She had silver hair. 

The absent observation rang hollow in Eris' addled brain before dispersing into the aether. Compared to the stranger, she cut a pathetic figure, crumpled dolorously on the ground as she was. She rubbed her red rimmed eyes fiercely, only succeeding in smearing her already bleary vision even further. Shining globules prickled at the corner of her eyes, warping  the tenebrous alleyway into a monstrous rendition of abstract art. She forced herself to rise on quivering legs, trying to ignore the intemperate pounding in her chest and the freezing clamminess that manifested as perspiration on her palms. Despite the severity of the situation, she couldn’t help but study the stranger more intensively. 

She was a very pretty girl. At least, Eris thought so.

Her ‘face’ overlapped with dozens of other faces, almost like a kaleidoscope. The outermost layer of the girl's face was chock-full of generic traits that could be found in a model magazine: iridescent blue eyes, a cute button nose, perfectly plump cheeks with just a bit of flush to them, and a cartoonishly heart-shaped structure. But as Eris continued looking, her eyes seemed to change shades, the vivid baby blue dimming fractionally to a more navy hue. Then it shifted a few notches more down the color index, darkening until it was almost black. The next second, it reverted back to a royal blue.

It wasn’t just her eyes. One second, her face was rounded; the next, it was lean. Her lips seemed wider than it’d been a moment earlier, and her eyebrows looked more voluminously bushy. Her hair wasn’t spared from the widely varied array of changes. Although the uncanny silver color remained a staple, the same could not be said for the length. Fortunately, the shift was only a couple of inches in either direction for the most part.

The changes were abstruse enough to conceal her identity, but not enough to render her unrecognizable. It was a fine line to travel along, making it so that someone would be able to recognize you while also masking your presence, and Eris only knew of one group of people who employed the tactic:

Custodians.

The realization knocked the air out of Eris' lungs. The enticing impulse to giggle like a lovesick fangirl and check her appearance rose up unbeckoned within her. A bout of wooziness washed over her and she swayed, her leg bumping into the mutilated body lying next to her. Automatically, Eris glanced down, and finding the corroded face gaze vacantly back jarred her. All at once, the sense of amazement and awe that had taken over her senses evaporated like a fog cloud in a dry season. Working her mouth, she fumbled for anything to break the silence.

The Custodian was quicker. “Well? Are you going to tell me or what?” Her voice was like a blizzard cutting through any excuse Eris tried to formulate. She racked her brain trying to figure out what the Custodian was talking about, but her shrewd gaze scattered any deliberations to the four corners of the world. It took Eris staring intently at a moldy patch right above the girl's head to scramble her thoughts into something coherent and recall the straightforward, if crude, question she’d asked. 

“I-I heard a weird voice that said you were in da-danger so I followed you into the alleyway but then a man g-grabbed me and we fou-fought and I….I…..” she tried forcing the rest of the garbled mess out but she couldn’t translate her thoughts into words. The pain of what she did was still too raw. She lowered her head sullenly instead, hoping she could get the rest of the story through with her body language.

The Custodian didn’t respond for a while. Eris glanced up and wasn’t surprised to find a look of disbelief on her constantly-altering face. She wouldn’t believe herself either. The girl's nose was scrunched up, as if she was trying her best to not smell rancid feces. Her beady eyes conveyed a dozen words in a single glance, each one a harsher insult than the last. Derision was etched into the lines of her face, and Eris' stomach swirled anxiously when she turned those razor-sharp eyes onto her.

“You’ve got to be fucking with me. This isn’t a fairy fairy tale. You expect me to believe this fucking joke?” she snapped. With every word, Eris ducked her head lower, flinching as if her speech were physical attacks hailing down on her. She sighed, rubbing her forehead with her index and middle finger. “But I guess that confirms it….you heard him? Fan-fucking-tastic.”

Eris chanced a look at her, uncertainty playing with her emotions. The Custodian looked extremely aggravated, like she was seconds away from ripping someone apart—preferably not her. She kept on inclining her head to her waist and waiting. Eris watched as anger unfurled across her face like a blanket, the corner of her eyes pinching and turning downward. She flung her arms into the air, clearly frustrated by something, and started to turn around before stopping mid-whirl and looking down again. Her mouth twitched but there were no audible sounds.

Eris watched all this unfold before her, wondering if the girl'd succumbed to insanity. She hadn’t exactly been the ideal image of a Custodian to begin with, and Eris' childhood dream of meeting a Custodian was quickly shattering to pieces and turning to dust. Then it struck her like a lightning bolt. The explanation for the girl's eccentric behavior was linked to another key facet of being a Custodian that had completely slipped her mind in favor of the more popular identity-concealing magic: Familiars.

Also dubbed as Mascots by some, though that title was often spurned by Custodians who saw it as demeaning and debasing their precious allies. The GDM had released an official document to the public approximately twelve years ago to answer some of the citizen’s most burning questions. Along with tips on how to survive Animus Incursions, was a subsection on Custodians and Singularities.

Singularities were the event when a girl became a Custodian. A girl who was pure of heart was noticed by a spirit, and asked to make a contract. They were bestowed with immense magical powers when the spirit entered their body and merged with them, surviving off their life force and fundamentally changing their physicality in the purpose. Some of the spirit’s energy was represented as Familiars, who were always seen hovering around their respective Custodians and providing support. Nobody was really certain what their role was besides looking cute, but the GDM’s PR team must cherish them. It doubled the standard Custodian’s appeal and to this day, there were hundreds of plushies made of different Familiers.

