*BRING-BRING-BRING*

An alarm went off in the middle of afternoon ki training. Immediately, soldiers rushed to cabinets on the walls and put on vests, and equipped themselves with guns. Sarah was all alone on the field by the time she reacted, putting on her own jacket and grabbing her weapons.

She followed the group of soldiers through hallways and between buildings. The group was eerily quiet, although the blaring alarm probably wasn’t helping her ears. She saw tense muscles, calm determination, and an ease of movement that only veterans could have.

Eventually, the group arrived at a fleet of army trucks, where a commanding officer was already waiting. Groups of eight loaded each truck. Sarah didn’t know where to go, so when she made out Peter from the crowd, she headed straight to him.

When he saw her, his eyes widened. “Sarah, you shouldn’t be here.”

Sarah looked him in the eyes. “I can help. If not by fighting, at least by healing. If I get hurt, I can just heal myself.” Peter hesitated, but just then the commanding officer shouted at the truck drivers to get moving.

“I don’t have time for this,” he grumbled. “Get on then, but it’s your life.”

Sarah boarded the military vehicle through the back, into a crowded space with six other soldiers. Through a window, she could see two soldiers in the front.

“So, what’s going on?” Sarah asked, making Peter curse.

“Why did you come if you don’t know,” he complained. “Houston was just attacked by a mass swarm of specters. You have to know what specters are, right?”

“All I know is that they’re one of the three alien races invading Earth,” she replied. Peter rolled his eyes.

“Specters are invisible entities. They look like foggy ghosts, to mages, according to Ms. Sanchez’s information. They possess humans and give them mana powers, and then lead their hosts to rampage. All mages in the world were previously hosts possessed by specters- apparently, mana can’t spread like ki does,” he said.

“So, how do we beat the specters?” Sarah questioned, tilting her head.

“We-” Peter motioned at both of them “-use non-lethal weaponry, and hope the mages arrive in time.”

Sarah looked at her gun, and then at her spear.

***

Sasha Turgenev opened her mouth, letting her mother pour a spoonful of soup down her throat. She sat in a $10,000 wheelchair that would drive with the slightest twitch of a finger, and came with a whole host of other functions.

Sasha eyed her mother out of the corner of her eye. The hardworking woman had amassed a surplus of money during her life, and decided to spend it on giving her daughter the easiest life possible. Sasha loved her for it, as it allowed her to slack off even past the age of thirty.

Sasha hadn’t had to leave her wheelchair in two years. It was waterproof, so she could just drive the thing into her custom automatic shower, that doubled as a washing machine for her durable clothes. Food was spoon-fed to Sasha, she slept by reclining the back into a bed, and she removed the need to exercise by careful nutrition management and ultrasound muscle atrophy therapy.

Sasha never wanted to exert herself again. Unfortunately for her, the universe had other plans.

Sasha first noticed something was wrong when her mother wasn’t in her room to feed her when she woke up. Her mother had never been late to breakfast for the past ten years.

She might have fainted, had a stroke, or been attacked, Sasha thought. It took ten minutes for Sasha to stop pretending nothing was wrong, and another ten minutes to gather the determination to press a button.

“Entering living room,” an artificial voice sounded from the wheelchair. Sasha was wheeled through an automatic sliding door, and came to a rest in the middle of a wide open room. There were couches knocked over, ripped pillows spilled feathers into the air, and a trail of blood led outside the front door.

Anyone else might have followed the trail. Sasha simply pressed another button.

“Calling police,” the wheelchair beeped. In these situations, it’s dumb to investigate before calling the police, Sasha rationalized. She was still gathering the determination to return to her room when she heard a creak from the front door.

It swung open, revealing a blood-soaked figure. They looked up, and Sasha was shocked to recognize her mother’s face.

“Oh, Sasha, my little girl, come to mama!” she sang.

“Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system,” the call ended.

Did 911 just leave me hanging? Sasha thought incredulously. Welp, guess I’m dead. There’s no chance of my survival, so it’s fine if I don’t even try.

Sasha’s mother stalked closer until they were staring eye to eye. She wrapped her arms around Sasha’s neck and started to squeeze. Suddenly, the bloody woman stopped.

“I can taste it,” she said. “Such a thick intent… I must make it my own!”

Sasha’s mother collapsed. Invisible to the naked eye, a ghostly specter rose from her body and flooded into Sasha’s body.

Instantly, the specter gained control of the body. That possession was much easier than the Legionnaire described, it thought. It spent a minute basking in the pure, unadulterated concept of laziness present in Sasha’s mind. It’s natural instincts told it that Sasha’s mind would be the perfect breeding ground for improving its magic, and creating new specters.

After spending an hour adapting the body to the use of magic, the specter decided to get moving, and report back to the Legionnaire. The specter stood up from the wheelchair.

