A Shady Morning

I woke up to large, silver glowing eyes leering at me from above and nearly had my heart leap out of my chest as my mind caught up to the dark skull-face.

“Shady?” I let out.

“Yuh-huh!” The eyes squinted into two silver moons as a wide tongue licked my entire face dog-style, making me shudder.

“How did you…” I began, staring at the massive Wendigo looming over me.

“I walked her over,” Nexxali said. “She turned into a big dog. That was… sorta neat.”

“You got your…”

“Got my holofractal doggo-form back, yuss,” Shady declared, smooshing her dark, furry chest into me.

I looked around, spotting Galateya in a lotus pose on the floor, in a wood and fern bikini-type outfit that she probably grew on herself. The air wobbled around the meditating dragoness, creating snowflake-like patterns of chilled condensation moving around her as she hummed a note.

Sage stood nearby, completely naked, orange-red tail swishing as she grabbed prints sliding out of her printer.

“Eyyy, look who’s finally up!” Sage announced, attaching photos to her slanted ceiling via fox-stickers with the giddy enthusiasm of a serial killer decorating their basement of dark deeds. The photos depicted our quirky group at the Moscow cafe, convention and bubble tea shop dreams.

“When did you four even get up?” I yawned.

“At four am,” Galateya replied.

“Omnids don’t need as much sleep as hoomans. Cryptid-science facts, bruh!” Sage clarified. “N’ways! S’ sexy wardrobe dispensin’ time!”

She hopped over to several t-shirt presses sitting in a precarious pile in one of the corners of her attic. “T-buns, you first.”

Galateya opened one glowing, violet eye. “I am not wearing anything with dumb text on it.”

“Don’t be a lame gator, ’s fresh-off-the-fox-press! The skulk worked very hard on these, you know. If you don’t wear it, many fox-designers will get laid off and won’t be able to feed their crying kits.” Sage tossed a neon green crop top at the meditating dragoness. Galateya caught the top and held it up, revealing a drawing of a cute fox hanging onto and chewing a sparkly dragon arm.

“‘CERTIFIED SCALY SNACC’?” Galateya read the text under the art, scales undulating between gold, pink and violet. “Why is there an extra C there instead of a K?”

“Memeticness value. Also your bottoms.” Sage threw lavender joggers with “DWAGON BUNS” printed on the back.

Galateya opened her mouth to protest, eyed the joggers again, looked at Sage’s utterly unrepentant grin, and sighed. “Fine.”

“Nexy!” Sage spun toward the serval, producing a hoodie with “PURRFESSIONAL MENACE” in holographic letters and the art of a fox licking a serval cat.

Nexxali accepted and examined the hoodie, turning it over. The back read “PASTA IS MY LOVE LANGUAGE.” The letter O had a fox eye inside it.

“Swank.” The serval grinned, pulling the hoodie atop her hexasuit.

“Ashy!” Sage lobbed a bundle at me. I unrolled a baby blue t-shirt.

“EMOTIONAL SUPPORT HUMAN” on the front. The back featured a drawing of a small, skinny, tired, dark haired boy making a bothered face while being mauled by four different cryptids, each progressively larger and more threatening, with minor resemblance to my girlfriends.

“I feel personally attacked by this illustration,” I said.

“Good. Wear it.” Sage pulled on her own outfit, a blindingly pink tank top reading “IF YOU CAN READ THIS YOU’RE ALREADY SEDUCED” paired with cutoff shorts embroidered with tiny fox skulls and the words “FOX BUNS” printed on the butt.

Shady watched the distribution of meme-wear from atop me, silver eyes tracking each garment with increasing suspicion. When Sage approached her with a zip-up, extra-large top reading “YOU LIKE KISSIN CRYPTIDS, DON’T YOU?” in sparkly letters, the Wendigo’s antlers lowered.

“Nah.”

“Come onnnn, it’ll look great with your yuge rack!” Sage giggled, rotating the top to show off the “WENDIGOONER” on the back featuring a wendigo head nom-kissing a cute, smaller fox.

I chortled.

“Your clothes have Astral threads woven into the fabric,” Shady stated flatly, plucking the outfit from Sage’s hands with a long limb. “Every single one is a scrying node linked to your Skulk. You can see and hear through them. Probably taste through ‘em for all I know.”

“Aww.” Sage’s freckles rearranged into “BUS-TED”. “What’s wrong with a little spying? S’ barely surveillance! S’more like… ambient vibes monitoring! A bit of safeties for…”

“Safeties? I can feel six of your eyes intently staring at my butt right now from this top.”