Eris craned her head, trying to catch a glimpse of the tiny critter enshrouded in her cloak. Simultaneously, she was beating herself up for not making the connection earlier. Of course the strange voice from the train station had been the Familiar talking to his Custodian! Still, that added a sense of urgency to the situation if even the Familiar felt that his Custodian was suffering. A smidgen of vindication surged through her at the thought that she’d been right in coming to her aid, but it was dampened by the uncomfortable truth that she may have stumbled into a situation beyond her capabilities. She wasn’t a therapist, she could barely handle her own mental luggage!

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” the Custodian muttered. The sound startled Eris out of her deliberation to find the Custodian scrutinizing her with the same attitude a disgruntled parent would wear upon discovering that their wild kid whose hobbies consisted of wrestling in mud and drawing on walls turned out to be a once-in-a-generation genius. For some reason, Eris felt like she’d let her down and shame welled up from her gut. 

“I just want to have one fucking day to myself and I run into a Potential. That’s fucking great, absolutely great!” The Custodian ranted, clearly agitated as she began pacing around in a circle. Eris stood awkwardly to the side, unsure whether she should try to comfort her or remain silent. Judging from how it seemed like she was partially responsible for her irritation, she wisely decided to clam up. 

The Custodian paused mid step as she was raking her hand through her hair. “What do you mean, ‘Not quite a Potential?’ You saw what she did, I saw her! A human can’t do that!” She renewed her circling, her hand reviving and running through her hair ferociously. “Fuck this, I don’t have time to deal with her on top of everything else….yes, of course I know that!”

Her eyes snapped towards her and Eris froze. She was a deer in headlights, a timid little creature facing a roaring metal beast with lights as powerful as the Sun. The Custodian's gaze petrified her, reaching into her body and wringing her intestines. Her breaths came out in shallow puffs and it felt like an elephant had decided to nestle onto her chest.

“You.” That single word sent shivers down her spine.

“Y-yes!?” Eris squeaked, resisting the inclination to salute her. Custodians didn’t hold an official rank in the military, but they all seemed to be masters of emanating a professional aura unlike anything else. It was hard to look at this girl who couldn’t be much older than her, and not see a much older, troubled soul hiding behind that youthly disguise. 

“What the fuck is your game here? Let’s say that you did have altruistic motivations, which sounds like a load of crap to me, but whatever. What now? You killed that man, didn’t you? You won’t be able to have a normal life after this. Will you try to haggle for my silence by blackmailing me? Or will you just rat me out to the GDM for protection from the authorities?” she questioned. Despite the aggressive nature of the word-dump, she looked as if she couldn’t care less what she chose. The clenching of her hands on her cloak betrayed her true thoughts though.   

There were a myriad of emotions circulating through Eris' brain right now, most predominantly panic. She’d avoided thinking about how her life would be affected by her actions, but she was completely right. Her life was defunct. Still, something the Custodian said didn’t sit right with her. Hoping she wasn’t making a mistake by prodding, she asked, “W-what do you mean by ‘r-ratting you out? You work for the GDM, right?”

It was an absolute truth that the Custodians and the GDM went hand in hand, ever since the beginning. Hell, the GDM had been built around the Custodians! There should be no reason for doubt, but she couldn’t keep the dubiety out of her voice. Why did she feel like there was something larger going on here?

The girl’s eyes sharpened and her lips curled up in contempt. “‘Work for?’” she repeated in a mocking tone, overly enunciating every word like she was a stupid child. “More like slave for.” She spat the words out like they she couldn’t bear to keep them in her mouth.

Eris wanted to deny it. Everything taught to her in school, by her parents, by the people around her said that the GDM and the Custodians had a healthy working relationship that was benefical fo both parties. She thought of all the ads and the events and concerts where Custodians looked like they were having the time of their life. How zealously the GDM protected the Custodians from the worst of humanity’s prying eyes, and how fulfilled the Custodians looked while standing next to Tim Marvin in conferences. Hell, there was even a GIF showcasing two younger Custodians hugging Tim during an interview, and people online called him the ‘Father of Custodians.’

The doctrine Eris'd been fed her entire life rebelled against what this Custodian was telling her. But the anguish in her voice that cut deep into Eris' soul, the glint of tears sparkling in her eyes, and the vibrant red flush of her cheeks wasn’t something you could fake. Eris' resolve wavered, and for the first time, she found herself wondering if the GDM was truly what it looked like.

“And people like you make it worse!” the Custodian continued, breaking Eris out of her mental crisis. She whipped her head up, indignation blasting away any thoughts of a secret conspiracy for a second. 

“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?” she protested. She was about to add ‘stupid’ to the end before remembering that it probably wasn’t the best course of action for her health to antagonize the Custodian any more than she already had. She settled for glaring spitefully at the hem of her cloak.

The girl scoffed. “Are you serious? Geeks like you who only care about social media and homework and what? Building kits? Who do you think we have to work our ass off to protect?”

Eris' ears burned. The Custodian had hit the nail. She’d been a devout member of the Science and Engineering club once upon a time before…..before Alice. But that didn’t justify her accusations! Her apprehension forgotten, she took a step forward and jabbed a finger into her face. The Custodian went cross-eyed trying to look at the finger before opting to glower at her face instead.

It felt like there was a furnace bellowing inside Eris' chest, burning hotter and hotter. The sheer audacity of this girl to say that….it infuriated her like nothing else. There was a maelstrom of utter hatred, detest, loathing, and abhorring, all compressed into a tiny ball as hot as the Sun. The flames traveled up her throat and she worried that if she opened her mouth, she would eject fire. 

Eris dug her nails into her palms, prior Animus Incursions flashing before her eyes. The words came unbidden, everything that she’d tried to come to terms with.

