The first change I felt was my heart racing in a way I had never experienced before. It wasn’t out of stress or adrenaline. A worrisome sensation, as if my heart was getting crushed as it struggled to beat.
I looked at my arms. Heavy. I didn’t feel the wind as I raised them. A slight tinkling as I moved. Only meager light from the streetlights outside passed through the gaps of the tendrils covering the windows. I lost Blanchette’s keen eyes and couldn’t fully make out my transformation, though dancing glitters told me that my skin had turned crystalline.
Did that… rhyme? Skin and crystalline should— Stop that nonsense! I should escape instead of thinking about bullshit like rhyming!
I kicked a toppled chair beside me. The wood broke apart, its flying pieces hitting the bar counter. Thankfully, I still had superstrength in this form, unlike Pino. Not as strong as Blanchette. But I had no use for superstrength now because I wasn’t going to fight.
Glass and wood shattered behind me.
“Yaaah!” I yelled, covering my head as I crouched. My own shout surprised me. I had never done that before, screaming in panic. The momentary shock faded as tendrils slithered into the restaurant.
My entire body froze, and I didn’t know why. I forced my legs to run. Go right! The windows that way weren’t covered by tendrils. The empty street called for me. But I stopped myself from diving at the glass and ended up tumbling over a table as I braked.
The door, I urged myself, surprisingly having some presence of mind in this tense situation.
This form was supposed to help me escape the Corebrings. But how?
Invisibility? Camouflage? Something like the thing that Deen’s Guardian Angel got going on? Whatever my power was, breaking windows might attract those stupid birds, mind-controlled by fetuses. A big tell if the glass shattered with no one there.
I unlocked the door, my long fingers not listening to me for a moment, and opened it just wide enough for my body to squeeze through. I gauged myself taller than my original body, with slight curves. Some jokes popped into my head. I chased them away. Have I always been this unfocused?
Assuming I was really invisible, anyone looking would assume that the door was open because the old building was rocked by waves of tendrils. And here they were, too, creeping from around the building.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I muttered under my breath, running across the street.
I trailed a rhythmic click-clack as my shoes made of crystalline quartz hit the pavement. This wasn’t a disguise—my footsteps alone were very noisy.
I could examine myself now with the lights from the street posts and the surrounding buildings. My bare legs and arms were covered with interlocking plates of smoky glass, making me look like a weird crystal knight or something. Underneath the glass I was freaking naked! But I didn’t have the mental space to feel embarrassed.
I felt around my face. It didn’t have any features, no eyes or a third eye or anything. Just a smooth curved surface, unlike the mask with many tiny polished surfaces, like a cut gem. I couldn’t check now, but I must be wearing a helmet.
Was I still in my Erind body but covered in glass? But I couldn’t feel it, nor did I notice anything weird with my sight. Also, I didn’t seem to be breathing.
Reaching the store across the restaurant, I crouched behind the chubby mascot statue by its entrance. No changes to my situation—both ends of the street were blocked off by the flood of tendrils. Actually, it was getting worse because this street would soon be covered as well. In front of me, the old-timey, wooden building was engulfed by massive coils of compacted gravel, slowly squeezed into splinters. This meant that the Corebrings thought I was still inside.
I didn’t dare peek, but Pan’s bird must be circling overhead, watching where Red Hood would exit. There was time for me to hide. Escape wasn’t an option because the flood had spread for blocks. Stay put here—that was the plan I came up with before Spooky Erind restarted the flow of time.
I grabbed the store’s doorknob and forcefully turned it. I quickly entered, closing the door behind me with as much softness as possible.
But it wouldn’t stay closed! I really fucking broke it, duh. I almost shouted in frustration.
“Okay, okay. Calm down.” Anything to prop against the door?
Those boxes beside that shelf. I sprinted to get one and returned in time before the door swung open again. Then I pressed the side of my helmet against the wooden panels, trying to discern what was happening outside. The building across the street continued to groan as the flood demolished it. Soon, the Corebrings would know they’d been had.
“Where’s the fucking stairs?” I asked the shelf that I had bumped in the near-darkness.