”…Four,” Sage corrected. “The other two are watching your tail. S’ very expressive.”

“Uh-huh. I’ve got a V-ring band from the bird for safeties. My point is… Uhhm, I don’t want to accidentally snag and eat one of your fox eyes with one of my hooks,” Shady said. “They’re constantly hungry and hard to control, if something like that sits on me all day, it’ll likely get chewed up, become part of my hoard and likely not in a healthy way that your pervy fox ghosts would enjoy. Anyway, Ashy can wear your silly shirt. As for me…”

She looked around the loft, then got off me, stretched to her looming, monstrous height, then slouch-folded slightly and stalked over to one of many boxes filled with random packaged outfits in the corner closet. She rummaged through it with purpose, then emerged with a plain black tank top and a pair of black athletic shorts.

“These will do.” She liberated the outfits from their plastic containers with a sharp claw. “No Astral-spyware. Plain cotton.”

Sage rolled her eyes as Shady dressed.

I contemplated how Shady would get the top on exactly. The tank top snagged on her antlers just as I expected it to, but then Shady’s antlers did a weird sideways-wobble thing and the fabric sort of passed through them like they were thick jelly. Then, the outfit stretched across her large chest.

The black plain shorts barely qualified as shorts on her curvy butt. “Nice n’ simple.” She stated, returning to sit down beside me.

“Ya look like ya rrrr’ plannin’ ta teach a murder fitness class,” the Skinwalker observed.

“Thank you.”

“Did you just… make cloth go through your antlers?” I asked.

“Uh-huh,” Shady stated. “Temporarily slid them into the Deep. Is one of my many lovely skills. Getting myself together slowly.”

“I see.”

My mind already divided into the Emperor of Mankind gun unit camped at the bar in Seattle and my human self since the moment of waking.

The Emperor me received breakfast from Baba Yaga and made plans to save the world.The human-Ash me yawned again.

“Nexxy?”

“Ya-huh?” The Serval slid over to us.

I sat up against Sage’s fox-pillow pile, rubbing sleep from my eyes.

The Backend of my mind started rapidly going over Kawathra’s intelligence reports, contemplating the slow-moving chess game in orbit. The Frontend me sitting in Sage’s attic surrounded by my many cryptid girlfriends, needed coffee to fully come online.

“We have a… fleet problem,” I said.

“Nah, the fleet is the solution, babe,” the Serval pawed at Shady and then at me. “My Netherweave Fold solution that brought me to my purrrsonal sunshine archipelago.”

“No, I, uhhm,” I ouputted eloquently. “What I meant to say is that we need to fuck over the Frontenachii in orbit some more, sort out the new Admiral, derail Saint Nikky and rescue Laika at the same time.”

“Hrm, hrm,” Nexxali chewed on her bottom lip. “I should call my boss. That might help.”

“Which one?”

“Legate Ixthia,” the Serval stated. “I gotta report to her anyway about the ex-Admirals’ naughty shenanigans. It’ll give us an excuse to further adjust the trajectory of the future in a desirable direction.” She flopped sideways onto the fox-pillow pile next to me, curling into my side. “Specifically, the direction where I get to keep eating all the tasty noms on this lovely planet.”

“Let’s walk through your call,” I said. “What are you going to say, and more importantly, what are you going to make her think she decided on her own?”

“Oh ho ho.” Nexxali’s fluffy ginger ears rotated toward me. “The Emperor wants to co-pilot my performance. Kinky.”

“I want to make sure we don’t accidentally hand Ixthia a weapon she can aim at us later,” I said, petting her head and producing a deep purr. “The Sleigh is a dungeon packed to the brim with kobolds and x-mass artifacts that we should keep to ourselves. You’re good at singing people into corners. I’m good at seeing the corners before they exist… I think. With our powers combined, we might actually survive the week.”

“Heh.” Sage perched her naked behind on the edge of her desk, legs swinging as she stuck another group photo to her memory wall. “Can I watch? I’ve never seen someone puppeteer a puppeteer puppeteering a Legate who thinks she’s puppeteering the…”

“Puppets all the way down,” I muttered.

Shady moved closer to me, silver eyes sliding from me to Nexxali.

“Right then.” I counted off. “Problem one: Evelithria hired a Krampus with a Sleigh dungeon.”

Nexxali nodded.

“Does Ixthia know about any of this?”

