Seven years ago.

  Morielle Aisling, a fourteen year-old knight in training, was throwing basketballs. At least, she thought they were basketballs. All the pre-Deviation sports kind of blend into one. The ball (made of black and white hexagons) was the size of her head, and it fit through the hoop, so did it really make a difference?

  She threw. It sailed through the air. Miss.

  It bounced off the floor, filling the gymnasium with the echo of her failure, alongside the slow dripping of rainwater leaking through the patched-up roof. She walked across the faded out floor marks and picked it up.

  How could she work it?

  The idea was sensible enough: animate the ball as it left her fingers and control its trajectory. The only problem was she didn’t know how to control an animation when she stopped holding an object.

  She focused on the basketball(?) until it grew blank white eyes with tiny black pupils and a smiling mouth to nowhere.

  “Gary,” it said.

  Okay, she thought, it’s animated. She launched the ball, throwing it overhand like a spear.

  “Gaaaaaaa!” screamed the ball. Mori tried to focus, picturing it turning mid-air and forcing its way down the hoop–

  It bounced off the wall, deanimated. Mori sighed and went to pick it up. She couldn’t think fast enough, but how does she speed up her brain? That’s not what her Deviation can do.

  Mori’s ears stood up as, stepping through the doorway, was her teacher already holding the ball. Miss Lucia “Fitness Beast” Freer.

  The teacher was of average height, well-built and had the skin of a snake but long-pointed ears. She also had training weights strapped to her wrists, and ankles. And elbows and knees. In fact, the entirety of all her limbs were covered in weights, yet no sweat marked her brow.

  “First of all,” she said, “this is a football. You kick it, but while she can certainly kick a lot harder with your Bio-deviation, I still doubt you’d get it in the hoop.”

  “Sorry Fitness Beast,” said Mori. Her teacher insisted on being called by her epithet. Knights work hard to earn their names and, if they get a good one, like to use it often.

  She walked to the gym’s closet to swap the balls out. “What are you working on? Training finished hours ago.” She threw a real basketball to Mori.

  “I’m trying to animate and throw at the same time.” Mori caught the ball, animated it and rolled it on the floor.

  The little face got smushed then came back up, saying “--ary –Gar–ry” as it rolled in circles around Mori and Beast.

  “Making it roll in a circle isn’t a problem. It’s simple.” She snapped her fingers and the basketball rolled back to her like a happy dog. “But when I throw it,” she did so and it screamed again, bouncing off the wall in a perfect arc, and Fitness Beast grabbed it without moving then handed it back, “I can’t turn it during flight.”

  The Beast thought for a moment, then asked Mori to stand on one end of the gym.

  “Do you have the energy to run?” she said.

  “Yeah, we mostly studied the history and geography of local kingdoms today. I’m itching to move.”

  “Good. Run from this side to the next, but on every lap, I want you to take your animation–”

  “They insist on being called Gary.”

  Beast paused.

  “Sure, animate the Gary and roll it alongside you when you get half way across. But don’t slow down. Sprint.”

  Mori nodded. She took her place, and ran, her feet pounding on the hard floor. Halfway, she brought the basketball to life but when she tried to keep it next to her, it rolled away to a stop.

  The Gary smiled like an idiot. If it had arms, she knew it would cheer her.

  “Again,” said Fitness Beast.

  So Mori did. Twice, a third time, a fourth. She did a little better on the second try, then on the third she did too well and the Gary rolled into her feet and knocked her over, but on the fourth she was so tired her focus slipped and it didn’t animate at all. She skidded to a stop next to Beast, falling to the ground.

  She slapped the floor, frustrated. This should be easy. She joined the knighthood as a prodigy but now her classmates are getting ahead of her, day by day.

  Fitness Beast tapped Mori’s shoulder.

  “Okay, try it again,” she said.

  “Why? I suck at this, I don’t know what to do different to make it work,” said Mori, but she picked up the ball anyway. She didn’t believe her own words, she had to be better.

  “It takes concentration to activate your, err, Garys, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then, if you can’t concentrate on two things at once, when should you order the Gary?”

  Mori thought, and an idea flowered in seconds. Her ears stood straight as she hopped back up.

  “Thank you! I figured it out,” she said as she prepared for another lap. She wiped the sweat off her brow as the ball came to life once again. “When you leave my hand, roll next to me, got it?”

  “Gary,” it whispered in a way only Mori thought was badass.