“Do you think we want to be defended by you!? Do you think we chose to be weak, to be powerless? None of us wants this! We don’t want to have to huddle down underneath a school desk, hearing you guys fight outside and wonder if the next big explosion is a fucking magic laser hitting our school! Have you ever been terrified out of your mind, not sure if the sound of the building breaking down is real or inside your head?! To look at your phone to see how the fight is going, and feel helpless when you see your favorite store be destroyed or your friend’s house atomized, knowing that you can’t do a fucking thing to help? Have you ever experienced how relieved you are when the alarms go off, and that stupid voice tells us the Animus Incursion is over? Do you know how quickly that relief turns into unsaturated terror as you check the list of the deceased, praying that we don’t find our loved ones!? To see our class dwindle with every Animus Incursion?! WE DIDN’T ASK FOR THIS!”

“I KNOW THAT!” she roared, punching the wall. The cheaply constructed concrete shattered under her fist, hurtling chips and pieces of debris into the air. A thick cloud of dust and plaster rose from the wreckage. 

“I know that,” the Custodian repeated. Her voice trembled. Eris'd never seen a Custodian look so distraught before, so lost. “But what can I do?” Her voice broke. “I can’t do anything. I fight and fight and fight and I get nowhere. Who do I blame? The GDM? Teresa? Myself? It’s not your fault, I know that….but I hate you so much.” The Custodian hung her head dejectedly.

Silence followed her proclamation. Eris felt like she needed to say something to fill in the emptiness, but she could barely think.

“I lost my sister.” Eris blurted out. The Custodian twitched but that was the only reaction she gave. She carried on. “She’s not dead….but she’s as good as. And I lost my other sister too. She doesn’t want to be around me anymore since I failed. And my parents can’t look at me anymore. They avoid me like I'm some kind of a monster. Me. Their own daughter. My best friend, she was like a sister to me. I thought we’d be together forever. But I ruined that as well.”

Eris laughed bitterly and looked up at the night sky, willing her eyes to stop tearing up. “Damn it, this is so embarrassing. Why do I cry so much?”

“I knew it,” the Custodian muttered. Eris turned her head questioningly. 

She was no longer slouched over like a dead person. She still appeared drained, but a sick, satisfied smile tugged at her lips. Her current face had given her heavy bags underneath her eyes. She looked tired, but happy too.

“I knew it,” she repeated. “You’re not a goody two-shoes. You came to confront your own demons and feel better about yourself. Nice to know that I'm not losing her touch.”

Eris blanched. Her arms quivered with barely contained rage, and she envisioned slapping the girl across the face. Keeping in mind that the person in front of her could slap her and her head would detach from her neck, she carefully shuffled through amicable sentence starters.

“Listen….I think you have the wrong idea. I just heard your Familiar say that he was worried you were distressed, and I came to see if I could help.” Eris attempted to keep her voice even, to conceal the swirling typhoon that was battering against her mental fortifications at this moment, demanding to be released so it may deliver justice to this cocky Custodian. The filter she’d carefully honed over years of trying to prevent being perceived negatively by snobby students was making a comeback right now simply to tone down the slew of curse words she wanted to spout. 

“Right, and I'm Santa Claus. That was probably what you told yourself to justify your actions. I mean, who goes into the slums just because of a hunch? A weird voice that no one else can hear? As if! You just didn’t want to feel worthless anymore.” the Custodian stated matter of factly. There was no judgment in her voice. Nonetheless, it felt like Eris was on a lab table and was slowly being dissected by the girl. She tried to defend her intentions, to fight back, but words vacated her brain. She felt like she was trying to move through a batch of honey, and her tongue had been swapped out for a cumbersome stone.

The Custodian didn’t let up, piling on with the apathetic interpretations. “You said that the people you care about left you, and you also used the word ‘failed’ fairly often. I can infer that you believe the reason they left you was because you ‘failed’ in protecting your sister, which created an unconscious desire to never fail again. You correlated failure with loss, and your ineptitude was the driving factor of all your suffering. Therefore, you saw your chance of helping me as a way to redeem yourself, didn’t you?” In a few sentences, she had systematically taken Eris apart. Worst of all, she wasn’t waiting for a response. She crossed her arms with the swagger only someone who was absolutely confident in their analysis could generate. 

At that moment, Eris had never hated anyone more than her. 

Eris wasn’t sure if the true reason for her wealth of resentment and rage was because deep down, a microscopic part of her agreed with her claims. In less words than it took her to churn out a B-worthy essay, the Custodian had dismantled everything she’d built up in the past 6 months. She’d taken solace in the fact that she strived to do good for wholly selfless reasons, that despite everything, she was still a good person.

And apparently, Eris didn’t even have that small token. She felt like she was falling in quicksand, the ground giving way to a sea of dismay and angst. She didn’t have anything stable to cling to; the Custodian had knocked down the blocks that made up the foundation of the beliefs she crafted to deal with everything, and she was floundering like a finless fish without it. Eris warred with herself, trying to deny the claims while also accepting them wholeheartedly.

What did the Custodian even know? Eris couldn’t stand the injustice of it all. She needed to make her suffer, needed her to understand all the torment she was putting her through. It felt like her mind was ripping itself in half trying to reconcile truth with fiction, but there was one thing the two factions agreed on. Even if she’d unraveled her thread and she was falling apart at the seams, she vowed that she was going to pay for it.

All Eris saw was the Custodian's self-congratulatory smirk, dripping with arrogance and deceit. She heard her mocking laughter fill her head and her body moved without her command. By the time Eris knew what it was planning on doing, she had plenty of moments to stop it. But she didn’t.

