Kaia the Argent Wing

The family had run back into their house while I fought the squirrel. Now they were back with camping backpacks stuffed full. Oh, that was good thinking. I needed a backpack too.

"Thank you, thank you so much," the mother said when she saw me. "What is that thing? What's happening?"

With an internal shrug, I decided to just be straight with her. "Honestly, it looks like the world has gone nuts and some sort of video game reality has been imposed on us. That squirrel was probably a normal squirrel like half an hour ago. I'm going to start running around pointing people to… oh, the high school! That's got tons of space and it's made of brick!"

The mother's eyes were beginning to bug out, when her boy kid blurted, "It's like all those books! Why didn't we get any class, though? What's it like?"

Books? We? Oh, him and his sister.

"Maybe you're too young?" I suggested gently.

"Yes, they are," the mum said with a stern look at her two children. "It's far too dangerous for the both of you."

"But mum!" The girl whined. "She's only like, a few years older than me! Did you see how cool she was fighting that monster? I want to do that!"

"I'm eighteen," I said, a little defensively. Also, I definitely didn’t feel cool when I let it eat my damned weapon!

With the added stats from my transformation, I was just able to hear the boy mutter, "Legal and hot as fuck…"

Ew! A literal child was making sexual comments about me! It hadn't even been thirty minutes since I was forced into the body of a girl and I was already getting harrassed! I could only imagine what he would think if he found out I wasn't a girl.

"And so adult for your age!" The mother said. Why did that make me feel icky too? "Let's go, kids. I don't know what's going on, but I think this young lady has the right idea. Let's go to the high school and find other people along the way. Good luck… what was your name?"

Panic. Oh no! What do I call myself? I couldn't say my name was Kai! That would make it way easier to figure out who I really was. Damn it… but I liked my name! Um, um, um, think…

"Silver!" I blurted. My hair was silver… and a piece had just been blown in front of my face by the wind…

The girl gave me the kind of sassy look that only a young teenage girl could achieve. "That's a bit on the nose, don't you think?"

"I um… I fell down some stairs when I was young and the stress turned it white so that's what my parents called me…" I said, scrambling to come up with a backstory. My grandpa fell off a ladder when he was twenty and his hair went prematurely grey so it made sense to me.

Apparently, it was less than believable to the bullshit-detector of the girl, if her expression was anything to go by, but she kept her mouth shut.

"I'm going to go break into a house and find another weapon! Good luck!" I said, and quickly turned to leave.

"Wait!" The mum exclaimed, reaching out to grab my hand. "My husband has a shed in our backyard, you're welcome to his tools. Think of it as a thankyou for saving us."

I blinked. "Oh, that's very kind of you…"

"He has a hatchet," the boy told me helpfully, while doing his best not to stare at my thighs. They were… testing the limits of the stitching on my jeans, that's for sure. I might have to cut myself out of them later.

“Okay, uh…” I said, taking a step in the direction of their house. “Gosh, this is weird. I’ll go ransack your shed now, I guess?”

“Good luck,” the mother said, putting a hand on each of her children. “God speed.”

Their house was similar to my own, which was in turn similar to all the other houses around here. Weatherboard outer construction, maybe a brick foundation, big windows, and well kept front and back yards. Houses with kids usually also had some form of mess around the place. Out the back, I found a two-terrace yard, plus a small deck that overlooked it all.

Keeping my eyes peeled for more squirrels, I jumped down the three foot drop to the lower terrace and made for the cheap corrugated iron shed. The door had a simple padlock on it, but these things were notoriously flimsy, so I twisted it until it was locked in place, then used one of the teeth as a lever against it. With my newfound strength, it broke quickly, and I allowed it to fall into the dirt.

Inside, I found a pretty normal selection of backyard tools and appliances. There was the usual disorganised toolbox full of cheap, tarnished tools, a rack with a few nicer ones, including the axe the boy mentioned, and a plastic-handled garden hoe.

