"Hm, there are a lot more people than usual." Ava says as we are walking through a loud, bustling street. The main street, as it is called, because it connects practically the whole city together, from the academic district on one side, through the crafter's district, noble district, residential district, then through the slums on the edge of the city and out of its old walls.

"Mhm, and a lot more Chaos Beasts." I add, following her and holding her hand while watching a huge bear-like beast walking past us, pulling a large wagon behind it, and avoding someone coming from the front who isn't paying enough attention to what's in front of him.

Ava nods in affirmation and hums some lively melody for a long while till she spots something on our side and pulls me there lighlty.

"I'll take a newspaper." She explains before I am able to ask and we eneter the store.

Half a minute later we go out of the store with a steaming hot newspaper under my arm and we continue to the market in the city center while I focus on the newspaper instead of looking around.

What greets my eyes when I look at it is a large title saying 'Ruins Exploration Progressing'. I quickly read through the whole thing and my eyebrows fall in disappointment.

"The ruin explorations are progressing, but they only give empty details." I complain to Ava and she glances at me questioningly. "It's written that the lead group managed to breach one of the gates in the ruins, supposedly to one of the production facilities, but there's nothing about what's inside."

"Don't expect any news about Old World to reach the public anytime soon." My girfriend replies with a scoff.

"I know. Not like they'll show any new technology they find." I nod, turning the page and skimming through the continuation of the article. "Last thing I remember being found in ruins is a machine working like a hairdryer, but without any Chaos, in one of the mansions. I don't hope for anything more substantial." I mutter absentmindedly till I reach a section that interests me. And my eyes probably have stars shining in them when I devour the rest of the article. "They will be opening a part of the ruin to the public!" I say excitedly.

"Really?" Ava asks, turning her head to me in surprise. "Where?"

"Um, it's the ruin in Palermo... part of the residential district, specifically." I quickly finish the thing and look up at Ava with a wide smile. "A silver mark per person, available from the purple alignment. We'll be having a break from the academy like tenday later, so we can go then." I look at her with what I believe is a cute pleading expression.

"Yeah, su-ryah!" She replies enthusiastically with a wide smile and lets out a strange sound when I pull her to the side out of the way of another Chaos Beast.

"Careful, Ava." I mutter and she nods in embarrassment.

"Mhm, I was saying, we can go then. I'm actually really interested in the ruins. They supposedly have no magic in them, and I'd like to see by myself what's so special about that. Palermo is really near the Mists as well, isn't it?"

"Hm, yeah. Forty miles, they mentioned somewhere here." I nod. "I wouldn't be surprised if our history teacher brought it up soon."

"Miss Marks? Yeah, she probably will." Ava nods. "We are also supposed to have machinery basics next semester, so it'll come in handy."

"Mhm, right." I nod, going back to the newspaper and skimming through other articles, trying to reign in my excitement at the prospect of visiting a ruin from the Old World.

I don't see anything interesting for a long while, just some news like minor accidents or discoveries, till I reach a section that, surprisingly , is about our city. Hm.

"Oh, apparently a large group of Chaos Touched arrived in Venus yesterday. Have you heard anything about it?" I ask Ava curiously.

"Hm? Nope. Maybe that's the reason for this unusual activity." She replies.

"Maybe. There's even a class 3 among them, it's said it's in response to reports about some criminal organization." I nod, already reading further, till I reach the usual Chaos Storm section.

"Hm, they say there will be a storm close to Venus tomorrow. Ah, no, it's today." I say aloud for Ava to hear and immdiately correct myself. "Right, I totally forgot about it... I wouldn't be surprised if they issued a warning in a while, so the lessons might be cancelled."

"Oh." Ava lets out, her step momentarily wavering, and I squeeze her hand tighter. "Alright. That might be bad, but I don't think it will be a problem if we miss Chaos studies." She turns to me with a wry smile. Reasonable, because we both already know much more about Chaos than we're being taught in the academy. I from my parents and Ava from her personal interest.

