I walked down the hall behind a Family member who was assigned to lead me to the meeting room when I arrived moments ago. As I approached, my enhanced hearing began to pick up Sufficient Gravitas’ voice.

  I stopped outside the door before he could open it, and put a hand on his shoulder to halt his announcement of my arrival as I listened to the fringes of a conversation about me. I waved off the guide, the suit made me uncomfortable anyway.

  “I mean its body was completely shattered and crushed! They found its core,” Alex’s voice sounds hoarse, distraught even. “That has to be it for them!”

  I burst through the door, slamming it open. “That’s step one! What about steps….”

  “I already did that joke.” Bomberman cut me off with a smirk.

  “Dammit. I worked on that one for days!” I whined in my mortal voice and slumped, pouting a little as the people in the room ogled me with different emotions apparent. “Aaanannnnyyyway. I’m back. Sorry It took me so long but I needed a lot of therapy.”

  A blurring missile made of cute ship girl slammed into me, distorting my form briefly as she all but crushed me in a hug. I hugged back momentarily before patting her on the head and smiling at her when she looked up.

  “You’re okay?”

  “Whole lot of faith there.” I smirked to soften my response to Gravitas. “Yeah. I cut my way out and dug down into the bedrock. Took some time for myself and got my head on right. Completely shifted into my nanites with multiple backups. It really takes several steps to kill me now. Not perfect but I’m getting there.”

  She straightened up and then tugged at her cute little uniform jacket, giving me a pout the whole time. Finally she returned to her seat allowing me to. I adopted the “Gendo Pose” and looked around the table.

  “I’m sure you all are wondering why I gathered you here.”

  “Not funny dude.” Bomberman snapped at me, showing how he felt about faking my death in a quick slip. “Seriously. It’s good to see you again. You don’t need to make jokes.”

  “Not joking.” I used my eldritch voice to put across how serious this was, before dropping my hands to the table and grinning at him. Way too wide, too perfect of teeth and too many K-9s definitely gave the right creep factor based on everybody's looks. “When I awoke I went sniffing at something that had been bugging me from the moment I got down there. Also Naylle insisted, so I went upstream.”

  Everybody let that hang for a minute before I continued, catching they expected more info.

  “So! I found something there and thought to myself, ‘This is a gun problem. I should bring all my guns, and all my friends with guns.’ So, I came out to the surface to call up the only people I trust.” Turning to the far end of the table and raising my eyebrow, I smiled at the only person I didn’t know in the room. “Which brings me to you. I don’t know you.”

  “I’m Nolan South. Family rep, just here to be a liaison for you if you need anything from The Family.” He put up a corporate smile that was brittle around the edges.

  “I think I should eat him. Should I eat him?” I shifted to a definitive shark-like grin, widening my face and shifting into jagged shark toothed jaws.

  Hiding a smile behind their face, Drag-On shook their head. “No sweety I asked him to be here as a third party. Maybe we can get you a snack later.”

  “Well I am hungry... but I’ll wait.” Turning away from him as I fixed my face, I shrugged and smiled as cute as I could at the others. “Anyway, I found a hive or a really high number of plants or, I dunno, something at the bottom of the lake. After confirming there was an anomaly there I booked it. I saw a few fish type Model One’s, it was murky so I couldn’t confirm numbers but whatever it is, it's under the sediment too.”

  “You seem to have,” Drag-On paused for a long moment, searching for a word, then eventually softly finished, “Changed since the last time I saw you.”

  “Yeah.” I drew the word out for a moment for the same purpose. “Like I said, therapy. I’m far more, well… me, and way less, ‘Oh god, oh god, we’re all gonna die.”

  The deadpanned quote got nothing but blank stares. My pop culture references were all out of date. Damnit. This brought a pout to my face and I sighed, shaking my head.

  “On topic, while I know you probably aren’t set up for underwater fights, I trust you to make suggestions. Either way I need to bulk up and eat enough to make a few Lesser Shoggoth to help with the fight. I simply wasn’t ready when I emerged from my hiding hole, which is why I did a quick scout.” I paused and looked to the left at the Family Rep, my pout deepening. “Please help.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  I wasn’t trying to look pathetic, but I think I did. Everybody started trying to talk over each other, Drag-On and Gravitas both trying to comfort me while Bomberman was giving solutions. In the end it was a slurry of noise even I couldn’t make sense of without referring to the recordings.

  The Family rep cleared his throat. Everyone in the room turned an evil eye at him and he gulped in response but pressed on. “If I might interject? The family has considerable resources and a vested interest in dealing with problems such as this. We would be happy to offer any assistance we can in the endeavour of dealing with this problem post haste.”

  I stared at him blankly. Finally having enough, Drag-On inserted, “Honey, that’s legal speak for the family will help since they don’t want that thing there any more than we do.”

  “Oh. Why didn’t he just say that?” I blinked a few times. “It’s not like I’m stupid. But shut up. If I want something out of you I’ll tell you.”

  He nodded and ran a pair of fingers across his lips as if zippering them shut.

