Clerk of the Night – Origins

The night the sun set on the east coast of the United States, numerous heroes with amazing powers were having amazing adventures. Marin the demon summoner was destroying the nice boat Seaking. Jason the blogger was fighting monsters in another dimension with angelic golf clubs. Flak the rhetoric mage was watching girl cartoons.

But this is not a story of heroes.

It is a

WHOOOOSH

The wind pulls into the station before the train. Horns blow long and hard as the final street crossing is passed. The noise of machinery crescendoes and then vanishes. Passengers embark and disembark. Amtrak has arrived.

No more details are necessary, because we don’t care about this particular train. Neither does Joe. Whether he cares about trains in general is unclear, but one thing is certain: trains care about him. He helps keep them running, after all.

The Amtrak mechanical clerk sat in a dark office in Queens two hours after his shift had ended. His colleagues had left for the day, all save for his direct supervisor, Sam.

Sam had asked him to stay late, but hadn’t made the reason clear yet. Joe had no reason to seek his supervisor out; if Sam wanted something, he could contact Joe. Having no objections to easy overtime, Joe waited listless at his keyboard. His thoughts lingered on Rarity, the best pony, then on the upcoming elections and the dearth of actual Christians in the running (Santorum was a fraud). He was startled out of his reverie when Sam tapped him on the shoulder. The bearded man’s glasses reflected light from Joe’s computer monitor. The rest of him was shrouded in darkness. Black jeans, black hoodie.

“Let’s talk over dinner. I know a place.”

Joe nodded and stood.

“Come quickly,” said Sam.

Joe noted the urgency, but he wasn’t one for speed.

“Should I leave my computer—”

“Just come.”

Sam strode off. Before Joe could leave the office for the night, he had to unplug his keyboard—a private possession he brought to work each day—and pack it. He didn’t trust the morally bankrupt atheist building janitors not to nab it. Hardware in backpack, he hurried to catch up with his supervisor. He managed to regain his breath in the elevator, but as soon as they hit the ground floor he found himself struggling once more.

“Slow down, man.”

Joe’s supervisor paid his request no heed, jogging down the steps into the nearest metro station with his hands in his hoodie pockets. Joe leaned heavily on the railing as he followed at a saunter.

Joe followed Sam through the turnstile and onto an unfamiliar line.

As the train pulled away from the station, Joe noticed two things: he and Sam were the only ones in their car, and there was screaming coming from the platform. When he turned to look back, all he saw through the car’s windows was blackness.

“What’s going on?”

“I’m protecting you,” replied Sam. “And the subway is the only place I have any power to do so.” His words came out slowly, like molasses, or like carefully-picked words.

“You’re not making sense,” said Joe.

“I’m sorry.”

Sam fell silent.

Joe tapped his foot mentally, still gripping a handle for stability and gasping for air.

“I’m going to teleport you to the San Francisco Bay Area,” said Sam after what felt like minutes. “Get off the train at Downtown Berkeley. You’ll meet a man who calls himself the BM. He’s better at explanations.”

“I bet he is,” laughed Joe, “and so I hope he’s in the next car, or something, and not across the freakin’ country. Teleport?” He burst out laughing.

Sam knelt and traced a circle in the metro car grime with his index finger.

BARTsnake, heed my call!

Joe felt nothing, none of the jolting or shunting he would have expected from his long career in Dungeons and Dragons. Instead, his surroundings simply changed. Sam was gone and the dark gray floor was replaced with a gray floor flecked with blue. Mad Men adverts disappeared, in their place Giants baseball posters. Hard orange benches gave way to upholstered blue, and the route map on the car wall was simplified from dozens of lines to five. Place names Joe was unfamiliar with dotted the map. Richmond, El Cerrito Plaza, Orinda, Lafayette. Berkeley.

“Downtown Berkeley, Richmond line.”

The doors opened onto a concrete-and-red-brick platform. Joe stepped out of the train. A voice on a loudspeaker was saying something about keeping “BART” safe and secure. Joe, having always had a healthy imagination, decided to accept the evidence. He’d been teleported. He’d stepped onto a New York subway train and off of a Bay Area Rapid Transit train.

