Em felt herself change as soon as the Ability took effect.

Rings of light formed on the tip of all her limbs. Made of pure energy; Flow made physical, shimmering in the darkness. As the monsters surged closer, growling and screaming, Em stood in front of Sen. With urging from her Ability, she closed her eyes, her entire mind focused on a single visualization from the past.

Her Ability guided her mind to a dress, white as snow. It had accents as dark as shadows, lined with a brilliant, crimson red.

The rings of light traced the outline of her limbs. They created clothes out of pure Flow, covering her hands in delicate, silver gloves. They climbed farther, farther up. Up until the gloves ended over her bicep, linking into the shoulders of frilly, white dress. That same dress flowed down in all its reds and whites and blacks, accented by roses and shiny, golden buttons.

Her Ability strengthened the repressed image in her mind, long-forgotten.

The Flow surging out of her created a skirt as frilled as her dress, then obnoxious, gothic combat boots and stockings, completing the set. Em felt herself sweating as the image solidified further.

Pale skin. Silver hair. Red eyes.

The Ability flooding her body changed her. All the blemishes on her skin vanished. Her platinum blonde hair came loose from her hair tie, flowing down her back as it shimmered into a startling, white shade. And her eyes—Em opened them to peer down the tunnel, as her eyes burned crimson in the dark.

The trinket on her chest hummed, pulsating with power. It was made of dark metal, in the shape of a crescent moon. Em touched it and closed her eyes, gritting her teeth as agony coursed through every fiber of her being.

“T-The moon…” she clenched her teeth and forced the rest out. “The moon is bloody tonight.”

Her trinket burst into a shower of red sparks.

They shot away from her before curling back. Gathering. They coalesced into her hand, forming a handle. Then a bladed body, made of metal as dark as night. It curled into a grinning crescent that glinted madly in the shadows filling the tunnel.

Em raised her weapon: a massive, reaper’s scythe.

Her Ability pinged in her mind.

Ability: Alter Persona [Body] – Tier 0

Active. Extreme Flow cost. The user’s mind recalls a distant memory—an ideal self of the past, capable of doing what the user cannot. This Ability calls upon the powers of the user’s original character, Yami Tsukihime (やみ 月姫 ; Dark Moon Princess), to empower the user with proficiencies and enhanced effects based on the Skill Orbs equipped. Additional features pertaining to the character are unlocked with each tier.

Em opened her eyes as she turned to the horde of Nightmare spawn in the distance. Her entire body felt hot with shame. The moment she saw the Ability, she knew it was going to be like this. It had happened. The agonizing past that had led her down into Multimedia Arts had come back to haunt her. The dark magical girl she’d envisioned herself to be in high school had come to life in all its terrible, edgy glory. It gave her power. Enough to keep both her and Sen alive for the foreseeable future, all thanks to her deranged fantasies as a younger teen. And yet…

She glanced down at herself, and a shudder ran up her spine.

Em wanted to strangle her younger self so bloody much.

But the time for crushing regret and overwhelming self-hatred was for later. Em took her mind away from her ridiculous getup and focused, releasing a breath in an attempt to calm herself. As she did, Sen stepped up next to her, cracking his knuckles. He was naked again, after walking through the fire. Aside from a few still-embered scraps of clothing that barely preserved his modesty, Em decided to just spare her eyes and look at his face.

He was ready to pull out all the stops to survive. Even as he stood next to her, Em saw his thoughts whirring behind his eyes, scanning the area for anything they could use to win.

Em gripped the handle of her new—she winced—scythe. “Aren’t we going to run?”

“How many of them do you count?”

She narrowed her eyes and counted, her head peeked out from the corner of the alcove. “Around a dozen. Probably more,” she said. Sen nodded.

“All Tier 0?”

“A single Tier 1. But no Bosses or Elites. I don’t think they see us yet; they’re just scouring the area around the bus.”

Sen nodded again. And with another gesture, Bone Armor erupted across his skin, covering his limbs and the upper section of his torso. “Then let’s just try and mop them up,” he muttered. “And then go on a little carefully after. We might run into more than we can handle if we just sprint up the tunnel willy-nilly.”

Em let out a grunt of agreement as she twirled her weapon, the gesture itself feeling disgustingly instinctual. “Right,” she said. “Do you want the gun?”

“Sure.”

He took it, checked how many bullets it had left, before walking out into the tunnel. Em followed him into the fray with one thought in mind:

If nothing else, this would be a good chance to let off some steam.

