Chapter 79: Uh-oh  

I have an upcoming holiday in May. I'll keep writing, but depending on internet availability, uploads may become sporadic.

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“Hello,” Jaclyn greeted … whoever had spoken. There were a lot of manatees in the water, somewhere between twenty and forty, and considering the fact that they were solely talking through sound magic, she couldn’t even tell in what direction she should be looking for the speaker in, let alone who, specifically, they were.

In fact, it was taking a lot of effort to keep up a calm facade and calmly sweep her eyes across her surroundings, rather than flicking her gaze from point to point in a haphazard, almost frantic, manner. Though how well her efforts translated across species boundaries was anyone’s business. 

She swallowed, suddenly nervous. As different as the orcs were, both in appearance and mannerisms, there were still extensive similarities to the people she was used to dealing with. 

This … no matter how wrong, how offensive, she knew the thought was, intellectually speaking, it still felt like she was addressing a zoo exhibit and someone was talking back through a hidden speaker. Rather than, you know, having a conversation with normal people. 

Being aware of the correct lens to look this situation through was far from the same as being able to implement it. 

“My name is Jaclyn Abrams, I’m the Deputy Director of the Bureau for Preternatural Affairs, and I do my best to make sure that the transformation zone in London stays safe,” she added after a long moment. 

“Greetings, Jaclyn. My name is Auralay.” 

A new voice, or rather, an individual one as opposed to the countless harmonized ones that had combined to make the previous one … but she still had no idea who’d spoken. 

Hunter nudged her with his elbow as he subtly gestured to a particularly large and sleek manatee circling around the boat. 

This was so weird. 

This felt so weird. 

“I heard you wanted to talk to someone from another transformation zone,” Jaclyn replied. 

“That is correct.” 

Another voice, a new one. Though in a brief flash of distraction, Jaclyn realized that the burgeoning BPA bureaucracy would likely come up with its own terms for the variation in tone used by individual manatees because just using an existing term that fit the bill would just be too easy. 

This time, Hunter didn’t even have to nudge her for her to pay attention to who he was indicating. Another manatee on the sleeker side, but this one was slim to the point where she might have thought she was looking at a porpoise instead. And the introduction followed immediately. 

“Alumara, chief scout.” 

Somehow, the introduction came across as a gruff grunt, despite there being zero reasons for it to sound like that. The sheer amount of inflection and implication carried in such an artificial voice was staggering. 

“Have you dealt with your anchor beast yet?”

Same voice, or at least similar enough that Jaclyn couldn’t tell the difference. 

“What’s an anchor beast?” she asked.

“The strongest monster in any transformation zone, you had to have had one, a monster whose power suffused its domain and anchored it when the world’s merged,” Auralay “said,” or at least Jaclyn was pretty sure she knew who the speaker was. 

As for the anchor beast … that would have to have been Alaxia, right? Deadalus had only surpassed her after the fact? And there wasn’t something even stronger hiding in the depths of that green hell? 

“Probably,” Jaclyn admitted. “We killed a dragon who found herself trapped in a human body when the worlds merged. But I don’t know anything about her having been an ‘anchor’ or something to that effect.”

“But you do have a system suited to combat outside the water?” Auralay questioned. 

Jaclyn was about to ask why that mattered when Hunter explained. 

“This place is from a world that’s mostly ocean, so that’s why its native system is the way it is. But the Manatee Grove is almost never deep enough for it to work at anywhere near its full potential,” he said with a slight roll of his eyes. 

Yeah, that had to stink. You got literal superpowers and could barely use them to fix the issue at hand … but what did he know about the anchor beast? 

“We do,” Jaclyn said. “Why?” 

“Your weapons do not function in this place. At least your most powerful ones don’t. My people are not warriors, and our system is ill-suited to allowing others to  fight the monster at the heart of this place, when it invetably realizes how powerful it is compared to this world,” a third voice announced, deep and rumbling. 

Once again, Hunter pointed out the speaker, though Jaclyn found herself wondering just why the truly massive manatee would sound exactly like how you’d expect them to sound, considering the medium they were speaking through. 

But that was the crux of the matter, wasn’t it? A powerful monster that defied local powers? 

Of course, they’d wanted to talk to someone from another transformation zone, which threw up another question: why was this the first she was hearing of this?

“Thank you, Vivied,” Auralay added, twisting in the water to briefly glance? at the third manatee Hunter had indicated. 

… trying to read the alien body language was giving Jaclyn a headache. 

