Dawn of Hunger [Nonhuman FMC Progression]

Aurora gave the Foreman a look. "She's killed people."

"Yeah, well, I've done that too," the Tier 8 replied, "I think most of us have."

Aurora sighed. "Okay, but that's different."

Is it? I was starting to smell the stench of hypocrisy. "Uh, how? I've only killed like…" Shit. I'd lost track of how many people I'd killed after Bungie Guy. The count when something like one, a few, two specifically—Lasso Guy and the girl whose head I whipped off like a golfball, and then there was that knockoff version of me I helped Luna kill, and then there was the maid in that hotel in Vegas…"

"Are we seriously going to just sit here watching her try to count kills on her fingers?" Aurora's voice snapped me back to the present.

"I mean it wasn't that many," I held up an open hand, "like, maybe five of them were actually my fault, and only two of those were on purpose. The first one was a pure accident, the two in the middle were kind of my fault but also kind of self defense, and then the fourth one was one of the bad guys anyway, and then—yeah, that's basically it. I'm claiming five."

The Foreman pointed at me again with a smug look. "See? That's not bad at all. I've done all of those things, and I mean yeah, killing people isn't good, but it does happen."

"Who's side are you on again?" Aurora grumbled. I took note of that—I guess that means the Foreman is supposed to be part of the Blue faction? Then, his attention returned to me. "I noticed you skipped over the last one. What happened there?"

Oops. It was true, there was no good excuse for that one—at least not in the context of framing it in a way that was digestible for normal people. But do any of these people count as normal?

"Well, that one was bad," I admitted, "I was having a bit of a combined manic and psychotic episode at the time, and I hadn't, uh, eaten enough, and then I was almost discovered, and I panicked a bit, and then I uh, well I ate someone."

Aurora directed another pointed look at the Foreman. "And there it is. You might have killed before, but you haven't eaten anyone."

"Okay but that's not really a fair comparison," I shot back before anyone else could reply. "Like what if we encountered a civilization of alien plant people, and they thought it was horrible that humans eat other organisms, and then you point out that the plant people have a long history of using toxins to kill animals, but they say 'oh well we never use them for food so it's fine.' Like that doesn't make any sense. Literal apples and oranges argument."

I can't believe I'm doing this. What felt weird was how natural it felt to start spontaneously pedantically bickering with the strongest person on the entire planet. But he really did make an unfair comparison, so like, was I supposed to not call him out on it?

"That's ridiculous," Aurora began to argue back, only to be interrupted by his ally putting his own arm on Aurora's to drag the accusatory finger back down.

"No, I think she has a point," the Foreman mused. "I still object to her creation, and losing control is—well, it's certainly worrying, but she has a good point there."

The next person to speak was neither me nor the two Blue faction representatives. It was Fabrica. "Do you want to eat people?"

I blinked. What? What kind of question is that? It was decidedly forward, and oddly, the neutral, curious tone almost made it feel more offensive than an obvious accusation. "I—what?"

"Do you want to eat people?" She repeated. "When you're in control, are you still drawn to the idea of it?"

I blinked. What kind of interrogation is this? I once again wondered what the purpose of this strange meeting was, but I decided to attempt an answer before asking one of my own. "Well, it's not that simple," I said.

"What do you mean?"

I thought about it. I knew I couldn't deny it—I doubted anyone who needed convincing would believe it, and all I would accomplish would be making myself look like a liar. I had to tell the truth—but, there has to be an optimal way to frame it.

"It's kind of like someone who's on a diet," I explained, "being tempted by a candybar or something. Or like, if a guy is super attracted to a particular woman but she declines his advances and he respects it, you know? Like there's definitely a desire, but wanting it on one level doesn't mean you'd try to get away with doing it even if you thought you could."

Was I telling the truth? Or is that also a lie?

Fabrica nodded. She didn't say anything, so I decided it was a good moment to clarify what was happening.

"We're considering involving you in something," Cascade, of all people present, explained. "There's an opportunity to use your circumstances to our advantage, but before we can decide whether to do that, we wanted everyone to meet you."

Uhm, okay? I blinked. "Involve me in what?"

Cascade frowned. "We have to reach a decision before anyone can tell you that."

Oh, so it's some real top secret stuff. Great. "Okay. But what if you decide to do it, but I don't want to. Am I gonna get a choice in that?"

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"Yes."

I blinked again. Wait, really? I was—not expecting that. "Oh."

"We wouldn't be able to force you," Fabrica added. "We wouldn't gain anything from doing that."

Okay, now I'm just confused. "You have to realize this is making me very curious. I mean, top secret stuff that you want me to do but can't force me to do? You, a bunch of the most powerful people in the world? And you won't even tell me what it is before, what, you all do a vibe check on me?"

"Basically, yes," Cascade confirmed.

"Huh." I looked around the whole room, trying to process everything. "So what now, we play board games or something? I mean this is still a bit awkward." I pointed at Aurora. "He literally tried to kill me yesterday."

"I think…" Cascade trailed off, looking at all the others, as if to confirm that no one else had anything to say first. "I think this is good enough. For now. A 'vibe check,' as you put it."