Sen strode into the group of enemies’ line of sight. They screeched as soon as they saw him; a small collection of surviving flesh barnacles, crawlers, and a single monster made of coiled, fleshy tentacles. He raised his pistol as Mind’s enhanced reflexes guided his hand. Twelve bullets. He fired.

A gunshot boomed. It missed.

The bullet ricocheted off the remains of their brutalized bus. Sen fired another. Two more. The last two connected, and one monster went down. He hesitated on the trigger, then put the gun away.

It was possible they’d need it later. He used a tiny bit of his remaining Flow to change his armored fingers into claws. “Alright,” he said, turning his eyes to Em. “I’ll take the lead and you can—"

She was already running forward.

Em rushed into the fray with speed beyond what Sen thought was possible from her. A crawler leapt at her and she twisted, dancing out of the way. Her scythe flashed. Gore splattered across the ground. Sen’s eyes widened as he recognized the way she moved—it was the same as his Claw Fighting skill. Her Ability was giving her an instinctual proficiency over that unwieldy scythe.

Which was extremely useful in their situation.

And also totally unfair.

Sen sighed and sprinted down the tunnel after her, barreling into a pair of flesh barnacles trying to flank Em from the side. He tore into them with his claws, their blows glancing off his armor. Their blood pooled at his feet. And yet, they didn’t stay there. The blood surged towards Em, before flicking across the room in tiny, condensed spheres.

She smashed the blood orbs into their enemies, throwing them off balance, before swooping in with her giant, whirling blade.

Nightmare spawn plopped to the ground in ribbons of gore and viscera.

By that point, Sen just blinked as she methodically massacred the Tier 0 enemies. It was surprising. Her enemies weren’t that powerful, to be fair, but Sen couldn’t help but be amazed at the sheer potency her Ability had. Seeing the two of them in action now was a far cry to how they were just days ago—running helpless against a horde of vampires, constantly wary of battles they were sure to lose.

All of the struggling was finally paying off. Their chances of survival seemed to be rising by the day. And now, they just had to—

Shup! A blur whipped towards him from the ceiling, and Sen jerked back, dodging a fleshy appendage that would have torn a gash across his neck. The slithering tentacle in front of him was tipped with talons, and it wasn’t alone. More of the vicious limbs drifted down from the ceiling in a small swarm.

Sen looked up at the source and glared.

Tentacled Goremass – Tier 1

Something in the center of its mass hissed at him, and Sen watched the tentacles give way to reveal a bird’s beak at the center of its body, lined with sharp, needle teeth. With another hiss, it moved. Tentacles streaked down from the ceiling. One whipped at his right. Sen ducked. Three stabbed down from above. He wove around them, counting, letting its limbs stretch away, and by the time he dodged the ninth limb—

Its last arm stabbed towards him and Sen sidestepped. His hand reached out to give the tentacle a light tap.

“You are heavier than steel.”

The last of his Flow left him as it surged up the monster’s arm. It stiffened, straining its hold on the ceiling, before Sen watched it crash to the ground with a sickening splat. It laid there in a twitching, bloody heap, unable to even move its limbs.

Sen finished it off by ramming his clawed arm into its eye. It died just as Em finished off the rest of the smaller enemies.

He turned to her in time to see her regalia burst into red sparks, dissipating into nothing. She returned to her normal appearance, her eyes once again blue, and her hair losing the piercing white shade it had before.

Em stood with her hands on her knees, panting.

“Fucking hell,” she said. “Of course it tires me out after use, too.”

“Is it not as strong as it looks? You don’t seem happy.”

“No,” she said, frowning at him. “Of course it’s strong. Yami-sama is—”

Em stopped herself with a shudder, her face twisting into a grimace. She turned away from him and stalked off, back towards the scorched bus.

“…Let’s check if anything survived,” she said.

Sen had to force down a laugh as he followed.

The two of them entered the ruined remains of their old, two-day headquarters. It wasn’t much of a surprise to see that basically everything inside had been burnt away. Sen stood in the middle of it all, looking for clothes to wear as Bone Armor preserved what little modesty he had.

Thankfully, some of the clothes had survived. They weren’t whole by any means, but Sen scavenged a jacket that only had a single arm burnt off, and a pair of soaked jeans that had survived the fire by being pinned under the bag where they kept their water. The bottles had melted in the fire, but at the very least, they had preserved him a pair of scorched jeans to wear.

Sen slipped into his wet pants as Em scoured the bus. They worked in silence for a few minutes, a few small fires still crackling behind them, before Em sighed.

“If I knew all the stuff we gathered was just going to get burnt like this, I would’ve just practiced using my Skills more before we left,” she said.

“I think we did pretty well. We didn’t die, at least.”