This time, the apparent leader swam closer, diving under the boat to pop up as close to Jaclyn as she could get while remaining in the water. 

“Our anchor beast was one of the strongest beings on our world, yours has only had access to magic for a short while. I have no doubt that all other zones harbor similar threats. Your people will need to be stand together to survive the coming storm, but I can tell you now, it will start here. The Hunger stirrs.” 

And just like that, the manatee flipped in the water, and shot off into the distance. 

“Yeah, they’re like that,” Hunter commented. “They can talk to each other from kilometers away, so they don’t put nearly the same value on face-to-face conversations.” 

“But what’s ‘the hunger’?” Jaclyn wondered. 

“No one knows. Its aura allows us to know it exists, and see its power overwhelming, yet no one has survived to lay eyes on it,” Auralay’s reply came, sounding the exact same as it had been when all the manatees had been in the area. 

“Like I said, not a big fan of face-to-face,” Hunter repeated himself while making a hand gesture in the direction of the “outside” and the boat immediately began to chug to life, slowly accelerating in that direction. 

Now that just left one question. If Hunter had known about the issue the entire time, why had she had to learn about it from the locals? 

“I …” she began, when he held up a hand to stop her. 

“I was instructed to not say anything about the anchor beast. Ever.”  

And there it was. The politics that kneecaped the efforts of the people on the ground, the scheming and politicking that worked counter to the common good and only benefited a select few, the rot that began to fester in any government as long as it had existed for long enough and the ruling elite began to become properly entrenched. 

The same thing the BPA would have been laboring under, if the government of the United Kingdom weren’t currently in the process of being rebuilt from almost nothing, and the people doing said rebuilding not been acting in at least mostly good faith. 

After all, her boss, Director Frye, for all that he was doing a fantastic job, was still the Defense Minister’s nephew. It was hard to believe that merit was the only thing that had gotten him into his position. 

“I understand,” she replied. He couldn’t do anything about it any more than she could, and all there was left to do was leave it to the politicians. And pray things worked out, she supposed. Or … 

Something nearby, right next to the boat, squeaked. Not an “hinge in need of oiling” kind of squeak, but more a “super cute baby animal sound.”

Jaclyn leaned over the railing and found herself face to face with an adorable, tiny manatee, swimming alongside the boat, staring up at her. 

She froze, her hand already raised to pet it. 

You wouldn’t know it based on the sheer number of times she’d responded to calls about people randomly patting the kids of someone else’s kids, or cupping the stomach of a pregnant woman they had absolutely no relationship with, but you shouldn’t pet other people’s kids. 

So Jaclyn just stayed there, looking at the baby manatee swimming there … until it dove under in an instant, tail swishing upwards, and she jerked her head back, sopping wet, amongst the Marines’ uproarious laughter. 

She spluttered and wiped at her face to get most of the water off. 

Yeah, that felt about right. Give her enough information about the actual dangers to film several horror movies, but deliberately avoid mentioning anything embarrassing so they could watch her walk straight into the trap … though Jaclyn herself was certainly guilty of doing the same, back in London. 

Also, time to change the topic. 

“It’s nice to know that as fucked up as the world is, parts of it are still beautiful,” Jaclyn finally said, looking back towards the village. 

“It was terrifying even before,” Hunter commented, staring off into the distance. “I could handle just about anything that came up … but it’s not me I’m afraid for. Do you have children, Director?”

“One, a little girl,” Jaclyn replied. She didn’t even have to ask if he had any; it was obvious. 

She sighed. “I guess that’s the deal we made, we decided to become parents.” 

“I guess,” Hunter echoed, then sighed as he leaned back and looked up into the sky. “But I can’t even imagine what it’s like to be a cop and a parent. At least all the ugliness I see is on the other side of the world …”

“I never thought about it like that,” Jaclyn admitted. Although to be entirely truthful, having easy access to the crime report for her neighborhood hadn’t exactly been a boon to her mental health. 

But it wasn’t just the world that worried her, there was plenty of damage that could originate much closer to home. Jaclyn liked to think of herself as a good mother, and knew that James was at least decent, even if he did hand out a little too much candy on the weekends when he had her … but didn’t everyone? Even, heck, especially the bad ones, who screwed up their children for life, one fuckup at a time?

And even so … Eve had been a good kid thus far, however, she was also six. A lot could change between now and when she became an adult. 

Jaclyn had seen far too many people at their worst. And while sometimes, her knowledge of the whole affair began and ended with an arrest, there were far too many more-or-less-tragic stories she’d gotten a far too close-up view of. 