This was ridiculously cool.

Joe trotted upstairs, ready to meet this BM guy, but found a turnstile blocking his exit. He quickly ascertained that the turnstile required a BART ticket, and that he had not magically acquired one. He walked over to the Add Fare machine and paid his way out of the conspicuously empty subway station.

As Joe ascended the mighty escalator in the central cylinder of the downtown Berkeley BART station, he noticed that he could see very little beyond the windows. His watch read 7:30, so it could be no later than 4:30 p.m. on the West Coast, yet it was pitch black outside.

At the top of the escalator, Joe encountered the shadow of a man. Dim outlines of buildings, vehicles, and figures were visible in the darkness, barely illuminated by some unseen lightsource. This was no normal nightfall, he knew. It was as if someone had taken the world in Photoshop and decreased the brightness. The man clicked his flashlight on, illuminating a mere couple feet of area around Joe.

“You’re the night clerk?”

“Was,” corrected Joe. “I was recently moved to daytime shifts.”

A firm hand grabbed Joe’s.

“People call me the BM,” said the man. “Walk with me.”

“Can I ask what’s going on?”

“Certainly.”

“Am I really in Berkeley?”

“Indeed. Spambot sent you here, right?”

“I suppose he did.” Joe blinked at the nickname. His colleagues referred to Sam as a spambot due to the man’s broken keyboard and eccentric e-mail behavior. “Did you work at Amtrak?”

“I’ve worked at my share of transit authorities,” responded the BM. “But that is not where I met Spambot, and that is a story for another time.”

“How did he teleport me?”

“The subways listen to him, clerk. Just as I command buses.” The BM increased his pace, tugging Joe along. “We have to go faster.”

“Is someone coming after us?”

“Something, clerk. The night itself.”

“I meant to ask about that.”

“Some moron Professor is trying to take over the world. Spambot reported you’re familiar with games—think Dr. Wily.”

“Right on.”

“This darkness is his doing.”

“Roger.”

“He has exploited a bureaucratic flaw in the system that governs light, and is using it to propagate this fake nighttime.”

“Okay.”

“The darkness fuels his minions. They use the darkness to spin monsters and demons into existence.”

“Alright.”

“You seem to be taking this in stride. You are strong of mind, clerk. This is good. Now, listen: night fell on the West Coast more than a week ago. It finally spread to the East Coast just now. A powerful demon summoner is en route to New York City, and her arrival would have destroyed you if you’d lingered longer.”

“Why me?”

“The Professor recognized your talents long before the rest of us did—otherwise, Spambot would have sent you here long ago. Here we are.” The BM pushed Joe forward. “Get in.”

A mechanical voice announced, “51B, Rockridge Bart.”

A door opened in the darkness in front of Joe. He could see the well-lit interior of a bus. No one was aboard the vehicle save the driver. Joe stepped up and paid the requisite two dollars ten cents.

The BM followed, waving at the driver and paying nothing. Joe saw that the BM looked every bit an aged homeless man. His clothing was thick, worn, and mismatched, his hair long and dirty, his skin weathered and wrinkled. The BM turned off his flashlight and gestured for Joe to sit down.

“We’re headed for the U.C. Berkeley administration building. There, we will find the Professor’s secret server room. You will access his files and revert his exploits.”

“I’m not a hacker.”

“You don’t need to be,” said the BM. “You just need to know your way around systems administration software.”

“That stuff does come easily to me,” said Joe, “but how am I different from any office worker?”

“You’re the best. And you know the night.”

Joe was nonplussed.

“I’ll do my best.”

“That is all one can ever do,” said the BM, smiling.

The bus trundled along pitch-black streets for four minutes. Then the bus stopped and the doors opened.

“Here you go, Mr. BM,” said the driver. “Good luck.”

“Thanks, Tim,” said the BM. “Good afternoon.”

Joe and the BM stepped down into the darkness.

“I have to apologize in advance,” said the BM. “Though I will try to protect you, this is a dangerous place.”

