Looking at Clem in her pile of plush and misery, there was only really one thing to do. I sat down on her springy bed, and drew her into a six-armed spider hug.

  “I don’t really think I’m following,” I said. “But I assume it has to do with the third eye growing from your forehead?”

  It really did look like an eye, just barely visible through the thin cloth headband. I lifted it just a tad, but Clem’s hand quickly pulled mine away.

  “What do you know of Asvexians?” Clem asked.

  “The who?”

  She quieted down as a frankly ludicrous amount of dramatic reveals happened on the show running on her laptop. “I suppose magi-sociopolitical history isn’t a high priority in your curriculum right now. They’re the race that made mimics. By accident. By the time their home planet was destroyed, their entire race was less than ten million strong. Then they disappeared, leaving some to speculate that they dispersed among the sister planets during the big convergence event of 536 AD.”

  “Okay?”

  “Asvexians are malleable, but only one in a thousand are born male. The rest of the females can… magically alter their biology to be able to copulate with and conceive offspring of other species. That offspring takes on the shape of its male parent, but when those hybrid offspring mate with another hybrid, the original Asvexian biology always, always trumps the rest. And they inherit the same magic as their forebears.”

  “And so you get another full Asvexian. Yeah. Makes sense.”

  Clem blinked. “It does?”

  “I mean, that’s just latent inheritance mixed with hybrid fertility. The former happens with a bunch of diseases, disabilities, sometimes baldness. It skips a generation, in layman’s terms. And hybrid fertility… I mean, most earthborn lifeforms grow infertile when they hybridize, so I guess that part is a bit weird. But it’s just biology cranked up to eleven with magic.” I paused. “So, you think you’re an Asvenxian?”

  She nodded glumly. “Either that, or it’s some sort of alien skin disease.”

  “Not to say that I don’t believe you, but you do realise you’re self-diagnosing?”

  “What options do I have, what flavor of medical professional could I turn to?” She whirled to face me, her forehead eye narrowing to a cat-eyed slit. “None, that’s what, and so now I have to deal with the fact that I’m changing now, and that I might continue to grow more changes as I grow older.”

  “I’ll admit, that’s weird, but in a good way?” Not the self-diagnosing part. Never self-diagnose. “What’s an Asvexian’s life span anyways?”

  “Oh, somewhere north of two hundred years,” Clem sniffed. “Asvexians have always selected for long-lived host species. I’ll outlive everyone I know.”

  Except me. Well, speaking optimistically of course. Having over a hundred in body had to be slowing down my aging process a ton, but there was no guarantee I wouldn’t get stuck in a bad place and run out of lives sometime in the future. Perhaps that was preferable to outliving so many generations. I probably wouldn’t deal with that well.

  “It’s not all bad,” I said. “I for one welcome you into the many eyes club.”

  “You don’t understand, Sam, I’m mutating, I-I don’t know what I’ll look like in a year, four years, a decade! What if I change in a way that makes it impossible to love me? What if I’m dangerous, w-what if Akira leaves me?”

  Oh you poor sweet Clem. “Clem, listen. You almost turned Akira into a slime. He proceeded not only to forgive you, but carry your injured ass through the Creektin convergence event. And then he helped you risk your life to help your bestie, when he really could’ve just chosen to be teleported out. And now he’s asking me to make you feel better, not because he’s scared of your changes, but because he’s worried.”

  “... he is?”

  “Bestie, hand over my heart, you must’ve bribed god to meet this man, because I haven’t seen anyone as loyal as he is.”

  “Yeah. Me either.” She laid a hand over her eyes. “I don’t deserve it.”

  I grabbed her by her shoulders and whirled her around until she was facing me. “No, Clem, you do deserve it. You’re great. If you weren’t straight as a steel rod, I’d have totally made a move on you years ago.”

  Clem snorted in disbelief. “I’m less straight and more ‘bi and picky’. You’d have always been my number one choice for a third, y’know?”

