as I continued. "...but I can't stay. I don't want to hurt any of you. But consider reaching out. I'm sure with a good word from me, the high council would welcome you into the fold."

"...The what now?" Kevin asked, making himself the first one to actually say anything.

That was my cue to leave. Letting wings erupt out of my back with more force and glamor than usual, I propelled myself straight up at great speed, not slowing down but continuing to speed off as I put distance between my former team and, well, me.

And not a moment too soon, because Matthias had been preparing to intervene that entire time. I doubted anyone other than Katherine or maybe also Luna realized he'd been lurking just out of sight.

Alright—what now? From my sudden new high altitude vantage point, I could tell that the incursion was being handled well. The border was shrinking, not growing, and several of the actual breaches seemed to have been fully shattered.

I decided to return to the bunker. I'd pretty much gotten most of what I wanted out of the incursion at this point, and I could grab my backpack from where I'd originally left it at that administrative building for the engineering college.

My phone and laptop should be mostly charged, so I could just read or play lightweight games inside the bunker for the next few hours. It would be a bit boring and uncomfortable—but I had a second, new identity to maintain—and I'd committed to acting with at least a little more responsibility and self control for the foreseeable future.

I realized there would be a slight problem upon retrieving my discarded backpack. Namely, I didn't have any fucking clothes. I already ate them. Damn.

My options now could be bucketed into those where I shifted back to being Vonnie and those where I remained Alex. Both came with their own difficulties—for Vonnie, I would either be inexplicably naked or, at best, I would have to scrounge up something that could pass for real clothing.

If I instead remained as I was now, the problem was similarly one of visibility. I drew a lot of attention in my current form, and that was before considering that I'd been on the news, let alone that I'd literally just encountered both my old team and Matthias.

I guess I could try just flying really high.

I decided against it. I already knew that one of the campus stores near the student union building had some shitty and massively overpriced university merchandise that included things like t-shirts and hoodies. I was sure I could find a pair of pants, too.

I continued to benefit from my earlier wisdom in knocking out the power in the surrounding few blocks. It was still off, and that meant I only had to worry about actual people. I didn't taste any during the entire walk.

Finally, I made it to the store in question—really, it was just one open, 'themed' section in a larger building. And lo! I was able to find a half-decent pair of jeans that would fit me as Vonnie. I'd been wearing jeans earlier, so while it wasn't an exact match, I hoped that it wouldn't be obvious I'd somehow swapped outfits if Katherine ended up coming back to the bunker or something.

I also snagged a t-shirt and a hoodie to cover it up. It was easy enough to pass off a change in outerwear like this, especially in a situation like this. Maybe my jacket got stuck on something and some dude gave me his generic hoodie. It was fine.

The only thing that wasn't fine was the complete lack of available underclothes. It wasn't a real clothing store, after all, so this was what I was expecting. I was just going to have to deal with it until this whole mess was over.

Lucky me.

After leaving the store, the last thing I did on my way over to the student union was to literally roll around on the ground for a bit to get myself dirty and messy. I also tried working up a sweat, but unfortunately that didn't really work. While my current appearance was hardly the pinnacle of fitness, ordinary exercise just wasn't capable of being strenuous.

I supposed that was fine. This was for the people in the bunker not questioning why I looked so obviously clean and fresh if I'd just survived a trek through an active incursion.

Satisfied, I returned to the student union, descended to the basement, and entered the staging area of the bunker. After knocking several times against the brightly painted resonator—designed specifically so that anyone inside could easily hear it—someone shut the outer doors, and then the inner doors opened, letting me in.

I immediately regretted it. A single whiff—the normal kind, not the Anathema senses kind—told me that there were way too many people festering in the cramped darkness.

But I'd come this far. I was just going to have to suffer.

And not snap at the crowdedness and start eating people.

That too. Technically, that one was always a risk.

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