Joe trembled slightly, half excited and half scared of what the darkness had in store.

“I’m following you,” he said. “Let’s go.”

The bus rushed off into the distance and the two were left alone with the weak glow of the BM’s flashlight. Before our heroes had gotten very far, the darkness was interrupted by several skittering forms. They loomed somehow blacker against the blackness, their eyes shining obsidian in the flashlight. Hisses and roars emanated from the darkness, and Joe made himself as small as he could behind the BM.

Phantasmal Bus!

Road noise countered the roars and an engine zoomed in a circle around the two. The dim outline of a bus was briefly visible, and then three squishy thuds and a sick splattering marked the demise of their assailants.

Bus vs. Darkness

Joe breathed a “wow.”

“Did you do that?”

“Yes,” said the BM. “Let’s hurry. I can’t keep that up all day long.”

“Alright.”

The two broke into a run. Joe wasn’t one for speed, but he felt leaner and fitter than he had in years. The adventure invigorated him, made everything 20% cooler.

The BM advised Joe to tread cautiously as they hopped up the steps of what the BM explained was Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza. The BM summoned another bus to batter the front doors, and the two blasted their way into the administrative building. “Left. Right. Down. Right.”

Joe followed the BM’s directions as they dashed through the dark building. The BM seemed to have a map of the place in his head, running at full speed through the narrow corridors without a single collision.

“We’re here.” The BM held his flashlight out, showing a locked door. “I only have one bus left. Can you open this?”

Joe thought for a moment, and then remembered the spare office supplies he’d been sneaking home every day in his backpack. He eased his pack to the ground and produced a couple paperclips.

He’d never done this before, but it came easily to him. Just holding the paperclips felt right. He used his shoe and the tile floor to bend them into shape and picked the lock in ten seconds flat.

“You really are good,” said the BM.

Joe shrugged and followed the BM into the room. The darkness in this room was darker yet than that outside. The BM’s flashlight emitted nothing.

“There’s a keyboard here,” said the BM, groping about in the dark. “But how are you going to type in the dark?”

Joe reached out and took the keyboard from the BM. He felt along its cord to where it was plugged in. Standard USB port. He pulled and threw the keyboard on the ground. He pulled his own out of his backpack and plugged it in. The keys lit up.

“Backlit keys,” he chortled.

“Nice.”

Fumbling further in the dark, Joe managed to flip a switch. A booting chime rang and a monitor on the wall came to life. Joe could barely read the monitor by squinting. It was enough. His fingers flew over his keyboard as he navigated the file system and launched applications. He wasn’t familiar with the visual interface used on this particular terminal, but it didn’t matter. He knew his way around this kind of software. He knew what to look for. He hit tab and space each a dozen times as he sped through menus and options. Finally he had it. The preference pane wherein the day was set to night.

He hit the save button and immediately the darkness in the room began to recede.

“You did it, clerk!”

Joe nodded.

“I did it, BM.”

And then an explosion rocked the building. The wall-mounted computer came crashing down, knocking an unawares BM to the ground.

Joe cried out and reached down to help his ally up.

“What’s going on?”

“The Professor’s a sore loser,” coughed the BM. Blood drenched his vest. “You should get out of here before the self-destruct program completes.”

“I can’t just abandon you,” said Joe. “It… it wouldn’t be Christian.”

“Run while you can,” the BM insisted. He staggered to his feet, grabbed Joe by the arm, and exited the room. The hall was bright. “The Professor’s minions will be here to make sure we’re buried. Get out, survive, and fight another day!”

Joe refused to leave his ally behind.

Sure enough, the minions were only seconds behind the BM’s warning. They rushed down the hall, slithering flying scuttling, gaping maws dripping with darkness. The BM extended his hand and a bus shot down the hallway, flattening the monsters.

“I’m done for,” he said. “Get out of here, Joe.”

More minions poured into the hallway from both sides, pincering the two.

“Damn it, it’s too late.”

“It’s not too late,” said Joe. “If Sam’s got the subways and you’ve got the buses, I have the office supplies. I’m special, right? The best clerk.” He brandished his keyboard and braced himself for combat. He felt ridiculous, a pudgy office worker staring down a horde of nightmares, but he had faith.

