Tyler normally hated sunrises, but on that hot June morning, as he sheathed his daggers and wiped the blood from his hands, the sickly sterile yellow of dawn was almost bearable. Gleams thrown from broken windows, ripped clothing blowing in the breeze, corpses snoozing in the street. The night’s treasures brought to bear, made grotesque by the intruding daytime. It was garish at best, hideous at worst. A travesty, the torn canvas of the Mona Lisa!

A cigarette found its way to Tyler’s mouth and he lit it, suppressed a cough that might’ve indicated lung cancer if hadn’t been for the frustratingly persistent curse of immortality. A flask found its way to his lips and he drank, grimacing in ecstasy as the cheap liquor kissed his throat.

It really was amazing how fast things could go to . A few days ago this street had been a regular old college town main street. Hell, Tyler was pretty sure it was called Main Avenue. Fitting to the point of being a trope. But that was just how life was. Cliche name or not, Main Avenue was bathed in crimson blood now, smeared by the black excrement of a false god with too much power. Brown brick academic buildings ransacked by the monsters, former hideouts for the survivors that hadn’t managed to get off campus before everything collapsed. Light posts broken down to give the zombies more darkness, car tires slashed and engines wrecked to prevent escape. A bonafide wasteland was what Bristol University had become.

Tyler walked through the corpses, pushing back the cloying pleasure of seeing so much death around him. Sweet homicide, succulent murder! The rot hadn’t begun yet, but he could smell it nonetheless, surrounding him, caressing him like the brutally loving arms of Jenny Death.

“Oh shut up, you ing freak,” Tyler muttered, sidestepping to avoid a tangle of spilled innards, “Control yourself.”

“Are you speaking to the dead again?” a flat, feminine voice asked from behind. Tyler didn’t have to look to see who it was.

Soft, low footsteps drew up beside him, and he dipped his head in greeting. A tiny figure in oversized clothes, purple shadows beneath soulless eyes, violet-gold streams of mobile tattoo patterned across the face and scalp. The infamous Evanie Eanon. Despite the night’s work, defying all reason and logic, she’d managed to keep those idiotic twin pigtails intact. Summer would be happy about that.

“The usual,” Tyler said, wagging his head and ashing his cigarette, “The usual.”

Evanie nodded. She wasn’t a girl of many words. That was part of the reason Tyler liked her.

“How’d your night go?” he asked, tapping the metal rim of his flask.

“Summer and I took down exactly twenty-four more of the Ekimu houses,” Evanie said in her monotone, referring to the Sirdar. Tyler didn’t bother correcting her anymore. The vernacular of her homeworld was, apparently, an unchangeable aspect of her personality.

“Unfair that you get to work together. Only sixteen for me,” Tyler said, shaking his head. Unlike her plucky girlfriend, Evanie didn’t really have a competitive spirit; she wasn’t gloating, just talking about things she knew were appropriate for conversation. Most were disturbed by the young girl’s robotic mannerisms, but then again, most would be disturbed by a lot of things in Tyler’s life.

“Where’s Summer?”

“She is making tea for me,” Evanie said, corners of her small mouth turning upward slightly. The marks on her skin began to flow faster, a sign of excitement.

“Well, hopefully she’s making coffee, too.”

Without a question to prompt further conversation, Evanie fell silent, allowing Tyler to return to his thoughts as they resumed their march down the battlefield.

What they were seeing here had the depressing excitement of Multiversal Decay. The inevitable drift of civilization toward collapse, the moment where the dam broke and the innocents were drowned in a flood of things they didn’t understand. Unlike a lot of the other cases Tyler had seen - civil unrest leading to rebellions, natural disasters that leveled cities, genetically engineered diseases running rampant - this particular apocalypse really was out of nowhere. Nobody, not even the all-seeing eye of the American government (God bless them!) could have seen this coming. That was probably why Tyler felt so bad, despite the little private edging sessions his curse forced him to endure at the night’s end.

This premature destruction was widespread and total. From what he’d seen of the news, the entire country was under siege. Mostly places with high population densities, but that’s how it always started when it came to invasions. The Midwest was doing alright, but the West Coast was getting hit hard.

Normally, Tyler and his crew would have grabbed what they needed from this world, then gotten the out, but something compelled him to stay and help. He’d call it human decency, had he still considered himself a human.

“Hey! You two!” a deep voice called from ahead. “Stop!”

Tyler’s head shot up, annoyed. No part of him was surprised to see a good old officer of the law standing there. And he really was the perfect portrait of an American “peace” officer. Blue uniform straining to contain his girth, thick, bristly mustache dropping over his lips, clean-shaven head giving him the appearance of a pale thumb.

“Don’t you know this is a restricted area?” the cop demanded, rushing toward them as fast as his fat legs could allow. Tyler felt his annoyance shift to anger; this man showed no respect for the dead, trampling over the sleepers as if they were trash.

Tyler sighed. He didn’t really want to get into it with this guy. There was a lot going on, they were both busy people, and-

With a gasp, the cop stumbled to a halt a few feet away, drawing his gun and aiming it directly at Evanie.

“You’re one of those freaks, aren’t you?” he said.

Evanie blinked passively and looked to Tyler, who gave a shrug.

“She’s a freak, yeah, but not a  particularly dangerous one,” Tyler said. Then, drawing from his cigarette and thinking, “Well, that’s not exactly true, but she’s not evil or anything. Anymore. Mostly.”

“What?” the cop demanded, sweat glimmering on his brow. “Put your hands up!”

