October 31st, 6:26 AM

Mary Sue used to have a soft spot for Ace, but over the years she slowly came to detest him. She never liked Tyreceus much, to begin with, but she liked Ace because she had children the same age as him, and found it easier to like him in kind.

Why punish the child for the sins of the father, she told herself.

She was supportive when Ace and Tyreceus immigrated. She even went to his elementary school graduation and came in for career day for him. She was delighted when he said he would pursue the same career as her, and supported him in every one of his ambitions.

That all changed once he enrolled in the academy.

She heard through her daughter, Mary Jane, how much Levi hated him, and she of course never questioned Levi’s actions. She had known Levi his entire life, and by extension, he was another son of hers. Now Mary Sue had learned that the woman who put her children’s lives in danger, and those of everyone else’s, only did so for Ace.

Her doting mindset turned into pure unbridled hatred, and she was willing to do anything to get rid of him.

When she found Ace inside the closet he was not afraid.

In his mind, he thought that Mary Sue was still a kind matriarch, that she was there to whisk him to safety. That was farthest from the truth.

Ace was surprised at how strong she was when she gripped him by his wrist. Tears welled up in his eyes from the pain, and he struggled, but her iron grip never left, and she didn’t even have trouble as she dragged him down the hallway.

“You’re coming outside,” Mary Sue screamed. “We want to leave this place! I’ve only been here four hours, and this is hell. ”

“Let go!"

She ignored him and dragged him down the hallway, now by both hands. Ace squealed like a pig, and Mary Sue was going to take him to the back, gut him, and hang him up to drain.

“She’s going to kill me,” Ace screamed. “Help!”

“Probably. But if one person dies and everyone else lives, it’s worth it. ”

Ace blinked away and Mary Sue screamed in frustration. She was sure that what she was doing was the right thing. That giving Ace to the monsters outside was morally just, saving the lives of not just her children, but everyone else’s.

Mary Sue went around the dorm building looking for Ace, but she was stopped by Delilah.

“We need your help,” Delilah pleaded. “You can use your luck ability to help us bring down the shield.”

“I need to find Ace first,” Mary Sue insisted.

“No, you don’t! If we can get it down, we can evacuate people and we don’t need him!”

Mary Sue then decided that getting the shield down would be easier than chasing a young man who could leave every time she laid eyes upon him.

“Fine. Where is it?”

Delilah led her outside to get to the training center, but at that point, the fighting had started again, and it was absolute pandemonium. With reinforcements the soldiers were able to hold the line, but not for very long.

“Go to the center’s basement entrance,” Delilah shouted. “Go now!”

Mary Sue ran off and Delilah ran into the fray. Her head pounded and she struggled to stand up straight, as she had not been in actual combat for years.

A low rumbling noise could be heard, the ground shook, and pipes of sewage and water burst out from the ground. The water turned and coiled like snakes, and pushed back all the corpses she could find.

Other soldiers got swept away in her attack, but she kept going, unsympathetic and on a mission. Even if anyone knew, it’s not like she would get punished away.

Who would stop her? The police?

Just like Mary Sue she had the same goal in mind, she just had a different way of going about it. Delilah shuddered, and the water again shot up into the air, this time into large balls.

It crackled and hardened and she had made herself large balls of hail, the size of cars. Her eyes twitched when they landed on her enemies, their blackened blood splattering upwards when the ice crashed down.

Pieces of ice flew up, black and dripping. Delilah grunted, and the pieces flew up and pierced through the skulls of any monster that dared to get close. They flitted around, but she couldn’t keep it up for long.

The humid heat inside the dome quickly melted her icy bullets, and she looked around for more sources of water.

Delilah’s sudden attacks made her the new target and all the corpses on the eastern side of the building went after her, and she was afraid she had done too much too soon. Dexter, Mary Jane’s older brother ran up to her and put his hand on her shoulder.

“W-what are you doing,” she stammered. “You’re going to cancel out my ability!”

“I can cancel theirs as well,” he declared.

The corpses ran toward them, but once they got a few feet within Dexter, they simply fell over.

“Oh my goodness, thank you.”

She hugged him hard and Dexter grinned, happy to be of service.

“Let me see how long I can keep it up,” he announced.

His eyes glowed a deep gold and he ran off into the fracas, bold and reckless. Just like his little sister, a part of him believed that he was truly invincible.  Delilah screamed, begging him to stop, but instead, he zipped through the dead bodies, holding his breath from the horrible smell. One by one they all dropped like flies, and Dexter was victorious.

Everyone cheered, but it wasn’t long-lasting. Once Dexter got away from a certain area, the corpses simply rose up again, and soon he was stuck in the middle of a trap. The unmoving corpses surrounded him in a small radius, while those that could still move, stood there, waiting for the right chance to get him outside his area of influence.

Dexter swore under his breath and he turned around in the same spot, nervous, afraid to move, blink, or even breathe. Julia saw him and she came running, looking more monstrous than the real ones.

She was covered in black tar and the blood of the living. She opened her mouth and the air started to shift. She held her neck in pain, as one by one the bodies of the monsters exploded.

Every time she opened her mouth as wide as possible, the molecules in the air would shake and vibrate so fast, she would decimate her targets. Dead brains, muscles, and decimated organs burst out in all directions, drenching Julia again.

She didn’t even notice anymore, and shuddered, her eyes glowing hot pink. Julia looked around, her eyes flying back and forth, looking for an escape route, while Dexter was not okay.

Julia continued to scream, grinning as she used every dirty word she knew. The nastier the word, the stronger her attack, but the more it hurt her vocal cords.

