"-So, whenever someone says sixty seven or six and seven, you do this with your hands and say "Six seven!""

"Oh, okay. But why?" Hanya asked, unblinking.

"'Cause it's really funny!" Oliver said, holding on to the top of the ladder and watching Hanya go about her business.

"Well, what does that actually mean? Where did it come from?" She asked, tilting her head at him. Up on top of the barn, she was hard at work shingling part of the roof. Now that the old ones had been torn off down to the plywood, she had a stack next to her that she was hammering into place. The coglike angles of her horns gleamed in the afternoon sun.

"Nobody knows, it's just a meme that started one day."

Time had passed as it always did, and her life had taken on two starkly different variations; During the day she worked on the farm and spent time with the Hermans, slowly having gone from just hired help to a fixture of their family, and at night she would stand watch on the steel walls she'd constructed around the property waiting for trouble while monsters scuttled around down below. Each constant flowed into the other, her desire to keep the life she'd found and protect it one and the same. Not needing to sleep meant she was able to be a presence in the fields and on the walls without resting, although lately she had been taking a break around midday to eat and gather her energy. Between her and Owen things were running smoother than they ever had before, Hanya always finding something to fix or improve and Owen working just as hard running the whole operation. Even now once she was done with the roof Hanya meant to go and dig some new drainage for the fields next since the walls she'd built had changed how water flowed across the land. After that, it would be close to dinnertime...

"Hey, boy! Get on down from there, it ain't safe." Owen called from below, and Oliver and Hanya both looked down at him. He stared back with his hands on his hips as Oliver hurriedly scrambled down the ladder. "Sorry, pa."

"It's alright, buddy, I just don't want you to fall. Go on and find something to do." He said, patting Oliver on the back as he headed off towards the house before looking back at Hanya. "How's that roof coming?"

"Just fine. I should be done before much longer." Hanya said, putting another shingle into place before shiftily glancing at him. "...Maybe... Another six or seven minutes-"

"Oh, god, he's got you doing that thing too? Kids these days, I don't know where they come up with this stuff." Owen said, shaking his head. Hanya smiled a little smile and went back to work, picking up the hammer and lining up another shingle so the slope of the roof would be unbroken. She didn't know either, but even though it was nonsense it was a little funny. After a few moments she looked back to Owen, making herself blink. "What's the matter?"

"Huh? Oh, nothing. I was just thinking back to when I was his age, about a hundred years ago. It really was a different time." Owen said, adjusting his hat in the familiar nervous habit. Hanya nodded sympathetically, even though when she had been Oliver's age she'd been living like a primitive in a factory the size of a U.S state. There just wasn't much basis for comparison there. "...I was born and raised here, you know. Before this was our farm it was my dads, and before him, my grandpas. Sooner or later it'll pass from me to Oliver. This has been Herman land for years and years, and I always thought it would stay that way. Maybe it's not much, but we've done a lot with it."

"...You're talking about a legacy?" Hanya suggested, and Owen nodded. "Guess I am. 'Course, these days things are a whole lot stranger and more dangerous than they've ever been before. Used to be I was worried about taking in enough of a harvest to pay our bills, or the government would bump our taxes up. Now there are tar monsters skulking around at night, waiting to get in here and tear us in half. If you weren't here, than... I don't know what would have happened to us by now."

"I've been thinking about lighting out. Evie's got family on the mainland, and we could stay with them until we figure out where to go from there. Although between you and me, I'm not sure which is worse, those creatures or my in laws." Owen tried to joke, before seeing Hanya's worried expression. "You'd be coming along with us, of course. I don't like the idea of running and giving up the farm, but I've got my family and their safety to think about. I couldn't ever forgive myself if something happened to them because I was too stubborn to leave."

"...Owen? I understand. I really do." Hanya said a little glumly. The farm meant a lot to her, but so did the Hermans themselves, and preventing them from being hurt or even worse was the whole reason she had been manning the walls throughout the nights. The thought of leaving things behind still made her feel like her heart had briefly stopped, and she guessed it was an echo of how Owen felt; Caught between two impossible choices. He tried to smile at her, but now she could see the tiredness lurking behind his eyes. "Well, day's a wastin'. I'll be out back if you need me for anything."