Stretching my arms out, I felt my way to the stairs. I had to climb to the upper floors to keep away from the tendril flood. After that, I had to figure out how to leave without getting spotted. The Corebrings would search the surroundings soon after finding out Red Hood had disappeared.
This body better have the power to make me look like a potted plant or something. If nothing else, I’d stand still and pretend to be a statue. No one would—
“Hello?” A male voice. He stood on top of the stairs, pointing his phone’s light at me.
My heart stopped. Then it raced as my body shivered. I hugged my chest.
This man wouldn’t have said ‘hello’ if he thought I was a misplaced statue. And he had already seen me move. I should kill—no! He was an innocent man. I balled my fist, ready to lunge and punch him. Control my superstrength. Just knock him out. He was just trying to survive, same as I was.
“Are you alright, miss?” He gestured for me to follow him.
Alright? In what universe did a woman encased in glass looked alright?
In the universe where my powers worked. This man saw differently.
Relief unraveled the knotted tension inside me. My survival was on the line, but I also didn’t want to hurt others. My mind replayed the screams of the people I left behind to be crushed by the flood. Something caught in my throat as an alien emotion weakened me.
“Come up quick!” urged the man, interrupting my thoughts. “Don’t wait for next week, miss. I’m no mugger, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“N-no,” I said, carefully climbing the stairs. Not sure what was going on with me.
I expected my quartz-covered feet would clank against the steps, but they didn’t make such a sound. Looking down, I was surprised to find that my legs had changed. Was I now wearing jeans and sneakers? I couldn’t make it out, but they certainly weren’t layered glass bands. I also had normal human arms, not covered by glass.
Automatic disguise? It didn’t need any thought from me, instantly activating the moment this man perceived me. He probably didn’t hear my heavy glass footsteps. An amazingly useful power!
Awesome help from Spooky and Glowy. My heart began to calm down. I wasn’t so jittery anymore, even with the loud crashes of a building getting destroyed.
“You scared the bejesus out of me, miss,” said the man, “skulking down there like some kind of thief.”
“Do you own this place? I’m sorry for breaking in. Not a thief. I was just hiding fro-from… what’s going on outside.”
“I’m not the owner, ma’am.” He hurried to the windows of the second floor to peek through the blinds. “Just a guy hiding, the same as you. I came down when I heard some noise. I thought those motherfucking tentacles got in. See them out there, swallowing up everything. Thank the Mother Core, it was only you.”
“D-do you know what’s happening?” I asked. My stammering wasn’t fake. I genuinely couldn’t speak straight because of the pressure of pretending to be someone else.
This should be no problem for me. I had done it many times and even enjoyed it. So why was I hesitating now? Why did I detest the fact that I had to fool this man? Was it because I was pretending to be innocent even though this mess was my fault?
I led the Corebrings here. I wanted innocent people killed as collateral damage. I… I’m a horrible person.
“Adumbrae attack,” replied the man. He scrolled through his phone. “What else could it be? Alerts after alerts. I put my phone on silent because it was getting annoying. Big mistake on my part. I would’ve known that I’d get fucking trapped here if I had read them.”
The screen’s light illuminated him, showing a full beard framing a tired face that looked familiar. But I certainly hadn’t met this guy before.
“We’re really trapped?” I asked. “There’s no way to safety?”
“The streets are claimed by Adumbrae. Going topside has its limits.”
“You mean traveling over the roofs?”
“Tried that already. I reached the end of the row of buildings, and what? The mass of Adumbrae tentacles was waiting to lovingly catch me and hug me to death if I went down. That’s why I went back here. But now, the tentacles reached here, too.”
“I-I see…” I had to save him to make up for the others I wasn’t able to save… That I intentionally didn’t save to show the dangers posed by the Corebrings, contrasting with my supposedly heroic acts as Red Hood. Such a disgusting act that was. I wanted to punch myself.
“We’ll stay here until we’re rescued, miss.” The man jabbed his finger up. “One more floor. Let’s pray to the Mother Core that we’ll be rescued before the tentacles get to us. I’ve heard that the Corebrings are in the city.”
“Shouldn’t we go to the roof then?” I asked as we went up the next flight of stairs. “Much better than down here.”
