Evelyn woke up from the nightmare with a scream, followed by sharp pain in her cheek. She wasn't a little girl anymore, but a woman who looked in her early twenties, though her exact age was unknown to her. Her dark curly hair had grown again as she slept, spreading over the pillow and bed like a mantle of night that spilled to the floor, her olive skin drenched in cold sweat. Not that she really cared at the moment. Her amber golden eyes were wide open in panic and surprise. She stood very still in her bed as she contemplated the dozens of jagged blades that surrounded her face.

The gray stone room she was in was simple and lacking in decorations, except for several pieces of scrap metal and a variety of other paraphernalia and assorted things made of metal scattered around in what to the unasumming eye would look like random spots, but were in fact, strategically selected before she went to sleep every night.
Evelyn had to make sure to always have enough to scatter around her before going to bed. Otherwise, the sample size would be too small to measure the progression of her particular situation.

Given how the room was now filled with sharp metallic growths coming from all the metal pieces and objects in it, the situation had taken a turn for the worse. The growths weren't completely random either, the metal wasnˋt extruded but expanded, more mass created than what was originally present. They came out of every metal surface and coiled up into plant-like forms, though imperfect, as if the metal wasn't completely sure of what it wanted or needed to be, as if its nature was being altered in a way that it couldn't understand all the way. As such, the imperfect constructs were jagged, distorted, and cracked, but all too sharp and dangerous looking, even more so the closer they came to the source of their manifestation.

Her.

Evelyn gulped, still rattled by the dream. The blades had come too close this time, the metal had grown wilder and more dangerous than in any other of her outbursts before, but the dream had been more vivid than ever. It had been so real this time, like she was there once again, that she could almost smell Mama's perfume or feel the warmth of her embrace. But she could also smell burnt meat and feel the pain of her lost arm as if she just lost it. The correlation between the two things growing stronger at the same rate presented questions that still needed to be answered, even after so many years. One thing she was sure of: her time was running out.

The door of the bedroom suddenly opened slightly as a young woman entered the room. The first word that someone would think to describe her would be blue. The second would be metal. Her entire gray-blue body was runitronic, not a single piece of human flesh visible among the scratched, repaired, and worn-down metal. Her short, powder blue synthetic hair was as messy as always, crowned by two runitronic bunny ears that flopped around just like real ones.

She was wearing stained black overalls, her only real piece of clothing besides her big plastik boots, and the always full tool holster and belt combo across her modest chest and waist. Her single runitronic left eye was even bluer than the rest of her, bright with the light of mana that powered it, constantly coming from her own Core. A black eyepatch over the other eye socket, which Evelyn bitterly knew was vacant, gave her a —supposedly, by her own words— dangerous touch to her otherwise cute persona.

"Hey Lyn, I was finishing the tuning of the new runes in your arm, but it started to react to your mana. Are you up already..." She stopped, dropping the red metal arm she was carrying to the floor as she screamed. "Evelyn!"

"Morning, Alice. It happened again."

"Are you okay?! Did they get you anywhere?" After a weak negative response, Alice noticed the blade that was closer to her cheek and the blood dripping from it. "They did! Why didn't you call us? A little later and that one would have pierced your head! Kornos! Get up here, we need you!"

"It's not that bad, Blue. Just a scratch."

"We are going to get you out of there, okay? Just don't move." Said Alice as she pulled a pair of pliers from the tool holster across her chest. She had even more tools in her belt, each for very specific uses, some that Evelyn had never even seen her pull out. "I told you your mana surges were getting worse, but did you listen to me? No, of course not! You are always like this. It will be fineee Blue. I'm in control, Blue. Of course, it's a good idea to put lots of metal around me while I sleep, Blue."

"Alice, you know what would have happened if my mana surge hadn't been absorbed like this. Better that the growths happen in this room than elsewhere."

An aggressive cut of her pliers put down one of the smaller blade plants as she started to make her way towards Evelyn, careful not to get cut herself.

"Well, this patchwork solution of yours is clearly not working anymore. You are getting worse, Lyn. I felt the mana reach my workshop in the big chamber this time."