With some people, you could see why they’d turned out the way they had, whether it was abuse, a complete lack of parenting, the wrong kind of parenting, spoiling someone to the point where the first time they heard “no” it was spoken by an officer of the law, drugs, and so on. Tragic, and painfully common, but it was the kind of thing she could and would avoid. 

Yet it was the other kind of adult that had her terrified for her daughter’s future. The ones with perfectly ordinary parents, with perfectly ordinary lives, free from violence, drugs, financial woes, anything at all that might explain a journey down a dark path … and had turned to crime anyway. 

Because how on Earth was she supposed to save her daughter from that?

Hunter gave her a sideways glance, leaving her realizing how long she’d been thinking. 

“You okay?” he asked. 

“I …” Jaclyn was about to answer, when she saw something through the trees and continued at a much lower volume. “You said the big snakes were too large to hide … I’m guessing that’s one of them?” 

Hunter followed where her finger was pointing and nodded grimly. 

It was also now that she realized just what she’d been smelling the entire time. It hadn’t been a familiar scent, there weren’t too many snakes in London, especially outside the dungeon, and even those hadn’t been this big. 

But she should have noticed. Somehow, coming to this realization brought back memories of the London Zoo, and suddenly, she felt like she’d shoved her nose into the bottom of a cage in the reptile house. 

And even amongst everything else, Jaclyn had to actively swallow to stop herself from drooling. 

Honestly, what would she have to do to stop that? Actually eat a snake? She certainly hadn’t had any ridiculous hankering for honey; her new preference for sweeter than normal tea was hardly an inconvenience, unlike … seriously drifting off like this? 

You’re not yourself when you’re hungry. 

Urgh. And now her train of thought was throwing up brand slogans. 

Did her power really have that much control over her … or was she just hungry in general, and the scent of a live snake was as attractive as the smell of good pub food to her? 

Now wasn’t that a fun thought?

“Can we go around?” she finally asked. Near as she could tell, the serpent was lying straight across the path they were supposed to be taking, but this place made mazes look simple. There could easily be another way she wasn’t aware of. 

“We’ll try,” Hunter said, the intense look of concentration fading just as the environmental noise did. 

“Finally,” he sighed, then turned to her, still whispering. “Sound barrier. It’ll silence anything we do, and muffle the engine, but the stronger vibrations from the engine can still alert it. So be ready.” 

“What’s the protocol for when that happens?” Jaclyn asked, likewise speaking softly even though it shouldn’t matter with the barrier in place. 

In England, she’d have known, because she’d written the damn thing, but there was no reason to expect the people aroundher to be using the same playbook. If things went pear-shaped, she needed to know what everyone else was going to do, so she could take her own actions. It was possible to act without that information, and chances were she could survive whatever friendly fire wound up hitting her … but better not to risk it. 

“Retreat,” Hunter said, sounding rather unhappy about it. “We avoid the D-Rank snakes wherever possible, if we have to engage, we draw them into the range of the artillery we set up at the border and hope that’s enough to to drive them off or kill them.” 

He sounded tired, more than anything else. How long had he been her- … stupid question. 

Jaclyn new exactly how long he’d been here, it had been the exact same span of time as this craziness had been in her life, except she’d had a Dungeon to power level in “safely,” been able to hug her daughter when she came home at night, and her enemies had been both beatable and beaten. Not easily, not without casulaties, and while repeated healing potion use had easily the wounds, she could still feel the scars on her soul. 

But ultimately, the London transformation zone had been as secured as an area that broke the backbone of modern society, by existing could be. 

Hunter had been isolated here for months, barely able to fight off the things that went bump in the night, or swamp, as it were. 

“So if it attacks, and the boat can’t escape, I should punch it on the nose and fly in the direction of your basecamp, or would that just get me shot?” Jaclyn asked, with the unspoken question of “how trigger-happy are your men?”. 

“You’re the visitor here, it’s our job to deal with any attacks.”

And in the old world, that would have one hundred percent been the correct answer. If you had a diplomatic visitor, you didn’t let them fight, or get into any kind of avoidable danger at all, nothing could ever possibly be worth that. 

But this wasn’t the old world, was it? Thanks to the aforementioned power leveling opportunities, she was the only D-Rank here, and that snake was looking to be near the peak of their shared power level.

