“She was all, ‘Imma pump Auld full of girl power!’ And I was all, ‘Rock and roll, baby!’ And Auld was all, ‘Sang it with me, girl.’ And we were all ‘Take that, bitch! You stupid mockery of coffee lovers. You defiler of all things compostable!’"

  Auld struck a rock star pose in the middle of the sidewalk as Harley re-lived the morning’s let’s-kill-a-coffee-monster adventure. My wife was on a roll, babbling a mile a minute, animated and happy, and that spilled over and splashed me in its wake.

  “Then I was all, ‘hear me roar, bitches!’” I growled, and it came out louder than I’d intended.

  “Uh, Muriel, maybe don’t scare the entire populace of Seattle by turning into a screaming dragon on New Year’s morning? Hmmm, babe?” my wife sniggered.

  “Oh, you know you love it, Harley. You’re gonna wanna make me growl and crawl all over you once the sewer’s outta my hair.”

  She grabbed me around the waist and planted a kiss on my cheek. “A shower certainly sounds like a good time, but first, we’ve gotta figure out what to do with Slayer Auld. I mean, you’re basically a new life form, right, Auld? Made of ice and magic? Will you melt if it warms up out here?”

  He nodded, “There’s no permanent place for me here, friends, but I can smell home calling, and it’s not too far off.”

  Then he winked at me, “And I have a feeling there are plenty of bears in the Cascades, so if I miss my singing partners, all I have to do—“

  “Hey, we are NOT replaceable!” my wife scolded, elbowing the giant ice being. “You can cozy up to all the sleeping bears you want, but if it's a jaunty pub song you’re in need of, Muriel and I are the only—“

  “Well, I say if there’s anymore mystical monsters, we let Auld have a go at them, and he can call us as back up. Otherwise, I’d prefer to be done with all this galavanting about every time there’s a holiday, and movies to watch, and food to consume, and couch-potatoing to do.”

  Auld bowed, sweeping an arm in front of him, then going to one knee. “Friends, ladies, comrades, it’s been a pleasure.”

  He looked around, scenting the air. “But I feel the storm on the mountains calling me home, and snow is where I must find myself. So, I bid you adieu and shall never forget our escapades. I am now an unofficial Monster Exterminator of Seattle, and all those in need of my service have only to whisper my name. Or cry for help, or some such. And as long as the temperature is below freezing, and the stars are aligned, and there’s enough magic left in my being, then I shall come forth. And monsters will rue the day they heard my name on the breeze.”

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  With that pronouncement, he let out a final whoop and jumped, scampering up our steep roof, knocking snow off the shingles, and sliding down the other side, gleefully declaring, “For auld lang syne!”

  I pressed my thumb to the bioscanner, unlocking the door and stepping into the place I loved most: home.

  “Think we’ll see him again?” Harley asked.

  “Well, we said we’d take a tour of Olympia next anniversary, but maybe we could do a long weekend in the mountains here and there? Aren’t there ski resorts in the Cascades? Is that what people do? Put sticks on their feet and slide down a mountain yodeling to the goats?”

  “Yode-lay-hee-hoo!” Harley called out, laughing. “Yeah, Red, let’s do a yodeling tour for Valentine’s, and maybe we’ll see our snow angel buddy rockin’ it with the hibernating bears.”

  Then we forgot about Auld for a while because the shower was calling us both, and things got too steamy to think about frozen creatures made of magical ice. The day’s detritus rinsed away, we ordered Thai from our favorite delivery and settled down to watch a holiday movie.

  Spicy tom yum goong was perfect on a snowy, cold day, and we chased that with green curry. The rich coconut milk and spiced veggies with chicken hit the spot, and all the recent troubles seemed long gone.

  “I’ll get Jason out as soon as possible to replace the window,” Harley started.

  I nodded, “I’ll help you re-seed the yard once it’s warm enough.”

  “Then it will truly seem like none of this ever happened, won’t it?” Harley’s tone was dejected.

  “We still have the power ups, Har. I hope we don’t ever need them. I mean, it’s nice to sit by the crackling fire with a blanket and spicy curry, isn’t it? Do we need adventures and battles with monsters? Isn’t life enough as is?”

  She leaned forward, placing a gentle kiss on my nose. “I just never wanna forget what it felt like to have all that purpose surging through my veins, Red. To feel like I was truly needed in this world. To protect someone, or really, everyone. I hope that when we’re sitting here, old and grey, we can look back and say our lives mattered. Don’t you?”

  I took a sip of my lager. Yes, we’d switched to beer. I was starting to think wine was a terrible idea, and planned to go quite a long time without opening a bottle. As the bitter liquid went down my throat, I considered my wife’s query.

  What made a life matter? Was it helping an innocent? Saving someone from a terrible fate? Stopping something that meant to do harm?

  I looked around our living room. The tree was still up. Typically on New Year’s Day, we took it down, putting the ornaments away until next Yuletide, but today had been full of something else, so we hadn’t gotten around to it.

  “Harley. Everything you do matters to me. The twinkling purple lights on our Christmas tree and its popcorn strands. The candles over the fireplace. The cup of coffee you hand me when I blink my way to the kitchen."

  "The smile on your lips when you look at me. The way you make me laugh when I least expect it, and how you can handle my grumpy pants moodiness. The fact that you exist is the only sun I need, and I don’t want to spend a single day thinking of a world without you in it. So, love, is that enough?”

  Her smile was soft, and her eyes wet. “Say that again, Red, and it just might be.”

  So I told her what she needed to hear, and I meant every word. And I vowed to keep telling her because I wasn’t great at saying the things my wife most needed to hear, but maybe, just maybe, if I repeated myself often enough, that would be all the music we needed, and the monsters wouldn’t pop up into our lives again.

  ? Overpowers: Magical Girl Crossover ?

  by Moawar

  He, Life, had a simple job.

  His responsibility as an Overpower was to make sure that fiction stories and the characters in them follow their dictated path. He always did his job well enough, not more or less than was needed.

  His latest assignment, however, would, in retrospect, prove to be his most challenging one of all.

  He would find himself in a unfamiliar world. There he'll have to quickly adapt to guide Nozomi.

  The strongest magical girl with the potential to accidentally destroy those she seeks to protect in her fight against evil.

  What to Expect: A love letter to fiction, where each relevant character represents a different genre in fiction with a few twists to make them fresh. Ex: Isekai, Shonen, Magical Girl, Tragedy, Cultivation, Regression, Tokusatsu, Horror, and many others. All are united under one theme: life and how each character will choose to live theirs.

  If you like the psychological aspects of Madoka Magica and the mixing of different genres a crossover story brings then this story is for you