Eris strode forward, relishing in how the other girl's smile faltered. She planted her hands onto her torso and pushed with everything she had, pouring all her grief and sorrow and anger into the movement. In Eris' rage-induced state, even the poor state of her left hand wasn’t enough to hinder her. Rather, the tender torment was fuel to the burst of strength that made her feel invincible. 

Instead of flesh underneath the prickly fabric, Eris felt metal. She blinked in surprise, but it was too late. Her body already carried out her will and the Custodian pitched backward before she made contact with the wall behind her. A dark shape fell out of her cloak and clattered to the ground with a distinctly metallic noise. Her mocking laughter dissipated into a shrill white noise, and Eris realized she had never been laughing at all. 

Triumph was slain, and horror replaced it. Eris backed away as if to escape from the scene. Her hands flew to her mouth but she aborted the motion midway, instead letting her left hand drop to her side. She closed her eyes, hoping that when she opened them, she had reversed the last minute. Of course, she was no Custodian, and the image before her eyes remained stubbornly the same, condemning her to a fate worse than death. Eris didn’t know what the consequences of laying hands on a Custodian was, but she could kiss any chance of her holding her tongue goodbye. Her left hand sent sharp spikes of pain through her body, further hammering in just how badly she’d fucked up. 

You know what? She didn’t care anymore. She just….didn’t care. Eris squared her shoulders and glared at the hunched over shadow of the Custodian, who still hadn’t budged from her position by the wall after she pushed her. Her eyes fluttered anxiously and she rolled back and forth on the balls of her heels, trying to burn off some of the excess energy. Eris didn’t back down though; she refused to be intimidated by the other girl. 

A shrill giggle split the air, crescendoing in pitch, growing more maniacal and unhinged. The Custodian seemed darkly amused by a thought only she was privy to, her hefty laughter wracking her lithe body. Perturbed, Eris bent her knees, prepared to break into a sprint at a moment’s notice if she showed any sign of attacking. 

The girl uncoiled from the wall with the coyness of a huffy cat, the shadows melting off her body. Slinking over, she bluntly kicked the metallic object out of her path and sent it skidding along the ground. Unsolicited, Eris' eyes tracked its path, truly seeing it for the first time. 

It was a metal tube with what appeared to be a cap on one end. A short handle protruded from the bottom, bound snugly in brown leather, with another situated just a couple of inches behind the first. Contrary to its nondescript appearance, it practically thrummed with power. She could feel the energy wafting off the cylindrical item, the air taking on an electric charge as her hair stood ramrod and her skin tingled. She could have sworn she saw little bursts of light pop around the tube, and ozone lingered in the air.

A ridiculous idea fermented in her mind, but there was no way, right? Surely not even a Custodian would be so deranged to carry one around in public?

“Yep, it’s a rocket launcher.” The Custodian whispered, mere inches from her ear. The soft, feather-light touch of her breath sent shivers down Eris' spine and she jumped, spinning in midair and clamping her left hand over her ear. She glared half-heartedly at the other girl, who simply shrugged. She looked far too pleased with herself for Eris' liking, but she was still reeling from the truth about the nonsensical object. She snuck surreptitious glances at the rocket launcher, trying not to appear too amazed, but unable to stifle a long-dormant part of her that yearned to dismantle the weapon and see how it operated—the same part that had motivated her to jot her name down on the Science and Engineering sheet in freshman year. The sardonic smile on the Custodian's face told her she hadn’t been nearly as clandestine as she’d hoped, but she met her gaze, uncowed.

“I'm not blaming you for anything. Honestly, if you hadn’t tried attacking me, I'd think you’re a robot. And trust me, I get your mindset. It’s not healthy, not even close, but what can I say? I'm sure you can already tell, but I'm not exactly the paragon of mental health,” she commented.

Great. I avoided getting pity-therapy for six months and now I'm getting lectured by a fucking Custodian in an alleyway. This is what my life has come to. Regardless, she’d been more effective in diagnosing Eris' psyche than any ‘professional’ she’d been forced to talk in. Although, that might not be a matter of qualifications, but more a result of her living through the same strife. In this field, the Custodian's experience shone unrivaled. She’d been locked inside a whirlpool of scalding emotions and trauma, but she’d managed to carve out her own path.  Eris couldn’t say the other girl had gotten to the other side unscathed—or mentally intact—but she’d survived. And right now, Eris was in the eye of the vortex and if taking advice from this Custodian was going to help her escape, she’d swallow up her pride and listen. 

The Custodian cocked an eyebrow at her unexpected compliance, but didn’t dwell on it too long. “See, people like you are a dime a dozen. This is a fucked up world we live in. Can’t even go a month without having an Animus Incursion, and humanity’s greatest weapons are teenage girls. Anybody would crack under that kind of pressure. You get used to this sort of stuff,” she stated nonchalantly.

Eris pursed her lips. Was that true? Was there anyone else she knew who also showed signs of lingering trauma from an Animus Incursion? she vaguely remembered a student in her elementary school who ran out during the middle of a class one day, and never came back. Later, gossip circulated the rumor mill and the general consensus was that her elder brother had been killed in an Animus Incursion in New York City. She didn’t recall much of the situation, only that it had caused a big ruckus among the school population, but she distinctly remember thinking that it didn’t have anything to do with her.

Eris could chalk it up to the incapability of a kid to care about anything outside their immediate bubble, but that didn’t erase the fact she’d brushed off that girl’s suffering as inconsequential. A stray yarn of thought scratched at the back of her consciousness, and when she tugged on the string, Zoe came to mind. Could Eris really blame her for deeming her troubles irrelevant when she had a track record of doing the same?