The moment stuck with her as she finished with the roof and then climbed down, heading for the fields to start digging. It hung over her like a cloud as she fretted, taking a shovel out of the barn and then making her way to the walls, footsteps in the dirt loud to her. Hanya could sometimes be detached, and thought of herself as not very emotional due to her experiences, but that was more from her own feelings being muted and a little disconnected. It meant that when she felt something sincerely it lingered with her, and now that Owen had shared his worries she couldn't help but dwell on them. As she dug out a trench to thread through where water had previously drained, the rise and fall of the shovel counterbalanced the twin anxieties of the Hermans being in danger and the possibility they'd be leaving the farm behind. Because she was trying not to overthink things it meant it was all she thought about even as she delineated a long line in the ground that would funnel water along the side of the field instead of letting it pool and sit.

As the sun sank lower and lower toward the horizon she kept at it, vantablack dress unblemished and dirt not sticking to her gloves or her shoes. Only when a path had been fully traced to another part of the field where water would flow through the rest of the system did she straighten up and check behind her to see the results. After she was satisfied she set back off to the barn to put the shovel where it belonged and wash up for dinner. Even with her pristine gloves on and black metal hands underneath, that was a small ask.

Eventually finding herself on the parapet of the wall that faced into central Ulimaroa afterward in the dark of night, Hanya sighed with the slight breeze blowing and was finally able to admit to herself that she didn't want to abandon the farm. It had been a long time since she'd been somewhere she felt like she belonged, with people who cared about her, and to walk away with them into an unsteady future made her apprehensive. If only there was a way she could make sure the Hermans would be safe... In her experience, when things changed they changed for the worse, not the better. It had been idyllic here, and let her heal herself a little. Her heart was set on staying even if she could recognize why that might not have been the best idea.

Staring out across the terrain with her weird eyes, Hanya spotted a pack of tar monsters far afield, skulking around the base of some hills. Another thing that worried her was evident as they tried to avoid her gaze; Over time, the creatures were learning. After she'd destroyed so many they'd begun to stay out of her direct sight lines, not knowing she could perceive them still due to being slightly phase shifted out of reality. Hanya could view around herself just as much as directly along the path of her eyes, like a zoomed out third person view, and she knew where they were even if they thought she didn't. Owen had brought her some coffee in a thermos an hour or so ago, and she sipped at the lukewarm beverage while she kept watch. Capping off the great big hole they'd found not so long ago in an oilfield had worked for a little while, but eventually the things had started coming back around once more. Hanya didn't know whether they had found another path up through the earth or if they'd managed to put a hole in the steel lid, but it came to the same thing either way. From what Owen had said about the other farms in the area, they'd had their own nighttime visitors, but so far things were holding steady... Hanya saw a small group of the tar monsters stop in plain view and narrowed her eyes to send vantablack death rays at them, knowing the beams would spear through the night and split them apart in the space of a second. She'd rely on her chains if they were going to approach closer, but as it was there was no reason not to force them to keep their heads down-

When two separate groups appeared on the edges of her vision, running for broke to both corners of the wall, Hanya blinked. It was too organized for it to be random movement, and with a sinking feeling she realized she'd been baited to concentrating on what was in front of her to the detriment of the rest. Sprinting on all fours, as usual the creatures didn't make any sounds other than the footfall of claws as they charged. But as they went to meet in the middle, Hanya didn't intend to give them a chance to do whatever they were planning. Raising her hands, a thick grey mist billowed out from a point until a cloud of it had formed before her on the ground, where the two groups would be meeting.  As the tar monsters ran into it, she let the front ranks advance inward before clenching her fists. Nails and screws materialized from the fog, flying upward at high speeds in waves like a reverse rain, the ones not sticking into black flesh soaring above her head before gravity took hold and they fell just as fast downward. She knew the creatures didn't have organs or blood, but with the nails sticking into them it allowed her to seize the metal itself, driving it deeper in their forms and then ripping many of them apart. Splatters of black ooze landed through the mists, smoking away and adding that output to the rest of the cloud.