Had they all been a full rank lower, perhaps this wouldn’t have been a problem. Overwhelming an E-Rank with a bunch of F-Ranks, or using technology to bridge the gap, might be costly, but that did not make it unusable. At that point, powers had a much higher impact than raw stats, whose gains grew and grew as you rose through the ranks. The stats gained at E were twice what they’d been at F, and those at D were two and a half times what they’d been at E. How big of a difference would there be at C? Or even the higher ranks?

“But, for argument’s sake, let’s assume staying out of it ain’t possible. How do I fight that thing without getting in your line of fire,” Jaclyn insisted. 

“We’re not going to be shooting at it, if we attack, it’ll be underwater, with these,” Hunter said, producing a rough-looking dagger from his belt. Though she supposed mundane handheld firearms wouldn’t do too much against a monster like that. 

Anti-Supernatural USMC Combat Knife (D-Rank, uncommon)

Made from the remains of a D-Rank serpent, forged to be a stopgap until proper magical weapons can be created. 

This knife can withstand the wielder’s supernatural strength up to a D-Rank human using the System of the Maritime Survivor, unless wielded directly against a highly durable and inflexible surface, such as a solid sheet of metal. 

“Interesting name,” Jaclyn commented. 

“When did I tell you its name?” Hunter asked, eyes once again fixed on the snake, almost deliberate in the way he was looking away from her.  

“The item description told me,” Jaclyn replied, only then realizing that his assumption had been that she’d read that name on some documents that hadn’t been provided to her or her nation. 

Hrmph. If she’d been engaging in espionage, she certainly wouldn’t have given away the game that easily. 

“Of course you get item descriptions,” Hunter muttered. 

So that was another thing the local system, obviously named “System of the Maritime Survivor,” lacked, along with an ability to choose what powers you got when you ranked up. Granted, that last part might be a semi-good thing, considering that it ensured that any powers you got had all the intended synergies, but honestly, she much preferred her own path to power. 

Though, admittedly, the way the marines could get stronger just by exploring was borderline broken, and something she and her people couldn’t do unless that was the specific purpose of one’s Class.

The boat continued onwards, engine dialed as low as it could be while still providing propulsion, the sound barrier shutting out all ambient noise in a way that was both soothing and incredibly eerie. The snake had long since dropped out of sight, and even the smell had dissipated for the most part. 

And then, in an instant, the ambient noise returned, coinciding with the boat rocking as Hunter leaped to his feet. 

“Mosquitos, two o’clock!”

Then, of course, all hell broke loose. 

Gunfire, shockwaves that were apparently still sound magic at heart, and orders shouted to be heard over the din of battle mixed to form total pandemonium … and amidst it all, Jaclyn was still sitting in the boat, staring aghast at the incoming swarm. 

Cat-sized creatures as far as she could see, the sound of their wings like jet engines that exploded into showers of grey gore as they were torn from the sky … except for the half-dozen that had apparently recently fed, those that dyed the sky red. The sight was bad enough, but the fact that it started floating was worse. Much worse. 

Jaclyn ducked under a crimson dagger that shot through the sky like a bullet and punched clean through the boat’s hull where her head had been a split second ago. 

Giant mosquitoes … okay, so far, so horrifying. But hemokinetic giant mosquitoes that would grow infinitely more dangerous the moment they managed to feed were so much worse. And Jaclyn couldn’t even help, since her gun was back in London, and trying to fly up and engage would just block her allies’ shots. 

For the next thirty seconds or so, that was all there was to it. Mosquitoes showed up, mosquitoes died, more mosquitoes appeared. The closest thing Jaclyn saw to “action” was nailing a bug that had gotten slightly too close for comfort with a branch she’d torn off a nearby tree and thrown. 

And then, as if to prove that things could always get worse, things started to smell of reptile again, something that was soon accompanied by the sound of breaking branches and shattering wood. 

A lot quieter than she might have suspected the motion of such a massive snake to be, almost too quiet to hear over the din of battle, but she noticed. 

“The snake’s back,” she yelled as she gently leaped up before snapping open her spectral wings. “I’ll deal with it.” 

Or at least she hoped she could. 

It was obviously D-Rank, high D-Rank at that, and truly, insanely, huge, but shouldn’t she be that thing’s natural enemy? Especially if it relied on venom? 

But no, that was wishful thinking; hard countering something only really made the expected difference if they were in the overall same weight class. She kept going, though. Wings beating a couple more times before she switched to gliding, looking for the snake. 

Once again, Hunter was proven right. The big snakes weren’t just far too massive to hide, they were too big to overlook as long as you were paying even the slightest smidge of attention. 

