Void Guardian 1.1

Impact 1.1

It’s a long drive home – shitty night, cut early, I have a few beers in me but I’m still good to drive. It’s made a bit longer by my decision to take the highway rather than the freeway – they’ve been doing late night construction and I’d rather avoid even the minimal traffic it causes. I give my aging Subaru some gas as I start heading uphill, and my phone dings. I check it – just a message from one of my gaming group cancelling tomorrow. I look back to the road and see a mass of ribbons and pink cloth.

I slam on the brakes but it’s far too late – the hood crumples and a spray of blood obscures the windshield as I hear a cry cut short. I stagger out, hoping that I had just hit a boar or a large dog that had run through a clothesline. The bloodstained figure in a colorful dress lying at the edge of my headlights' glow makes my heart sink. Oh god. There's no way I'm not going to jail. She must be 10 years old, and with all this blood she can't be long for this world.

My thoughts of my impending doom screech to a halt as I walk around to the front of my car. There is a sword stuck in the front of my grille. Not a little girl sword, three feet of sharpened steel that gleams a dull blue, even in the amber glow of my aging headlights. I stare at it in horror until a rasping wheeze shakes me from my stupor and I run to the girl's side. She's a little thing, covered in blood, and her eyes won't focus on me. I don't manage to do more than kneel over her when her glassy eyes stop moving altogether and her head slumps to the side.

“PUCHUU!” something cries off to my left.

I whip my head around to see... a disgusting mass of pink. It looks like someone tried to build a mongoose out of oversized marshmallows and stuck an even bigger one to its head. Despite its soft appearance, it moves bonelessly as it dances in place, frustration apparent.

“This AGAIN?! Too many, too fast! This is entirely unfair, they're all so fragile!” it cries, as its body writhes like a maggot in a fire. Two glittering black eyes fixate on me. “Oh, puchuu! You'll do just fine. I'll just do THAT to you, and it'll be even better! It worked on the others and it’ll work on you too!”

I'm too dumbfounded to do anything but blink when the coruscating pink and violet energy washes over me and turns my world into pain. I've never felt such incredible agony. My body twists and shifts under me, and I collapse. I'm not sure if I've hurt myself in falling to the asphalt – my body and my very being are tearing apart. The flesh on my arms runs like molten wax, and just as it runs down to shining bone it all goes black as my eyes flow out of their sockets and my soul rings like a struck bell. I hear its voice, and it crawls directly into my consciousness, as my ears have shattered like glass.

“Oh, I guess I should give you a little bit of help, puchuu? Take these, and take care to spend them only on what you really need, puchuu.” It pushes objects into my flailing protohands, and my touch says they are coins but my soul says they are beacons of power and will, cool embers, bright sparks and a sharp flame.

My body shifts and groans, the puddle of myself quivers and begins climbing my frame again. It's making me smaller, younger. “NO!” I cry, and my soul stills before vibrating with greater intensity. One of the embers vanishes, reinforcing my desire not to shrink and be lesser, to grow larger. My frame shifts again, and I stretch, large and tall. I continue to grow, and in more than one place. As flesh fills into the mold of my soul, my rebuilding body shows what has changed. I gain wider hips and breasts take shape on my body. My hair returns. Not my hair. My hair isn't black. It is my hair.

I try to stagger to my feet as I feel something touch my essence, a vast emptiness and yet a comfortable and complete blanket wraps around me and I feel the world shift as I gain new senses. I collapse back to the ground as the marshmallow thing shines in a new sense. The world distorts as a second sense springs into place and I see the warp of time and space, the pull of the Earth on everything and the interaction of the weft beyond it, sun and even the vastness of the galaxy's pull beyond that, a dimple in a divot in massive crater. It’s beautiful, and the cosmos sing to me with a quiet hum.

Its cloying voice pulls me from my reverie.

“Oh, good, puchuu. you didn't waste the gifts. Well, I guess you used one, but that's not too bad. You're a magical defender of justice and fate now. You wouldn't have been, normally, but between you and the others, we need all the replacements we can get. We've hijacked a couple destinies for this, so you're filling in for her.” It points with one droopy limb to the cooling corpse of the girl.