Evanie lifted her arms halfway so that her hands were level with her head. Tyler snorted at the sight, wondering if she’d ever been arrested before.

“Alright, we’ve had a long night, and honestly I just wanna go get something to eat,” Tyler said, reaching for his flask. “Can we just head out of here and call it?”

“I said put your ing hands up!” the cop hollered, training the unsteady barrel of his gun on Tyler now.

Tyler sighed and obeyed. Well, at least he hadn't seen the-

“What are those on your waist?” the cop demanded, gesturing with his pistol. Tyler groaned.

“Daggers, what else would they be?” Tyler said, dropping his hands, “Listen, can we just not do this? I’m really not in the mood.”

“You’re both under arrest,” the man said, shuffling closer, jowls quivering. “Take the belt off, and throw it to me, you piece of .”

“Calling me a piece of is kinda uncalled for,” Tyler said, undoing his belt and dropping it to the street. His daggers clattered against the pavement, leaving a faint metallic ring reverberating through the air, subtle shimmers of lavender trailing from beneath their sheaths. Tyler drew his leg back, paused, then locked eyes with the cop.

The man’s eyes were a bright blue, the piercing kind, backed by a screen of self-assuredness that came from his position of authority. A thin screen indeed. A veneer, really, little more than a coating of gold paint on a rusted brass doorknob. In a way, it was just affirming what Tyler already knew, but he liked to be sure.

All this Tyler read through those brief few seconds of eye contact, and by the look on the cop’s face, he knew it too. 

“Yeah, I’m done playing along,” Tyler said, shaking his head and relaxing his leg. “Evanie?”

The cop opened fire. A void of yellow and purple sprung up in front of him, extending like tendrils from her left bicep and forearm and spreading into a wide funnel. The report of each bullet was lost in an infinite echo. The cop screamed, emptied his gun into the abyss, then turned and ran.

Tyler bent to pick up his belt. “Alright, cool, I think that’s-”

    The cop screamed again, louder this time, sound warped into sharp highs and baritone lows as time and space convened around him. The void drew in, momentarily capturing his form, the outline of a trashing bulbous man entangled by several dimensions at once. Then he was gone, thinning into a disc that retracted back to Evanie. The marks on her arms thrummed with delight and rejoined the flow across her flesh.

    Tyler paused, let out an exaggerated sigh, and redid his belt buckle.

    “I feel like that was a bit excessive,” he said, taking a long-overdue drink from his flask. “I don’t think Summer would approve.”

    Evanie smiled in her classically unhinged way - the way she always smiled after a kill - and let out a barking giggle. “Summer isn’t here, is she?”

    “Bold of you to assume I won’t tell her.”

    Evanie paused.

    Tyler chuckled at the questioning look on the young girl’s face. If he ignored the fact that she held an eldritch god inside her, he could almost see her as an innocent kid. “I can be persuaded to keep my lips sealed if you’re buying breakfast.”

    Evanie shook her head. “I have no money.”

    “Then convince Summer to do it,” Tyler said, waving his hand. “Don’t try to get out of this one.”

    No answer. Shocking. Tyler and Evanie walked, cresting the sloped end of the avenue. The elevation here gave a brief glimpse at some of the standard New Jersey topography that Tyler was oh so fond of. Two-lane highways crowded by green overgrowth, a wide river running adjacent, neighborhoods crammed wherever space was available.

The only thing missing was the usual slog of midday traffic, but considering the circumstances, that was to be expected. In some other where and when, Tyler had known a university like this, and it had been pretty nice, all things considered. To watch a place similar to it become a haunted ghost town brought him a distant, nostalgic melancholy that he’d prefer not to dwell on.

    “Oh, I almost forgot,” Tyler said just before he cracked open his second flask. “Did you and Summer manage to send out that message last night?”

    Evanie nodded. “I do not know who will answer the call, but it was received. I’m sure some of them will show up.”

    “Good. We don’t even need a lot of people. Just enough to keep the casualties at a minimum,” Tyler said, satisfied.

He hated to ask for help - especially in a fight that technically wasn’t even his - but he could sense that something big was going on here. It was a just hunch, but he’d learned to trust his gut. It was one of the few reliable tools he had in this cruel, uncaring multiverse. Either way, calling backup was a win. If his gut was right - if this was another skirmish of the Moonlight Wars - they might be able to win it, gain some traction on the enemy. If not, he’d just saved a bunch of people from becoming slime-monsters. Granted, the latter possibility really relied on Sooyoung and Seulgi Stardust’s success, but it was a good deed nonetheless.

    “In a way,” Evanie said suddenly, a look of intense concentration coming upon her face, as if she were calculating. “You owe me now.”

    Tyler rolled his eyes. “You don’t eat, and Summer makes you all the tea you want. Plus, it seems like you’re forgetting the time you gave me ing rubbing alcohol to drink.”

    Evanie scrunched her brow, cocked her head to the side, and frowned. “Yes. I guess you’re right.”

    Tyler laughed, threw the of his fourth cigarette on the ground, and continued on.

---------------------------------------------------

Sorry for the OC content, but I wanted to give you guys a little taste of what Tyler and Evanie are like as standalone characters. They (along with Summer) won't play huge roles in the last parts of the story, but I also needed to provide the main cast with some backups to help protect the planet. Fans of my older content will be happy to find out who Evanie was contacting through those messages (;.

(Also I swear Evanie is smol and cute and doesn't just kill indiscriminately...)

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