It was, in fact, the same snake as before. A dappled green pattern across its skin, leaflike patches connected by pale brown lines and shot through with shining silver that looked like the sun glinting off a calm ocean surface. Beautiful, and further proof that this thing clearly had no reason to hide. 

So, what now … 

Jaclyn’s normal strategy with snakes was to just let them bite her. If they depended on venom, she could snap them in half while they couldn’t dodge, and if they were constrictors … well, they also wouldn’t be able to dodge and she could still rip them to pieces with her spectral claws if she still had a free arm, or chomp them to bits with her spectral badger’s jaws if she didn’t. 

For obvious reasons, that would fly here. 

But she hadn’t even gotten close enough for a proper mistake when the snake made the choice a redundant one. It simply lunged at skywards, mouth gaping open, two massive fangs that glinted with silver liquid ready to swallower up as its car-sized head shot at her. 

Oh … bollocks!

A frantic beat of her wings yerked her to the side, leaving the titanic skull to rocket past, missing by inches. But the head suddenly began to curve around in a long arc, even as much of its body spooled out and was hurled out of the water as well. At a length of six hundred-ish feet, the serpent’s striking range was huge, but this was excessive. 

Ergo … one power identified. And it likely had a second power that allowed it to survive in full defiance of the square-cube law, though that might be part and parcel with the first one. And the venom was likely the final one; nothing “natural” looked like that, unless this thing actually spat something like mercury or gallium. 

With any luck, that was it, all three powers known. 

Size, mid-air “maneuvering,” and venom. 

With her luck, though? Things probably worked in the exact opposite way. 

Several rapid wingbeats carried Jaclyn higher and she got to watch the snake finally run out of momentum and a fall back towards the ground with a tremendous splash that sent water geysiring all the way up to where she was. 

She could stay up here; she could easily fly high enough to be entirely out of range, but she could feel that monster’s baleful glare on her. It wanted to kill her, and would not be deterred, but she sincerely doubted it would overlook her current comrades in arms if given half a chance, especially if she was unreachable. 

Below, the snake was coiling up into something that was either a defensive posture, or some kind of biological spring that would allow it to actually clear the ground despite its weight and snatch her straight out of the air. 

Jaclyn let herself slowly drift downwards, spectral wings still beating but not rapidly enough to maintain her altitude. 

Come on, come on, you know you want t- …

The snake launched itself at her faster than she could blink, and only the enhanced reflexes from her eagle bond allowing her to haul herself out of the path of the attack but the damn thing still managed to redirect itself slightly, somehow leaning to the side and snapping its fangs together less than a foot from her boots … but in the end, that “achievement” was something the serpent would come to regret. 

As it was coming back down to earth, the snake passed close enough to Jaclyn for her to be able to twist in midair and lash out, a kick planting her foot straight in its basketball-sized eyeball. Irritating and painful beyond belief, and that was if that was all that had been done. 

That was when she curled her toes inside her boot, and a massive eagle’s talon manifested around her foot, grasping onto the orb, four claws punching straight through the outer membrane and holding fast. When Jaclyn beat her wings, the whole affair came free with a sickening squelch, like a deflating sack of goo that trailed bundles of blood vessels and nerves. 

When the summoned claw vanished, the ruined organ fell away, after the bleeding head of the monster, but the gore and eyeball jelly that had splattered all the way above her knee still made her stomach do flips. 

Apparently, even after all these years, there were still things that managed to nauseate her. God, that was gross …

But as unhappy as she was at that outcome, the snake utterly hated it, its loud, pained, hiss making Jaclyn’s ears ache as the monster returned to its previous position.

Many would consider what she’d done cowardly, or just plain cruel. But Jaclyn had created her own fighting style inspired by her very first “totem.” And it had three cardinal rules.

Everything you can reach is a viable target. 

Nothing is off the table. 

And if you win, your opponent won’t be around to complain. 

Of course, those rules didn’t fly against sapient opponents, they needed to dig themselves in very deep before she was willing to resort to those kinds of tactics, but to defend herself or others from someone who’d already proven themselves willing and able to kill, someone who couldn’t be brought down humanely? She’d do whatever she had to. 

Now, would this damn snake repeat its previous mistake, or would it do something else? 

As it turned out, yes it would, very much so. 

Jaclyn wasn’t entirely sure if what followed was a power, a subsection of a power, or just plain biology, but one thing was for certain: she wasn’t going to trust her venom resistance when the serpent took a page out of the Mozambique spitting cobra’s playbook and a literal geyser of silver liquid burst out of the depths of its throat and shot towards her like a … a … honestly, she didn’t have a good comparison. 

