I Swear I’m Still the Hero!

It was strange, in a way that Luna knew she probably should have examined more closely than she actually was.

Her friends were screaming. Not constantly nor without pause, but often enough that the sound had become part of the background atmosphere of the house over the past several hours. There were moments of strained silence where teeth were clenched and hands gripped furniture hard enough to leave dents, and there were moments where the pain simply overwhelmed composure and tore itself free in sharp, ragged cries.

And Luna did not seem to care as much as she felt like she should.

Well, that was not entirely fair, she did care. She did not enjoy hearing them in agony. There was a part of her that flinched instinctively when Emily’s voice had cracked into something almost feral during the worst of it, or when Samuel had begged for just a second for it to stop. She didn’t like that part.

But it only lasted half an hour, an hour at most, and on the other side of that hour was perfection.

On the other side of that hour was the body they had always wanted, shaped precisely to their desires, polished and refined and elevated beyond normal biological limits. It was a small price to pay, she reasoned, especially since they had all agreed to it. She had explained that it would hurt. Umbra had not lied about that part. The pain was part of the restructuring. Flesh and bone and something deeper had to be rewritten.

They had consented, which was the most important part.

Umbra had left not long after giving Luna the knowledge of how to bestow the gift herself. There were more people to gather, more allies to prepare before the tyrannical knight and the oppressive angel inevitably made their move. Umbra had described them in grand, dramatic terms that Luna had absorbed eagerly, and in the meantime she had been entrusted with something that felt almost sacred.

The ability to transform others, and it had been surprisingly easy.

Luna had expected incantations or complicated gestures or some ancient language that would burn her throat as she spoke it. Instead, it had felt like pushing a force mentally. She had focused on the shape of what her friend wanted, imagined it clearly, and then pressed her will outward. Something within her chest, the warm coiled presence of the mana core Umbra had installed, responded immediately.

Then the recipient’s body would begin to change.

It left Luna exhausted afterward, the way running a long distance might have once left her winded. She needed to sit down for a few minutes after each transformation, sometimes drink water, sometimes just breathe and let the warmth inside her settle back into a steady hum.

But the act itself had been shockingly simple, and the results had been, in her admittedly biased opinion, fantastic.

Of course, everyone hated the process. Of the five friends she had converted over the past few hours, every single one of them had cursed her at least once during the worst of it. There had been threats, and promises of revenge. There had been a thrown cushion that had nearly knocked over a lamp.

And yet, once the pain subsided and the shaking stopped and they had been able to stand and look at themselves properly, the mood had shifted completely.

They had been overjoyed.

She was standing now in the living room, which looked increasingly too small to contain them all, and surveying the results of her work with a strange sense of pride.

Emily was perhaps the most dramatic change. She was now a bubbly nightmare of a catgirl, barely one hundred and twenty centimetres tall, with glossy black ears that twitched at every sudden sound and a long, expressive tail that swayed behind her in quick, energetic arcs. Her eyes were large and luminous, almost unnaturally bright, and she seemed physically incapable of standing still for more than a few seconds at a time.

Harry had gone in a completely different direction. He was now a towering minotaur, broad-shouldered and solid, with dark curling horns and a presence that made the furniture look fragile by comparison. He kept bumping into the ceiling fan and apologizing profusely to it.

Jason, on the other hand, had chosen something closer to Luna herself. Where she resembled a succubus, all ink-black hair and subtle demonic elegance, he now looked like her mirrored counterpart. If she was a succubus, he was an incubus. They were not creatures of sensual hunger in the way stories sometimes told it, but there was something undeniably supernatural about their beauty. It was not merely aesthetic; it felt magnetic.

Sarah’s transformation had perhaps been the least surprising. With her gothic wardrobe and long-standing fascination with the macabre, becoming a tall and athletic-looking vampire had seemed almost inevitable. Her skin was pale in a way that looked intentional rather than sickly, and her eyes carried a faint crimson sheen in certain lighting. She did, in fact, feed on blood now. Or rather, she could. She had admitted that she liked the taste.