No, that’s not the same. She and I were best friends. You don’t just abandon them. You try your best to understand their pain and help them get through it, not just leaving when the going gets tough. It was hard to stomach that there was credence to the idea that Zoe had been justified in ditching Eris for other, better friends. After all, although she liked to throw the term ‘abandon’ and ‘betray’ around, Zoe hadn’t exactly cut off all communications and began conspiring against her. If anything, it was more like they'd just drifted apart over time. But inaction is still a form of betrayal! And what about all her talk about remaining friends until the end of the universe? 

“But do you want to know what makes you different from all the other poor chumps who are trying to trudge along their life, lying to themself to feel better?” Eris started shaking her head but the other girl bulldozed over her gesture, going straight for the kill. “You want to be a hero.”

The word ‘hero’ sounded like an abomination coming from her mouth, a twisted slur reserved for the most heinous of criminals, a derogatory label that stamped someone as the height of foolishness. It was an affront to everything Eris'd grown up believing in. What was so wrong with having an ideal to live up to? 

Eris'd must not have been able to hide the question on her face because the Custodian bared her teeth, looking strikingly like a vulture at the moment. “The problem is that it’s an impossible ideal. There’s no such thing as heroes in this world.”

Her knee-jerk reaction was to cite the Custodians as the modern archetype of heroes but she managed to stall her tongue in time. Regardless, the other girl's lips curved bitterly. 

“You were going to say Custodians, huh? Ha! That’s probably the funniest thing you said all day—wait.” She tilted her head, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “You said a lot of funny things. But it’s definitely up there! See, Custodians are overrated; trust me, I should know. Take a look. Do I look like I have my shit together?”

“Yeah, definitely not,” Eris muttered dejectedly. And wasn’t that a depressing thought? 

She barked. “Of course not! Hell, you send children to war and expect them to come back all peachy? Get your head out of your ass! We’re all just a fucked up happy family, and the ones that act the happiest on TV are the ones that have the most screws loose in their head because they can’t accept that they’re fucked up. They play the facade of a perfect heroine so well that they’ve lost touch with reality. Ain’t that messed up as hell?”

Eris bit her lower lip until iron flooded her mouth. She didn’t want to risk souring her tentative relationship with the Custodian more than she already had, but if she didn’t stick up for what she believed in, who would? “I think you’re wrong.”

“Eh?” The Custodian glanced at her sideways as if she couldn’t comprehend the words coming out of her. To be frank, neither could she. The last shred of Eris' self-preservation was ordering her to shut up and not escalate the situation, but she adamantly refused. Heartened that she hadn’t been killed yet, she forged on. 

“Maybe the heroes in movies and books don’t exist in real life. The superheroes with capes flowing behind them as they fly through the cityscape, shining bastions of hope and justice that can do no wrong. You’re right; that’s an unrealistic dream. But I believe there are so, so many people who do things purely out of the goodness in their heart. To me, they’re heroes in their own right. And you’re also right that the world is fucked up, but part of the problem might be cynical people like you who refuse to see the good in humanity. If more people tried to reach for the skies, then we would be able to unite and destroy the Animus!”

Eris panted, feeling like she’d sprinted through a marathon. She felt lightheaded but at the same time, she was delirious with elation. It felt so good saying that to someone else for the first time (not just Prometheus), and to a Custodian, no less! Exhaustion pulled at the edges of her consciousness, reminding her that she’d roamed the alleyway for far longer than anticipated. However, she refused to succumb to sleep. Not yet. 

The Custodian released a long-suffering sigh. “So what? You’re not one of these ‘heroes.’”

There was no venom in those words but they still stung her worse than anything else she’d uttered. Eris' entire frame shuddered as she tanked the pitiless words, doing her best to let it wash over her harmlessly. She took a couple of seconds to stabilize her breathing. The next words she was going to say would be difficult to admit, but it was crucial.

“You’re right again. I'm not. I don’t do the things I do because of some inherent selfless quality that I possess. I wish I did, I really, truly wish I did. But to me, that doesn’t change anything. While my motives may be selfish, I'm still moving forward to help everyone I can. I'll continue doing the best I can until one day, I'll be worthy of being called a hero. I don’t know when that day will come—it might be tomorrow, it might be on my deathbed—but I won’t stop trying to be the best person I can be.”

It was done. All the bottled, pent-up emotions that she hadn’t been able to put into words all this time were now out in the open. Eris no longer felt like she was choking on the enormous weight of her feelings. A burden had been lifted off her shoulder, and she thought this is what it must have felt like for Atlas when he was able to relinquish the weight of the world. She turned earnest eyes to the Custodian, exultantly anticipating her response. 

She looked absolutely devastated, like someone had gathered up her most cherished stuffed animals, threw them into the fireplace, and forced her to watch as the charred-brown cotton curdled and disintegrated away. The jubilant tower of elation wobbled perilously, and Eris' stomach dropped. What had she missed?

“That’s a nice dream, but it’s not going to happen. You’re going to be better off sticking with something that you’re more likely to not regret,” the Custodian suggested, her callous body language at odds with the unspoken apologies shining through her periwinkle eyes. 

Eris' teeth clacked together as the beast in her chest sputtered to life, chasing the exuberance out of her body. The beast dug its claws into the base of her brain stem, and whispered into her thoughts, insisting she leap forward and scratch that insufferable pity out of her eyes. A fresh swell of rage rose in her, and fury roared through her mind until her thoughts went blank. 

“It’s the truth! I've seen other people, better people, go down the same path you are now. And trust me when I say that it never ends well. You’re not just going to hurt yourself; I promise you, if you continue down this route, you will hurt everyone around you. If you want to be a true hero, the most heroic thing you’ll ever do is walk away. Deviate. It’s turned good people into bad, and trust me, the last thing the world needs is more bad people.”