But the beam was as thick as a beer keg and travelling almost as quickly as most bullets, surrounded by a halo of small droplets. 

She dodged the main beam with ease, failed to get clear of the surrounding spray, half a dozen droplets of which hammered into her despite her efforts. The impact was more akin to a buddy punch, rather than something intended to do harm, but it was venom, as far as she’d been able to tell. It wasn’t meant to do damage via raw momentum. 

And a moment later, her assumptions were proven both true and false as pain exploded down her left side, where the droplets had impacted. 

Because what she’d been struck by wasn’t venom. 

Instead, it had acted more like liquid mercury for a split second, soaking into her shirt, before transforming into a ball of blades and spikes, like some fucked up burrs that ripped open her skin as they formed before tearing their way free through a combination of gravity and the clothing fibres they were attached to having been shredded.

If that shit also worked like that when injected by those two massive teeth she could see glinting in the snake’s maw, each as long as one of her arms, she’d be dead, no two ways about it. They’d shred her blood vessels until they reached the heart, and even if her heart was only damaged and instead sent the solidified “venom” onwards, that would only pass the problem along to her lungs, which were far less durable. 

So … don’t get bitten. 

The snake continued to glare up at her with its one remaining eye for a long moment, then it uncurled and began to move elsewhere. 

Huh? Was that i- … oh, Christ! It was going after the others. The marines who were still obviously engaged with those thrice-damnded mosquitoes, judging by the noise. 

She let herself fall, both hands clenching into the half-closed fists of the leopard style of Kung Fu, which formed the basis for her fighting style, followed by spectral badger claws that would rip straight into her target. Sure, the wounds they inflicted would be shallow, considering her target’s size, but she’d cut this thing open until it was bled dry, if it came to that. 

Jaclyn fell down from the sky like a diving falcon, wings dismissed, leading with both clawed fists, aiming at where the base of the monster’s skull would be … and then it twitched to the side to glare at her. 

Shit. 

She snapped her wings open with a shrugging motion, desperately trying to halt her momentum before she plunged into the ocean and went under, a position that would be much harder to escape from than atop the snake. 

She managed it, almost. 

Her fists hit the surface with enough force to shatter her projections like glass, the water hard like concrete at the moment of impact, then the rest of her body belly-flopped after it but then another beat of her powerful wings finally reversed her momentum, leaving her front side sopping wet but unharmed and she was already reclaiming her previous height when one of the serpent’s coils slammed into her like a battering ram. 

Jaclyn felt like she’d been hit by a truck. No, she’d been hit by an actual truck during training. This was more than twice that. 

She went flying, ribs aching, but the only thing she cared about was not coming down in the water. No, she wanted, she needed, to gain height, to make sure she didn’t crash into the trees, lose her momentum, and wind up in the drink. 

And the snake surged after her, jaws already agape. 

Oh, bollocks. 

Jaclyn twisted away, but the side of the snake’s head collided with her and sent her spinning. Perfectly survivable … until her right boot caught on a particularly high branch and she “tripped,” the tree limb acting as a fulcrum for her change in trajectory, which left her knocking aside half a dozen further branches with her face until she finally landed in a tangle of roots. 

… that felt like it should have hurt more. 

She shook herself like a dog that had gotten wet, leaped, and unfurled her wings yet again. 

This time, she told herself, she’d reach the skies.

And she did. 

But she couldn’t stay up there. She went mano-a-mano with her foes; she needed to be in melee range, and things were getting to the point where she felt like leaving a hurt and enraged snake behind would result in people getting hurt. And the snake had already shown who its target would be if she was out of reach. 

So Jaclyn dove down and punched the snake’s body as it flashed past, her claws parting scales like cardboard, then she ripped them down its length until the sheer force exerted upon it shattered the construct once again. And then the snake bucked her off again, but with how she’d positioned herself, that placed her in the sky. 

Below, the serpent’s body twisted and lurched as it brought its head around, several of its coils reaching into the skies in attempts to bring her down while it also tried to snatch her out of the sky with its jaws. 

Jaclyn ducked under another bite, and punched it in the jaw, feeling not only the scales tear but also the laws of physics scream in frustration as the law of equal and opposite reactions failed to launch her backwards. Because it should have. When you hit something, the thing that was easier to move, moved, and this thing was orders of magnitude heavier than her. 

But she had her skills, the power that went beyond mere “powers,” where her ability to do something and grew until the proficiency began to warp the very laws of reality. And she had several at that level, including Pugilism. 