  I shifted in place on her bed. “Well now you’re making this hug weird.”

  “I can make it weirder,” she said. “Akira is wicked good at sex. He’s got those strong arms and that wide, flat tongue that just—”

  “Alright, that’s quite enough pillowtalk for today.” I gave the eye thing on her forehead a prod. It was as hard as glass. “This eye give you any trouble?”

  Her mischievous grin faltered. “That’s the second thing. I can’t remember wide swaths of my childhood, or my parents’ faces. I’ve been forgetting little things too — dishes, car keys, birthdays. I-I think my parents have been selectively deleting my memory as punishment for trashing the house.”

  “Or, hear me out, your memory is getting fuzzy because the third eye growing on your forehead is putting pressure against your prefrontal lobe. It would explain the lack of inhibition too, plus all the constant snacking.” And the paranoia. Honestly, Clem’s parents didn’t seem like the type of assholes who put too much stake in what their daughter was doing. They were absent, probably out and about on witchy business, though I suppose that was its own flavor of neglect.

  I think I’m the only one with halfway normal parents.

  Regardless, Clem wasn’t in a good place, mentally speaking. Akira wasn’t aware enough of the going-ons of The Society, aliens, and stuff. The gnomes didn’t know how to help her either. They were barely managing to clean up after her. So, it really was up to me to share the good vibes.

  And so far, it looked like I’d already accomplished that much. My bestie was distressed, but calming down. Change was indeed coming to the world, for all of us. Facing it alone was daunting. But that was why you had friends.

  “I think you’re going to be just fine, Clem,” I said, slowly undoing the wraps around her forehead-eye. She let me this time. “And if you’re not, you know who to call.”

  “Of course,” she said, wiping her eyes. “So, about that offer for a threesome—”

  “No.”

  “Awww.”

  I didn’t know if she was being serious, if she was joking, or if this thing was influencing her mind. Therefore, I decided to ignore it.

  With the wraps removed, her eye was revealed. It was a glittering blue gem of an eyeball, a blue sclera with infinitely repeating reflections scintillating beautifully. In the middle, an abyssal slit like a cat’s eye flicked around restlessly.

  “Can you see through this?” I asked.

  “Yeah. The extra perspective is a bit disorienting, is all.” She scratched at the flaky skin around the edges. “Itchy too.”

  “Right. Let's get some moisturizer on that and then, uh, I dunno.” Probably go looking for a Society-approved medical professional. “I actually came here with a problem of my own, you know?”

  The blue gem-eye zeroed in on me as Clem’s brow furrowed.

  “I almost forgot,” she said. “I have a potion for you.”

  “Clem, no—”

  “It’s a special mix,” she added, snaking out of my grasp and rummaging around under her piles of pillows. She emerged with a long-necked potion bottle straight out of a fantasy game, two cups of liquid colored like antifreeze swashing around inside. “Some potion sales came in, so I bought ingredients in bulk from the profits and skimmed some off the top for personal research. This is the result — go on. Touch it. See what your system has to say about it.”

  She seemed giddy enough that the distraction might be worth it. I poked the potion, to which the system gave me an unusual prompt.

  [Unknown potion. Consume sample for identification.]

  “Unknown potion?”

  Clem squeed. “It’s my unique mix! I invented it — partially by accident since I accidentally dropped half a sandwich in there — but I did it!”

  “Whatsit do then?”

  “It’s a mind-hardener. Keeps telepathic intrusions out. A thimble taken beforehand inoculates for half a day, twelve hours to be precise. If you’re already under outside mental influence, you drink about one to three liquid ounces. It also functions as an invertebrate-icide and has all the necessary micro- and macronutrients to count as a full adult-sized meal.”

  The system adjusted its parameters as I took the tiniest sip, showing me a prompt that reflected pretty much what Clem had just said.