  “Now now, be nice to the poor mortal, Oggy. Oh wait, I like that! Oggy, short form of Shoggoth. It’s cute.” Drag-On hid a smile behind their lace covered hand and leaned back in their chair. “On to the point now. I can indeed perform under water, just so long as it’s not too deep? I’m unaware of the depth of Lake Coeur d’Alene.”

  “Uh…. Naylle?”

  Utilizing a portion of my skin Naylle answered in his effete baritone voice with his pretentious British accent.“<>Indeed. Lake Coeur d’Alene is approximately one hundred ninety four feet at the maximum depth to sediment. This is, of course, previous recordings. Currently, I would estimate the body of water to be one hundred and twenty feet.”

  I hadn’t even noticed his mannerisms until half way through therapy. Now, it’s weird not noticing it. As I took in each of my acquaintances, I cringed a little inside as I mentally relived a few moments where I either did something ridiculous or straight up missed something obvious.Thankfully, despite how I was back then, they didn’t seem to be upset about anything, so no use harping on it.

  “I can manage that, but anything past two hundred meters and I’ll have problems. That’s not even sixty meters at its deepest.” Gravitas hopped in her chair to shift in it so she could lean across the table further. “Do you think It goes deeper?”

  “I don’t know. I only found an entrance, then my drones got squished.” I shrugged. “In the end I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a network of tunnels under the silt and into the bedrock that goes down a bit. It’s been hiding there for a while would be my guess. Naylle and I think the higher level models we fought at the end of the incursion came from there somehow.”

  “So we are going to assume it goes down to at least the original recorded bottom?” Drag-On raised an eyebrow as they spoke. I nodded in agreement. “Then I should be able to help as well. Bomberman?”

  “I… Uh… Have depth charges I wanted to test? I’ll need some way to survive if I go under ‘tho, I don’t have anything for depth.”

  “No worries, if you have points I’ll give you access to my forcefield catalog. There’s a good one that will deal with most low level quill fire and keep air in when you get submerged or swallowed. It’s rated to two hundred meters of water.” Gravitas smiled and flashed a thumbs up at Bomberman. “Only two hundred fifty points!”

  “I can float that amount, if you need it,” I commented quickly as he got a pensive look on his face. “Hell. I think I can put together the two thousand five hundred for a blueprint and then just make them.”

  “<>You are shy by three hundred points I’m afraid. You purchased additionals for smoothing out your combat style while in therapy if you recall.” Naylle with the save.

  “If it’s for blueprints you’ll share I’ll make up the difference hon.” Drag-On smiled and leaned forwards.

  “When have I ever been stingy with them? Just because I’ve had therapy doesn’t mean I’ve become a dick all of the sudden.” I pouted at them. Drag-On just smiled cheerfully back and nodded. “Okay, so that’s solved provided everybody’s down for it?”

  I got nods in response. “<>Blueprints purchased and shared.”

  “Great. Should we think about bringing on some bigger people for this? I mean, it sounds like it’s not nothing. I mean, none of us are slouches, but,” Bomberman trailed off as he fidgeted in his seat.

  “Maybe somebody who specializes in underwater hives?” I shrugged and crossed my arms, elbows on the table. “It wouldn’t hurt to have at least one specialist. Anybody got someone who they trust for that?”

  “I may know someone. Let me make a few calls honey.” Drag-On stood up and walked out of the room. Presumably to make a call on an actual screen or something.

  “So,” I trailed off trying to think of something to fill the time with. “What happened to that stealth server farm I found?”

  “Oh yeah.” Bomberman laughed before relaxing into a slouch. “Turns out the group who owned all those buildings were all secretly working together on antithesis research. Illegally. The other corporations, and more importantly the rich people behind them, got super pissed. There’s still a whole legal thing going on over it. Speaking of, the courts issued a blanket mandate for any ‘forgotten’ grey matter projects to release the specimens into a care facility being paid for by the original corp that fucked you over.”

  “Lots of corporations shuffled the last two months,” Gravitas agreed. Her whole demeanor turned a little sad. “A lot of people lost their jobs.”

  “That blows. I bet a lot of money is up in the wind right now too. Either shifting to hide it or locked down by the courts.” I grunted and stretched out across the table in a very human-like cat imitation. Stretching my fingers to their lengths and spreading them while yawning. Finally I relaxed into a slump across the expanse of real estate I had taken up. Speaking into the table, my words came out muffled as I complained, “Shame there isn’t something we can do about that to free up some severance packages or something.”

  “The Family guy is twitching.” Bomberman didn’t bother to disguise his amusement.

  “Speak.” I didn’t bother to lift my head.

  “I can certainly arrange to ensure such a thing happens. Excuse me, I can do that if you want.”

  I popped my head up, almost at an unnatural angle and looked at him for a moment. “Yeah. Do, please.”

  He nodded and made some notes on a tablet as I let my forehead slam back into the table with perhaps a little too much force.

  Raccoon's Gardening Guide.