“We will, if we don’t find a way out of here.”

“That shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Got any ideas?”

At her question, Sen looked up from where he was. He pursed his lips and glanced out at the remaining fire, still eating away at the gasoline that remained. Sen pointed his finger at the smoke, billowing upwards and flowing up, drifting along the ceiling.

“We can try following the smoke,” he said. “The ceiling’s low enough that we can barely see it with Darkvision, even at Tier 0.”

Em blinked as she followed his finger. Sure enough, the smoke was there, flowing out towards what could be an exit, farther up and away. “Huh,” Em said. “That’s… pretty smart, actually. Wow.”

Sen raised an eyebrow at her. “You make it sound like I’m usually pretty stupid.”

“No, you’re usually just naked for one reason or another. With alarming frequency.”

“You better not be thinking that I do it on purpose.”

“Of course not. I don’t think that at all.”

The glance she gave him told him otherwise, though. Sen huffed as he tied a piece of surviving seatbelt around his waist, tightening it around his new pair of loose pants. So what if he didn’t mind occasionally being naked on accident? It wasn’t that bad. Back in Spain, Sen and his cousins went sin camisa all the time; shirtless. No one in the countryside minded. No one cared.

If anything, he felt people in Dubai were too sensitive about that stuff. It wasn’t weird to like being shirtless at all.

That didn’t make him a nudist. God, no.

Sen just liked letting his muscles breathe every now and then. It wasn’t his fault the monster attacks kept stripping him. It was out of his control. He nodded to himself at that, as he walked out of the ruined bus to join Em outside.

"I'm not a nudist," he said.

"I didn't say anything."

“Good,” Sen nodded again. “Let’s get out of here.”

“About time we did, yeah. Lead the way, muscle man.”

Sen nodded. “Sure. And about your Ability’s resemblance to some of the shows I’ve seen on TV…”

She grimaced so hard Sen felt it. Em turned to him with a glare. “Not a word.”

He nodded. “Right. I...”

Sen felt the words dissipate before he could think to speak them. A joke was in his mind; a way to tease her about her new Ability. But it never came out. Instead, he gave her a weak smile, and Em nodded at him, her eyes tired. They had been coping for the last few days. Trying to oust the terror with humor and forced optimism. But now...

Now they were just tired.

And all they wanted to do was finally leave this nightmare behind.

They walked up the tunnel in silence, following the smoke. The walls were dry and truly dead, now. Left deprived of essence. After it was cut off from the rest of the Nightmare’s nest, Sen had watched it wither to this state. It seemed like such an easy decision for the Child of Kulv'arash to abandon a section of underground this large. He wondered just how massive the Nightmare’s territory was, stretching so far underground like this. Was it as big as Dubai’s Academic City? Or vaster? Did it reach the city proper itself?

Sen wasn’t sure if he wanted to know the answer or not. All he knew was that the sooner they left its territory, the better.

“...Let's hurry up," he said.

Em nodded faintly. "Mm. Jog?"

“Let’s. Try not to fall behind.”

Sen broke out into a jog, occasionally glancing up at the ceiling to follow the smoke. He dearly hoped it led outside. Out into the city, where they could finally…

He paused. Finally what?

Dubai was dead. And as far as Sen knew, the whole world could be just like it. Where would they go? The police couldn’t be relied on if they were all vampiric beasts. And the UAE’s military, if any survived, were never that numerous to begin with. What were the chances that there enough of them left to make a difference? As the idea of finally leaving came near, Sen suddenly felt unsure.

Up ahead, as they followed the smoke towards an uphill climb, that feeling only got stronger. Sen stared at what might have been the way out as they approached.

“Hey,” he said, his voice soft as they jogged up the incline. "Em?"

She looked at him. “...Yeah?”

“What are we going to do once we’re out of—”

Ping! August 22nd. The Sun is releasing excess Odd into Earth.

Realm is being altered. World Mutation has begun.

The two of them froze, the timer forgotten. As soon the notification sprang up, Sen felt the tunnel rumble. Goosebumps prickled at his flesh. Then there was shaking, then a trickle of light, crawling down the tunnel from far, far above. Sen saw the energy in the same moment that it seemed to see them.

A pause.

And then the trickle of light ahead of them instantly turned into a blazing spear, stabbing into the room, rushing down the walls and down. It flooded towards them like a tidal wave of silver light. Hungry, seeking. So desperate to corrupt that it rushed towards them as soon as it caught their scent.

It was the first day, all over again.

The Bad Morning had come to kill the world a second time.

Sen turned to Em, eyes wide, and screamed—

“Run!”