The closest cluster of people to the Kaiju were entirely unguarded. In Lower Olympus, if you weren't carrying, it meant you could usually hold your own somehow. They'd found themselves a cluster of rundown homes, a shell of what used to be a strip mall, and a parking lot to set up a home base. Tents, tarps, open fire pits and kids running around dressed in soiled, filthy clothes. Sometimes Lower Olympus didn't even look like it belonged to this city. Or smelt like it. Raunchy. Hot asphalt. Oily tarmac and the lingering stench of the fire brewed into a cocktail that nearly choked me the moment I breathed it in. Nothing stood out with these guys, though. Run of the mill men, women, and everyone else just trying to see through the next hour. Until, of course, they spotted me in the sky.

It started with a lookout perched on top of the strip mall, binoculars on me and his finger pointed. Almost as if this had been rehearsed, the four or five streets leading into this area got blocked off with rusted, burned-out cars. Still no guns being raised. Still no Supers coming out of the fray and trying to go home with a couple of my teeth in their pockets. Not a bad start compared to most times. Limelight was floating beside me, his hair light and wavy and his porcelain skin glowing faintly. He smelt…weird. Like wet dirt. Maybe a morgue. A little like ozone.

But it meant the whispering hiss of that creature wasn't in my ears when I was around him, so I stomached the smells filling my lungs as I raised my hands and slowly descended through the sky until I landed on the street.

Everyone had cleared out by the time we'd been spotted. Doors slammed shut, deadbolts slid into place. Heavy pieces of cloth sprung over boarded-up windows. It was a ghost street in seconds. I could hear shuffling inside the buildings surrounding me. I could almost hear every single echo the dirt under my boots made as I slowly walked down the avenue. Fire pits smoldered. Smoke lazily hung in the air, making it stink. Unwashed bodies. Old pipes and clogged toilets, something meaty cooking from somewhere I couldn't see, and then came the command.

"Stop right there!" So I stopped, hands on my hips, as a man standing on the shell of an old SUV pointed his hands at me, palms out, the air quaking around his fingers. Limelight waved at him. I gave him a look, and he slowly put his hand down. The guy on the car looked around, then glanced at the sky. He was wearing a party mask, a tiger with its grin scribbled out. I wouldn't have taken him so seriously, because…I mean, c'mon, I've fought so many people way worse than guys like this before, but since I've got this new peace and harmony thing I'm trying out for Bianca's sake, sure, fine, I'll let the guy in the tiger mask shout at me. "State your business, or leave! Now!"

"I just came here to talk," I said, then waved my hand to my side. "This guy speaks on behalf of the Kaiju."

Wind rolled through the street, throwing trash and old newspapers against my leg. The headline Olympia Missing! was printed out, probably from several months ago. The guy on the car tensed. He didn't show it, but his muscles tightened, sounding like old rope in my ears. "We've got no business with them," he spat. "None at all."

Limelight opened his mouth. I spoke over him. "Yeah, well, you kinda do. You live next to them."

"They stole that land," he snarled. "They're lucky we don't want it back."

"Right," I muttered under my breath, then spoke a little louder. "Who's in charge?"

His jaw tensed. I could almost hear his teeth grinding against one another. "Leave."

"I suppose that rules him out," Limelight said quietly. "What'll it take for us to meet your boss?"

"Kaiju-lovers don't have a single thing that we want."

"What if we—"

A shockwave slammed into my chest, sending me skipping and skidding down the street. I rolled to a stop, slumped into a heap. I wheezed for air. My throat was tight. Air dribbled into my mouth with each fighting gasp. I clenched my jaw and pushed myself off the ground, throwing a loose tarp I'd collected off me. I glared at the guy.

Then shut my eyes, let out a shaky breath, and tried my best to get my fingers out of the pavement.

"Final warning!" he yelled, leaping off the car. "I don't care who you are, this is our Eden, our zone!"

Limelight was suddenly beside me, offering a hand. I grudgingly took it and tried to pretend I could breathe without sounding like my chest was actively against doing that. Limelight looked at him, his skin still softly glowing, his eyes a pale yellow. "He's aggravated," he muttered. "The spirits didn't quite enjoy that noise."

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"Me neither," I said, working my finger into my ear. My head was ringing.

"What should we do now?" he asked.

"Look," I said loudly, spreading my arms. "I came here to warn you."

"Is that a threat?" he shouted. The air quaked around him. Limelight flinched.

"Oh my Gods," I muttered. "You have way bigger problems than the Kaiju living close to you guys." I started walking forward slowly, hands raised, taking my time. "The Kaiju living near the stadium don't want any kind of problems with you people, alright? Heck, you guys need one another more than you probably even think."

