The fire department was quick to arrive. The station was only a few blocks away, and the smoke drifting out of Anya’s shattered window made for an easy-to-find marker.

Anya and Tori stood out on the sidewalk along with several other of the tenants from the building. Both women looked like they’d just crawled through a chimney. Despite some singed hair, Anya had been the only one to actually get injured. Her finger tip was burned and her nail was cracked and blackened, but it wasn’t anything that wouldn’t heal on its own. Tori seemed the most upset about her eyebrows getting partially toasted off.

“So, no explosive devices?” a tall, rugged-faced firefighter asked Anya.

“No, I swear. I was in my kitchen, I lit a candle and then ka-boom,” Anya replied.

“It was near the bed,” Tori clarified. They had gotten their story straightened out once they’d been sure there was no serious danger. Anya’s test flame had expanded rapidly, but done nothing but cosmetic damage.

“Yeah, looks like you just left the gas on. No serious damage outside of some light burns on the walls,” the firefighter said.

“That’s not too bad,” Anya sighed.

“And you’re fine? No injuries?”

“No, thank god. Scared the shit out of me and ruined my hair, but that’s it.”

“I’m fine, except for my eyebrows,” Tori said.

“You’re lucky. If the gas had built up, it could’ve been real bad,” the firefighter said. He nodded at the rest of the firefighters as they exited the building, giving various thumbs-up or nods at him. “All right. Seems like everything is okay now. You might wanna talk to your super about any kind of smoke damage or maybe moving apartments if you think there might be an issue with your gas line.”

“Right, thank you. Sorry for making you come down here,” Anya said.

“Our pleasure. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to call the station. Just ask for James. That’s me.” He smiled at her as he put his helmet on and climbed back into the fire engine.

“If you’re not gonna call James, I might,” Tori said. Anya laughed and shook her head.

“You think there’s other leaks?” an old Korean man asked them. Mr. Kim, Anya’s neighbor, was short, somewhat hunched, and had wispy white hair. “This building’s older than I am. Wouldn’t surprise me.”

“Uh, no, I’m sure it’s fine. The firefighters seemed to think it was safe,” Anya replied.

“Mmmm,” Mr. Kim said and then glanced up and up at Anya. “Were you always this tall? I know my eyesight isn’t what it used to be, but…”

“I had a little growth spurt recently,” Anya said. It had been several weeks since she’d run into Mr. Kim in the hall. He looked like he had other questions, but he only shrugged.

“Well, if you need more food, let me know. I always make too much,” Mr. Kim said and then hobbled inside. Anya let out a little sigh of relief.

“Can we get back inside?” Tori asked. “It’s freezing out here.”

“Seriously?” Anya asked. She had thrown on a bathrobe over her torn PJs, but it barely covered her. Still, even with her thin and partially ruined clothing, she barely felt the cold. It was chilly sure, but it didn’t feel that bad.

“Yeah, you can’t feel it?” Tori asked.

“Kind of?”

“Fringe benefit of you being a fire magician or whatever now, I guess,” Tori said and then went back inside. Anya followed her, then let out a groan when they entered her apartment.

Long black streaks marred the otherwise pristine white walls and reached up onto the ceiling. Their pattern made it look as if the apartment were in the clutches of some great black hand whose fingers were closing around it. The room reeked of burned cloth and smoke, even with the shattered window letting fresh, frigid air in. Anya switched on the overhead fan to blow as much of the lingering smell out as possible, then started to scrub the walls and floor clean of scorch marks. Tori helped, and the two of them had it mostly repaired and tidied up after a few hours. Anya had to settle for taping some towels over the broken window until she could get it properly replaced.

When the place was more presentable, Tori let out a sigh.

“I think I’m gonna head home,” she said. “I have hit my weird limit for…well, probably for life, if I’m being honest. You gonna be okay?”

Anya looked around her apartment and then down at herself, her muscles, her singed finger. “I’m not sure. I’m definitely not gonna blow myself up again if that’s what you mean. But I have no idea what I’m gonna do about work.”

“I’ll cover for you on Monday, tell them you were crazy sick or something. Give you at least a few days to figure it out.”

“Thanks, Tori.”

“No problem. You gonna go to the cops or the feds next?”

Anya shrugged and nodded. “Something like that. I’ll figure it out.”

“All right. Try not to rush into anything though. If there’s an emergency, call me. Otherwise, I’m going back to my apartment until Monday morning, and trying to not think too much about what I’ve seen today.” Tori gave her a wave and Anya smiled at her friend as she left.

The sound of the door closing behind Tori echoed in the apartment. It was far too quiet for Anya’s liking.

“Hey, uh, AI thing,” she said. The construct materialized over her shoulder like a chubby angel. Or maybe a demon.

“Hello!” it cheered.

“I gotta think of a name for you,” she said. “You got any preferences?”

“None whatsoever. Whatever suits you best works for me.”

“Hmmm,” she thought as she took out a small pair of scissors from a drawer nearby and started to clip off the burnt edges of her hair. “Well, you’re super happy, and enthusiastic…how about Felix?”

“Felix is Latin for Happy!” the AI said. “That’s fantastic!”

“Nice to meet you Felix,” Anya said.

“We actually met already. I’m your personal——”

“I know. Just…nevermind.”

“Okie doke!”

“So that fire magic I used,” Anya said. “I’m guessing it’s tied to emotion or something? I got excited and it exploded. I also got really winded after.”

“Let’s see,” Felix said and tapped their chin with a finger as they thought. “Looking at data on the Flame Dominion skill, it seems that lower levels of ability are less stable and more likely to be disrupted by breaks in concentration or spikes in emotion. Raising your skill as well as your awareness stat can fix this. Also, a lot of magic skills require the caster to act as a conduit for energy both ambient and inherent, so a high fortitude stat is essential! If you’re not careful, you could exhaust or even kill yourself with the amount of energy you use.”