That gave Evelyn pause. That was too far away. That confirmed her suspicions: her mana surges were getting stronger.

"Has anything else in the Last Glade been affected? The garden? The tree?"

"Not that I saw coming up, but I'll do the damage control later. Right now, what I care about is getting out of this blender."

"At least the mana-charged metal is good for crafts and trade, right? If we can make some chips out of it, maybe it's worth a cut or two." Joked Evelyn, trying to alleviate the situation.

"It's not funny, Lyn." Alice said with an expression that reminded Evelyn why she was a scavenger and not a comedian. "You could have really killed yourself today. And then I would've come to find you here, alone, having to live with knowing that I wasn't there in the last moments of my best friend."

"I'm sorry, Alice. I didn't mean..."

"I know. You never do. But we care about you, you dumbass. Please remember that every once in a while. We three are all that is left." Her reproachful tone took a somber turn for a moment. She looked like she was about to say something more, but instead decided to stay silent and focus on cutting a path through the metal plants.

A minute later, heavy steps approached the room at a fast pace, and the door burst open when a big, hairy arm broke it off from its hinges as if it was nothing but a mere inconvenience.

Alice had to duck as the door flew forward, taking with it several of the metal plants and landing at the feet of the bed, creating in seconds a safe path to reach Evelyn.

"What's wrong?! Is Evelyn okay?!" Roared the huge man that had pounced its way into the room. His entire body was covered in brownish orange hair, green human eyes in a humanoid lion face, with a dark nose and a pair of small black horns on his head, which gave him the look of a wild creature at first glance. His proud and ample red-haired mane completed the image of a king of beasts, an apex predator among men and monsters. That first impression was a little damaged by the dirt-covered gardening apron that he was wearing, embroidered with a cute cartoon lion with a sunflower head. He was wearing no other clothes, not even shoes, leaving big paw marks of dirt across his path.

"You almost killed me, Kornos, you big hairy oaf! And are you walking inside the Last Glade without shoes again?" Complained Alice, getting up from the floor after avoiding the flying door.

The beast man gave a fast scan of the room, locked eyes with Evelyn, and they exchanged a look filled with meaning. He needed no further explanation of what had happened. "Sorry about that, Blue. I was working in the garden when I heard you shouting, so I came as fast as I could. I'll clean it later. Let's get our girl out of there first, shall we?"

Kornos went ahead in the path he had cleared with the door, took it like it weighed nothing, and used it to bat the sharp metal plants away from the bed and Evelyn.

Alice looked at her pliers with a sigh of defeat before putting them back into her holster and starting to pile the mana-charged metal in one side of the room.

"The garden and the tree are fine. Nothing was damaged this time." He reassured Evelyn as he swiftly took care of the blades that almost pierced her head through and petted her head gently with his big hand to calm her, then gave her space to readjust herself in the bed.

Once Kornos and Alice were done clearing up most of the room and the metal was safely in a single pile, Alice sat next to Evelyn, having procured some first aid from one of her many pouches to heal the cut in her cheek. Kornos had his big, hairy arms crossed and a worried expression.

"Time has run out, little cub. You either unlock your Class creation, or you are going to die." He declared solemnly.

"What the giant carpet means is that we need to find a different approach to solve this problem. Ignoring it is not making it go away." Said Alice as she rubbed some healing ointment on Evelyn's cheek. It was the cheapest stuff they got, which meant to say it was almost the only thing they got left. Things haven't been good for their little group lately.

Evelyn endured the burning sensation of the cheap product on her wound as it slowly started to close.

"You shouldn't waste that, you know that I heal fast." Evelyn pointed, trying to save as many resources as they could. Using anything more than necessary on her seemed wasteful.

"Not from those you don't." Said Kornos, pointing to the pile of deformed metal. "Your body heals fast, but after every mana surge, your own mana disrupts that healing. Think we wouldn't notice how you wake up with cuts in your hands from taking those things apart?"

"Ah. So you noticed. Fortunately, that only lasts a little while after I wake up, so it should be fine if you let it be."