In addition, that particular skill would allow her to do damage even when the weight inequality went in the opposite direction and her foe should have gone flying instead of taking the full force of her punches on the chin. 

And, of course, the snake didn’t have the same advantages. Even the few times she did get hit, her focus wasn’t mitigating the force of the impact; it was on ensuring it flung her skyward, where she could regain her balance and poise and launch herself straight back into combat.

She could feel the frustration boiling off the snake. Even with how different, how utterly alien its body and body language were, she could tell. And she couldn’t blame it, but that did nothing to smother the sheer bloody glee she felt at the sight. 

Fighting Jaclyn in flight was akin to trying to crush a flying mosquito with one hand. The air pushed around by any motion one invariably struck before whatever was doing the pushing, and at the time of impact, the target would already be moving in the same exact direction as the attack and wind up simply moving with it, rather than taking damage. 

Granted, with her toughness and their relative weights, she’d have the same defenses even without the atmosphere, but since it was there … yeah, the monster’s body was one hell of a hammer, but what good was a hammer without an anvil?

So they tore into each other, over and over again. Her knuckles were starting to be scraped raw, the ocean was slowly turning red even with how much water there was to dilute the monster’s blood, and Jaclyn’s entire outfit was stained crimson so thoroughly that one could easily mistake it as having been that color the intended time. 

How long had it been? 

Everything hurt. Her feet and fists were the worst, as she’d been beating them into the monster’s body, but her sides ached from constant battering, she had scrapes all over, and her shoulders were crying in pain every time she triggered another wingbeat.

The serpent glared at her once again, clearly trying to decide whether or not the damage it would inevitably take killing her would be worth it. Or maybe it was attempting to judge her degree of fatigue, and if it would be able to outlast her. 

Yet whatever calculation it might have rolling around in its mind, the solution it came to was obvious: the fight was no longer worth it. 

It turned around, and began to slither away. But Jaclyn’s earlier resolution still stood: this thing had to go, because it was aggressive as hell and now it was hurt to boot. It had to go. 

She launched herself at it, claws first, aiming just behind the base of its skull and came down like a goddamn meteor. 

The projected badger claws hit first, ripping through the outer layer of scales and going deeper, flesh parting like butter, yet the sheer combined impact of her momentum and the snake bucking back into her overwhelmed them, shattering the projection like glass but she kept going, the toughest part already having been bypassed. 

Jaclyn could feel the tissue part beneath her knuckles, individual tendons and muscle strands stretching and subsequently breaking, time seeming to slow to a crawl until her face slammed into its back and her head bent back at an angle that would have broken a normal human’s spine. 

Thank God for supernatural flexibility. 

And then her momentum came to a dead stop, leaving her there with both arms embedded in a giant snake’s body up to the shoulders, actually stuck since the serpent’s every motion caused various muscles in its neck to contract, trapping her limbs. 

She’d missed the spine, she’d missed the brainstem, and she was in a terrible position to attack with her feet. 

So she didn’t. 

Instead, she gnashed her teeth and the flesh beneath her, a giant spectral badger’s head manifesting and mirroring the motion, shattering scales and tearing flesh. 

Again and again she snapped her teeth at the monster which was starting to buck bore and more, wildly thrashing, trying to crush her against trees that shattered instead, trying to drown her but failing to keep her under for long enough, trying to squish her against the bottom of the mangrove swamp but instead simply creating a her-shaped depression in the soft mud. 

And through it all, she continued to rip into it with the fangs of her phantasmal animal companion. 

It should have been ridiculous, the actions of a madwoman gnashing at the empty air and expecting something to happen. But flesh tore and blood sprayed and eventually, she felt the resistance of bone beneath “her” teeth. 

Jaclyn chomped again, but her projection vanished with a sound of breaking glass as she tried to push it. 

With a snarl of frustration she bit down again and, instead of trying to break bone, she twisted her head and with a loud snap, tore the vertebra free. 

Instantly, the snake went slack beneath her and Jaclyn managed to draw her arms back out, which had fallen asleep by now. 

She sighed, and closed her eyes, breathing heavily. 

Things that had hurt before felt even worse now, she was drenched in blood from head to toe, some had even found its way into her mouth in between badger manifestations. 

Jaclyn gagged, briefly. 

Price of success, she supposed. 

It was only now that she realized that the sound of the battle had ended, something that she’d missed entirely in her fight. 

Uh-oh.