With one mighty swing, he clove three skittering monstrosities in twain. He kicked his backpack into the air, pulled a staple gun from it, and fixed four more minions to the walls.

“Let’s go, BM.”

He looked back. The BM was on the ground, surrounded by burning bus tires and covered in feasting minions. Another explosion rocked the complex and Joe leaned against the wall for balance.

“It’s over,” sighed the defeated BM. “Go…”

“NOOOOO!”

Joe wiped hot tears across his cheeks. He said a brief prayer for the BM, and then considered his escape options. He had no bus, no train, no transport vehicle to carry him away from the exploding Sproul Hall. All he had was his keyboard. Emboldened by the success of his two previous uses of office supplies, he placed his keyboard on the ground and stepped onto it. It grew to the size of a surfboard and hovered into the air. Joe grabbed his backpack, leaned forward, and zoomed through the horde of oncoming minions, shattering them with a ream of printer paper.

On the lookout for holes left by the various explosions, Joe took the first exit out of the building and rode into the fading night sky. Actual, real, normal night overtook Joe as he flew east, and he reached Manhattan just as dawn broke. As the first rays of daylight touched New York City, he alighted and his keyboard shrunk back to normal size. Heart heavy, the Clerk of the Night prepared for another boring day of clerical work at Amtrak.

None of the thrill of adventure remained. None of the power, none of the excitement. Joe looked around his boring apartment, picked out a fresh shirt, and then boarded the subway to Queens.

Somehow he knew that that night, and every night to come, he would again find himself regulating evil.

The portal was gone and half the Angel Stones destroyed. Dorito George calmly photographed the sky.

“How we getting back nya,” asked Jason.

LAW1 murmured. Frog didn’t pump his fists or shout enthusiastic slogans. Kris didn’t take charge and organize the next move. Everyone was bewildered.

Even Dax was at a loss for words.

El remained silent as well.

The sun disappeared behind a skyscraper and a shadow fell across LAW1. Soon it would be dark here, too, Jason realized as time passed by. Dark here and there were still two monsters on the prowl but did it even matter if they were never going to get back to their San Francisco?

If Pablo were here, he’d suggest busting into one of the abandoned storefronts and finding food for the long haul.

Jason blinked and looked over at Frog. They were thinking the same thing.

Pablo may be gone, but on our backs, and in these hands (nya)—

Jason the catgirl and P.T.H. Frog waltzed across the shimmering pink lines which traced the curb and approached the facade of the nearest eatery: a Subway shop. It took a few swings to calibrate their crowbars to storefront-bashing, but within seconds the Richmond-qua-Berkeley segment of LAW1 had shattered the glass and entered the store.

Inspector Kris opened her mouth, still speechless along with the rest of the men, and when her shocked facial expression fell on blind backs she realized she was powerless to admonish her one-time subordinates.

Slowly, resignedly, zombie-like the rest of the unit fanned out across the block, following the example of Jason and Frog and securing looted provisions. Dorito George and Dax alone remained motionless, the one having finished his photographic remuneration and the other wondering why he didn’t feel like thrashing the former.

Somehow, maybe, violence wouldn’t solve this problem.

LAW1 scurried through broken glass and shadows grew longer. After half an hour, Dax sighed and turned his gaze from Dorito George. The pink lines in the ground had disappeared and nighttime was coming on. It would be a short night compared to the unending night of the real world—the world outside the Angel Stone portal, the world in which the demon-spewing Marin could roam freely, the world to which Dax and LAW1 had been denied reentry by Dorito George—but at this rate it would be one of many such short nights.

Many, many, many.

Dorito George said nothing. The dog had always rubbed him the wrong way, and though he was a long-time fan of Meow Meow anim and thusly appreciated Jason’s transformation, he was none too impressed with said catgirl at the moment.

As the unfit LAW1 personnel panted and wheezed around him, he kept his cool and his peace.