  “Gee, this is pretty neat,” I said. “But, uh, I’m not planning to fight any hostile telepaths anytime soon, Clem.”

  At that, she gave me a disappointed look. “I am a telepath, Sam. All telepathy is mind control, the difference is just in how far the user is willing to go.”

  “I don’t feel like you’re subtly manipulating me,” I said.

  “And I’m likely not the only telepath you’ll meet. Telepathy is serious dark magic, Sam. If someone worms their way into my mind, they’ll have a direct connection into yours, and neither of us might notice.”

  Moderately unnerving. The idea reminded me of hackers infecting personal computers, stealing account data and using it to send fishy links to the user’s social media contacts. Technology wasn’t quite far enough along to allow someone to hack into a person’s brain. I’d followed enough talks about what lawmakers and producers could do once the tech inevitably became widespread to understand that prophylactic care was better than fixing the problem once it had occurred.

  And beyond that, Clem made this specifically for me. I’d be a terrible friend if I ignored not just her worries, but also her sincere effort. If anything, it would let her sleep better at night, not me, and that was worth a bit of personal sacrifice.

  “If that’s the case… I’ll take it then.” Clem smiled and more hugs followed. Clem was obviously critically undersupplied. Hugs were one thing money couldn’t buy. “And it works?”

  “Tested it on Akira,” she said, then added a bit too quickly, “A-and on a rat. Before giving it to him, of course.”

  We sat there for a while until the tension had bled away.

  “So Clem, as the foremost expert in accidental slimeification, I come to you with a problem.” I undid my backpack and emptied it out. Slowly, and with a drawn out schlorp sound, an orange soda-colored slime large enough to fill a bathtub, oozed out and plopped onto the bed. “This is Rebecca. Say hi, Rebecca.”

  One of Becca’s pseudopods waved.

  “Rebecca?” Clem asked incredulously. “From high school?”

  “That’s the one. Becca got her soul mixed with a mimic. Now she’s a Custodian, but she can’t speak, and she’s got some type of issue with her system access. I am going to help her fix that. And if I can make a slime talk, I can help whatever you’re going through as well.” I was a magical girl after all, and even if she wasn’t my responsibility, magical girls exist to make people happy.

  “I see,” Clem said. “You could’ve asked me to talk to her telepathically in the first place.”

  Clem stared at slime Becca, her brow furrowing ever more.

  “I can’t get through.” She exclaimed. “I can’t get through!”

  “Now try me.”

  She did. But instead of connecting like before, something inside me snapped closed.

  [Mental intrusion detected. Activating firewall.]

  “Eek!” Clem recoiled, as if zapped by static electricity.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “I… you activated the system firewall. Why?”

  “I… I suppose now that I’m aware of the damage I can cause, every connection is seen as an intrusion,” Clem mused.

  “But you’re my bestie,” I said. “You’re not dangerous to me in the slightest.”

  “If your system thinks I am, then I am.” She fixed me with a stare.

  I fidgeted nervously under her stare before an idea hit me upside the head. “System, what would it cost to buy your firewall and install it on an associate?”

  The system was silent for an unnerving few moments. Usually it responded immediately. Maybe this was more difficult of a question than I had anticipated.

  [Mental Firewall I: A basic partition of the system, used to shield a user from mental influences. Comes with a self-install kit, complete with anesthesia. Price: 25 Soulcoins.]

  “Buy it.”

  I turned to Clem before she could protest. “Now listen. I’ve already drunk more than a hundred soulcoins worth of your potions — believe me, I checked. And now you’re giving me some more. This is some of my repayment. If you want anything else, just call me.”

  “But—”

  “I mean it. Now you don’t have to constantly feed Akira potions to keep his mind warded.”

  Assuming he was ready to accept a little magical cyberware. God, cyberware. The future is now! Or well, it was for those with soulcoins. Everyone else had to wait for the commercial release. It was only a question of years, surely.