Up above, I spotted a wide shelf where the conspicuous strap of a hiking backpack was hanging over the edge. Jumping up, I pulled it down and took a look inside. There was an old musty bottle of water in the main pocket, a small utility knife in a side pocket, and a foam mat for sleeping on the ground strapped to the underside.

Taking careful inventory of the shed, the space available in the backpack, and my increased strength, I picked what I wanted to take with me. I had a much better hammer at home, but there was a screwdriver on the wall that looked hella sturdy. The axe went into a loop on the side of the hiking pack, and the few tools I decided to take went into the main pocket. Into the side pockets, I filled a random jar with assorted nails, screws, metal ties, and bolts.

My plan was to take everything back to my place and make a proper weapon. As good as the axe would be initially at killing things, it had a fibreglass handle that wasn't designed for combat and would quickly break. I was better off keeping it to chop wood and making something expendable or very sturdy as a weapon.

The best find from the shed was definitely the hiking pack. It had so much room and so many pockets.

Time to head home. As I hopped the fence, I considered what I might make with the squirrel teeth. The two large teeth were about a foot long. Well, the tooth part was maybe two thirds of a foot, while the metal spike that made up the root was the rest. Actually, if I kept running into things with armour, a spike might not be such a bad idea.

When I got back home, I hunted around in my basement for some hardwood to use as a handle. I know we used to have tons, but I also remember using a lot of it. Dad got really upset with me when he finally got time for some woodworking and found the wood pile ransacked.

Good, aged hardwood was actually really flipping expensive. Especially furniture quality stuff.

Eventually, I found a nice square piece of hickory about four feet long and rushed over to the bench with my prize. Shit, what I would give for a lathe right now.

Time was still something I didn't want to waste though, so I got to work with a chisel. Shaping the wood was a rushed, quick job that left me with a vaguely circular piece of wood for a handle. At the top, I sawed out a slot for one of the teeth and hammered it in snug and tight. Next, I grabbed some of the steel ties and wrapped them as best I could around the tooth to fix it in place. I used some to add extra strength to the haft itself too. To make it actually comfortable to hold, I wrapped the handle in duct tape. Oh boy, what a hack job testament to tinkerers and hobbyists everywhere.

Hmm, with the way the tooth was curved, it was going to turn in my hand sometimes. Better throw some files and sandpaper into my backpack, along with my favourite hammer.

I threw a couple more tools I thought I might need into my pack, then raced back up into the house. There, I grabbed my sleeping bag from the storage cupboard and strapped it to the top of the pack. Oh, I needed to replace the yuck water bottle.

Unfortunately, given the state of the roads, I doubted the water mains would be functional and clean. The hot water cylinder though…

I tested the hot water in the bathroom and I whooped, pumping a fist when it worked. "Thank you dad! Thank you for being a stingy old bastard!"

Ever since dad got his nice fancy mining corporation job here in the states and we moved over, mum had been pestering him to replace the gravity-fed hot water cylinder with one of those fancy ones that heated water directly from the mains. Well today, his frugality was paying off.

I filled two empty 2 litre coke bottles with warm water, which I hoped would cool down by the time I wanted to drink it, then stuffed them into my pack along with everything else and headed for the door… but stopped before I left. Marc.

My heart ached for my big brother. He’d better live through all of this, or I was going to be so upset with him. Still, if he came looking, somehow making it over the Appalachians, then he’d need to know where I was. Oh, and my parents, they’d need to know too, I guess.

Taking the utility knife out of its accessible side pocket on the pack, I carved into the wall; Gone to help people. Probably going to post up in Edgewood high school if it's clear. Kai.

There. Now anyone who came looking would know where to turn to find me. Unless, like, the high school turned out to be a hive of monsters. Oh shit, what if dungeons were a thing now? The high school would make a really good dungeon. Crap! Hopefully someone with the ability to kill shit would scout it before that mother and whoever else she dragged with her made it there.