Invasive Shady

“…Your job is to figure out the Emperor’s weakness and then take him out of the game,” Legate Ixthia stated. It sounded like she was choking her kobold on the other end. “Is that understood?”

“Yes, my Lady,” Nexxali replied.

The ring became dark.

“And… done!” Nexxali high-fived Shady.

“Go team A-man!” Sage clapped from her seat on the table. She then turned to Nexxali and Galateya. “Okkai, ma’ draconion & catio! While our Emperor takes over the Sleigh, we are going to hit Westfield Southcenter, and behave as perfectly… normal and law-abiding besties of the future Baroness of Earth! Three sexy objectives. One: Get to know each other. Two: Galateya practices low-level terraforming in a high-traffic, low-Aether, civilian-dense environment. Three: girls’ day. Massage chairs! Sushi! Real bubble tea! Photo-booth pics! Trying on stupid hats!”

“If we’re going out in public, how are you going to stop humans from falling in love with you?” Galateya asked.

“I’ll wear mah full body motorcycle-rider gear,” Sage clarified. “Duh!”

“Take Katherine and the vamp girls too,” I suggested. “How are they doing by the way?”

“They fine,” Nexxali said. “Kawathra has a bunch of gun units watching them.”

Galateya unfolded from the lotus pose, magic-suspended-condensation patterns dissipating. She pulled the Sage-designed crop top over her head with the resigned dignity of a knight donning armor her liege demanded to be worn.

“You seem… quite pliable around the fox,” Shady commented at Galateya.

“She’s… Uhrm, she makes me happy,” Galateya let out shyly, glancing at Sage with a small smile.

“Rather rapid relationship progress, no?” the Wendigo added.

“Is ‘cus we’re the same soul!” Sage bobbed, hopping over to the blushing dragon girl and squeezing her. “The same person from two different dimensions. Except… I’m a foxxy Skinwalker with human-‘ship problems and T-bun never had a chance at shippage due to being a bubble-babe.”

“Hrm,” Shady voiced. “You’re the same soul?”

“Yep. You too by the way,” Sage stated.

“Me too, what?” The Wendigo arched a jet-black eyebrow.

“You’re also the same soul, I theeeeeeenk. As is Nexxali,” Sage revealed. “The skulk has judged it thus. We’re all diluted in a specific variety of ways, enduring a variety of life-hardships, but we’re the same meta-pattern at the core. Is why the Dagaz pact between us works so well. Also, why Nexxali’s music brought us together… for this.”

“For what?” Shady asked, silver eyes sliding from the fox to the dragon to the serval.

“To accomplish the kitty’s wish made on the bigly warship of spliced wall-humans,” Sage stated. “Of home and freedom. Of a happy place. Of… family!”

Nexxali simply nodded, striped tail swaying.

“Any other me-s I should be worrying about trying to butt-in on my Ash-time?” Shady ground out.

“Theoretically there are infinite soul copies across the dimensional divide,” Sage said, making Shady frown.

“Why?” I asked.

“System Wizards, I think.” Sage shrugged, pinning one more photo of me, Laika, Teya and Sage to the wall as it crawled out of her printer. “It’s like a… re-usable narrative template they lo-oicense or something. Each Earth has the same soul-pattern set they rely on. Or maybe it’s just how the boundary curve works, due to the Deathmoth gates being limited to particular patterns of doomed dimension like a Casino dealer is limited to a specific deck of cards. Not really sure.”

“The dog isn’t us… right?” Shady asked.

“Nah, Laika isn’t us,” Sage stated. “It basically goes like dis: Teya is the most Syntropic version of us. I’m her clearest Entropic reflection severely diluted by fox-ness. You, ma’ Shadio, is Syntropic Void-ness. N’ Nexxy is yo’ most matching Entropic Song-ness. Like two Syntropic planets with an Entropic moon each orbiting our A-man star! Schrödinger’s harem!”

“I see.” I stared at the photo wall. Six faces. Four of them allegedly the same soul wearing different skins, born across different dimensions. Then there was me.