  I shot Clem my best, reassuring smile. “So, besties forever?”

  She looked ready to cry again. I gave her a hug and at the same time called Akira via the system interface. He picked up after a single ring.

  “Everything alright?” he asked.

  “Clem needs you.” I dropped the call.

  It was almost comical how we could hear him approach down the hall with rapid, thudding steps. He slowed down a few steps away from the door before entering, trying to look like he wasn’t worried to death at all.

  The moment he did, he saw me, Clem, and Becca oobling on the bed.

  “Oh,” he said, his brain short circuiting for a moment. “Is that me from an alternative universe? Or is that… ours? Oh god, am I a slime dad?”

  “No, bun-bun, it’s—”

  But he was unstoppable. “Do cribs come as watertight containers? What do slimes even eat? How did this even happen, we were using protection and everything. God — I don’t know how to raise a slime. But I’ll try.”

  He didn’t even look flustered by the change on her forehead. All he did was give it a glance, before returning to stare her straight in the eyes.

  I gave Clem a raised eyebrow, a flourish of three arms, an ‘I told you so’.

  And that was when the smile returned on her face, and the tears. She muttered apologies and sobs into his shirt as they embraced each other. Clem sure had one heck of a life going on at the moment. But the most important thing was that she wasn’t alone.

  There was a cracking sound. All of us looked at Clem’s forehead, where the slit pupil of the eye was growing to stretch until it turned the entire orb black.

  “Huh. That is cool as hell.”

  The eye cracked down the middle and a forearm-long blue tongue flicked out, licking Akira across the face.

  “Ack!”

  “Oh my god, I am so sorry.” Clem turned to me, positively mortified. Her forehead tongue immediately licked across three of my eyeballs.

  “Aaah, my eyes! I’m blind!”

  “Oh my god, I am so, so, sorry.”

  “Just kidding!” I uncovered my eyes, blinking them in turn. That earned me a scowl.

  “That’s not funny Sam — eek, what are you doing!?”

  “Inspecting your new eyeball-tongue-mouth. As an experienced many-eyeball-haver, I’m qualified to do some initial testing.” I gently poked the eyeball mouth, flinching back when both sides clamped shut like two halves of a clam. “Did you feel that? No? Alright. Can you still see through this thing?”

  “Yeah, but everything is blue now.”

  “Where did that long tongue disappear to? Can you make it open up again?”

  “I don’t know if I want to!” she exclaimed.

  “Alright. Akira, come over here for a moment.”

  He immediately got licked again.

  “Alright. Initial diagnosis: Whatever it is, it likes Akira.”

  “Don’t talk about the eye mouth like it’s some sort of alien creature that’s not part of my body!”

  I turned to Clem. “Correction: Clem is incredibly, wildly infatuated with you, Akira. But you both already know that, so here’s something you don’t know: Just relax. Explore what this thing is. And if it’s a problem…”

  “We come get you,” she said with a huff, poking her forehead. “It is highlighting some of my magical reagents in odd colors, and you, Sam, are practically glowing. Ooh, wait, can I see thaumic weight now? Suddenly, being a freak doesn’t sound so bad.”

  I couldn’t help but grin. “Welcome to the club.”

  +++

  Clem, it turned out, just needed some reassurances that we wouldn’t leave her, or talk smack behind her back about her new third eye. She wanted to get used to it first before she revealed it to any expanded circle of friends, so she wasn’t joining the party today, sadly. And since Akira was busy treating her like a princess, apparently I was the next best choice as a host.

  Surprisingly, it was going pretty well.

  “Jenny! So glad you could make it.”

  “You, I recognize you two. Class 11C, right?”

  “Heyyy person-I’ve-never-met. You look like you need some help. Looking for snacks? Music?”

  The guy in question gave a quick glance at my face. I had unsummoned my extra eyes, and I was hoping that the gray skin just looked vaguely dark in the dim light. “Who the heck are you supposed to be? Is that a cosplay?”