That wasn’t a good thing in someone who was supposed to be a leader, now was it?

But thankfully, with the snake dead and the mosquitoes gone, it was fairly easy to locate the marines by sound even before one of them shot off a signal flare. 

After a brief moment of consideration, Jaclyn decided to suck it up and fly over there in lieu of slogging through the mud, which would take forever and likely wind up even more exhausting in the long run. 

“Holy shit,” Hunter exclaimed when she finally emerged from the treeline, a sentiment echoed by the others. They weren’t exactly in picture-perfect shape either, with splashes of ichor covering the entire group and several odd pieces of chitin were stuck just about wherever she looked. 

“How are you?” Jaclyn asked. 

“Fine,” Hunter said, waving her over towards the boat. “Thanks to you. Though I don’t even want to imagine how this is going to look to Washington.” 

That caused everyone to flinch, Jaclyn included.  

“Feel free to blame me for taking off,” she finally said, sitting down heavily. It wouldn’t fix everything, but it should be a mitigating circumstance. 

Then, she took a couple of seconds to check her status screen while the boat began to chug to life, moving in the direction of the snake’s carcass. 

Name: Jaclyn Abrams

Race: Human

Class: Anima Monk

D-Rank, Level 6 -> 9/20

Class Abilities 

Spirit Bond: Honey Badger (F-Rank)

Spirit Projection (E-Rank)

Ancient Bond: Haast’s Eagle (D-Rank)

Statistics (0 points available)

Body: 210 -> 235

Magic: 15

Mind: 129 -> 154

Spirit: 210 -> 235

Skills

Pugilism 34 -> 37

Fist of the Indomitable Badger 36 -> 38

Athletics 32 -> 36

Situational Awareness 33 -> 34

Bullshit Radar 29

Martial Arts 35 -> 38

Alternate Skill Set (currently inactive, switch available)

Mana Control 10

Utility Magic 12

Ballance 15

Breathing 11

Inspect 15

Movement 7

***

All her combat skills had gone up, but her Situational Awareness had seen the least growth. 

Yeah … she’d gotten caught off guard way too many times in that fight. 

But otherwise, she was too exhausted to celebrate. Exhausted and hungry. 

Jaclyn looked over the carcass of the slain snake. After all that, there was nothing psychosomatic about her hunger, of course fighting a monster that already fit some people’s definitons of a kaiju had left her starving. 

She turned towards Hunter. “You said you guys eat the small ones? Think some of your men are up to cooking this thing?”

*** 

An hour later, she was back aboard the seaplane, fully refuelled. Well, the plane, that was, though in a sense, that applied to her as well. She’d probably eaten an actual honey badger’s weight in snak emeat, and had twice her body weight in raw “steaks” in the cargo hold, adequately stored. 

Jaclyn was also feeling much more human after a quick application of cleansing magic had removed all of the blood and gore caking her and some a mending spell had restored everything she’d been wearing upon her person, including the compass that she had not wound up needing.  

She also had half a dozen large boxes of the cooked stuff, a roll of scales, and the beast’s heart, though that too had been refrigerated and put away. She’d felt weirdly possessive of it. 

Oh, there was also a collection of fangs and organs with potential alchemical applications, some of which she would inevitably feed to Daedalus, to curry some goodwill. 

Although … 

As much as she’d been planning to save the meal for later, and hand out some to her colleagues as “souvenirs” … yet she could still eat. Was this what it felt like to have the munchies?

She fished around in the bag she’d borrowed for a couple of seconds, then pulled her arm back out with a clear plastic box whose insides glistened with the telltale look of barbecue sauce. Should she … 

Five minutes later, a pulse of magic removed the sauce stains from her face and the corners of her mouth. 

Damn, that had been good. 

The snake itself might not have had the strongest flavor on its own, unlike beef, which was good all by itself before any seasoning, but it was both lean and incredibly juicy, practically melting in her mouth … and then there was the sauce. All on its own, that sauce disproved any and all negative cliches about American cuisine. Rich, flavorful, and with just that hint of heat that tied it all together. 

Perfect. Until she realized a fragment of chilli pepper had gotten stuck between her teeth and was, now that all other flavors were slowly dissappearing from her pallate, burning her tongue. 

Urgh. 

Another blast of cleansing power took care of that. 

Now the only question that remained was how much of the food would actually make it to Great Britain. 

Or it would be, if it hadn’t been for the presently unspecified incident that was the reason for her rapid return. With a sigh, Jaclyn pulled out her sat phone and went back to work.