“Hold up,” I said. “If you’re all copies of the same soul template… are there copies of me out there too? Like, am I eventually gonna run into a prad version of myself? A prisoner of the Third Fleet maybe? Or maybe an Omnid Ashcroft? Some elk-man version of me working at a G-bucks in dimension eleven-forty-seven?”

Sage’s freckles rearranged into a frowning emoji.

“Unlikely, Ashy.”

“Why?”

“Math.” She stated. “Tha’ finite boundary curve of doomed Earths connected by Mothman gates? It creates this super unfortunate gender imbalance. Like, cosmically unfortunate. Two Omnid females born for every one male. And on prad-dominated worlds it gets way worse… Twenty to one.”

“That does sound unfortunate,” I said.

“Yuh-huh. It’s most likely that the nearby souls matching your template are statistically… dead. Eaten by a dungeon. Squished by an apocalypse. Sacrificed to create a hot cup of tea. Turned into a Christmas ornament by a festive goat lady.” Sage ticked off fingers. “The male survival rate across doomed Earths is genuinely tragic. Humans die off first, then male prads. Female prads persist longer. Omnids generally don’t die, but there’s a limited number of us.”

“So Omnids cannot endlessly reproduce and take over every doomed world out there?” I asked.

“Not really,” Shady commented. “From what I was taught at Skyfall, our soul-limited-ness is also what reinforces our Syntropy-alignment and powers. Some Omnids require a great number of live worshippers to feed on recognition or accomplishments.”

“The Frontenachii Wendigos figured out how to extend the kids-number limit a tad,” Nexxali stated. “Galateya and other girls raised in time bubbles are a deviation, powered by Wormwood Star shards, a finite, precious resource burning up within the Corpse God Citadel.”

“Finite how?” I wondered.

“Wormwood Star shards are VERY hard to procure,” Shady answered. “They’re guarded by leviathan abominations, greedy magitek civilizations who also use them for power, or incredibly horrid dungeons.”

“So every version of me across the multiverse is basically… dead?” I asked.

“Not all of ‘em, but most likely… Maaaany are, yeah.” Sage’s freckles spelled out “RIP”. “The ones still alive are probably hiding in deep underground bunkers eating canned beans and crying. You’re the local outlier. The one sexy cockroach in the nuclear test site still doin’ pushups.”

“Romantic.” I sighed.

“It do be,” Sage offered. “In a sadge, heat-death-of-the-universe sort of way.”

“The Ashy-romancing belongs to me today,” Shady announced, cutting through my soul-math-contemplation.

“Aight, I gotta take a shower,” I said. “Get off me, you loafs.”

Shady and Nexxali reluctantly released me from their warm embrace.

As I stepped into Sage’s bathroom, Shady crammed herself in after me, antlers nearly scraping the doorframe, and kicked the door shut with a clawed foot.

The bathroom was designed for a single, average-sized human. Shady occupied roughly seventy percent of the available floor space.

Before I could say anything, I found myself pushed into the shower, water blasting across me. She procured a pink loofah and began to scrub my neck, chest and arms with the speed of a car wash operating at twice the safety speed. I sputtered through the shower assault.

“Shady, I can wash myself,” I let out.

“You smell like fox and dragon,” she huffed, scrubbing harder. “Much unacceptable! You’re going to smell like Ashy today. MY Ashy.”

“Shady, what did we talk about before?” I stared at her judgingly.

“Look, I just wanna max my time out with you,” she deflated slightly. “Is that wrong? I’m remembering more things everyday. More of our past, so many happy moments from my childhood. I want those feels back. You want those feels too, don’t you?”

I nodded slowly.

Shady reached out to me and smothered me in her embrace, her tank top becoming wet and transparent.

“By the way, I sorted out your outfits by color this morning,” she purred into my ear. “Set ninety percent of them on fire too. An Emperor should look presentable, not wearing werewolf moon boxers.”

“You what?!” I glared at her and found myself staring at a cheeky moon-shaped eye.