"It's also written that there were some more minor victims in Raphlesia. I mean, Chaos Touched. Why the hell did they write victims... Must be a new editor..." I grumble.

"Maybe it's about the Beast-turned?" Ava asks, glancing back at me.

"Nah. There's a hundred and three victims," I shake my head and say, drawing out the word mockingly. "Among which eighty seven Beasts were either killed or captured. Though they didn't write how many full and wild. Oh, and there's a new Draco!" I almost shout out the last part and Ava turns to me in surprise.

"Draco? You sure?" She asks with disbelief and I shake my head vigorously, reading the article.

"Yup!" I reply a moment later. "She's apparently an, uh, static type 2, so she doesn't have dragon form like Sovereign does. But she's still a class 4, almost half as powerful as Sovereign by early estimates, so she's really powerful. You need some dumb luck to get a Draco among a hundred people, huh?"

"Yeah, and in Raphlesia at that, so close to us." My girlfriend nods with a frown. "And, honestly, that stinks a bit. There are like eight of them currently alive? Among five hundred million people or something? And she comes happy from a hundred?"

"Hm, yeah." I nod, contemplating the issue, but shrug a moment later and go back to reading. "Well, either way a new Draco is still a big deal, even if there's no dirt to dig where she comes from."

A Draco, after all, is a Chaos Touched with characteristics of a dragon. Not a drake or something, which are their lesser siblings and classified as subkind of Lacerta, so lizards, but proper dragon. They are said to be among five most powerful types of Chaos Touched, and are arguably the strongest of them, which shouldn't need any further commentary.

"Mhm." Ava mumbles and we continue to the market, which right now is already very close. "I wonder what she will do. With power like hers, she must already be swarmed by tens of offers, deals and all that. I'm pretty sure last Draco has joined the army, though he was pretty weak."

"Um, yeah, mid class 3." I nod absentmindedly, engrossed in another article about Chaos Touched classification, which apparently got a few changes a while ago after General Chaos Management received multiple petitions about its flaws. "Apparently she is going to think for a while before she decides, but she said she doesn't want to join the army."

Hm, they are adding a class 0 for the Chaos Touched whose powers are so miniscule they might as well be nonexistent, which they were putting off for a really long time, but apparently the problems with law finally pushed them to do that. Some of those powers are like an ability to produce sparks from your fingers, like one of our classmates can. He can't even shock anyone with the output he has, at most startle someone, but is still affected by the restrictions placed upon the Chaos Touched.

"They're adding class 0." I say to Ava, already devouring the latter parts of the article.

"Huh? Finally." Ava mutters. "Though I can't say it makes me feel exactly safe, but that should have been done long ago."

"Mhm." I nod. "They will have much less restrictions comparing to the class 1 and their presence will be allowed in the Chaos-free areas as long as they pass some checks. Basically untouched who need to pass more checks and all that."

"As expected." My girlfriend nods. "Victor will be happy." Yup, that's the sparkly guy.

Going further, hm.

"They are also adding one more type of Chaos Touched." I say. "Type 5 is a beast that can't be reasoned with, just as earlier, and the new type 6 includes just the mad cases that rampage without pause. I'm not sure why they are adding it, to be honest."

Types 1 to 5 are all logical. Unturned, Demi or Half-human, Half-beast, Full Beast, and Wild Beast. Each type represents different level of changes to the body and mind, and each is very distinctly different from each other. The Chaos Beasts on the streets, by the way, are type 4 who agreed to work as labor. But type 6, apparently called Mad Beast, seems a bit pointless.

"Mhm, yeah." Ava nods with a small frown. "I guess it's something technical that won't really be used by people."

"Yeah, probably. The rest remains mostly the same, just some subkinds have been added or divided." I say and fold the newspaper, seeing that we've reached the market already. "The kinds remain the same. I'll continue reading when we're done with shopping."