  “I, er, no?”

  “You hiding something under that hoody? Weapons? Drugs?”

  I… was this guy an undercover cop? “I don’t think I follow. Don’t you see my name badge?”

  He squinted at my hoodie, which had a little wooden plaque attached to it.

  “It just says ‘host’.”

  “Yep. So, who’re you and how can I help ferry you towards your favorite drink?”

  He didn’t give me his name, which meant I was definitely keeping an eye out in case he tried any shit. There were quite a few camera drones buzzing around, recording people doing Tik-Tok dances. A couple cheap ones from the system shop fit right in.

  Back to socializing.

  Twirling past people and bouncing from one group to the next was amazing. Fulfilling. Like I’d always wanted to live like this, but never managed to put even a single toe outside of my comfort box. There were so many different people with so many different life stories.

  Socializing was surprisingly hard physical work. Go from here to there. Talk to that person, then this one. Offer drinks. Up the stairs, down the stairs, outside, inside, get someone to clean a bathroom again, end up doing it myself because everyone else was wilfully incompetent…

  It was little wonder then that, when my mind was overstimulated and my Custodian constitution was flagging after the long day, I made a mistake.

  “Addy! Oh my god, there you are. You smell like grilled meatstuffs. Where were—” My arms, all poised to give her a hug, unfolded as one. With a loud tearing sound my gray hoodie was ripped apart by the seams.

  The closest people noticed immediately, mutterings and yelps of surprise spreading in a wave. People muttered, pointed, yelped, screamed, and reacted in too many ways to parse.

  “Aw fudgesticks.” They were all staring at me. For all my posturing in front of Clem to not worry about her add-ons, when it came to revealing my own my confidence took a nosedive. What a hypocrite. “I, umm, hi, uh… surprise?”

  And then Addy did the unthinkable.

  “RancorSurge.”

  Over the course of a three-second theme song, a rainbow-colored mix of epileptic proportions enveloped Addy, growing her up and up until she was so big people had to step back to make space for her. The party goers were surprised by the spider girl in their midst, but they were downright terrified by the ceiling-height weretanuki suddenly showing up out of nowhere.

  “Greetings, I—” She hit her head on the pointy end of a chandelier, eliciting a pained squeak. That more than anything brought my panicking brain back on track.

  I jumped forward, put on my best showface, and gave people a six-armed wave. “Hello, hi. Custodian Sam here, and my partner Custodian Adelaide. In case you’re not from around these parts, we’re part of the reason Creektin is still standing. We didn’t mean to interrupt and, er, this isn’t an official business visit, or even an audit or anything. We’re just here to have fun like normal people! Not that it means unnormal people can’t have fun, or that we’re not normal normal, and… err…”

  There was a moment of silence. The music turned back on. Nobody was dancing. All eyes were on us, and of those, most were on Addy. Then, people started talking again.

  “Hey, you people destroyed my car!”

  “Is that fur real?”

  “Fuck, she’s hot.”

  The single voices were quickly turning into a maelstrom of gossip.

  “Please, we’re just here to party as well. Superheroes need to relax too. Isn’t that right Addy? You’re a bona fide partier, what say you?”

  Addy took in the room with those yellow eyes of hers. And in that moment, through rubbing her every stat-upgraded braincell together, she arrived at the single answer, the singularity, the one thing everyone here could relate to.

  “I bet… I could outdrink you all?”

  “Deal!” someone yelled from the peanut gallery. “Someone get some drinks over here.”

  Within moments, we were sitting at a folding table someone had quickly dragged over, face to face with not one, but two competitors in the age-old contest of ‘who can handle the most poison?’. Opposite of me was a girl I could only describe as lethally goth. Black lipstick, eyeshadow, piercings, the works. Her gaze was raking me like a tongue tasting a new sort of candy.

