When shit hits the fan, don't look up.

  - UWO Command Sergeant Major Veltros -

  We ended up catching a ride back to post with Tran, since we couldn’t find a taxi with the state of the area having been hit by hurricane Red Ulana. Tran was pretty pissed that I didn’t reply until the next day, but that was overshadowed by the system announcement that everyone got.

  “What do you think it means?” Tran asks, pulling my focus off the massive pair of fuzzy dice hanging from his rearview mirror, “You know, the divine intervention thing.”

  “I uh…”

  Cortez shoots me a look, staring daggers. I’m not used to lying to friends.

  “I don’t know,” I say, which isn’t a lie. I don’t actually know what’s going to happen, I just know that Earth got put on notice. The System doesn’t like divine handouts apparently.

  “I thought the gods were fake, my mee-maw, she used to talk about them all the time,” Tran says, doing some kind of half-assed cross movement over his chest. He’s never been religious, that’s Barlow’s thing.

  “Didn’t your grandma pass before the gates?” I ask him.

  “Yeah, but like, what if Earth’s gods were real too man,” he says, giving me a concerned eyebrow raise.

  “I mean I guess depending on who you ask, they’ve been real since before the gates,” I say.

  “Right, but like. Do you think Earth gods are gonna roll up now?”

  Cortez rolls her eyes, swiping through her interface. I just kind of give him a dumb look. His girlfriend in the backseat, I forget her name, she speaks next.

  “Yeah, I didn’t think about that,” she says, pushing up her glasses, “Do you think Earth gods go hard, or like, are they weak sauce?”

  “Babe, they go hard,” Tran says, nodding to her, “Earth goes hard too.”

  Letting out a shallow sigh, I think about what they said. They aren’t the first to question it. Especially after we started seeing things from our own folklore and legends coming from gates. There’s a running theory that’s been gaining traction, this isn’t Earth’s first rodeo with gates. There are even groups… well, honestly more like cults now that are formed around growing beliefs. The chief amongst them that’s growing in popularity is the sit back and not do shit about the apocalypse group. They think we should let the system cull us. They think it’s god.

  People will believe just about anything these days. Everything we thought we knew, turns out we didn’t.

  While Tran and his girlfriend dive down the rabbit hole, I fiddle with the ring… Abyss. What does that even mean? Does it store stuff? What’s the purpose? Honestly, it just looks like a plain ass black ring. If I hadn’t seen it turn liquid and force itself onto my hand, I wouldn’t believe it's special. The ring lets me slide it around my finger, but if I try to pull it off completely it latches. I stopped fidgeting with it when Cortez gave me a nudge earlier. Guess I’ll have to figure it out later. Worst case scenario, I guess I could try cutting off my finger… yeah, let’s exhaust all other options first.

  “ID’s out,” Tran says, holding out a hand as we pull up to the post front gates.

  I reach into my pocket out of habit… shit. That’s going to be a problem. I completely spaced it with everything else going on. It’s something I realized last night when I went to pay for the hotel room. I’m pretty sure I lost my wallet on the fox planet. Either that or it’s by the dumpster Cortez found me. Either way, I’m going to get in trouble for that too. Losing your Military ID is definitely against the regulations.

  “I don’t have mine,” I admit.

  “Seriously?” Tran asks.

  “Yes, seriously,” Cortez sighs, shaking her head. She’s understandably not in a good mood. She’s never been fond of spending time with Tran or his menagerie of rotating girlfriends.

  “You couldn’t have told me before we got to the front?” Tran asks, shooting me a look.

  “Just throw a blanket over him,” Tran’s girlfriend says.

  Cortez shakes her head with an audible sigh. It’s not the worst idea ever… besides the fact that there is no blanket in the car.

  “Nah, I got this, watch me rizz.”

  Cortez sighs again.

  When we pull up to the gate, it’s an E-4 specialist just like us. I don’t recognize him, but he looks like he doesn’t want to be on entry gate detail.

  “IDs,” the specialist says, holding out a hand.

  “Yo, bro, my buddy, he fucked up,” Tran says, leaning out of the car window.

  “I’m not your bro, bro,” the guy gives him a stern look, but he doesn’t shut him down completely.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Tran starts speaking quietly to him, the guy rolls his eyes and waves us through after scanning their IDs and giving them back. Cortez, for once, is seemingly impressed.

  “How?” she asks.

  “The rizzler strikes again,” Tran says with a smirk.

  To be fair, his Charisma stat is high according to him. Not that it really affects many things outside of class skill bonuses and dealing with enemies, as far as we know. It’s one of those, we haven’t quite figured out what it does yet stats. Theory is that it makes you glib as a side effect though, which Tran, always has been… kind of.

  ***

  After getting back to the barracks, I follow behind Cortez to her room. Thoughts of the ring falling to the back of my mind. It’s been at least twelve hours since she dropped the baby fox off in her room.

  “If my room is trashed, you’re paying for it,” Cortez says, giving me a warning glance.

  “I know,” I say.

  The door opens and I’m met with a familiar floral undertone that her room always has, followed by the pungent smell of baby fox droppings. Turning, I see them right inside one of her pairs of shoes. The aroma of piss wafts from it as well. Peering closer, I realize, those are actually my shoes. Cheeky bastard.

  Cortez smiles when she sees it. I’d give her an eye roll, but I’m just glad it wasn’t one of her shoes. She has more expensive taste than me.

  Other than the understandable droppings and piss, the room appears to be pretty clean, nothing out of place. Stepping further in, I see the bowl of milk she left is licked clean, the water half gone too. It takes us a minute, but eventually, we find it curled up under her bed, tucked behind a box. It’s not asleep, it’s just rolled up, holding itself.