The pedantic dachshund had murder in his eyes, and it was impossible to read Jason’s expression. In any event Dorito George was not happy. But wary of the dachshund’s power, the power which had picked up a machine gun and swatted Pablo until Pablo was out cold on the Pizza Hut floor, Dorito George screamed his “Objection!” mentally and plotted in silence. He felt that this was the true test of his ability to perform for Anonymous of New York, that here and now was when he would be called upon to save his childhood friend.

Once the group had regained its wind, it moved as one back toward the portal into darkness. Dorito George walked at the front of the crew, but not more quickly than any of the others.

The portal came into sight, shimmering iridescent in the late afternoon glare. Through it was nothing.

“Play the ball as it lies, play the course as you find it.”

Dorito said this so quietly that most of LAW1 didn’t hear him. Only Dax and Jason with their sensitive animal ears turned in time to see an Angel Stone drop to the photographer’s feet and a spell circle five yards in radius spread out from the point of impact, spinning in an infinite complexity of alphabets.

In one quick stroke of his crowbar—aiming at himself like he had never aimed at himself before—Dorito George sent a payload of magical dynamite hurtling at the portal. His eyes glowed red and a faint blue light contoured his body.

“Sorry, guys,” he said. “But I’d already made my contract.”

The portal was gone, its only remnant the powdered Angel Stones which the wind swept across the street and out of sight.

Dax looked on in impotent rage as the spell circle disappeared.

Dorito George, silent once more, dropped his crowbar, fished his camera out of his backpack, and began taking pictures of the sky.

“We don’t have time to rest,” said Dax, stamping his feet impatiently when LAW1 didn’t stop laughing. “We need to get going.”

Jason nodded, eager for anything to take his mind off the fact that he’d been turned into a catgirl, and clenched his crowbar.

Explosions in the distance marked the presence of more monsters.

“We’re going to have to break through them to get to Garch,” yelped Dax.

“Let’s do it,” said Frog, and the crew took off.

As they ran downhill, the road dictated their movement, bending this way and that, forcing turns. Spell circles flickered under LAW1′s feet, pink light tracing curbs and painting a path. Dax led the way, shooting forward along the pink lines as they were drawn, bobbing and weaving as necessary, and the rest of the gang followed his lead.

No one knew where they were going, or why they were running in the direction in which they were, until they reached the next hulking black monster. Without wasting a second Jason annihilated the thing and the group was running once more. The twisting pink lines tunneled through the uneven streets, making paths through the hills, through skyscrapers, over thin air. LAW1 ran on. Jason obliterated monster after monster, each magical attack more powerful than the last, each explosion louder than the previous.

After five iterations of this procedure, LAW1 was completely winded and Jason wanted answers.

“How many of these monsters are there, El nya,” he asked, gasping for breath. His tail and paws were weighing him down and the rest of the gang, their jobs entailing little more than sitting in front of monitors dumbly, was hardly in better shape. Dax alone seemed alert and chipper.

“Infinite,” said El.

At this, Dax stopped running mocking circles around the panting LAW1 men and growled.

“The hell’s that supposed to mean,” he barked.

“More are being generated than you’re destroying,” responded El. “All signs point toward you being unable to remove them all.”

“Um, why do we want to destroy them all, anyway nya?” asked Jason. “Can’t we just go to where Garch is nya?”

“Not so simple,” replied Dax. “El can’t tell us Garch’s location until all the demons are dead.”

El confirmed this.

“This sounds impossible nya,” breathed Jason. “How can we stop an endless supply nya?”

“Endless supply…” Dax muttered. “Wait. El, how many are left in this space?”

“Two,” said the book.

“And now?”

“Still two.”

“Has it been fluctuating?”

“No, there were eight and my master killed six.”

Jason looked at the book, then at Dax, then at Dorito George.

“It’s her, isn’t it nya?” he asked.

Dax cursed.

“Alright, men, we’re going back to the darkness. We’ve got us a demon summoner to kill.”

Marin strode on sand, on pebble, on rock, all of it darkness, and before she had walked very far she decided that if she could walk on darkness it might as well be the darkness of the sky. Sprinting north on thin air, no longer even needing to move her legs as the invisible conveyer belt of magic carried her through the night, she quickly caught up with the smugglers.