The pacifying timbre of her voice kindled the blazing flame inside Eris, inciting the ravenous fire to devour the paltry words the other girl offered as advice. The beast reared its head, frothing as it screeched its vexation at the condescending tone of the Custodian. Through sheer force of will, Eris swallowed down her frustration. Inwardly, she was seething, but she molded her face to not express any of the turmoil inside. 

“No.” 

It was a single word, but the weight it carried could not be understated. She was in open-defiance against a Custodian, the Defender of Humanity. Shock flitted across the girl's face before she composed herself, her lips pressing into a line so thin that her luscious red lips went white. Her eyes turned frigid as a glacier, and any trace of warmth left in the lines of her face vanished.

“Fine,” she spat out. “I don’t know why I bothered trying to convince you otherwise; you’re a naive little girl. When your dream crashes against the rocky seabeds, you’ll learn that I was telling the truth. The world has a way of stamping out the hope in people like you, and replacing it with hatred. And there are few things more terrifying than a good person scorned who turned cruel.”

She wasn’t just furious; she was afraid as well. She hid it well, but the beads of sweat glistening on her forehead and the way her chest moved up and down gave her away. Her eyes were wide and just a little bit frantic, the dark shade of her pupil growing to engulf her blue iris behind a black curtain until it looked like her eyes were an inky pool of shadows. Eris' heart skipped a beat and her throat went dry.

The Custodian didn’t seem to notice. She was staring absentmindedly at something over her shoulder that Eris couldn’t see; she was completely lost in her own world, fighting demons of her past. Eris' eyebrows bunched together and she cautiously moved her hand in front of her face. The girl's pitch-black eyes didn’t follow her movements, instead beaming through her flesh and muscle to peer out the other side. She licked her lips nervously, trying to moisten her parched mouth. Eris hadn’t anticipated that the Custodian would completely lose her mind!

[Warning. I sense five Custodian heat signatures approaching rapidly. We have approximately five minutes before they reach us]

What!? Eris zeroed in on the Custodian’s waist where the sound had originated from. Under further scrutiny, the poorly cobbled-together disguise fell apart. Now that the Custodian was standing still, she was able to discern the distinct outline of a plump creature the size of a beach ball. The more inconspicuous details were successfully obscured, but she could make out hindquarters and something that looked suspiciously like horns straining against the cloak.

The Familiar. Eris thought, a jolt of excitement blazing through her. Custodians were beings of incredible power, but they were still humans. Familiars were creatures entirely composed of magic, who had no ties to Earth’s ecosystem and didn’t obey the laws of physics. According to the GDM, their true form is something we couldn’t comprehend so they usually assumed the appearance of animals on Earth. Of course, more often than not, they added a magical twist to the standard animal.

Case in point, the deer-like antlers jutting out from what she suspected was a hare or something of similar build. Eris found herself leaning forward, eyes locked onto the shifting bulge and her hand outstretched. As she neared, the Familiar stilled, but in contrast, her heart thundered in her veins. The air turned staticky, and it felt like the space between her hand and the clad Familiar was alive with energy, making her head swoon. It was an exhilarating sensation, akin to guzzling a bucket-load of Gatorade and inhaling a dozen donuts before the inevitable sugar crash. The closer she got, the more intense the reaction; her breath caught in her throat and her fingers twitched. 

Eris was about a foot away from making contact when she spotted a brown blur in the corner of her eyes. Her survival instincts overrode her geekiness and her hand retracted from the Custodian's waist as quickly as humanly possible before backpedaling.

The girl's hand smacked into her Familiar which let out an affronted squawk. Eris winced in sympathy as her fist sunk into the Familiar, leaving a visible indent in the shape of her knuckles when she removed her hand. In front of her awe-stricken eyes though, the Familiar instantly filled the crater in its body by bouncing back, the malleable substance it was made out of conforming to smooth over pristinely. 

“I told you to only talk to me! I don’t need just anybody wandering in and eavesdropping!” the Custodian hollered. Eris figured she was that ‘anybody’ she was referring to. It was still hard to stomach that she somehow possessed the potential to become a Custodian. She hesitated on breaching the topic with the Custodian; it would make the possibility far too real, changing it from a whimsical dream to something tangible. And she was consumed with fear that she’d been picking up on the wrong hint, making assumptions and finding clues where there were none.

Yeah, like you could be a Custodian. Stick to what you know, huh? Eris took the words to heart, mentally filing away the mention that Custodians could open a private channel with their Familiars and taking note of the subservient nature of their relationship.

[Sorry]

The short, nonchalant reply didn’t fool anyone of the Familiar’s true feelings, but it was ignored. The Custodian seemed grudgingly satisfied by the Familiar’s admission of guilt, and it was just starting to hit Eris that more Custodians were coming here.

“Oh god, I feel sick,” she moaned, bending forward. Her stomach gurgled and sloshed, playing with the idea of upending its contents on the alleyway floor at the thought of meeting more Custodians. Bile rose up in her throat and Eris pushed it down, gagging at the rancid taste that stabbed into her sinuses. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck. Hey, you said you wanted to help me, right!?” The Custodian demanded to know. Eris didn’t trust herself to speak right now, but she bobbed her head up and down sluggishly, instantly regretting it as even that small movement triggered a new wave of nausea. Relief flashed across the Custodian’s face even while sorrow ate away at her eyes, making her look a thousand years old. Eris' pulse quickened, and despite her absolute certainty that this was what she wanted to do, she had a sickening feeling that she’d just made a grievous error in judgment. 