  “Come here buddy,” I say, pulling it out.

  It’s warm and it doesn’t try to bite me, which is nice. When I pull it closer, it looks at me and gives a faint whimper. Nuzzling into my shoulder.

  “All things considered, it appears to be a good house guest,” Cortez says, scratching behind its ear.

  “Yeah, I’ll try to find a better…”

  “I don’t mind if she stays,” she interrupts, pulling it from me and snuggling it, “For now at least.”

  The baby fox seems pretty taken with her, even after she sets it down, it follows her around. She does give off maternal vibes I guess. Shaking myself from the daze, I move towards the stringless bow on the counter.

  “What is it?” Cortez asks, sitting down at the table now, pouring fresh milk for the baby fox.

  “I don’t really know, I just know it’s pretty strong, allegedly.”

  Picking it up, I feel the weight of it. The runes are buzzing with light again, crossing the surface slowly.

  “No string, usually that means a mana bow,” Cortez says.

  “Yeah, that would make sense.”

  I’ve never tried to use a mana bow before.

  “Jimmy, take a seat,” Cortez says, holding the baby fox in her arms, “Any minute now we’re getting a message to form up. Plus you need to see if Mwangi still wants you to meet up.”

  Nodding, I sit.

  “Before all that though. You owe me…” she pauses, covering the fox’s ears, “A mother fucking goddamned explanation as to why the fucking hell you were half dead by a dumpster.”

  “I uh…”

  “And you better not leave out the part where you found this fox and that strange ass bow. I want it from the beginning,” she says, her eyebrow quivers, but it settles as she uncovers the fox’s ears. It stares at me too. With those glacial eyes, wrought with guilt-inspiring charm.

  “Um, well, the truth is,” I begin, her expression changes as she sees me squirming, her eyes narrowing.

  “If you lie to me.”

  “I don’t want to lie to you,” I admit, sighing, gripping the bow still, “I don’t think I can tell you all of it,” I give her a look, then look upwards toward the sky, “If you understand my meaning.”

  She pauses her onslaught of judgmental eyes for a moment to measure me more softly.

  “Does it have anything to do with the ring?”

  “It’s fair to say they might be connected, yeah.”

  She covers the fox’s ears again, “For fucks sake, Jimmy what have you gotten yourself into?”

  She’s taking this a lot better than I thought she would, like a lot better.

  “Tell me what you think you can tell me then,” she says.

  “Okay, um,” I pause, parsing my thoughts, putting the bow on the ground, spinning it like Mira did. It turns nicely, I get why she did this idly, “Basically, I found the fox, I killed the thing that killed its parents, and I stole the bow before I left somewhere.”

  “Somewhere?” she asks.

  “Somewhere not here.”

  She blinks, “You mean?”

  “Yeah, not the normal way either.”

  “Why?”

  I roll my jaw, trying to mull the answer, but she speaks first.

  “Is it related to the message we all got?”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “So, Divine Intervention?”

  “You could say that.”

  “And, you’re not supposed to talk about it?”

  “That’s pretty much it, yeah.”

  “Is whatever happened going to happen again?”

  “Presumably.”

  God, she’s good at this verbal charades.

  “Well,” she says, looking down, deep in thought.

  “Yeah,” I say, spinning the bow again, “I want to tell you everything, if that helps?”

  She looks at me, appraising the words, she sighs and nods, turning down to the fox, petting it affectionately.

  “It does,” she says, then looking back up at me with a concerned look, “You lied yesterday.”

  I squint at her, “About?”

  “You said you were out of mana,” she says, petting the fox, “You said that’s why you couldn’t heal yourself.”

  “How did you know?”

  “You do this thing when you lie…” she pauses, narrowing her eyes at me, “Doesn’t matter, I just knew, can you tell me why?”

  She really does know me well.

  “I can’t use healing anymore.”

  She doesn’t even blink, she just stares at me.

  “What?”

  “I don’t have the skill anymore… it’s gone,” I say, my eyes falling down. That’s the first time I’ve admitted it out loud. Hits like a bag of bricks, even with all the other catastrophic shit that’s going on.

  She nods slowly.

  “So, let me get this straight. You saved a baby fox from somewhere not on Earth, and stole what looks like a very powerful weapon. All of that resulted in you nearly dying. Then you…” she pauses, her jaw flexing for a moment, “Then you asked your psycho ex to patch you up because you can’t use healing and wanted to avoid questions.”

  I nod when she pauses, even though I’m not sure Dorliac would qualify as a psycho ex. Something tells me that’s not a hill I want to die on though.

  “Then somehow related to the thing that you can’t talk about, the skies erupted, divine intervention, and now you have some creepy ass ring on your finger.”

  I nod again.

  “And because of that creepy ass ring, the Earth just had its gate difficulty increased.”

  “Yeah,” I admit. That hits harder than healing. Guilt. Worry. They don’t sum it up.

  “I’m guessing you’ve made a pact or something with a divine… thing or whatever?”

  I tilt my head for a second before nodding, that’s pretty close to the line on talking about what happened. So far though, I haven’t gotten any warnings or weird feelings. So maybe this is fine.

  “Well, shit,” she sighs.

  “Yeah, shit,” I agree.

  A notification pops up in the corner of my vision. It’s from my first-line supervisor Sergeant Gilroy. Opening it, I see it’s about a formation.

  [ SGT Gilroy: Mandatory Company formation at 0900, do not be late Shitvak. ]

  Looking up at Cortez, she looks like she just got a message from her first-line as well.

  “Guess we’ll finish this later,” she says, petting the fox gently behind the ears. Her beautiful hazel eyes fall into mine, making my heart beat a little harder. Giving me solace.

  “Guess so.”