  She practically launched herself forward with how much vigour she ran with and when she let the basketball go, it rolled and rolled, spinning on its own animated will. She reached the opposite side of the gym, pushed off the wall and ran back, then in circles, then zigzags, not slowing down and not looking toward the Gary that followed after her. Its voice rang out like a kid.

  She finished exhausted and collapsed. The Gary rolled next to her, then turned back to normal, faceless. Fitness Beast walked up to her.

  “Better?”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  “Yeah, thanks teacher,” she said and sat up with a wince. “I need to focus on a Gary to order it, but I can’t do that while distracted. When I sprint or throw, I’m thinking about my body, not the order. But if I order it beforehand… it works.”

  “Good job Mori.” Fitness Beast pulled her student off the floor. “If you perfect the timing, you will be able to command a Gary in the most intense situations.” She sighed. “Now, let’s see if I can get you to stop sprinting like the average person and get you to start hopping, then you would be so much faster.”

  Present

  Mori hopped easily out of the Talpid’s grasp. Unfortunately, she couldn’t get away from it. Richard, burdened by a skirt of tentacles around his waist, was exceptionally fast in water but slower on land so she had to stay close and taunt the sack of furry muscle while the both of them steered it away from civilians.

  Neither of them knew if the short-haired huntress would handle the other Talpid by herself, but Mori saw her guide the creature into the forest and hoped she knew what she was doing.

  “Do you have a plan?” said Richard.

  They were all on the road. The Talpid turned its head, sniffing, and was about to run toward a pig-faced child on the pavement when Mori picked up a rock.

  “Curve and hit the snout,” she said.

  “Grock!” said the Gary as it came to life. It spun through the air, twisting the shot so Mori hit her mark. The Talpid flinched and focused on her.

  “Yeah, keep throwing rocks at it until I can think of something better. Keep everyone else out the way.”

  Richard went ahead and shouted to make room, leaving Mori alone on the empty pothole covered road with the Talpid. It was impossible to know what they were thinking, as the creatures didn’t have facial expressions, just two small beady eyes to stare into her soul. Mori shivered.

  What could she use? Rocks were okay to get its attention but did nothing. She needed something bigger.

  The creature charged at her, bearing its long claws, strong enough to tear through concrete and as it did, Mori got an idea. She touched the floor, let it get close, then leaped as high as she could, somersaulting over its head. When she landed, she brushed off her jacket.

  “Bite its foot,” she said. The pothole under the Talpid came alive, a ring of teeth forming around its ankle to clamp down. It squealed, letting Mori think. She couldn’t knock it out, as a weight big enough to do so would also be too heavy for her to move. The fiery explosion of the clay oven made her consider burning the Talpid, but that would be too cruel, and now she was hungry again.

  The Talpid stabbed at the ground, carving up the aged tarmac and gouged the Gary to pieces, but even when its foot was free, it continued to tear up the ground.

  The mole people were at least stupid, which made trapping them easy, but their claws ensured they wouldn’t be trapped for long. So she has to trap it and knock it out.

  But how?

  When the creature remembered Mori existed, it lunged for her. She jumped onto its head and scratched herself right where the skin met her horns, like a nervous tick.

  “You can’t make this easy can you?” she said and rubbed her knuckles into its skull. When her fist came away, her fingers were covered in dirt. “Oh, do you also get dirt baths?”

  It swung again and she dodged while brushing her hands of the mole dirt, which finally gave her an idea.

  She turned tail and hopped off, not before throwing another homing rock at its snout. The Talpid dropped to all fours and skittered at an alarming speed to catch her. At the end of the road was a lamppost. She grabbed it, animated and the ‘Glamp’ swung her with a head-bang before the Talpid crashed into it head first, giving Mori the time she needed to find what she wanted.

  A high fence, a crisscross of metal wires, blocked her path but it didn’t matter, so long as it wasn’t a wall. She grabbed the fence and lifted it half a metre off the ground. The smell of salt filled the air.

  “Come on, animate and lift,” she said, breathing hard.

  The cartoon eyes popped out the top and a mouth formed out of the wires.

  “Gence.”

  “I know, now lift.”

  Despite having no arms to speak of, the Gence gave the strong impression of hitching itself up like a skirt, creating a gap as high as Mori’s shoulder letting her crouch under. But as she did so, a squeal and pitter-patter of heavy feet sped toward her. One of her ears got caught on the fence as she was headbutted in the gut and thrown back. Pain seared from her head to her torso. She lost her footing on the edge of a steep hill and struggled to balance.