We first go get some food, including eggs I just now learn we've ran out of, and we're continuing to another place when we hear a huge ruckus picking up in volume somewhere on the other edge of the market. That's when the loud voice from speakers resounds over the city.

"Attention, citizens! There is a Chaos Storm happening inside the ci-." And it's cut off.

The whole market seems to freeze for this tiny, timeless moment, during which I notice the mulitolored hues of Chaos starting to grow somewhere not very far, and then all hell breaks loose.

"Back to my house!" Ava screams through the shouting, curses, shrieks, people pushing us, small brawls starting, and a moment later it's all joined by new sounds. Roars, howls, snarls, booms, crashes.

I desperately cling to Ava's arm as we turn around and start running through the crowd, but without much success. We move at speed of... maybe a meter per second, if we count in the delay from being hit and pushed by other people. After a few seconds of this struggle I feel something incredibly heavy hit my back and I tumble forward, feeling only the piercing, searing pain in my back and the much more spread, but still strong pain on my front from hitting some people and probably ground as well.

My head is spinning and pounding with dull waves of pain and I think I curl up on the groud, but I can't be certain with all I feel being pain.

All I can think about is Ava, pain, and approaching Chaos.

And then... I feel it. Chaos. I don't know how, I don't know why, but I know I feel it. I am... I don't know. Scared, excited, terrified, buzzing with anticipation. I don't know. A part of me always wanted to be Touched, but the approximate of five among six people being turned into beasts, most of them wild, is pretty scary. And it's the reason why only crazy or desperate people try to turn their lives around by purposefully exposing themselves to Chaos.

Said Chaos is now on my back, and starts slowly spreading with this absolutely weird, unbearably hot, chillingly cold, and yet painless feeling of my flesh falling off and returning to its place a moment later. And it's fucking uncomfortable, yet scarily soothing to my mind.

Then the feeling abruptly spreads through my whole body in a wave that robs me of my sense of touch, hearing, sight and basically everything. I scream soundlessly and I think I fold backwards, but I can't tell. As the wave rolls over my head, everthing suddenly becomes... calm. I don't feel anything.

It's a... scary moment. I don't feel absolutely anything, and yet I'm aware. Complete sensory deprivation. I don't know how much time passes. Could have been a second, a minute, a day, a year for all I know.

I almost start to panic before my touch starts slowly returning to me and I feel a lot of things in succession and in strange detail. The stony street under me, my torn clothes that feel like they stick to my skin, the heavy, slick something that covers most of my body, including head. And my tail. And my large ears.

Huh?

I groggily open my eyes and the only thing I see is blackness and barely recognizable stones of the market... or at least I assume it's the market. I can't really tell with something quite hard, rough, and very heavy pressing me down from above. I try to lift my head up, but I only manage to get around half a foot up before the force gets too large to keep myself up with only my head.

I pull on my arm and manage to raise the left, which seems to be under a smaller load, by a few inches, and I use all my strength to lift my shoulder up. Well, shit. I'm not sure how to go from there. I don't think I can get out of here without scraping myself on the rough ground.

So I push my other shoulder up and pull my arm from under whatever is pinning me down, managing to get two or three inches by twisting my upper body and ignoring the pain from my arm which feels as if my skin was being stretched to the point when it almost cracks. I continue doing the same for a while, twisting my upper body and pulling myself away from the thing, with each pull feeling the load on me becoming a bit smaller.

I finally reach the point where my leg can be pulled to me a bit and I do just that... and I feel my tail coming close to ripping off and the fur on my foot being torn away and growing back. And I'm so fucking sure of that I'm having trouble convincing myself that I'm not dreaming right now. But with all that pain it's pretty damn impossible. I literally felt the skin of my arm to be close to being torn away a few times.