"They kill us normal folk," he said, stopping dead. Dirt skittered against his shoes. "They steal our kids."

"Incorrect," Limelight said beside me. "The ones you are referring to are not the ones we represent."

He looked at both us of, breathing heavily as his arms shook. "That's bullshit."

Limelight gestured to me. "Olympia herself says it's true. If you don't trust me, trust her."

I'm not sure he'll buy that.

The guy swallowed, stared at me. I nodded slowly, hands still raised. A tiny voice in the back of my head was already counting the seconds it would take to put him down. But that was an old bad habit, always playing offence instead of trying to figure out how to not always end things so violently. I was a lot of things, but I wasn't going to be like those assholes in the stars. If they—scrartch that, when they do eventually get here, I didn't want them to even think I was on their side. So that meant I had to be better at this. I had to be more…human, I guess.

Even though the humans liked killing each other over the dirtiest little crumbs, too.

Hell, I know this might sound kinda bad, but maybe I'm supposed to be a little more than human. At the end of the day, I was pretty much neither fully Arkathian nor fully human either. I was just…me. However much that meant. And right now, the Kaiju had split, and there was a pride of them going around slaughtering people to grab as much space and resources as they could before things got better around here. They were ruining the rest of the Kaiju's lives with whatever ideals they had going on, and if more people could know that, then my life would get a lot easier. Less fighting. Fewer fires to worry about. I know Ava was probably gonna benefit somehow, but fine.

If it meant I didn't have to stomach the sounds of people killing each other every time I put on headphones and tried to catch some sleep, then I'd take it. It wasn't gonna be easy. Not because I didn't want to do any of this.

But because my life was never simple to begin with, starting from the moment I was born.

The guy in front of us lowered his hands. The quaking around him stopped. Good. My chest still ached, and I had grit between my teeth, but I smiled at him as he got closer. He took off the mask and stuffed it inside his jacket, looking me up and down with gray eyes and a heavily bearded face. I was expecting someone a lot younger. He looked like Lower Olympus had finished smothering him for the past several decades and finally threw him out.

"Is that actually true?" he said, as the sound of chatter filled the windows around us. "It's not them?"

Limelight moved closer, his gloved hand glowing white. "I can show you—"

The man startled and stepped back.

I put up my hands and said, "Easy. We're not here to screw with your mind." I shot Limelight a look. He shrugged and waved his hand out to the left. Wispy light spiralled together, forming several figures. Huh. I watched as they came together, a group of five ghostly apparitions that stood facing us. Both the guy and I stared at them. Four of them were big cats, not all with Kaiju heads, but larger teeth, slightly bent legs, but powerful, massive, big enough to prowl and hunt and kill a person and use their jaws to sever their heads from their throats. But the guy in the middle was the most impressive. A mane of hair sat around his shoulders. Human face. A scar that ran across his mouth all the way to his throat, garish even in this form. His arms were folded, his scowl hard and beard heavy.

"He's named himself Savage," Limelight said. With a flick of his hand, the wispy white air shifted, changing into a scene with the five of them in the middle of a bloodbath, gutting open bodies, with Savage sinking his hands into a man's chest, tearing out his heart. "As is common with a lot of Kaiju, where he came from, where he was born, or even what his real name was, is unknown." He closed his fist. The smoky apparitions vanished, the sickly scent of them hanging in the air. Limelight looked at the guy. "But he's out for blood. Human blood."

"How do I know this isn't some kind of trick?" he asked. "We open our gates just to get killed?"

I shook my head. "The Kaiju are as afraid of them as you are. Most of those guys don't even eat meat, let alone human meat. At the end of the day, they are normal people. It makes Savage and the ones who follow him—"

"Cannibals," he whispered. He shut his eyes. Breathed shakily. "I should've just left this city."

I patted his shoulder and said, "We're gonna make things better. I just need to talk to your boss."

He tensed his jaw, then nodded. I almost grinned. Holy shit, talking to people actually works! I would've just hit him until he either got with the program or he gave up his boss' location. "But he's not very understanding."

"Please," I said. "I grew up with people who lived and breathed that word. How bad is he?"

"There are rumors," he said quietly, so silent it almost came out as a whisper. He looked around, as if the people hiding behind the sheets and the kids peeking out from alleyways were a threat to him. "About his name."

I glanced at Limelight, then back at the guy. "Why's your heart beating so fast? You trust him, right?"

"We… It's…" He cursed. "He keeps us safe. He wards off gangs and raiders and Supers for us."

A sick, icy feeling settled in my gut. "It's not Lucian, is it?"

Limelight made a gesture, then smiled at me.

"No," the man said. The tightness in my chest uncoiled. "But he used to call himself Wasteland."

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