  I’m nervous. Why am I nervous? I can blow up mimics all day, but get weird when a pretty girl starts staring at me?

  “Uhh, hi. I’m Sam.”

  “Oh, I heard.” She licked the metal studs poking out from under her lips with a bifurcated tongue. “So. Know how to use those hands?”

  “I’m very proficient, yes,” I said, knocking back a drink. “Probably could learn to juggle in, like, a day if I wanted to.”

  “Funny. I like funny girls.” She knocked two more back. I had to follow up. “Got any plans after this?”

  “I, uh, kind of just wanted to relax and chill.”

  “Oh, we can absolutely chill.”

  A tingle ran up my spine.

  Addy had it easy. Opposite of her was a dude with the genetic predisposition of a quarterback, and a mouth like a vending machine for trivia and fun facts. He was a certified A+ yapper. Initially, he had compared Addy to his dog. She was vaguely insulted at first, but after some followup questions seemed to be hitting it off quite nicely. She didn’t say much, and he was happy to fill the rest of the void with inane blabber.

  I turned back to the goth. “We can ‘chill’. If you beat me, that is.”

  Judging by the fire in her eyes, she was more than down for a little competition.

  Judging by the drool coming from her mouth fifteen minutes later, she was done for.

  “Lemme win,” she mumbled around a cup of some mixed drink. “I dun gettid… erkh.”

  She fell off her chair. Somewhere in the background, the constant chant of ‘drink, drink, drink’ reached its crescendo. Whoops and hollers filled the room. Apparently, all I needed to be considered part of the party people was to win a public drinking contest. It was, honestly, rather easy.

  “I thought you were stronger,” I said, wiping away a faux tear while carrying her gently on six arms over to the nearest couch. Her black lipstick was smudged across her lower lip, which was twisted into a pout.

  “So fuggin’ hot,” she muttered.

  “I recommend water, and if that doesn’t help, a bucket.”

  “Not me, you idiot…”

  Addy had finished with her opponent much more respectfully. He ducked out before approaching his limit, which was a rarity in these parts.

  Addy sighed, stretching and cracking her neck as we moseyed over to the nearest snack table. She sniffed at the snacks, then turned into her hybrid form. Maybe the salted goodies tasted better in that form?

  I was feeling a bit peckish myself, and unlike her I hadn’t had the opportunity to peruse the grilled goods outside. Ooh, there was some normal sushi left, right next to the crumbly remains of what must have been multiple platters of fried sushi.

  Sushi and wasabi. What a wonderful time.

  I wonder if wasabi is more or less spicy now? On the one hand, I have a bunch of Body and [Vampirism I] reinforcing my constitution. On the other hand, maybe Sense makes the spiciness even worse?

  I turned to Addy, whose eyes were tearing up from a single bite. She was closing in on 200 Sense. It didn’t keep her from stuffing herself even more.

  Definitely worse.

  “Holy shit, it’s Badass Tanuki!” someone yelled.

  Hybrid-Addy turned around, cheeks stuffed like a squirrel. “Mmff?”

  A girl stepped up with her party of friends. “You’re all over the internet.”

  A clip was playing on her phone, a montage of Addy in her hybrid form cutting through swaths of mimics. There was a shot of her from the front, baring her elongated canines in a challenging frown, and from her back, twirling her shapeshifting sword, the phrase ‘bark for me, bitchboy’ plastered on the back of her shirt, which someone had edited to flow like some sort of victory flag. Tanya’s work, no doubt about it. The short thirty second clip had twenty million views and ten thousand comments, most of them barking noises.

  Addy looked shocked, then mortified. A low keening noise I’d come to recognize as a sign of panic filled my better-than-human hearing as more and more people gathered around her. She couldn’t just change into her big form and run away in here. She might break something, or someone.

