Monster

The cafe was sleek and modern, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the shopping center's central plaza. They ordered, a coffee with two sugars for Emma, a complicated concoction with whipped cream and caramel for Melly, and found a table near the windows.

"So," Melly began once they were settled, "remember that guy I told you about? The one from Defense?"

"Vaguely," Emma replied, though she remembered perfectly well. Melly had been excited about him for weeks. Emma lived for Melly's dating stories, savoring each dramatic detail over coffee or late-night phone calls. The way Melly's eyes lit up describing a promising first date or how she would furrow her brow while talking about another disappointment, these moments gave Emma a peculiar joy. It was safer this way, experiencing the thrill of romance through Melly's adventures. Emma felt that as long as she had Melly's stories, she didn't need to venture into a relationship herself.

One thing Emma and her sister had in common, was the lack of their love lives. However the reasons were completely different. Lily was driven by a strong sense of duty, achievement and purpose, she felt that dating was a waste of her time, choosing instead to work an extra shift, or take a night course, and then later, to enlist. Emma however, couldn't deny that she loved the idea of love, she must have if she loved Melly's stories so much. But if she swapped herself for Melly in any of her stories, instead of excited flutters, Emma would get a sense of overwhelming dread. It was safer to experience these feelings through Melly's stories. Emma always felt in a sense that her life had enough doom, that to pursue something so magical like love would be tempting fate. To open yourself to love, meant to open yourself up to loss.

Emma had some experience with dating, Melly had successfully convinced her to go on dates here or there over the years. But nothing ever stuck. 

There had been a close call, a connection with a man named Julian. Emma felt for the first time that warm feeling of growing affection for a person, and when he smiled at her and she felt butterflies in her stomach she found that it was immediately followed by nausea. The way he'd looked at her with unmistakable hunger, and how her body had responded despite herself. The intimacy had been too raw, too demanding, leaving her feeling strangely exposed in ways that extended beyond the physical. So she'd ended it with a carefully crafted explanation about timing and compatibility, ignoring his confused expression. Now she simply smiled knowingly when Melly described her latest bedroom adventure, offering supportive commentary while privately relieved to be spared the vulnerability herself. 

Emma put those thoughts out of her mind and returned her attention to Melly.

"Total disaster." Melly started. "Turns out he's a Mage - Rank Two, metal manipulator. And oh my god, the ego on him!" Melly rolled her eyes dramatically. "He spent the entire evening talking about his 'crucial role in colony security' and how he could 'bend bloodsteel with his mind.' Like I'm supposed to be impressed?"

Emma suppressed a smile.

Bloodsteel, a metal harvested from the bodies of slain monsters, was both extraordinarily powerful and exceedingly rare, it only came into our world from monsters that jumped through rifts. Mages with metal manipulation abilities could weaponize bloodsteel, forging it into bullets and daggers for devastating attacks against monsters. Attacks that would deal damage unlike regularly crafted bullets that only worked on low tier monsters. Some whispered of elite metal manipulators who could even maintain such a command over the metal that they could forge platforms and make themselves levitate.

"Anyway, I've officially instituted a no-mage dating policy. They're all so arrogant," Melly continued.

"All of them? Really?" Emma laughed. She was skeptical that her friend would keep this rule. Melly loved to have fun, and dating mages was just more fun then dating an ordinary guy. Mages were well taken care of by the Ministry of Defense, it was important to keep them happy else they might defect to another colony for a more luxurious life if the pay was better. So even the lowest rank mages typically brought home a good salary. This sometimes bred resentment amongst the regular populace but it typically dissipated right after another monster attack. Even financially struggling citizens like herself understood that without mages the colony would fall, and if nice cars, fancy clothes, and floor to ceiling windowed apartments made them incentivized to stay and protect us, then so be it.

Emma didn't know much about other colonies, neither did most of the residents of the Floating City Colon. Televisions only played approved media by the Floating City government, and it was often speculated by conspiracy theorists that the colony purposely approved media that didn't show other colonies to counter any thoughts of leaving. Emma didn't find the idea ridiculous, but truthfully she didn't much care.

Emma did find stories from her restaurant patrons interesting, merchants from far off corners of the planet coming to bring goods and services to Floating City would sometimes be dressed so fascinatingly interesting, with amazing accents and gadgets she'd never seen before. Briefly Emma would spark the tiniest bit of curiosity of what lay beyond Floating City, beyond PortTown, beyond the wall. But all that would fade away with the distraction of the next phone bill, or car repair, and now, her sister's disappearance. 