Suddenly, a terrifying blast of resentment surged from within the body, attacking the specter’s mind from all sides.

Flee! It screamed, escaping from the body and the horrific willpower within. How did this happen? If the savage’s willpower is so strong, then how could I possess the body?

The specter phased through the front door and floated into the sky, putting as much distance as possible from the house. Just as it thought it was safe, the specter felt its body lock up and plummet to the ground.

Back in the house, Sasha examined her newfound mana. Streams of the energy would leave her body, swim through the air, and return back to her body. Just feeling the mana agitatedly flowing through the air gave her a headache. With an exertion of will, the mana flows slowed to a stop, turning sluggish.

Much better, Sasha smiled. Then, screams pierced the night. So annoying, Sasha grumbled internally. With barely a touch, a fifth of the effort required to push a button, a bundle of grey, sluggish mana left her body and diffused throughout the area. The screams quieted, and Sasha’s precious peace and quiet returned.

***

Sarah got out of her truck to find downtown Houston in chaos. Buildings were on fire, windows were smashed, and it looked like a riot had stormed through. All around her, soldiers from the various military bases surrounding Houston swarmed in, with Police forces interspersed. In the distance, she could barely see civilians beating each other up with metal bats and other improvised weaponry.

“Ten twist-ties, a baton, and a clip of rubber bullets each!” the commanding officer yelled. Sarah scrambled to get the non-lethal equipment, but decided to keep her spear and bullets on her, just in case.

The unit dispatched, marching down a street and around cars. Soon, they made it to the fighting. Immediately, the soldiers tackled fighting citizens and slapped twist-tie plastic handcuffs on them. The police officers around her clearly were more used to the process, but Sarah’s unit were elite soldiers with ki, allowing them to take down rioters with ease.

Sarah couldn’t tell which pedestrians were possessed by specters, and which were simply defending themselves. The soldiers didn’t care, and so Sarah had no choice but to jump into the thick of it.

She came face to face with a teenage boy carrying a fire extinguisher. She considered using the butt end of her spear, before deciding it wasn’t necessary.

“Drop the weapon and you’ll be safe,” Sarah shouted. The boy’s eyes widened in fear at the sight of the incoming soldiers. He let the fire extinguisher drop with a clank, and put his arms in front of him.

“I’m normal, I promise! I don’t know what’s going on; I was just defending myself!” he cried. Sarah hesitated. Peter glanced at her in the middle of subduing a possessed rioter and shook his head in disapproval.

“Okay,” Sarah dragged out. “Just go back in your house and lock the door, and I won’t need to handcuff you.” His face lit up, and he quickly bowed in thanks. I need to conserve these handcuffs, she thought.

Sarah moved past him to get to the more dangerous rioting. Just as she passed him, the teenager pulled a knife from a pocket and stabbed it into her waist. It glanced off her cut-resistant leather jacket, but left a white mark.

Shocked, Sarah immediately grabbed his wrist and twisted his arm, pushing his face into the floor. It took her ten seconds to figure out how to apply the thin plastic handcuffs while keeping a subject in an arm lock.

I have to assume everyone is possessed, Sarah thought grimly.

“Wait! Untie me! The specter left as soon as you immobilized me!” the boy cried. Sarah winced. The worst part was, he was probably right, and yet she still couldn’t let the boy go. Suddenly, an idea struck her.

Sarah redirected her ki cycles to pass through her eyes, drastically increasing the amount of ki strengthening her eyes. To her delight, she could see a wisp of gray smoke hovering above the boy’s body.

The specter hesitated, as if unsure whether to stay in the boy’s body, leave for a new victim, or even attack Sarah. As she looked, it seemed to come to a decision, flying in her direction.

Sarah took a moment to think over her options. She really, really wanted to learn magic, and the only known way to become a mage was to be possessed by a specter, and then throw off its control. Sarah was confident in her will- she had honed herself by repeatedly testing the limits of the mold colony’s control over her body- but she didn’t want to take the risk of the specter making her attack her friends.

It’s not like she could be sure that the specter could adapt her body to mana in a short timeframe, anyways.

Reluctantly, Sarah grabbed her spear from her back. She formed a ki cycle through the weapon, which glowed a warm red. The specter suddenly found itself with a gaping hole in its body. Two more stabs was enough for her ki to blast the specter into bits.

She turned back to the boy. “I don’t know how to remove these plastic handcuffs,” was all she said before moving on.

From then on, she would kill the specters leaving the bodies of pinned down humans, and then the soldiers would let the civilians go. This kept the troops from running out of handcuffs.

Once, she had to apply emergency healing when a police officer took a metal bat to the face. Thankfully, her regeneration ki was able to heal him to good-as-new, but it made her consider how other sectors of downtown Houston were fairing. She had an inkling that the more time she wasted, the more dangerous the situation would get.