They'd once more diverted her attention as the initial force she'd first seen started to move toward her while another bunch from nowhere ran for the front gate, along the wall all the way at her back. The coordination to attack from two different sides at the same time calmed her down even as it alarmed her, since it forced her to prioritize efficiency and killing power over spectacles. It was the way she had always fought, not wasting effort or motion when simple solutions would do to accomplish the goal. Despite that, as her mind whirled and considered angles, trajectory, and tactics, something she hadn't felt before in the midst of a fight was influencing her. More than just the science and reality of her powers, an emotion she wasn't familiar with was rising in her. She let it ride as she gestured behind her, the cauldron like Crucible forming into being and hanging in the air in front of the farm. As it tipped and spilled out molten metal in thick waves she swiped with her hand, splitting the showering steel apart so it fell like burning rain instead. The droplets pattered down, igniting and incinerating tarry black flesh even as she gathered herself and straightened up to face the other incoming enemies.

Energy gathered as a spiral pronounced itself just over her head, in between her horns; There were too many to bother with eyebeams, so she meant to step up the blasts to a real barrage. There was a slight hum while the death rays charged up, the monsters getting closer and closer to the walls before she opened her eyes again and let loose. Vantablack beams streaked outward from the spiral, many all at once that made sounds like glass breaking before they split apart whatever they struck, carving long straight lines in the hardpan after lancing right through the creatures. Behind her, the door to the farmhouse banged open as Owen staggered out, rifle in hand, but she didn't notice as Hanya was too busy searching for more targets. A few errant chains coiled from behind her back like tentacles, bladed tips following her eyes as she looked for anything still moving. Only then did she spot the last of the nighttime visitors far off and watching her. Even in her current state, the sight took her aback.

The other creatures seemed mindless, just malformed things without any real intelligence, so the regard in it's many red eyes brought her up short. It was tall, taller than any person, and it had too many eyes and too many arms, but it was looking right at her. Studying her. Shaped like a human but subtly wrong, with white tatters across it that could have been clothing or could have been skin, it had been watching the entirety of the skirmish, and only now when things were nearing the end and the others all dead did it move. Slowly, it raised one of it's hands to point directly at her. It narrowed it's eyes all at once, like a carpet of glowing red that ran from it's head down it's body and even in it's shadow as they one and all glared at her.

"Hanya! You alright?" Owen called as she took a step back. She didn't know what it was, if it was the source of these alien beasts or just their leader, but the challenge and the intent in the gesture and the gaze was impossible to misread. Hanya swallowed before she narrowed her eyes back at the figure, the feeling that had been rising seeming to lock itself in place in her chest defiantly. This time, she could at least make a guess as to what it was; It felt like resolve.

"GO-" She raised her hands above her head as a whitish blue shape of geometry flickered into being and solidified with a metallic sound. The turret of the tank floated just above her, perfectly drawn but translucent and almost glassy as it took aim under her command. Owen realized what was about to happen and put the rifle in the crook of his arm to plug his ears.

"-AWAY!" She yelled, the sound lost under the boom of the gun. When the tank fired it shook the wall under her and the ground around her, throwing dust off the roof of the house and the barn; After a second of whistling through the air the round impacted and exploded right where the new enemy had been, throwing up flames and smoke and force and dirt. The impact rang throughout the night, and before it had even started to fade Hanya fired again, letting another shell punch into the earth to punctuate the message. Only after things had settled back down did she take a look around and realize the sky was lightening for dawn to eventually come, seeming to spell an end to the long night.

"I heard the commotion and came out to make sure you were okay." Owen explained to her as she lowered herself off the wall and then dropped down, the chains she'd conjured coiling back up and vanishing just like the tank turret had. "What happened?"

"Hello, hi. Owen? I don't want to leave this place." She said instead of replying to his question. He could probably guess what had gone on during the night without specifics, but she wanted to be sure and say that first. "I don't want to leave the farm behind. It means too much to me, and I don't want you and your family to give it up. If I get a vote, that's mine."

"...I don't want to leave either." He admitted, adjusting his hat. His rifle was loose at his side, and Hanya looked over to see Evie peeking out from behind the screen door at them. Oliver likewise was watching out of his bedroom window.

"Some things are worth fighting for." Hanya said, because she meant it. It was a lesson she'd learned because of the Hermans, and she was more determined than ever to protect the place and the people she'd grown to love.