They were trudging along a highway, one with his thumb extended, the others dragging still-damp sacks across the dry ground. A pair of flashlights lit the way, and were the only lights on the road, their nimbus almost blinding to Marin as she approached with her magical vision on.

Disengaging it, she alighted behind them, her raven—its head once more the head of a raven—flying circles around the smugglers with one eye blinking red as it searched for firearms. No buzzers within the bird buzzed and it faded back into the blackness as the smugglers turned around to behold Marin dressed in night.

“Jesus, she’s still alive,” muttered Shades, dropping his flashlight and crossing himself.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” said Marin as the smugglers dropped variously into fighting and fetal poses.

“Whaddya want,” spat Guy Fawkes, before quickly shifting the bottom of his mask to wipe away the spit.

“I’d like to accompany you to New York, same as always,” she said.

“Well, you’re an invincible demon-summoner, so I guess there’s no point in resisting you or doubting you,” said Fawkes, lowering his fists.

“That’s true, isn’t it,” said Marin. “Listen, I’m sorry about your nice boat, I got a bit carried away attacking the darkness—” guffaws from some of the more composed smugglers “—but I can transport us to New York, and fast. That’s where you’re delivering your goods, right?”

“What of them we managed to salvage on the lifeboats.”

“You’re seriously not going to slaughter us?” questioned Beard.

“Nah, we cool,” intoned Marin. “You were scared, I understand that. And whatever it was you did to me, it’s been reversed now, so no point holding grudges.”

That said, she called her raven back into the flashlight light and increased its size by a factor eighty. A door opened out of the thing’s side and a black staircase extended to the ground. “Get in, boys.”

The smugglers exchanged shrugs and then climbed aboard, the stairs disappearing and door closing behind them.

Marin floated up onto the thing’s shoulders and lashes of darkness extended from her fingers and became reins. With one flick the party was shooting northward across the sky at supersonic speeds.

Marin groaned and tried to open her eyes. All she saw was darkness. She could feel, though. Pain surged through her and her flesh crawled. Tiny pincer-like claws scuttled up and down her body, following the pain. Eventually she lost consciousness again.

When she came to next, her magical vision was working and she could make out her surroundings. She was lying on her back on a small pebbly beach. A black mass floated on the ocean in the distance. She was alone, and drenched in something—water and blood.

Marin sat up and took an inventory of her injuries. Though her clothes were in tatters she seemed to be sporting no bullet holes. She wondered briefly if she’d died and been brought back, but then she remembered the pincers and figured something had mended her before it was too late.

She thanked the darkness in her heart and then stood.

First things first, she was going to need to find some new clothes. She had no idea where she was and there were no city lights in the distance no matter in which direction she projected her vision. For the time being, she guessed, she would have to resort to clothing herself in darkness. Several pairs of demonic scissors manifested themselves and snipped away at the air around Marin. Creepy crawly things with too many claws hovered thrumming nearby, their mere presence leaching black threads from the night sky. Soon the night was threadbare and Marin was dressed in a gown that shimmered obsidian.

“That’ll do,” she said, dismissing her phantom wardrobe.

Darkness wrapped around her feet, providing her with a comfortable pair of boots, and she strode away from the ocean. She wondered where the smugglers had gone, and a monstrous raven burst forth from the shadows and disappeared into the distance. Seconds later it phased back into the space around Marin, its face oddly human. It opened its mouth as if to speak, but then seemed to have a change of heart and its head morphed into a signpost.

A reflective white arrow pointed north. 3.4 mi.

Once the Thing had dissipated along with the burst of light and all traces of it were gone save the wrecked pavement and overturned cable car, Jason breathed a sigh of relief.

As San Francisco’s song receded, however, a different sound faded in. The sound of laughter. Jason turned around.

“Meow,” said one of the Oaklanders in between fits of uncontrollable giggles, “what the hell happened to you?”

“The hell do you mean nya?”

Jason blinked.

“What the hell nya.”