The Custodian jogged over to the missile launcher, hooked her feet under it, and in a move so quick she almost missed it, she launched it up and plucked it out of the air. For a second, Eris thought she would change her mind, but then she hurled the missile launcher towards her. “Here, catch.”

Though Eris'd been expecting it, it still caught her off guard somehow. It hit her in the chest and knocked the wind out of her. Wheezing, she seized the weapon before it could fall with her right hand and held it close to her chest. She massaged the soreness away, already resigned to seeing a bruise in the mirror tomorrow.

If there was a tomorrow.

Excruciatingly aware that she was handling a weapon that could obliterate a building like it was matchsticks, Eris examined it with the gentle touch it deserved rather than eagerly stripping it to pieces like she wanted to. It was a very simplistic design, extremely minimalistic with its lack of knobs and magazine parts. She had to remind herself to give it some leeway; it was magic after all. And wasn’t that a thought? Her hands itched to fiddle, and she cursed the eternity it would take for her right hand to heal.

“W…what do you want me to do with it?” she forced out. Eris felt abysmal simply pondering the possibility of relinquishing the weapon, and immediately wanted to shovel the words back into her mouth. The weapon crooned under her touch, as if touched by her gesture, and her eyes snapped to it. Weapons didn’t croon, or anything else that indicated sentience. Her hold trembled but she couldn’t bear dropping the sanctimonious weapon. 

The other girl shifted her weight from one foot to the other, her head scrunching into her shoulders. Her right hand clasped the left in a white-knuckled grip. For the first time since Eris met her, she didn’t meet her gaze head-on. There was no dare, no spunk, no challenge in her face when she did eventually raise her head. Instead, she studied her like she was committing her face to memory, the same way you would do for someone you were unequivocally certain you weren’t going to see again. While that could mean any number of things—what were the odds of running into her again?—Eris' breath hitched. She fidgeted, her urge to baby the weapon impeded by the alarms in her head.

“I'm sorry,” she said at last. Her voice carried an undertone of despondency and Eris' heart palpitated. That wasn’t a good sign. “I can’t be caught with that. I'll draw the others away; they won’t find you. Just hide the weapon somewhere and leave. Forget about it, and forget about me. You can go back to your normal life.”

She was offering Eris a way out. But what if she didn’t want to abandon this new and exciting way of living that she’d stumbled onto? What if she wanted to continue to confront the fragility of her life, the overstimulation that made her head swoon and her stomach swirl and her limbs go weak, challenging the world to strike her down and crowing in triumph every time it failed to do so. She was tempted to reject her offer; the word ‘No’ was on the tip of her tongue.

Then Eris thought about the somber moments too: the discovery of the corpse and the fatal fight with her assailant chief among them. It put a dampener on the rush of positivity, like a stormcloud descending from the heavens to drench the earth in gloom. Suddenly, she remembered the sight of the man’s face melting off. The queasy sensation returned to plague Eris with a vengeance, and she narrowly stopped herself from upending her lunch. 

The Custodian groaned, her eyes darting nervously to the rootsteps. Eris imagined what it was like to experience the world from her lens; to be able to sense her comrades approaching through their magical auras long before they entered her line of sight. Despite her efforts to quench it, anticipation and hope at the fact that she might be able to do the same buoyed her upward. Her dreams must have shown on her face because the Custodian snapped. 

“Damn it, look!” she exclaimed. “You’re not special, okay? I know he said you’re a Potential but he doesn’t know what’s saying half the time anyway—[I take offense to that]—and he gets confused easily. Most likely scenarios? You’ve been in close contact with someone who’s a real Potential. Their magic rubbed off of you and you can now partially see through the glamor and partially hear Familiars. Big whoop. If you had the Potential to become a Custodian, you would be radiating magic like a leaking battery but you’re not. You’re middling. You have some potential, but nowhere near enough to become a Custodian. You’d be better off finding the true Potential and making her awaken, since that’s the closest you’ll ever come to feeling what it’s like to be a Custodian.”

Eris flushed from the roots of her hair to the tip of her toes. The Custodian had found all of her yearning and aspirations, and yanked it out from underneath her. Her lips wobbled and to her horror, she felt burning behind her eyes. The Custodian became little more than a brown blob. Sniffles occupied the air and her cheeks burned with shame, which only increased the volume of her whimpers.

Eris heard the Custodian curse but it was muddled, barely audible through a dim white noise that muted everything else, like she was submerged a dozen meters underwater. “It’s the harsh truth, but not everybody is suited to become a Custodian. I suggest that you break off your relationship with the Potential before it sours; you’ll never be able to look at her without seeing what could have been. It’s better to end it painlessly than let it fester into resentment.”

There was only one person it could be; Eris knew it intimately in her gut, the name engraved in her bones and whispered on her skin. Her left hand reached for a phantom, monotonously going through the motions of an elaborate handshake that only Zoe and she knew. She could feel the comforting pressure on her hand, the warmth signifying her steady presence and anchoring her to the world. The homely heat sharpened to a smoldering fire, searing through her veins and arteries, and matching the passion in her heart. She tried to release the hand but the memory held on, clinging to her as if bent on burning her to a crisp. She was overheating; she felt like she was inside a furnace, slowly being cooked alive by the realization that her best friend had betrayed her once again. 

No. I can't accept this. Any thought of forgiving Zoe was long gone, devastated by a barrage of grudges that Eris hadn’t known existed. Every mundane, trivial qualms she had about Zoe reared their ugly head, grossly exaggerated and enhanced to show her worst traits that only she knew about. A small part of Eris refused to let go of her dreams, praying that the Custodian was wrong.