“She doesn’t know shit, as far as I know,” Nexxali said. “Any of the fleet plans go through Datamancers and they send me all of their reports for the general ‘fleet motivation’ speeches I make. As far as the Third and Sixth Fleets are aware, they don’t think that the Sleigh is dangerous at all, assuming that it’s an old Qola truck, some supplies that the Stabalists let through their gate.”

“Don’t tell her too much then,” I said.

“Can do,” the Serval agreed. “I’ll market the Sleigh as a threat, but not like a world-eating dungeon kind. Just some annoying mercs I can squash myself.”

“Can you liberate Laika and take over the Sleigh yourself?” I asked.

Nexxali pursed her lips, striped tail swaying and swatting me. “Ehhh… I could, but… the Stabalists or Admiral Colly might throw a fit and ask too many questions if I go guns blazing and plow a Corpse Seeker through the freighter that’s… currently floating dead in lunar orbit.”

“Alright,” I said. “Nexxy, here’s the script. You call Ixthia and report the freighter, the merc hire, the concept-rewriters. All factual. Stuff Evelithria bragged to you about because she’s an idiot who trusts dastardly felines.”

“She called me to gloat, yepp,” Nexxali confirmed, “post-incarnation brain fog made her chatty.”

“Perfect. Report the threat. Get Ixthia to grant you resources, permissions, etc. Division 881 access, fabrication authority to print us more handy stuff, non-tracked gateways, Corpse Seeker intercept clearance from the Abyssal Sorrow.”

“Full wish list.” Nexxali nodded. “She’ll give it all, as a Krampus merc with concept-rewriters is a serrrrriouss threat to the otherwise immortal Legates.”

“Yes. Ask for compensation too. The freighter’s crew. All the prads. Frame it as wanting fresh kobolds to break with your voice because your two best girls are still recovering from their deaths.”

Nexxali tilted her head. “Yep.”

“Then ask for whatever See-Mass cargo is inside too. Frame it as hoard-starters for the lower-ranked Wendigos. Spawnlings like Wattica have no hoards and barely control their divisions. You’re solving a fleet morale problem.”

Nexxali’s tail swished. “She would indeed appreciate such pragmatic middle management.”

“Next… Steer Ixthia toward the diplomatic path. Remind her the Stabalist Overseer ship is watching. Remind her Omnithornia knows about the fleets now. Any visible aggression looks terrible.”

“She’ll land there on her own,” Nexxali said. “Ixthia’s whole play is slow suffocation, smothering of the populace with her dum’ Paradise Planet plan. She’ll want Colette to flood Earth in gardens until we’re too comfortable and happy to resist.”

“Let her believe the garden plan is working. I’ll deal with Admiral Colette separately. For now, the key deliverable from this call is: Ixthia uses me as a chess piece to attack the freighter.”

Shady made a sound like a motorcycle revving, wiggling beside me. “Ashy gets to blow stuff up?”

“Ashy takes over the Sleigh with Commander Wattica before the Frontenachii figure out what it truly is,” I corrected. “Ixthia must be made to think that she’s using me as a loaded gun. And the Stabalists will witness a brave human leader acting brashly, defending his planet, etcetera.”

“Who be… Wattica?” Shady squinted at me with a look of deep suspicion.

“A low-ranking Wendigo Commander who defected to the Princess and her Planetary Administrator,” I explained. “Officially fired and delisted from the fleet roster. Dramatically shouting about defection,” I plotted out. “And… soon to be Ixthia’s ‘eyes’ inside our operation.”

“Say what? You want a Wendigo spy in our house?” Shady asked.

“Wattica won’t be an actual spy,” I said. “She’d already defected to us last night. I’ll give her control over the Sleigh, make her its new Captain. That should buy her fully.”

“Ugh. Givin’ other Wendigo girls gifts,” Shady huffed.

“Do you want to be the Sleigh’s Captain?” I asked her. “Deal with figuring out how the dungeon warship works?”

“Not particularly,” Shady tisked. “Seems like a lot of work.”

“Then don’t complain, Miss Lazy-pants Princess. I’m giving Wattica a responsibility to handle, not a gift. The Sleigh might be booby trapped. Wattica has prads with nullifiers.”

“Fineeeee,” Shady let out.

“Got everything?” I asked Nexxali. “Think you can pull all that off?”

“For sho’,” the Serval agreed. “Aight, am calling the Legate now.”

She tapped her V-ring. The ring flashed for about two minutes.

“Report, kitty,” Legate Ixthia’s voice came from the artifact.

“My Lady,” Nexxali began, “we have a problem.”