Only Rachel, who had insisted on becoming a dragon girl complete with scaled patches and a long, powerful tail, had volunteered to provide a sample.

They had disappeared into the guest room not long after that, and Luna had pointedly not investigated. They could have their fun before the fight came. There would be time for seriousness later.

Sam and Sam had been the last.

Samantha had barely hesitated. She had endured the pain with gritted teeth and watery eyes, but her focus had been singular. She wanted the transition, completely and irreversibly. When it was over, she looked like something out of a horror film, reminiscent of Samara Morgan with long dark hair cascading forward to partially obscure her face. Somehow she could see perfectly well through it, and beneath the curtain of hair she was undeniably beautiful in a haunting way.

Samuel had been more difficult.

He had paced. He had asked questions. He had nearly backed out twice. The temptation, however, had been too strong. A free and complete transition was not something easily dismissed, especially when Luna herself stood as living proof that it worked exactly as promised.

He had asked to become a lizard man.

Now he sat curled on the couch, newly scaled and long-tailed, adjusting slowly to claws and altered posture. His golden eyes blinked more often than necessary, as if recalibrating to the world.

Once he seemed steady enough, Luna clapped her hands together to gather attention.

“Okay, everyone,” she declared, trying to inject confidence into her voice. “Important business now.”

Emily’s ears perked up immediately.

“Oh, is this about the angel and knight stuff?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Luna replied. “They’re coming to kill Umbra and take our gifts away.”

There was a collective murmur at that.

Rachel folded her arms, her scaled tail flicking lazily behind her.

“You know,” she said thoughtfully, “when you call them ‘gifts,’ it makes us sound kind of like a cult.”

That earned a round of laughter, including from Luna herself.

“Yeah, I guess it does,” she admitted. “But I’m pretty sure Umbra is a god or something. I mean, she can do this for us.”

“Well, I’m in,” Sarah said immediately, brushing imaginary dust from her sleeve.

“Of course the witch is excited to be in a cult,” Harry rumbled.

“Hey, not cool,” Sarah shot back. “Paganism isn’t a cult.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Harry said quickly. “Just joking.”

Luna raised her hands slightly to bring them back on topic.

“Okay, focus. We need to fight against these interdimensional cops and send them packing back to wherever they came from. All of us can use magic now. And it’s really, really easy. I can show you.”

Samuel slowly raised a clawed hand from the couch.

“What’s up, Sammy?” Luna asked gently.

He swallowed.

“I don’t want to fight,” he said quietly. “I don’t like hurting people. I don’t think I can.”

For a moment, Luna frowned, not in anger but in thought.

“Hey,” she said after a second. “I’m not going to force you. This is dangerous, yeah. But we’re all stronger than you might think. You wouldn’t even have to be right in the middle of it. You could support us. Shields. Healing. Distractions. There’s more to a fight than punching someone.”

She stepped a little closer to him, her tail swaying slowly behind her.

“And we’re not the bad guys,” she added, with a conviction that felt solid in her chest. “We’re protecting what we were given.”

“I-I guess,” Samuel said slowly, still flexing his clawed fingers as if expecting them to disappear. “Is magic really that easy?”

Luna nodded immediately, perhaps a little too eagerly.

“Yeah! It’s kind of ridiculous, actually. It’s like… mini-omnipotence. You just think of an effect you want, and it happens.”

He blinked at her.

“That sounds… dangerous.”

“Well, yeah,” she admitted, waving a hand slightly. “You have to measure the power you’re using. Your mana isn’t infinite. It’s not like you can just decide to blow up a mountain and expect to walk away fine. Your mana pool is limited, and if you overdraw it you’ll exhaust yourself. Or worse, I think. Umbra didn’t get into the ‘worse’ part much.”

That did not reassure him.