The last word, feces, seemed to be the worst, and all of the monsters in a 50-yard radius exploded, arms slamming against cars, breaking windows, and legs sliding down the street.

A stray eyeball landed next to her feet, and with a loud squish and a stomp, she popped it like a grape.

Dexter screamed as black tar got over his body, and once Julia was done she coughed up blood herself.

“Don’t be an idiot,” she rasped. “ Jane needs you. Let’s go.”

Dexter nervously followed her through the soft remains of corpses and whimpered, gagging on the smell that somehow became worse.

The arrival of reinforcements made even the most tired and weakest of the astrals bold. Those who were originally too afraid to fight were helping in any way they could. Those with abilities that couldn’t be used for fighting would bring out weapons, others would carry away the dead and wounded. The strongest created defensive lines in front of the dormitories where they had the people without abilities hiding inside, or group up to push the line back with a unified assault.

Mary Jane went from building to building, creating walls of asphalt and cement to defend the entrances. This took her quite some time, and as she ran between the buildings she tore through the bodies like paper, punching them as hard as she could.

She was short and no longer wearing heels, so it was hard for her to reach the heads, and kept missing. She couldn’t keep it up and was starting to get tired, having to jump up every time she wanted to get a one-hit KO.

They surrounded her and she backed up into a tall streetlight. She mumbled something incoherently and once again she had new energy she never knew she had.

Screaming and groaning, Mary Jane pulled it out of the ground with both hands. She held on for dear life as she swung it around, the soft decaying flesh of the corpses easily destroyed by the combination of her herculean strength and the rigid street light.

She dropped it to the ground with a loud boom, and stumbled off to the next building, wondering where her mother was.

Her mother had finally made it to the basement of the eastern half of the Training Center’s building. There were people inside with books, furiously trying to understand how they could turn off the shield transmitter.

It was an old and rusty machine, and no one could even understand the language of the computer system or the labels of the machine’s parts.

No one in the Union used English anymore for written language and had their own different universal writing system. Only those who were interested in past cultures bothered to learn the different writing systems of various languages, and the people looking through the books were staring at what looked like complete and utter nonsense.

Of course, Mary Sue was lucky. She was always lucky.

Mary Sue’s own grandmother was ancient. She was a child when the Empire had colonized Earth for around 90 years, and lived long enough to see it gain its independence. Her grandmother lived to the ripe old age of 137 years old, a few years shy of beating the current record of the longest-living Earthian.

During her life she had taught English to her family, wanting so badly to preserve what the Empire had destroyed. Mary Sue knew how to read English. Very basic English at that, but enough to recognize a few sentences.

Savannah was with the others, trying to make sense of the dead language, but none could even grasp a single thing. Mary Sue took the book out of Savannah’s hand and screamed at her.

“It’s upside down,” she yelled at her. “All of you are getting us killed!”

Savannah prayed that no one outside of the room would hear of her mistake, and she feebly stood there as Mary Sue examined the book.

Mary Sue barked orders at those around her. They brought her a pen, a pencil, and some paper, and she went to work, translating the few words she knew, trying to remember the letters and the sounds they made.

It was very difficult, as Deceit’s army was slowly approaching the training center, and the sounds of decay and violence were getting louder and louder.

After ten minutes of racking her mind, she finally found the page she needed. Everyone watched, holding their breath as she went up to the computer module and copied the symbols from the book.

A password dialogue popped up on the screen, and everyone started to shout at each other, the stress of death and technical support too much to handle simultaneously.

Mary Sue tried everything.

She put in the names of all of the long-deceased Michael Slater’s family. None worked. She put it in the year that Earth had been liberated. It didn’t work. “What would this old man use as a password,” she screamed.

She put in the name of her children as well, whom Michael had briefly known in his last few years of life, and none worked.

“Why don’t you try his birthday,” Savannah suggested. “I use that for all my passwords.”

“That’s not a good idea,” Mary Sue replied. “You really shouldn’t be telling anyone this.”

A loud explosion could be heard, and the lights in the basement flickered. Pieces of dust fell off the ceiling and they coughed and sneezed. “Michael doesn’t have a birthday anyway. He was an orphan. He just celebrated it on Christmas,” Mary Sue explained.

“Just try it,” Savannah sighed.

Mary Sue pouted and put in the date for Christmas. A word she didn’t understand popped up on the screen, but it was different from the continuous, incorrect password message she kept getting, and her heart started to race in anticipation.

The machine’s whirring noise slowly stopped, and then another window popped up on the screen. Mary Sue could partially read this one. The last word said completely.

“I think it worked,” Mary Sue said in awe. “Go upstairs to check.”

Savannah was eager to get out of the dusty old basement and flew upstairs. She looked up into the sky, and overhead she watched the strange pulsing orb blink slowly, and then it stopped. A strange object could be seen plummeting to the ground, and it landed several hundred yards away from her, on top of an armored vehicle, crushing it and fizzling smoke.

She whimpered like a small child as she saw the shield fade away, the sky no longer a strange color, and suddenly water poured down on them. The shield had blocked out most kinds of weather changes, and she sighed in relief as blood and tar came out of her hair.

Savannah was not the only one happy that they were finally free. Deceit was as well. Once she had obtained the strongest of astrals and their reality-bending abilities she would make her way out of the city, and off to conquer the rest of humanity.

Deceit snickered as she saw those who could fly away, off into the air, away from the campus, and knew that if she did a full assault as quickly as possible, she could win the battle and gain stronger soldiers before more reinforcements arrived.

Savannah left as well, tired of being a leader, and hoping that everyone would simply think that she died.