  Without much thought, I gently pushed the throng aside with six arms and put myself between the crowd and her. “No, no autographs. Not even on your shirt. On your cast? You can get one from me. What do you mean you don’t care, I’m — hey, girl! Stop flashing your — and now everyone’s barking. Why is everyone barking? Is this a meme I’m not aware of? Here, you want something to focus on, have some magic: Arms & Arms proficiency!”

  Everyone took a step back as twin lines of yellow snaked down my arms like living tattoos. The ring of people around us went quiet.

  “So… what does that do?” a guy in a shirt that was emblazoned with Addy’s face looked at me.

  We have merch!?

  “Magic stuff. Try throwing something at me.”

  The guy threw an empty vodka bottle at me. It was a slow, underhand throw, but still, have some tact, man.

  At the same time, an empty slipper flew at me from behind.

  I caught both the bottle and the slipper without so much as turning an inch. “Next time, throw something that won’t hurt anyone if you miss!”

  That was the starting shot. The crowd whooped and hollered as people tossed everything and anything at hand at me in the hopes of seeing me catch it. In short order, I caught: six empty cups, three hats, an orange, two pieces of sushi (yum), a pink bra, a potted plant (stop ruining Clem’s decor, jackass!), a football, another potted plant (I’m serious!), and a fake human skull. I had to juggle half of my catch while stacking the other half on a nearby table. While this was absolutely fantastic training, people were also getting way too enthusiastic about finding weirder and weirder things to yeet in my general direction.

  It didn’t even take a minute until someone tossed a plastic cup trailing an arc of juice and-slash-or alcohol behind it. My eyes caught it just as the ill-fated projectile left his hand. It wasn’t even projected to hit me, flying towards the TV instead.

  One moment.

  Time turned lazy.

  There was this interesting property of being able to think at ten times the speed of the world around you. You could plan every movement of your hands and feet ahead, but the limiting factor was always still how fast your body could react to those commands. During training, even enhanced by stats, when I tried to move during [One Moment]’s effect, I still ended up in a pile of limbs more times than not.

  Today felt different. Over the past weeks, every little failure had led to a correction through an adjustment of my filaments and ligaments via [Elasticity]. Stretchier iliotibial bands as well as modifications to hip rotators and the knee allowed me to turn on a dime, and stop as well. Below my hip, my tendons were springs, the energy of every step conserved and added onto the next step if I so desired.

  I moved, tendons optimized to give the longest powerstroke possible flinging me forward like a rubber ball. I bounced off the ground, then again, then dug my heels in to break. One hand cupped the cup, scooping the trail of liquid right back up, while the other five angled to catch me the moment I hit the crowded table in front of me. Because I was going to hit it, no matter what.

  I kicked the ground on the third bounce, put two hands against the table and turned my momentum vertical, vaulting up and onto the table.

  Don’t step on the sushi, don’t step on the sushi—

  I landed, arms flailing to counter torque while I balanced precariously on the tip of my toes. [One moment] wore off just as I had begun to appreciate the way people’s heads were still moving to follow from where I’d been over a second ago.

  The world picked up its pace, and faces snapped back onto me.

  “... caught it.”

  The room erupted into raucous cheer. The atmosphere of jubilation was overwhelming, the praise… intoxicating. My hands were shaking. Even enhanced, they really didn’t like being pushed beyond their limits this quickly, but god was it worth it. I could almost see, almost smell, almost feel their joy in a physical manner.

  [Resonance detected]

  [Collating collective emotions]

  [Composition: 96% Joy, 4% Anticipation]

  [Would you like to open external channels?]

  I blinked at the unfamiliar notification. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a small, fuzzy tanuki hopping up the stairs past a few startled partygoers.

  I looked back at the crowd and gave them my best theatrical smile and bow. “That’s it for today folks; stay safe, drink responsibly, for the love of god walk home instead of driving. Yeah, I mean you, big guy. We’ve been keeping the area clear of mimics, so it should be safer than drunk driving. Cheerio people!”

  mlem.