"But it's not fine!" Exclaimed Alice, angry. "You've been trying to complete your Core for a long time. It's not working. And doing this trick with the metal scrap only works to protect others from your mana surges, but not you. Yeah, we noticed that too. You are giving up." She accused her with her piercing blue eyes.

"I don't want you or anyone else to get hurt because I can't be fixed. That doesn't mean I've given up."

"Puffdust to that! Please, just talk to us. We are your friends, aren't we? We are all that we have left in this world. Don't make us stand idle and watch as another friend fades away. I couldn't take losing you, too." Pleaded Alice, taking Evelyn's only hand and squeezing hard, as if she feared her friend would disappear if she let go.

Evelyn breathed in and out, recentering herself, just like Mama Anima had taught her, and later Kornos helped refine. Mana was all about the breathing, but it was true and useful for keeping yourself of one mind too.

The whispers had come back, assaulting her from the dark recesses of her psyche, just as with every one of her episodes. They were louder than ever and a little bit clearer, but Evelyn could still not understand them. She had decided that they weren't hallucinations a long time ago, but she suspected that particular mystery wouldn't be solved until she fixed the main problem.

She needed to complete her Core and create a Class. Without a way for her mana to take stable form, it would keep surging out every time she lost control. Magical manifestations would only increase in size and effect until she could no longer stop them from overflowing. At that point, mana would pour out of her Core in a massive explosion of magic, consuming her in the process.

Evelyn had seen it happen once before.

"I've tried everything, you already know that. My Core is not normal, so what works for others who have become Classers in the past doesn't work for me. I don't know what they did to me when I was a child, but it has to be the reason."

"Evelyn, I know we can't understand what you are going through. I'm a Runicron. I was born with a Core, but I can only work with existing Runes, never create new ones, and Kornos has so many monster mutations as a Chimera already on his Core, there's no room for a Class anymore with that level of impure mana."

If Kornos took any offense at that, he gave no indication, instead choosing to nod somberly and grunt in agreement.

"What I'm trying to say here is that you have a real chance of changing your life for the better. Not just saving it or delaying an inevitable end. We can't ever create a Class, but you? You can have a future out of District Zero and the Menagerie. You can gain access beyond the walls to the rest of Neo Vorath and even see the outside world. And for that, we are willing to do anything. Because we care about you."

"You say that as if you are not going to be part of it. When I get my Class, I'm taking you with me. We promised."

"Don't worry about that. You are not getting rid of us that easily, little cub." Growled the mutant. "Right now, we need to focus on helping you get there in the first place.

"There's one thing we haven't tried." Offered Alice.

Evelyn tensed up immediately. She already knew what Alice was going to suggest, and she knew it was her last move left.
But admitting it would mean accepting the inevitable. She had to go back to where it all began.

"Has it really come to this?" Asked Evelyn, more to herself than to her friends. She knew the answer. "Fine. If anything, my being away from here is the right thing to do. The people that live here have already gone through enough; the last thing I want is to keep putting them all in danger out of selfishness."

"Is that a yes then?" Asked Alice, suddenly hopeful.

A deep sigh later, Evelyn got up from the bed and, with a simple push of her will, opened her Core Inventory. A leather jacket, fixed and refitted through many years of hardship, pain, and survival, appeared on her body with a puff of mana. It had lost its fur and the golden vine embroidery, but it was still her mother's jacket. If she was going to go on this journey, she would need to feel her spirit with her.

"I'm going back to District Zero. It's time I find the lab that made me."

"What you mean is that we are going." Declared Kornos with an all too dangerous edge in his voice.

"I won't put you in danger. It's not just the monsters, ubermuts, and raiders. Not even the possibility of finding a wraith, as slim as that may be these days. I could blow up at any moment. I know you are thinking it too. It's do or die for me now, but it doesn't have to be for you. You've already done enough and..."

Before she could finish talking, Kornos threw her the arm that Alice had brought with her before. He and Alice gave each other knowing smiles, blatantly ignoring Evelyn's attempts at complaining.

"Get your things ready. No cutting back on resources for this one; we use everything we have left. We are going clean house. Either this is our last adventure together or not. You are coming out of this a Classer, or none of us are coming back. Say whatever goodbyes you feel the need to and meet us at the gate. We move out at dawn."