  “This is okay, all okay,” she said, waving her hands back and forth to regain control.

  The Gence was shredded down and the Talpid stepped up to her but before she could hop away was smacked by a bony hand. She heard a crack in her chest. Mori rolled down the hill, and in a moment of sheer stubbornness, dug her fingers into the earth.

  “Shake and tremble.”

  The face that grew from the ground was unlike the happier Garys. Its eyes were deeply furrowed, the mouth not full of white teeth in a rictus smile, but clenched shut. It grumbled, drew back and the hill tilted, forcing the Talpid to roll down after her. She managed to roll to the side and let it go crashing into the basin below in a huge splash.

  The sign above the fence said ‘Fresh Sea Baths and Bathing Emporium.’

  “I get weighed down by water, cause my fur soaks it up like nothing else,” said Mori, although every word made stabbing pains in her chest, “so I got thinking that maybe you did too.”

  It thrashed and spun, the huge webbed paddles that made its hands and feet splashing Mori. It was panicked, unable to focus, and the high sun dazzled its beady eyes further.

  Mori crawled back up the slope to the fence while she heard the rabid swimming behind her. Time, it should give her time, now all she needed to do was find Richard.

  As she crawled, she found blood on her hand, then another drop fell into her palm. It came from her head, and the sharp pain in her ear finally hit. Between that and the nausea of broken ribs, her head swam making her collapse. Her head felt like lead, but she still dared to look back to see how much time she still had.

  Her heart sank.

  The Talpid, obviously scared by the water, dug into the concrete basin to push up the edge. Its darkened brown fur, though soaked, didn’t slow it down in the slightest. It hated the water but wasn’t weak to it like her. Once it regained its senses, Mori was going to be done for, and the Talpid will get away.

  “Oh heck,” she said. Her head dropped down and moving suddenly felt like the greatest challenge. “I couldn’t get an easy one, could I?”

  She trained as hard as she could in the knighthood. She aimed to make a difference, but while everyone else knew what they wanted to do, she couldn’t form an ambition more concrete than simply ‘be a good person.’ It was a shame, really, to watch as all her acquaintances flew ahead in progress leaving her behind to wander on her pilgrimages.

  Will Fitness Beast be disappointed in her lack of training?

  Will her parents be proud of her?

  Then Mori thought of a pretty face, one with long silver hair and the most beautiful pink eyes. Will she ever get to see her again?

  The crunch of the earth told her it was time. The mole person towered above her, shivering. Most creatures didn’t seek to kill, only protect. Mori hoped this was true of the Talpids.

  It raised a paw.

  “Damn,” she said.

  “Mori!”

  A writhing mass flew over her, barrelled into the Talpid and both crashed back into the pool. Fists and tentacles flew, smashing the beast into every sensitive spot: snout, eyes, gut.

  Richard, unlike his slow plod on land, flew in water. He stuck a tentacle to the basin floor to whip around and deliver a sharp kick to the Talpid’s feet, throwing it upside down. The more it panicked in the water, the more Richard thrived.

  He danced a waltz, which the Talpid stumbled through, tripping over itself.

  It unleashed a high-pitched squeal, letting Richard attach two of his limbs to either side of its head and pull himself in for a final knockout blow: a knee to the face. The beast tumbled back, and collapsed with a thud. Richard dragged its head out the water to keep it from drowning.

  Mori, through all the pain, was astonished. She’d never seen him move like that. He can’t move like that.

  When he reached her, his hands and tentacles moved quickly, removing bandages and scissors from a satchel on his back.

  “Mori, what ze hell were you zinking? Where are you hurt?”

  She was flipped onto her back, and she tried to gesture to where it hurt but she ended up pointing everywhere. He bandaged the ear where the cut was obvious, and left her to rest on the floor as there wasn’t much he could do for a broken rib.

  “Did you like my plan?” asked Mori.

  “Zat was the plan,” said Richard, “to almost get yourself killed by luring it to a bath?”

  “I thought it might slow it down, but I knew you would beat it if I couldn’t. I didn’t expect you to move like that though.” Mori cried. The tears burnt hotter than her own blood. She laughed. “You’re so strong Richard,” she said, the tears came on faster so she covered her face before he could see. “Since when did you get so strong?”