As if sensing her dilemma, the Custodian’s next words put a swift and uncompromising end to her burgeoning ambitions.

“Look at me.” Her voice brooked no argument. Blinking the tears away, Eris inspected her dynamic face. “Tell me what color my eyes are.”

“W-what?” she asked, her tongue feeling like sandpaper. The other girl raised a perfectly trimmed eyebrow. Eris hastily studied her face, willing her eyes to drill through her illusion. The Custodian's face fluttered from mask to mask, switching faster and faster until her features blurred. It was like staring into a whirlpool and being tasked with locating a speck of diamond in the rushing current. Fresh tears pricked the edge of Eris' eyes and it felt like she was falling endlessly without anything to grab onto. She pushed onward even as her vision clouded and she could no longer see the Custodian's hair, much less her eyes. She had to; the other girl had to be wrong, she could become a Custodian!

Eris strained her eyes to their breaking point, feeling the veins around her temples pop under the exertion, but still, she didn’t stop. Even when a migraine barreled into her skull like a sledgehammer and made it impossible to think coherently, she ordered her deteriorating body to focus on the slim chance of victory. She gnashed her teeth together; she was so close, yet so far. Every time she thought she’d pinned down a face, it danced slyly out of her grasp like a leaf in the breeze. Molten tears flowed down her face in equal parts physical and emotional torment. Her inability to rend her illusion was an admission that there was nothing truly special about her, that in one night, she’d been stripped down to her parts and shown the ugly truth that she didn’t possess anything of value.

She still continued to gaze at her face, but she didn’t see anything anymore. She was a hollow shell just mindlessly committing herself to an act that she was no longer suited for. She was the most foolish clown in a circus of freaks, the main attraction behind bars to ogle and gawk at. She was already beaten, and she knew it, but she couldn’t bear to be the one to yield. It was petty and ultimately meaningless, but she just wanted this small win to call her own.

In the end, it was the Custodian who called it off. “Enough,” she ordered, her voice dripping with sympathy and pity. Eris kept at it for a couple more seconds out of pure spite before averting her burning eyes.

Disappointment, self-loathing, and disgust duked it out for the dubious honor of being the prominent emotion. The missile launcher picked up on her distress, flaring once, twice, as if trying to show its support, but it just brought about another wave of grief to come crashing down on her. Even this magical artifact was a reminder of the strange, mystical world she could never be a part of, no matter how desperately she wanted otherwise. 

Eris wanted to howl, to rip her hair out and hurl it haplessly at the Custodian, to punch and scratch and bite her until she was so mangled that her illusion magic could no longer give the pretense of a perfect face. On the other end of the spectrum, she wanted to curl into a ball and bawl her eyes out, to pretend like she was back in the familiar safety of her bedroom, to go into a tiny dark space and never venture out again. 

The Custodian’s head snapped sharply to the sky, her eyes narrowed as she peered into a spectrum that no mortal instrument could pick up. 

“I need to go.” she declared. It took Eris a second to realize that she was announcing her leave for her benefit. Why bother? she thought sourly. Just come and go as you please. It’s a little late to ask for permission. Of course, she didn’t say anything. She didn’t give her the satisfaction of any outward reaction. She wanted her to see how completely she’d ravaged her soul. The other girl winced, but that was it. A small muscle spasm for all her suffering. “Remember to hide the rocket launcher. And……good luck.”

She turned, bending her legs into a crouch. At the realization that she was actually leaving, Eris was taken by a panic so intense that it was like getting lanced in the stomach by a spear. It almost brought her to her knees, doubling over and retching Sahara-dry air. The Custodian paused, looking over her shoulder with clear concern and annoyance tearing interchangeably across her face. 

Eris hesitated. Was she going to stoop so low as to beg for help from someone who had proven to have an adverse effect on her? Was she so desperate that she would throw away what little dignity remained, and cling onto the last remnants of her dream even as it faded? There was only one answer resounding from her heart—

YES.

“Are you ab-absolutely certain!?” she cried out, her voice breaking. “Maybe I'm just a l-late bloomer or som-something! That happens, right!?” Eris was almost fanatical in her attempts to get the Custodian to say one word, just a single-vowel word that would bring her back from the brink of nothingness, to confirm that she was worth something.

“No.” she said, and Eris' world came to a halt. Her hope, a newborn sparrow tentatively peeking its head out, was crushed before it could spread its wings. “Strong Potentials unlock their power when they’re in the immediate vicinity of magic, whether that be Custodian or the Animus. Weaker Potentials might need direct contact. There have been some cases of Potentials awakening in moments of extreme stress while they’re under a lot of duress, but those are few and wide in between.” She didn’t need to fill in the blanks; what went unspoken hung in the air like an anvil: Eris had touched her when she pushed her, and there were five more Custodians approaching. If she could have awakened, she would have.

Now that she’d said her piece, there was nothing keeping her here. The Custodian shifted her weight. Rubbed at her skin. “For what it’s worth, you were a good listener.”

Eris heard it for what we both know it truly was: an empty apology meant to soothe the burn of rejection. It was bred from guilt, not from a place of genuine remorse. After all, the girl bore the facial expression of a person  who’d taken her anger out on someone but realized too late that she’d crossed a line in the process of venting. The crestfallen expression of someone who had thought she was fighting with an equal opponent, but learned that she had taken candy from a baby.

One second, she was standing in front of her, shame and guilt written all over her face. For a silver of an instance, Eris thought she saw cerulean eyes glimmering back at her. Then she was gone, traveling through the shadows with the silence of an ninja.

Leaving Eris sitting on the floor of a damp alleyway, surrounded by a dead body and dead dreams.