There was no room left in Emma's spirit for even the tiniest bit of wonder, or hope of anything else, different. All she wanted was the same. The same life back with her sister and Melly.

Emma realized as her thought turned to Melly, that she was about to continue.

"The last three mage's I've dated were complete jerks. That's enough of a sample size for me." Melly sipped her drink, leaving a smudge of whipped cream on her upper lip. "Though I might make exceptions for special cases."

Melly nodded toward the large screen mounted on the cafe wall, where a news program was showing footage of a Defense team posing heroically in front of a recently killed monster. The caption identified them as Team Steel, Floating City's second most elite mage squad.

At the center of the group stood a strikingly handsome man with silver hair, obviously dyed, as he couldn't have been older than thirty. He wore a Defense suit uniform heavily embellished with silver embroidery, and multiple silver rings adorned his fingers. The camera lingered on him as he demonstrated his powers, levitating a bloodsteel blade and sending it spinning in precise patterns.

"Ah, Alexander," Melly sighed. "For him, I might reconsider my policy."

Emma watched the display on screen. She was well aware of who she was referencing. Alexander Sharpe Rank Three mage, the leader of Team Steel, and the second most powerful metal manipulator on the colony. Second only to Max Thorsen, Rank SC (Special Class), a powerful mage who was both a mind and metal manipulator. But his strengths truly lied in his metal manipulation. Mind manipulation itself was extraordinarily rare. There were only six mind manipulators on the whole colony, and while people often gossiped and rumored about mind manipulators having the ability to read minds and even to control them, evidence proved that all the mind manipulators seemed to be capable of was commanding weak minded monsters into attacking each other and themselves.

But the two of them were still not as powerful as Vaughn, called The Flame Hunter by the obsessed media. The most powerful mage on the colony, a fire manipulator. Incredibly mysterious, he rarely appeared in news segments the way that Mage Alexander of Team Steel did.

Melly had said something that Emma didn't catch and in response she nodded absently, watching the footage. She'd seen these teams before, of course, everyone had. They were the colony's heroes, the ones who kept the monsters at bay, who made everyday life possible in a world that had been shattered fifty years ago after the first dimension rift. 

"I wish I were a mage," Melly repeated. "All that glitz and glamor. Though with my luck, I'd be a Rank One, stuck on wall patrol duty." Melly laughed.

Emma couldn't help but find the statement ironic. In her mind, Melly had always been the lucky one, parents who survived, a normal life, confidence, effortless beauty. If either of them was to be blessed with powerful mage abilities, surely it would be Melly.

"Or," Melly continued with a mischievous grin, "I could be a conduit. Just think, spending all day touching handsome mages to stabilize their energy. Not a bad job, right?"

Emma's smile faltered, and she looked down at her coffee. The mention of conduits brought Lily sharply to mind.

Melly noticed the change immediately. "Oh god, Em, I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking. Lily, and everything..."

"It's fine," Emma said quickly, offering Melly a soft smile, though it wasn't entirely fine, truly. The mention of conduits triggered something else too, that awareness she'd been trying so hard to suppress, the sensations she couldn't explain and didn't want to acknowledge.

"I'm an idiot," Melly said, reaching across the table to squeeze Emma's hand. "Let's change the subject," She said, Melly leaned in closer and a mischievous smile spread across her face.

"Fuck, Marry, Kill: Alexander, Max, Vaughn?" Melly asked, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms proud of her pivot strategy.

Emma laughed, grateful for the shift, wanting their conversation to return to the type of conversation two twenty-three-year-olds would be having.

 "Oh well, I would probably go with-"

Tap. Tap. Tap.

She stopped mid-sentence, she heard that tapping again, and the prickling sensation at the base of her skull suddenly returning with alarming intensity.

Emma raised her hands to cover her ears. Futilely trying to block out the tapping that was coming from somewhere inside. Melly leaned forward immediately.

"Em, are you okay?" She asked.

Emma gritted her teeth and shook her head. "It's just that-"

As if on cue, a sharp alert blared from the cafe's speakers. Emma and Melly both looked down as they saw their phones light up with an alert. Around them the beeping and blares of several phones in the cafe alerting at once made the situation clear.

There was a monster in the area.