I try to get words out but can't work my new voice. Only a dull croak emerges from my throat.

“Hmm,” it muses. “I think you'll fit best… here. I have some girls in need of your sort of powers, and you should be a good fit, puchuu. You’ve got a patron, which is inconvenient, but may help...” It capers madly in my lap. “ANYWAY! You should transform now – the words should be etched on your soul, puchuu, and the other gifts will just make you stronger now.”

I stagger up and speak with my new voice for the first time. It's clear and cold and beautiful. But the words that pour from my lips are not a demand to know what is going on, not a scream of agony, not a terrified offer or bargain to return to myself, but a call for aid from nothing I have ever known before tonight.

“Void beyond the deepest black, join with me to crush evil!”

The influx of power is intoxicating. My awareness of the weft and weave of space snaps into place, clearer than ever. The paradoxically warm blanket of nothingess flows over me, changing and building, not in the painful way that the little creature did but a gentle caress that fixes my ills, repairing the scrapes I have just gained in my tumbles with my new body, the slight misalignments of my joints, my teeth, my eyes and all small imperfections simply righted. The embers and coal melt into my new blanket. My body renews itself and I am left whole and improved, better than before. Perfect. My aching soul is soothed by its new blanket of void and the comforting hum of the heavens.

I come to a moment later, and my awareness of my body causes me to freeze. I hold a large polearm, and I am dressed in something that could charitably be called Victorian, if I was a prostitute. A short skirt and bustle leave would most of my legs exposed, were it not for the thigh-high stockings. Ruffled and be-ribboned sleevelets adorn my arms, and feeling my midsection, I'm in some sort of ribbon-adorned corset – whether that is whalebone, sprung steel, or adamantine below the cloth I don't know. I take an experimental step forward and am reasonably glad that I feel a large square heel on the high boots and not a pin heel.

The void sharpens my focus and I turn toward the creature. “Did you change anything other than me? What about my family?”

“Puchuu!” it burbles. “No, just you. Your family is fine.”

“They won't stay fine. What does this gig pay? And if it's not much, is being a defender of justice and fate possibly a part time thing?” I idly play with my polearm. It has a large crescent blade on the end with a single back-spike – a halberd or glaive, I would wager.

“Full time only, puchuu. Not that you have much choice.” the creature flops back and waggles mockingly at me.

I frown and plant the butt of the weapon in the roadway. “They'll need to be provided for. Otherwise you're not much of an agent of justice.”

It stops its squirming and stares at me. “You play dirty, puchuu. But I suppose that's what's going to make you great! Okay, Void-girl, I'll play your game. I was going to offer you something else, but sure. I'll make sure you get paid. It'll be on you to get it into their hands though. Two-thousand a month – adjusted for inflation from this point on, so it'll be like a job! ”

I do some quick mental math. That's not a lot. “24,000 a year? That's less than I'm making now.”

It flops unconcernedly. “Three thousand then. Not going any higher though.”

I grit my teeth. That's marginally more than I am, or technically was, making. Shit. My wife needs the house and my daughter needs to be provided for. “Vacation time?”

“Nonexistent!” It gurgles at me happily, “but I'll ensure you get to see them during… seasonal lulls, if you want.”

My chest tightens and my heart breaks a little. My little cherub isn't going to see her father ever again. “You're not leaving me much ability to be a father. It's pretty much all I was truly good at.”

“You can't be much of a father in your current state anyway, puchuu.” The marshmallow body quivers up and down as it gloats. “I'm giving you a pretty good deal as it is, puchuu. Some others, well, they just get forgotten. Some don't even get families as fate corrects itself and closes the gaps, writing them out. You get a chance.”

Its eyes flicker over its shoulder. “Time for me to go. Some folks will catch up to you in the next 24 hours or so and they'll give you the skinny. I get the feeling you don't like me, so I'll let them explain. Sayonara-puchuu!” With that last it bunched up into a little ball and shrunk down into nothing, vanishing.

Leaving me alone on a dark highway with a young girl's corpse and a running car.