“Got it,” Anya said. “Magic though. Really? Not just technology that looks like magic? The real thing?”

“The menu says that’s what it is, yeah,” Felix nodded.

“And I’m guessing the menu system learned about all this when it got close enough to Earth? Picked up all the information on the planet in however many seconds it took to enter the atmosphere and smack me in the chest?”

“When not attached to a host, the menu system has an informational intake range of up to 100 light years. I don’t have access to where all of the menu’s information came from, but it isn’t all from Earth.”

“Anything in that informational range that told you who I should call if aliens are invading my planet in the next year?”

“Nope! Sorry!”

Anya grumbled to herself and started to boil water for tea. The process of alerting authorities for this sort of thing just didn’t exist, and Anya wasn’t smart enough to design one herself…but she could be.

She brought up her stat menu and stared at the “INTELLIGENCE” stat, which was already at a 7. Raising her Brawn to a 9 had put her at what she figured must be peak physical condition. Putting 3 points into her intelligence would raise it to a 10, beyond what she had in Brawn.

“This will make me smarter, right?” Anya asked Felix and pointed at the Intelligence stat.

“It will raise your ability to think faster, and concentrate on multiple different tasks at once. I am still not entirely certain what humans consider ‘smart,’ as that can vary based on culture and species, but it will increase your mental facilities, yes.”

“Just 3 points for now then, see how it goes,” Anya said. She wasn’t sure if a single point would be enough to tell a difference, but feared more than 4 or 5 would be too much if it wasn’t what she was expecting. She raised her Intelligence to 10, and hit “CONFIRM.”

Her head tightened with the worst migraine she’d ever had in her life, but then it was over almost as soon as she registered the pain. Anya checked her head in the mirror to make sure it hadn’t swelled and when she saw it hadn’t, let out a sigh of relief.

Except she didn’t feel smarter. She didn’t notice anything even remotely dramatic. She tried to think of a perfect solution to her current dilemma but nothing popped up in the forefront of her mind, just more questions and more possible problems.

Although…

She noticed that her thoughts branched out much more neatly and with greater clarity than they had before. She was now thinking of two separate problems and two separate solutions in tandem as easily as she could focus on one. Not the all-powerful super-brain she was hoping for, but not bad. At the very least it hadn’t done her any harm, and she could focus on the overwhelming problems before her a bit more efficiently now.

An invasion of Earth was a global problem, so maybe the UN would be best. Anya had no idea who to even start to talk to in there, however. The office of the US ambassador? Maybe.

The military? She guessed the Air Force might be the best branch to talk to, but that would involve going to a base or someplace where there was a lot of security. They might think she was an alien herself and lock her up.

Maybe nothing as extreme as the military. The FBI sounded better. Not so many missiles and jets. Still, it was the federal government. They didn’t play around. And if she went there and told them she’d been granted access to nuclear bombs by alien powers, they might not be any more friendly than the military.

The NYPD would be the easiest. There were precincts in Brooklyn, but the police were local. They didn’t have the authority to handle something like an alien invasion.

“This is harder than I thought,” Anya said. Her kettle whistled at her and she poured it into a mug with a teabag and let it steep.

A quick search on her phone brought up more options: SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, seemed promising. They didn’t have any power she knew of, they were just a non-profit organization that did research, but that meant they couldn’t threaten her either. The Institute was located in California, though which was a bit far away.

Anya decided that contacting anybody by phone was a waste of time. She’d immediately be written off as a nutcase or a prankster. So that meant showing up in-person and that, for now, SETI was out. However, the UN, FBI, and naturally the NYPD all had offices in and around Manhattan. The Air Force had recruitment centers in the city, but she wasn’t sure about bases. They went near the bottom of her mental list with SETI.

“So the UN, Feds, or the cops,” Anya said and sipped her tea. “Felix do you have anything to suggest about who I should tell?”

“Based on scans the menu took prior to integration, it looks like your planet doesn’t have an established procedure for reporting extraterrestrial contact.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Anya said.

“I guess you should just do what’s easiest and work up from there!”

“Most difficult to contact in-person is SETI since they’re so far away. Then probably the UN. They’re in Manhattan but talking to anybody requires lots of red tape. And security there is so high that just charging in and demanding to see somebody isn’t an option. Easiest would be the cops, definitely,” Anya said. “And they could contact people higher up the ladder if I can convince them. Cops call the Commissioner, who calls the Governor, who calls the President. Easiest to get away from if something goes bad too.”

“Get away from?” Felix asked.

“If they think I’m an alien. It’s a lot easier to just bolt out of a police precinct than it is an FBI office or a military base. I don’t think it’ll be that bad, but better safe than sorry. Just one more thing to consider, y’know?”

“Are you going to show them your Flame Dominion skill?”

“I’d like to start with you. If that’s not enough, yeah, I’ll show them some minor pyrotechnics once I’m sure they’re not gonna shoot me or anything. If that still isn’t enough, I dunno. Maybe get another skill, something really crazy.”

“I’d like to meet new people!” Felix said. “Are we going now?”

“Not right away, no. You’re sure about having a whole Earth year until the aliens arrive?”

“The menu’s most recent data says yes!” Felix said. Anya nodded. She could take a day or two to weigh her options. The police were the most appealing at the moment, but it wouldn’t kill her to look for other options. Tori had urged her not to rush.

Besides, she thought, I’m gonna need new clothes before I go out anywhere.

“Hey Felix,” she asked, “the RAC store has clothes and stuff too, right?”

“Of course!” they said.

“Maybe a little shopping later, just for the basics,” Anya said as she took her tea over to her desk and computer. “For now, I gotta figure out how to go about reporting an invasion.”