The spell circle at his feet vanished as he staggered around, looking at himself and trying to take in all the nonsensical sight perceptions which were triggering his comrades’ ridicule. His hands had morphed into large furry mits, cartoonish cat paws. His hair reached his waist, held back from his face some kind of cloth headband. His unremarkable street clothes had been replaced with an outfit the likes of which he had only ever seen in anime: the classic French maid dress, trimmed in pulsating pink frills.

He didn’t have to reach up to tell that he was sporting cat ears, and a thin black tail swept about as he moved.

“What the hell is this nya?!”

LAW1 was too amused to respond.

“El, what’s going on?” asked Dax.

“Classified information,” replied the book.

“Jason, use refrain mode,” commanded the dachshund. “I’m sure El knows something about this. It’s gotta be some kind of trap of Garch’s.”

Jason took a deep breath and then addressed El.

“What the hell happened to me desu nya?”

LAW1 members dropped like flies, falling to the pavement and rolling around in anguished laughter.

El said nothing.

“I said desu nya!”

Dax growled.

“Quit the nya, would you, moron? Refrain mode requires that you end your sentences with—”

“I can’t nya!” Jason sank to his knees, paws on the pavement before him. The euphoria of the magical surge had passed and replacing it was a sense of shame. This was no trap of Garch’s. But he couldn’t tell Dax what he guessed was going on. And he couldn’t tell LAW1. “You think I would say nya on my own prerogative nya?”

“You never know.”

Dax trotted over to Jason and laid a paw on the catgirl’s.

“We’ll figure something out for you, kid. Hang in there.”

The Thing was unscathed, and it let out a howl so terrifying that air particles dropped dead from the sky. Beams of red shot off around it, all missing its hulking form.

“What now?!” screamed one of the Oaklanders as the monster approached.

Another switched from golf to baseball, preparing himself to bat off any of the Thing’s attacks.

“Um, maybe just keep shooting,” said Jason, the first to notice that though his crowbar had made contact with his Angel Stone, and though he had followed through on his swing, the red orb was still at his feet.

“Exactly,” barked Dax. “Keep shooting till it’s down.”

“We’re not hitting it,” commented Frog as volley after volley of crimson light narrowly avoided the Thing.

“Very strange,” commented the dachshund. He paused as the monster belched a cable car at the group and deflected the projectile with a flick of purple energy. “Any clues, El?”

The book flipped its way out from under Jason’s armpit and hovered a couple feet away.

“My master need not aim at his target,” quoth El, “but at himself.”

“That explains everything,” laughed Frog. “Don’t shoot me, shoot the you who’s shooting at me?”

“Focus on what you need to do,” said El. “That’s usually an internal thing.”

Jason looked down at the Angel Stone. His gaze moved upward, tracing the crowbar in his hands, and then meeting the non-gaze of the eyeless Thing. What did he need to do? He wanted to be done with all this, to go home to working lights and less-censored internet, to watch anime and blog it and laugh about his commenters with his friends on IRC.

“When what you want to do and what you need to do are the same thing, you can hear the voice of the world.”

“The hell’s Meow spouting,” asked one of the Oakland boys, not letting up his ineffective beam assault.

“Something his grandfather told him, no doubt.”

Frog looked excited.

“Do it, Jace.”

Jason took a deep breath. Two different San Franciscos were singing in his ears and the roaring of the monster was just noise to be silenced. There was an Angel Stone at his feet, but there was another Angel Stone in his heart. It was shrouded in darkness, but he could glimpse it glinting.

“I may have zero magical talent,” he murmured, “but I was chosen to do this. It’s my duty.”

And, he admitted internally, don’t we all want to be the little girl.

The spell circle at Jason’s feet radiated rainbows as he prepared to take his next swing. He felt naked, completely exposed, infinitely vulnerable before the lumbering black ball of natural weapons, but he had a trump card.

His head itched, his hands felt enlarged, a strange weight pulled at his tailbone. Luminescent pink frills filled his peripheral vision.

None of the vestigial changes mattered.

All that mattered was that he was swinging his crowbar, and a cylindrical burst of red light thirty feet in diameter was barreling toward the Thing.