"Okay, good." I directed a pointed look towards my dad. "Does that mean I can go now? I mean I don't know exactly how long it's been, but I feel like I've been taking a concerningly long shit at this point. Like, anyone paying attention has got to be thinking either 'damn, that girl is up to something shady' or they're wondering if someone is about to have to call an ambulance. And what if someone else needs to get in? I think one of my history teachers said sitting upon a contested throne can be dangerous..."

Realizing I'd started rambling, I trailed off, only to be met with silent stares. "...What?"

After handing over my packet of handwritten notes, as well as a few questions, my dad shipped me back to the porcelain sanctum. Checking my phone, I blinked. One minute? That can't be right. There's no way.

The meeting hadn't taken long, but there was no way it was less than five minutes, let alone just one. Did I go through some kind of time dilation or something? What the hell? It wasn't outside the realm of possibility.

Explicitly time-based abilities were rare but not unheard of, although the same couldn't be said for actual time travel—but in fairness, if someone did have a time travel ability, would we even know?

Regardless, distorting the relative speed of time was more reasonable and would fit in with the rest of my dad's ability set. I decided that was the most likely explanation and filed it away as important information.

I also changed back to my Vonnie form. I still didn't want to let on that I had an alternate appearance, though it might be a bit of a moot point—if my dad could portal me around like this, spying shouldn't be a difficult problem.

He also knew where the pickup and dropoff point was, so it was possible other people were watching the area and would see my Vonnie appearance going in and coming out.

At least doing it like this stopped me from revealing it to the less friendly Star Guardian factions. So even if the Red faction was reading my hand, I might have a decent chance of keeping it concealed from everyone else. That alone made it worth it.

After returning to Cassandra's house, the first thing I did after unpacking my bag and settling in was to refresh my memory of all the Star Guardians present in that meeting.

Dad, Mom, Aurora, Fabrica, the Foreman, and Cascade.

Skipping the first two, I recalled at least some basic stuff about the rest. Aurora was generally considered to be the strongest, rivalled only by Fabrica and Saber. However, it was easiest to argue in his favor.

Only he and Fabrica were Tier 9, which made it easy to reject my mom, although there was a minority that claimed she was basically equal, as she'd always hit well above her tier and had actually gone at it with Aurora himself.

As for Fabrica, it was both harder and easier to argue, and that was due to the nature of their respective abilities.

Aurora's powerset was simple, flashy, and iconic. He could fly around really fast, including in space, he was ridiculously strong, even by the standards of ultra high tiers, he was seemingly impossible to hurt, and he manipulated an aura of bright, rainbow colored… energy? Stuff?

His name came from the colorful, luminous wake he left in the sky during flight. I wasn't sure what it was, but it was the same stuff that had lingered around the edges of the hole he put through my skull.

It was also what he used to form the giant death beam that nearly cut me in half and put my own prior display to shame. I was pretty sure it wasn't what caused the initial hole in my head, though—it was hard to tell, but I think he flew straight through me with his own body.

Regardless, it was an awesome looking set of abilities that was close to an exact match for some of the most famous, quintessential superheroes. I suspected that was no accident—Guardians, Star Guardians, and even Anathema like myself had our abilities shaped by our own desires and our understanding of them, after all.

I found it likely that Aurora's powerset emerged from him projecting preexisting tropes in fiction to an initial core ability that already possessed the potential to develop in that direction.

In contrast, Fabrica, as her name implied, was good at making things—and not just things, but also things that were good at making things.

Unfortunately, she wasn't good at making things that were good at making things that made things. It was one of those powers rich in important nuances, but fortunately, she was important enough that there were a lot of good explanations floating around.

While some Guardians had very direct, physically simple powers, like Aurora, many were best summarized by invoking a particular concept. Fabrica's concept was simply technology, especially technology that fabricated.

Real witty name.

Anyway, the things she made weren't magical, as they were supposedly all reproducible in theory, but actually constructing them without the specific power necessary to cheat them into existence might be exceedingly challenging or outright impossible.

From there, those devices had to obey what was possible for someone without her power, and there came the heart of her core limitation.

Any wonder technology Fabrica made had to either be made personally or it had to be made by a wondermachine that was limited to what a theoretically possible machine could do without cheating.

That wasn't to say her work wasn't incredibly useful, because it was. There was a lot of everyday tech that traced its lineage back to Fabrica in some way.

Also, Fabrica's power wasn't being some kind of supergenius who could come up with miracle works with her mind. It was ultimately more physical than mental—she herself had given the analogy of a magic toolchest.

In many ways, the Foreman was similar. But while Fabrica's power centered around advanced technology itself, the Foreman's concept could be summarized as larger scale construction and logistics.

While Fabrica might research ways to create an improved kind of road surface, the Foreman could actually build the road. Together, those two Star Guardians had quite literally built up global technology and infrastructure more than any other pair of individuals in history.

Finally, there was Cascade, the one with which I was least familiar. What I recalled was that her abilities, as might be expected, were all about things like self replication, duplication, chain reactions, and so on.

I decided to research her first because I had the weakest grasp of her abilities.

Oh. I replayed a segment of the first combat video I found several times. Now that's interesting.