Kornos left the room, giving both women a nice view of his hairy behind and a lizard-like tail covered in small, rounded spikes and tiny feathers. There was the sound of crunching, and an envelope was thrown into her garbage can. In Kornos' back, a pair of small bat-like wings started growing where there had been none moments before.

"Was that the dragon candy? Tell me you didn't. You've been saving that one for years!"

"This is an auspicious sign. Seems like the All-Mother has blessed me with the mutation I wanted. Hopefully, they'll be fully grown by the time I need them. They'll last me until we succeed or I die with them. Either way, it's all part of the plan." With a hearty laugh, Kornos left to get his things ready. And maybe to put some pants on.

"You heard the man. Clean house. I'll go get my suicide mission pack from the workshop."

"Alice!"

"What? Not everyone is so lucky as to have an Inventory. Some of us poor, eternal Classless need to actually carry our stuff." Alice smiled jokingly and pointed to the metal arm. "You know how to put that on. I made the changes you wanted to the weight and inscribed that Rune combination you suggested. I don't know about the Runeskill that it makes, but be careful with the potency. It can only handle so much after so many readjustments and refittings of spare parts."

"Thanks, Blue. I can always count on you to make my crazy ideas a reality."

"Don't thank me yet. With the way you handle it, it may explode before you do." She made a pause. "Is that too dark? I can never tell. Oh well, hopefully soon you'll be making your own real Skills with real Runes. I want you to tell me everything about the process, so don't think for a moment you are going to escape out of the Menagerie without me getting in your brain!" She chuckled with an evil laugh, already salivating at the prospect of progressing her own Runicron abilities.

Evelyn was left there, dumbfounded, both thankful and scared for having people who cared about her that much.

"I don't even know what I did to deserve them."

She pulled out the left side of the jacket, leaving her shoulder connector accessible. With a quick push and a twist, she connected her runitronic arm and completed the runic circuit formed by the arm and her incomplete Core. The mana that flowed from her powered the implanted arm, making the Runes inside it glow with a soft green light through its every crevice. It wasn't elegant, and it certainly wasn't sleek, not even beautiful, but that's what made it a Blue design. That and the lack of better spare parts.

"Watch over them, Mama." Evelyn prayed, kissing the one sleeve of the jacket in her usual ritual of good luck. "They are going into the thick of it for me. Even if I'm not worth saving, I want to live to repay them."

Concentrating for a moment, she called upon her Core and, with a push of her will, activated one of the few advantages of having one, even as unreliable as hers. Projected from a point in the center of her chest, a series of words materialized with the light mana. Looking for any kind of change, Evelyn gave her status screen a quick look, as she did every morning with the same degree of expected disappointment.

[Evelyn Anima]
[Unknown Core - UNSTABLE]

[Class - UNSTABLE]

[STATS]
[STR - Unassigned archetype]

[DEX - Unassigned archetype]

[END+ - Unasigned archetype]

[AWA - Ecologist (AWA, END) - Tier ERROR]
[Action Skill - UNSTABLE - Tier ERROR]
[Passive Skill - UNSTABLE - Tier ERROR]
[Utility Skill - UNSTABLE - Tier ERROR]

[INT - Unassigned archetype]

[WIL - Unassigned archetype]

[PRE - Unasigned archetype]

Evelyn gave a deep sigh, but refused to abandon hope. At least her Ecologist archetype assigned to her Awareness Stat was still stable enough to read as such, even if the Skills she should have gained from it weren't. The increase to her natural senses and the capacity to feel mana were a consolation prize for having her first archetype —which was always the only one chosen and assigned by the Core itself, depending on compatibility and not by the Classer themselves— already activated, even if her Class hadn't formed properly yet, as it should have.

The secondary boost to Endurance —from it being the second Stat associated with the Ecologist Archetype— gave her a much-appreciated passive regeneration that had saved her life many times before, which, considering the current instability of her experimental Core, was probably also keeping her alive at the moment.

Outside, the sound of people waking up and starting their day early came through the window.

It was going to be a very long day indeed. The last of this life or the first of another.