In the last two months, the thing that changed the most in my life was …

There was a knock on the other side of the dressing room door. “Come on, are you done yet? It’s just a couple of clothes, not a European dress,” Bethany asked on the other side.

… Her.

She ended up being dead serious about wanting to be my friend and attached herself to me like a third leg. When she first proposed the idea, I thought she’d be like all the other higher ranked Hunters, constantly trying to knock me down to my place and treat me like a grunt. Surprisingly, she didn’t. In fact, all she wanted to do was hang out.

Oh, and talk. A lot.

It wasn’t so bad. I’d come to realize that she was as shallow as a teaspoon, but as vast as a lake. She knew about a lot of random things — like just a couple weeks ago when I mentioned thinking about real estate in Garden City. It was only a sentence, and the next day she handed over a thick stack of papers on the best properties. Seriously, who needed the internet when there was Bethany? She even knew stuff that wasn't available to the public … and now I do too, whether I wanted to or not.

“Jyn,” Bethany called again.

I shifted and glanced at myself in the mirror. The ‘couple of clothes’ involved a pair of … pants? Shorts? Short-pant? I don’t know what they were called. They were dark gray and tight fitting, the right side a long pant that went down to the black calf boots and the left side as a short that cut off, leaving two inches of skin before a dark gray thigh-high started and covered the rest of my leg. A black leather strap in the front and back attached the short to the thigh-high. It was cute, but weird. She paired it with a white tank and an short black and blue jacket, left open.

I finally opened the hot pink door and stepped out. “Look, Bethany, it’s cute and all. But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to spend $200 on four articles of clothing.”

Bethany looked me up and down, appraising me like a new car. The wrap-around short dress that she was currently modeling shimmered between white and blue as she moved around me. “Of course not,” she announced happily and tipped her head to the side, making her gorgeous, wavy blonde hair spill over her shoulder. “I am.” She hummed under her breath, completely ignoring my pained look, and pointed to the white pendant hanging from my neck. “A blue necklace would look better, but that has sentimental value, right?” She sighed, as if in reluctant acceptance. “Oh, well. I’ll just have to find an outfit to match that too. The tab’s on me, of course.”

“Bethany,” I moaned. She was always trying to give me stuff. It drove me crazy.

“What?” She crossed her arms and pouted. “Look, I just want to take you with me to some of the parties I go to, okay? I want to hang out more, let you experience more than the streets and the Gate. But I’m not going to let you get mocked for wearing discounted clothes, alright? Even these are barely in the acceptable range.”

I sighed silently. “I really appreciate that.” I knew her well enough now to know that she honestly meant well. “But I just don’t think that any of those places are for me.”

She huffed and planted her hands on her curvy hips. “Look, you have backing now. Me. And if you want to get out of the hole in the ground that society put you in, you need to use it.”

I scowled. “But that’s not why I’m friends with you.” Technically, the reason we were friends was because she wouldn’t let me go. But I did enjoy hanging out with her and didn’t regret it. I just wished she’d get over this ‘give Jyn the whole store’ thing.

“But I don’t know how to be friends with someone who doesn’t want anything from me,” Bethany half-yelled. Distress buckled the eyebrows over her baby-blues. “You wouldn’t take the smart phone I tried to buy you and you settled for that little thing —”

“It does everything I need it to,” I cut in. It could call, text, and access the internet. What else did I need?

“So why not this?” Bethany demanded. “I’m the one that wants to take you to a party, so I should pay for the clothes.”

“Because I don’t know how to be friends with someone that’s always giving me stuff,” I said softly in the wake of her tantrum. Granted, Kesstel had a habit of always giving me food, but that was completely different. That was a cupcake or a snack sized bag of nuts, not a thousand dollar phone.

For a second, Bethany looked like she was going to cry. Her hands tightened at her side and she looked away, scowling with tears in her eyes.

I frowned, feeling bad that it sounded like I was rejecting her. At least the only audience in the store was a shop clerk who was trying to make herself disappear behind the racks of expensive clothing and two bodyguards that were already invisible. It made it easier to go on, because I didn’t want her to misunderstand.

“We couldn’t be more different,” I said slowly. “You’re from the top of society in every way. I’m on the bottom. Even our personalities couldn’t be more opposite. This kind of friendship is new for the both of us. A lot of people would think we shouldn’t hang out at all.”

She frowned, but didn’t refute me. After all, it was true.

“So let’s work to figure out a friendship that’s only our own, okay?” I said softly. “Not based on past relationships we’ve had with other people. Not a transactional one, but a real friendship for the sake of being friends. Is that something we could do?”

She threw her arms around me. “Okay.”

I awkwardly patted her on the back and let her cling. The number of people I let touch me forcefully increased by one since I met her, and I was still getting used to it. I stepped back. “I’m going to change now.” Then I paused. “But I really like that dress on you.”

She beamed. “I do too.”

Suddenly, an alarm rang from every light post outside the clothing shop.

I froze as I recognized the sound. A Gate Surge was coming.

No, I thought. Please, please tell me this isn’t a world-wide one. Earth can’t handle too much more of this. I looked at Bethany, her face just as shocked as mine was.