Hm, fur. With me being Touched holy fuck I was Touched and I'm sane! Holy shit! And from the feel of my arms, my tail, my ears, and my legs, I am a Demi, or mild stage Half-beast at worst. Which is arguably the best you can get, because it allows the powers to fully manifest, unlike it is with some Unturned, while not having the major disadvantages of tiers 3 and 4, which usually can't speak and have a whole lot of instincts, urges, and internal changes to their bodies that flip their lives around completely.

Holy shit oh my gosh. I can't believe it. I always dreamed about it, a part of me always hoped it would happen, but the fear losing myself and leaving Ava never allowed me to purposefully get Touched. And before I had her, I never considered it seriously, apart from when my parents disappeared, but back then I was keeping the promise to them. To find hapiness, and I did.

And I'm pretty sure I did it again today, especially since I have a very good inkling towards my kind as a Touched. I'm practically certain it's Vulpes, Lupus, Felis, or something similar to one of those.

...Unless... fuck.

Ava... what happened to her? I refuse to believe she is dead, but with what was happening earlier, she must have been Touched as well. Damn. Shit. Fuck.

No, I'm not going there. I'm not going anywhere till I get to know if Ava is okay. The problem is that I have no damn idea how would she look if she was Turned into a tier 2 or higher, and tier 2 already can be hard to recognize after the transformation. Not to mention a Full Beast, which looks just like it sounds. Full Beast, full transformation, nothing of the previous body remaining.

'Back to my house!' I hear Ava's shout playing back in my mind. Yeah. I'm going back there, and we'll see what to do after that.

I continue crawling out from under whatever is keeping me here with renewed vigor, not caring for my injuries once I notice that they seem to be healing at abnormal rate. It's not like accelerated regeration, but that would probably fall into body restoration or rebuilding. Those are the official names at least, but their meaning is pretty straightforward.

The fur on my feet, for example, isn't being regenerated, but more like it gets rebuilt within merely seconds after I pull my leg to me and tear it off my skin. But I'm still going to call it regeneration for simplicity.

Hm, couldn't I tear my leg off and regrow it...? Nah, better not experiment with that, especially now.

After around two minutes of constant effort and one meter crossed, the pressure on me lessens to the level where I can pull my legs from under the thing without tearing anything out, and I do just that a few times, pulling myself forward, till I finally see dim lighting seeping from the small space created between the ground and whatever I have above me.

Damn, finally. Only the last bit remaining. I push myself up with my arms as strong as I can and I manage to lift myself up by around a foot up into the air, but any more is too much for me to push. I then pull myself out with all the strength I can muster, and my head finally reaches the open air.

I feel wind brushing over my large, furry ears, and I gasp in surprise and almost elation when they are freed from under the heavy thing and I can move them properly. Though my excitement is dampened considerably when I realize I don't hear anything. And I mean, anything. My ears aren't working. Hm, well, not like it matters right now.

I stretch out my arms and pull myself further out again, and again till only my legs are still being crushed, and again till I am free from under the thing. I collapse on the ground heavily, feeling the effort finally getting to me. Damn, that was not the first thing I wanted to do as a Chaos Touched.

After a moment I finally lift my head from the ground and look back at what has been crushing me. And I freeze in shock, looking from one end of it to another.

It's an absolutely massive Chaos Beast with rough, gray skin. Its head and part of its long neck is hidden in a crushed building on the side of the market while its tail... is curled somewhere in the middle of the market. Its body is large and... I don't want to say fat, but that's what comes to my mind when I look at its large belly with multiple smaller and larger wounds soiled with dried blood.

It's probably a dead Saurus, and its length is nothing to scoff at, reaching no less than fifty meters, but the problem is not that.

I look at my slim arms and hands in wonder, noticing only now that I lost some of my tan and some of my muscles, leaving my body much softer than it was before, still small and slim. Please explain to me, how the fuck I survived being crushed under this thing's belly.

Because from what I know, I would need to be at least a high class 2 to do that, which is... pretty terryfying.