“Not if we can help it. There’s another Adumbrae out there jumping on the roofs. Wolf beast creature of some kind.”
I missed a step and almost fell. The man stopped climbing, offering a hand. I hesitated for a moment, but ended up accepting his help, holding his hand. He didn’t flinch. Did he feel a normal person’s palm as he pulled me up?
“There are two Adumbrae here?” It clicked why I recognized this man.
He was the last person I had saved! Then, I jumped to the balcony, and Clive attacked me. It made me feel proud to find him safe and sound.
“Probably more than two Adumbrae, judging by the alerts,” said the man, checking the windows again.
The noises had simmered down. The Corebrings knew that Red Hood had escaped. They’d expect to be in my human form now. If I stayed with this man, there’d be fewer chances that Trepanner would think I was Red Hood. They could interrogate us, maybe even examine me. But Spooky and Glowy Erind seemed confident that my power would hold.
“There’s this odd thing that happened.” The man knelt beside the window, keeping a lookout. “That other Adumbrae, the wolf man, saved me from those tentacles.”
“Saved you?” I repeated.
“As crazy as it sounds, it did just that,” the man said. “Snatched me up before the tentacles got me. Place me on top of the building two doors down like a chick safely in the nest. I think that counts as saving.”
“An Adumbrae saved you?” I asked, injecting a tone of incredulity. Just pretending to be a normal person. Everyone would be disbelieving of what he had said.
And I shouldn’t be feeling proud of my deed. It was my own fault that he needed saving. I had to redeem myself. Maybe not now, but someday.
What the hell went through my mind to come up with that plan? I didn’t need to endanger anybody. I could’ve run elsewhere, devoid of innocent bystanders, staying out of sight of Pan’s birds as much as I could. They’d eventually find me, one way or another. Clive would stab me with his flaming spear. Spooky and Glowy Erind would intervene to save me.
Everything would be as it had happened, minus all the dead people.
None of them needed to die. Their deaths were on my shoulders.
Even the justification that Corebrings killing people would sour public perception, dissuading the government from working with them, held no ground. Corebrings would continue to hunt for me, despite the Washington Protocol. The government might even work with them. And I knew all of that. I was just making up some excuse to bend Rule #4 and sow chaos.
“Seems a bit far-fetched that that really happened,” I added, weakly chuckling. “Are you sure you didn’t imagine it?”
The man shrugged. “Nope. Couldn’t have gotten on my own, could I? And I got this video.” He showed me his phone.
There I was in my werewolf form, swinging a car to beat back the tendrils. Anyone would think that I was fighting them. Not sure if the Corebrings would come out to admit that they caused the flood. Probably not because that would make it seem that an Adumbrae was defending civilians from the Corebrings.
“That’s… weird,” I said. “Maybe the Adumbrae are fighting each other over who gets to eat us?” There was the temptation to play up Red Hood as a good guy. But doing that would somehow legitimize the bullshit plan I had.
“Guess so, miss,” replied the man. “But I’m alive, and that’s all—”
CRASH!
Both of us jumped to our feet and looked at each other. We both knew what that sound meant. The man checked outside the window to make sure. “To the roof!” he cried out.
“But the Adum—”
“We have to risk it! Didn’t eat me the first time. It’s probably gone by now.”
We sprinted up the stairs. The man opened the door, into the night sky. I hesitated before exiting—this was it. Trepanner would see me. I stepped out, holding my breathe.
“Hello there,” said a shrill voice. “May I ask some questions?”
A bird landed in front of us while a half a dozen more flapped their ways above us.
(Author’s Notes: I still haven’t settled on a name for Domino V2, but I’ve decided that she should have a superhuman body. In the Prior Cycle, she was a regular human and very helpless except in specific circumstances. Domino V2, like her previous version, is mostly for disguise, stealth, and illusions. Her powers will be more controllable this time. However, I want to keep her main weakness in the Prior Cycle—she has the feelings of a normal person. It had a lot of potential for conflict. And we could use her to call out Erind’s bullshit, highlighting that Erind really is a psychopath. Thanks for your support!)