“He he he. You’re… soooo easy to scare,” she giggled.

“Right,” I relaxed. “You’re way too lazy to sort anything.”

“Damn right I am,” she laughed. “Starting to remember things, are you?”

My mind slid sideways, falling backwards through time.

A time when smaller, cheeky moon-shaped eyes stared at me, my best friend laughing at me, after poking fun at me… like she always used to.

“Where have you been since I lost you, Shades?” I asked.

“Places,” she sighed. “Omnithornia, mostly.”

“It wasn’t my parents moving away from Cascade that stopped you from seeing me again, right?”

“No it wasn’t,” she let out. “That was a bit of a… white lie… another misdirection, me trying to keep you from thinking about Omnithornia… trying to keep you safe from the Scruts.”

“That certainly worked out great,” I said sarcastically.

“Yeah… I mean… I didn’t think that you’d turn the whole situation around like this, become the freaking Emperor of Humanity, man.”

“Dummy.” I grabbed her wrists to stop her from resuming the loofah attack.

“Am a thicc dummy, yeah,” she admitted. “I tried to sort out everything myself, made a horrible mess of things, brought the Third Fleet here… and somehow you fixed it all for me. I should have put my faith in you from the start, trusted that you could handle the truth, help me… as my bestie.”

“No more lies,” I said.

“No more lies,” she agreed, rubbing her entire body against me.

“Also, quit emasculating me.”

“Emasculating, hrrrmm? Isn’t it hot when a bossy girl protecc? Bossying and washing your man is like a mega-standard thing in Omnithornia, you know. Is how we Omnid girls show love.”

“You’re on MY Earth now, Princess.”

“Am I really?” she grinned. “Then maybe you should do something about that, Emperor? Take charge, push me down, punish me for being bad.”

“Push you down? You’re the size of a god damn tank,” I grumbled.

“That didn’t stop you before.”

“I had Nexxali on my side to swat your behind hard enough for you to feel it.”

“You have my Fractal Engine heart on your side Ashy,” the Wendigo purred. “You just have to… Remember how to wield it. Haven’t you heard our kitty’s reality-breaking story? Did you… forget all of our summertime forest adventures?”

“Most of our ‘forest adventures’ seem like batshit fever dreams when I think about them,” I said. “They don’t make any sense in my memories.”

“Elaborate?”

“How did we meet?”

“We met in Darkfall… on a stormy, sunny, foggy… night, evening, day, morning… one summer,” Shady replied.

“What did I just say about you being honest? Did you fuck with my memories or something?” I grumbled, annoyance bubbling up. “I don’t understand any of that sentence. How can ALL of those things be true?”

“I didn’t mess with your memories, I swear.” Shady shook her jet-black mane, water droplets running down iridescent violet and blue edges. “We met a thousand times because you and I wanted to replay our first day together. Our friendship lasted much more than three summers. Breaking time was one of the many wishes we’ve made in a fairy circle.”

“Fairy circles are fucking real?”

“Fairy circles were real because WE made them real,” Shady clarified, booping my neck with her black snout. “I’m starting to remember. We built them… ourselves. With shiny rocks that I snuffed out and dug out from the old, abandoned Cascadia Co mine.”

“The… Netherweave Fold effect?” I stared at her, comprehension dawning.

“Yep.” She nodded. “Do you remember how many times I chased you across Darkfall valley? How many times… We played hide and seek in the forest or in your grandparents house? Or the game you called “Sah!” where you chased me down across the forest and tackled and caught me?”

“Huh, I didn’t, didn’t I? Wait, did you allow yourself to be caught or something? Or are young Wendigos slower than human kids?”

“Oi, quit insulting my awesome Wendigo-ness,” Shady huffed. “I’ve always been hella fast. You just managed to accelerate yourself by bending time in Darkfall. We didn’t have a name for it back then, didn’t fully understand it ourselves, were too preoccupied with the game itself.”

“So…”

“You caught me fair and square.”

I felt my mind careening sideways at this unexpected revelation.