From the other side, there was no visible portal, just a gaping black hole in the air. A few humanoid shapes were visible in the darkness, but no features discernible. Some flashlights pointed Jason’s way, but they seemed pitifully dim next to the full power of the afternoon sun.

The other San Francisco was abandoned. There were no people, no cars, no cats.

“Normally, you’d find cats in an eerie alternate plane like this.”

The dachshund snorted at Jason’s comment.

“You’ll find plenty to keep you busy soon enough.”

Jason had a bad feeling about plenty, but he gestured for the rest of LAW1 to follow regardless.

Once everyone was through, Dax asked Kris to distribute the crowbars.

“We’re dealing with a supernatural crisis here, as the Inspector noted before,” he said. “That means we’re dealing with things that might blow your minds. Remember this: henceforth, you are not surveillance dudes. You’re magically-equipped storm troopers, raiding a monster-ridden fortress.”

A couple of the Oaklanders couldn’t resist snickering.

“Um, this isn’t bullshit,” said Jason. “You guys saw the demon—no, I guess only me and Frog saw the demon. But. Yeah. Um, we have footage. These things are real. We’re fighting something way beyond normal human experience.”

“How we gonna do that?” asked Timmy.

Suddenly, the ground beneath LAW1 shook. The booming sounds of gargantuan footsteps approached.

“Excellent, we’ll have a hands-on tutorial,” grinned Dax. “Everyone, place your Angel Stones at your feet.”

The unit complied, each person placing their shiny red orb on the uneven San Francisco pavement. The Angel Stones were shining brighter than ever, glowing more with every passing second and footfall.

“These like Sting?” asked Timmy.

“Not bad,” said Dax. “They are. But you’re going to get visuals soon, and you’ll want to get the first strike. So get into your best golfing stances… yes, with the crowbars, of course.”

Puzzled glances among LAW1 lasted only a second before a monstrous black form erupted from the nearest skyscraper. A ball of fangs, limbs, tentacles, and pincers rolled out onto the street, filling it from sidewalk to sidewalk. A mouth large enough to swallow the LAW1 van whole gaped, drooling black saliva.

Dax turned from his human subordinates to examine the foe. Jason took a deep breath and tightened his grip on his crowbar. A spell circle spread beneath his feet, pink Greek letters rotating clockwise.

The dachshund muttered a few lines under his breath.

“Play the ball as it lies, play the course as you find it.”

Taking the words as an order to fire, Jason led LAW1′s first salvo at the Thing, beams of red light ricocheting around the block.

“You got a little too into it, my master,” said one of the pairs of eyes as Marin’s black fire licked the walls of the cabin.

Marin blinked.

The death screams of whatever those things had been were soon drowned out in the roaring of immolating timber. The cabin was burning bright black. Smoke began to cloud the upper regions of the cabin, obscuring the remaining pairs of eyes as they retreated. Marin felt an oppressive heat weigh down on her.

“No, stop, stop!”

She spun in place, she begged the darkness in her heart, she sang every foolish incantation she could think of relating darkness to water or cold or fire extinguishers. Nothing helped, so her only option was to flee the cabin.

“From the darkness in my heart, a violent awakening!”

A monstrous black fist shot out of thin air and splintered the cabin door. Marin ran through the opening. The hallway outside was as dark as her cabin had been, as dark as the world outside had been, but she could still see.

Leaving a trail of jet embers behind her as she ran, she made her way to the deck, where she expected she’d find the smugglers, puzzled by the darkness and perhaps frightened by it.

More likely playing seven-four by flashlight, she admitted, but she liked seeing her captors a bit uneasy.

At least, she did until she ran head-first into the beam of a flashlight. Half-blinded by the sudden flare, she took a step back and blinked again.

The smugglers were standing in a tight pack at the top of the stairs to the deck, in their hands…

Marin blinked again.

Bullets tore through her and then a third darkness—not the darkness of night, and not the supernatural darkness engulfing the sky and ocean—took over. People do stupid things when they’re scared, she remembered. Like kill each other.