“But for basic stuff?” she continued quickly. “It’s easy. If you want to make a shield, you just imagine it. Visualize the shape, the thickness, how it reacts to force. The more hits it takes and the longer you keep it up, the more mana it drains. It’s kind of like… stamina.”

Samuel frowned thoughtfully.

“So it’s not just ‘wish and it happens.’”

“Right,” Luna said. “It’s bounded. There are rules. Umbra gave me a crash course before she left, but honestly I’ll need to experiment more. There’s probably nuance I don’t get yet. But basically? We can do what we want, as long as it’s within those limits.”

“Oh,” he said quietly. “Okay.”

Luna beamed at him, her tail swishing behind her in a lazy arc.

Sarah stretched her arms over her head, fangs glinting faintly as she smirked.

“I’m cool to fight,” she said bluntly. “Fucking the pigs. From another world or not.”

Harry gave her a sideways look.

“That phrasing is deeply concerning,” he rumbled.

She waved him off.

“You know what I mean.”

Harry shrugged his massive shoulders, the motion making the couch creak ominously.

“Eh. I’ll follow all of you,” he said. “I don’t mind either way. Just as long as we don’t hurt innocents. That would be uncool.”

“Obviously,” Luna said quickly. “We’re not monsters.”

Rachel, who had been examining the sheen of her scaled forearm in the light, looked up.

“I wanna turn into a proper dragon,” she said, as if remembering something important.

Luna shrugged.

“That might be possible now that you have a mana core. Bigger transformations probably cost more, though. Maybe after this? I don’t know how long that would take or how much mana you’d burn.”

“Yeah, fair enough,” Rachel said. Then, after a beat, “I hope we don’t get taken to some secret lab and experimented on.”

Luna snorted.

“Pretty sure that’s like, America or China or something that would do that.”

“You never know,” Samantha said conspiratorially, brushing her hair out of her face. “Maybe we have men in black too, but we just don’t know it because they’re really good at hiding and being sneaky.”

“That’s not comforting,” Samuel muttered.

“I don’t want to be kidnapped,” Emily declared from her perch on the arm of the couch, her tail flicking dramatically. “I have too many hijinks planned.”

Before anyone could laugh, the front door slammed open with such force that it rebounded off the wall.

They all flinched.

Umbra stood framed in the doorway like a chaotic omen, hair windswept and clothing even more mismatched than before. She looked like someone who had sprinted through several backyards and possibly a thrift store in the same hour.

“I AM BACK!” she announced at full volume.

“Oh fuck, is that her?” Sarah asked under her breath.

“Yes!” Luna said excitedly, hurrying forward. “This is Umbra! The one who gave us the gift!”

“Yes, this is me,” Umbra said proudly, placing her hands on her hips. “New servants? Good! I made more. Some are smart still, some aren’t, but that’s okay. I have hundreds now!”

The room went very still.

“I feel the bad people coming,” Umbra continued rapidly, barely pausing for breath. “Will be here soon. Stay hiding for now. Will make more. Just wanted to check in and make sure you were doing a good job.”

Her gaze swept over the group, assessing them with open scrutiny. She tilted her head slightly.

“Could do with more bones and claws and things,” she mused aloud. “But smartapes have weird tastes, so it’s okay. Good job, Lulu.”

She walked over to Luna and patted her firmly on the head several times.

“Good girls get head pats!” she declared cheerfully. “Okay, going to make some soldiers with whatever I can find. Oh! Make more smart servants. Always need more!”

And just like that, as abruptly as she had arrived, Umbra turned and disappeared back into the night.

The door remained open, cool air drifting into the room and no one moved for several seconds. They all stared at the doorway as if expecting her to reappear and explain that she had been joking.

Finally, Emily cleared her throat.

“So,” she said slowly, ears twitching, “that was Umbra.”

No one disagreed.

Luna squeaked, drawing everyone’s attention.

“Did she just call me her good girl?”