I hurried back into my stall. I changed into my armor as fast as I could. I felt a little bad about carelessly throwing the outfit to the side, but I was in a hurry. When I came out, Bethany was waiting just outside in her street clothes.

Several of Bethany’s bodyguards stood around her, scanning the shop for threats. One guard stepped forward, his angular face tight and his brown hair waxed back away from his face. “Miss Wilks, we need to move to a secure location.” He motioned toward the door.

She nodded, as if it was expected. Then again, she was so pampered, I bet she didn’t have to help with Gate Surges. She grabbed my arm. “Jyn is coming with us.” She glared at the guard, as if daring him to argue with her.

I blinked at her then my mouth pulled in a lopsided smile. I gently took her hands off my arm and stepped to the side. “I’m fine, but thank you.”

She turned her scowl in my direction. “Gate Surges are dangerous! You’re just an E, you could die!”

I grinned and patted her shoulder, trying to comfort her. “I’m not going to die anytime soon. There’s too much that I have to do first. And too much that I have to to protect.” I slid around the guards before she could protest anymore. “I’ll see you later.” I waved and ran out of the store, past the shop clerk as she stepped out of the back in armor.

“Jyn!” Her wail cut off when the door slammed behind me.

As soon as I was out of her view, I opened my stride and sprinted at full speed towards the black arch looming over Eden. The autumn sun was high overhead as I entered Gate Square. The space was full of Hunters in formation. Technically, I should be in the back with the rest of the Es, but I wormed my way up to the gray area between B and C Hunters. Since I could take on stronger monsters, I should pull my full weight. Most of the Hunters were in groups and guilds. They grouped together in formations, so it was really uncommon for a random Hunter to be standing alone, completely opposite of the E and D Hunters.

The group of Hunters next to me looked at me like I had a death wish, but I ignored them. My whole attention was on the Gate towering overhead.

It wasn’t like the last time I saw a Gate Surge or Portal Surge. The rim of the Gate was wrapping and shifting around, but the black 2D arch looked stable. It wasn’t bubbling and twisting like a soda about to overflow, like last time. Still, the alarms were ringing, meaning that the Gate was unstable, and that could only mean a Gate Surge.

Suddenly, the Gate’s movements stilled. The calm before the storm.

“Get ready!” a man yelled from the front of the Hunter army. It took me a second to place the voice as Blood Sword.

My heart skipped a beat, a mix of anxiety and fear. I was experienced and strong enough to not be mindlessly scared anymore, but there was always a bit of tension at facing the unknown. My kindjal appeared in my hand. I took a breath, steadied my breathing and killed the butterflies in my chest.

From my place in the middle of the crowd, I could see the Gate ripple, but I couldn’t see the monsters. Or hear any.

A gasp rippled through the crowd. That was it. No other noises.

The people around me looked at each other. “What’s going on?” a woman whispered to her friend.

The friend shook her head.

A dense pressure swept over the crowd, starting from the Gate and spreading out like a tidal wave. One after another, every single Hunter was forced to their knees with the pressure, no matter what their rank was.

The feeling hit me and I stumbled back, but I wasn’t brought to my knees like the people around me. I bent over, gasping for air as my eyes widened.

I knew this aura.

My whole body was shaking and my knees wanted to give out, but I lifted my heavy head to look over the downed crowd. Hundreds of bodies were between me and the Gate, filling the ground like a messed up puzzle, but that didn’t matter. The only important thing was the man standing in front of the Gate.

He was covered from head to toes in black blood. His armor was missing, and his clothes were in shreds. His pants were passable, but his shirt was in pieces, hanging on his broad shoulders by threads and revealing his pale skin underneath. It didn’t seem to matter how he was dressed, his head was high, chin up and eyes narrowed like a disapproving Lord surveying his people. And finding them wanting.

“Kesstel,” I mouthed the word, but the pressure was so high that I couldn’t make the sounds come out.

I peered at him, trying to see if there was any red mixed in with the black blood. From here, I couldn’t see any injuries, but that might not mean anything. I was dying to grab his shoulders and shake him. Yell in his face, Where did you go? Make his chest hurt just as much as mine did just by seeing him in that dilapidated state after disappearing for two months.

But more important, he was back.

I stumbled forward, slowly limping toward him through the air as thick as cement.

The S gods were also affected by Kesstel’s aura. The only S ranked Healer had fallen against the man at her side, gasping for air. Two other S’s put their hands on their heads, as if they had the same headache that threatened to split my head open. The rest of them looked uncomfortable, but they weren’t downed like the rest of the Hunters.

Blood Sword stepped closer to Kesstel, his face tight. “Noble.” His shaky voice was barely audible from here. It was only because the rest of the square was so quiet that I could even hear him. “Put away your aura.”

Kesstel turned his head and looked at Blood Sword. His face was apathetic as usual. Then a slight frown pulled down on the corners of his lips. That was the only warning he gave. His hand shot out, so fast I couldn’t even see it moving.

A second later, Blood Sword was on his knees with Kesstel’s fingers around his throat.

*****