There was nothing to do.

  I y on my couch, a bowl of mostly-ignored cereal on the floor beside me while my ptop pyed a YouTube video I definitely hadn’t picked and wasn’t even paying attention to. Yeah, I could reach out and change it to something better, except there wasn’t something better. It was bnd, vapid crap, and just being near it was probably giving me brain cancer. But, on the other hand, the world could go fuck itself and I was watching crap anyways, so I probably deserved brain cancer.

  I didn’t change the video for the same reason I hadn’t cooked anything for lunch. I sucked at cooking, and I couldn’t afford ingredients worth using anyways. Cereal was bnd and texture-less, which meant I didn’t have to think about eating it while I ate it. Well, I would have been eating it, but I didn’t even have a patrol today, so I could afford to rex and skip a meal.

  So, that was what I was doing, and today, rexing meant YouTube on the couch in a dirty pair of underwear and an even-dirtier shirt. No bra, because why bother dealing with the pain of a pokey underwire when I didn’t have anyone to impress, anyways?

  I did take a shower when I got up, the same as every morning. Self-care is important, and hygiene is an important part of self-care. When I’d staggered out of bed at 10:30 – early morning for me – I’d really had to push myself, but I made myself a promise I wouldn’t consider skipping breakfast until after I took a shower, and that was just enough mental goading to get me over the hump. And with that chore out of the way, and no pressings needs for my time, I was free to do whatever I wanted, which really just meant I wasn’t going to do anything.

  My name is Emma Hawthorn, also known as the Chosen Sunshine Incandescent, and this is the gmorous life of the Defenders of Humanity.

  My phone rang again, but I ignored it. I already knew who it was. My mother had been calling all morning, like she did whenever she started getting desperate. Today, she’d tried to py it like we were a loving mother and daughter, and wouldn’t I just be delighted to help poor momma out with a small loan? For house repairs, of course. That st storm was a killer, wasn’t it?

  I told her the same thing I told her every time I took one of her calls: I didn’t have any money, but even if I did, I wasn’t going to pay for her next fix.

  I used to have some. The government hands out some decent benefits for Defending Humanity, including free housing and a sary. It’s not all that hard to save up a healthy chunk of cash, because Chosen don’t really, or at least shouldn’t have many expenses. Flipside: the government pays a lot of attention to where our money goes, and when you’re sending most of it home to your druggie mom who immediately blows it on partying, your sary gets locked up in something called a spendthrift trust, and you have to ask nicely to get any of it beyond a small allowance. My trustee does not care for me, so I do everything I can to avoid the bitch, and thus, what should be spending money is instead my food budget.

  It wasn’t all that bad, really. Sometimes, I had to pick between eating on patrol days and saving food for if a kaiju manifested, but it’s not like I was going to spend that money on something else. I’ve got my computer, I’ve got a phone, and the internet, and I have absolutely no friends, so what was I really going to spend that money on, anyways? Yeah, that’s right. Nothing. At least buying food is something a responsible grown-up would do.

  My phone rings again, dragging me out of whatever I was thinking about. What was I thinking about? Did it matter?

  …Eh, probably not.

  Right! Phone. My phone was ringing. I hit the mute button and threw it across the room. It wouldn’t get my mom off my ass, but it made me feel a little better, and that had to be worth something, didn’t it?

  Except the phone didn’t stop ringing. Why wouldn’t it sto – wait – ooooh, shit.

  I fumbled around under the couch cushion for my work phone. Yup – that was the one. I felt a flicker of worry building in my stomach, like I did every time I got a call. I hadn’t missed a patrol, had I? I was pretty sure I didn’t have one today. But one day, it was probably going to happen. I could just tell.

  “Hello?” I asked, holding my breath.

  “Sunshine Incandescent,” the dispatcher immediately jumped to business. “A Tier 1 rift is manifesting in your district. Coordinates to follow.”

  Sigh. Fine, I guess I’d need to finish that cereal after all. And at least I could rex – I hadn’t missed a patrol.

  Now I just had to stop a monster from destroying the city.