The office itself was surprisingly welcoming. It seemed like the secretary already knew who we were, and it took all of ten seconds for the attorney himself to come out and greet us. I couldn't help but notice how much like a lawyer the man looked. If you were to construct some kind of two axis chart, with the stereotypical dreary accountant in one corner, the snazzy businessman in the opposite corner, and a regular dude in the bottom left, then this guy would be in the remaining, top right corner—the one where you put the big shot lawyers.

  I somehow ended up shaking his hand within the first five seconds, and another few seconds later, I found myself sitting in a quaint little office. It wasn't very big, and the two best words to describe it would be 'neat' and 'homey.' I was kind of impressed by that. How'd he manage to make it feel both cozy and so perfectly organized? There were just the right number of silly little bric-a-bracs.

  "Alright, Miss Huntingfield, it looks like we have most of what we need to get started." He had a few different folders of papers and an open laptop. "As I understand it, your current intention is to become an active Guardian of some kind—am I correct?"

  I nodded. "Yes. Probably just a regular double-A-G member, unless you have some kind of other recommendation. I'm not looking to enlist in the military."

  "Alright, then. That should be easy enough to work with." He typed something on his laptop. I assumed it was probably just a login or something, as it was only a few different keystrokes. "I'm not sure if you're aware, but I've been a Guardian for some time myself." He turned away from the screen to talk to me directly. "Never an active one, mind you, but it is the reason I wound up practicing Guardian law."

  "Hmm." I put on a sly smile. "I suppose the reasoning was that it would give you a soft advantage getting and working with clients? Social factors and all that?"

  He laughed. "I'd be a liar if I told you that wasn't a critical factor in the decision. The whole world was just starting to stabilize around that time, and I saw a great opportunity to establish myself early. I dare say it even worked out in the end."

  Yeah. Worked out indeed. I had to imagine he was doing alright these days. I decided I'd look him up later. I wonder what your net worth is, Mr.—Keith Nelson, right. I was also curious if he'd been involved in anything big. I was starting to regret not paying more attention to whatever David had told me before this meeting. Regardless, neither of us were here for me to sit around pondering over David's professional networking. We were here to get a bunch of shit sorted out, and that's what we proceeded to do.

  The very first part of the actual meeting was mostly just him confirming more stuff. Then, we moved on to sorting through a few piles of miscellaneous crap that needed to be sorted through for a variety of boring reasons. Mostly, Nelson was the one doing the sorting things out bit—that's what we were paying him for, and I was just there to occasionally confirm something, sign something, assent to something, or hear him give a quick, watered down explanation of what he was doing and why. Boring.

  Things started to get a little more interesting later on. It corresponded to the part where we started processing AAG stuff—most of it was still kind of boring, but at least it felt like it was building the foundations for something actually exciting. Finally, we got to a part where he poked around on his laptop and asked me about potential Guardian names. "We probably won't claim one for you today, but it's been my experience that people like to have a good starting place to start thinking about it."

  Oh, well that's convenient. One other thing that I'd done over the weekend was to check whether the 'Valkyrie' pseudonym was being used by anyone well known. My searches didn't come up with anything definitive, so I assumed whoever had taken it wasn't anyone particularly well known for anything. Nelson said he had access to a database of registered and potentially trademarked Guardian aliases—that was one of the things he'd pulled up on the computer—so I was curious to see what he had to say regarding the possibility of acquiring it.

  "Valkyrie, huh? I agree with you that it's most likely in use already, but let's see." He typed something in—'Valkyrie,' I would assume—and took a few seconds to stare at whatever popped up. "Huh. That's interesting. It looks like no one has actually registered that name, or even a minor variant of it." Wait, what? I blinked. Surely that can't be right—nah, he's definitely about to follow it up with some reason why it's a bad choice, actually. "There are, however, eight different Guardians using it as part of a name. Crimson Valkyrie, Midnight Valkyrie, Emerald Valkyrie—huh. Almost all of them are effectively associating it with some kind of color."

  "So that means I could register the name, right?" I didn't see why not, but I was also expecting there to be some kind 'but' he'd hit me with.

  "In theory, yes." He paused. "In practice, also yes. That being said, you would want to at least consider following the trend these eight others have started. Some of them might have simply assumed the same thing both of us did—that 'Valkyrie' alone would already be taken—but there's actually a good reason for adding something else to make it more specific. Registering it as your Guardian alias is one thing, but most career Guardians will want to also enforce a trademark. That should still be possible, here, but it runs into the issue of scope."

  Scope? "What do you mean by that?"

  Nelson folded his hands on the desk in front of him. "Trademarks aren't universally enforceable. It would cause some big problems if they were, because it's obviously quite common for companies and individuals to use names and iconography taken from the public domain. In the specific context of your Guardian image, it could still work, but something as simple, with such a long history, and as culturally widespread as 'Valkyrie' is generally going to be a lot harder to keep to yourself, so to speak. I have to assume at least some of the other Guardians on that list were taking this into consideration."

  Okay, yeah—that does make sense. Damn. On one hand, taking it anyway would be a bit of a power move. I wouldn't be the 'Golden Valkyrie' or the 'Iron Valkyrie' or anything like that—I'd just be the Valkyrie, and those other eight would just have to cope with playing second fiddle if they ever did become relevant. The more I thought about it, the more I was tempted to spit in the face of the potential future headaches I could run into—assuming I became too famous to ignore the problem—and to just brazenly snatch up such a powerful and valuable name.

  And, honestly—I would just be lying to myself if I said I would probably think of something better. Future me had the chance to get annoyed with the choice, but deep down, I didn't feel like I'd truly regret it. I also felt like I'd end up always regretting my decision if I took literally anything else. Alright. No point wasting time or giving any other little shit the chance to steal it out from under me. If this guy doesn't say it's a truly terrible idea—go for it.

  "Is it a bad idea?" Nelson waggled his hand. "I wouldn't put it that way, so I suppose you can say the answer is 'not really.' What I will say is that it's something to be aware of, as it definitely has a higher potential to cause problems."

  That settled it for me. By the way the man arched his eyebrow, I think he could tell I'd already made my decision. "I want to go ahead and just take it, then. Yes, I also know that Guardian powersets are flexible, and that it's way too early to be able to actually back up any particular way of branding myself, but—you ever get a feeling where you just know that you'll regret making any other choice than the one right in front of you?"

  The man nodded. "Yes, I'd say that I do. It sounds like you've already thought through any other concerns I might raise—I'd still like to caution some time and patience, but it doesn't matter if you've already reached a decision. We should be able to get it taken care of right now, actually, if you're sure you're ready."

  "Just to clarify—I can change an alias later, right?" I really had no intention of doing so, but it felt like something I was supposed to ask. Not asking it would feel like some kind of—I wasn't sure. I suppose it felt like it would be going off script, and that was a feeling I almost always avoided.

  "Yes, that's correct. It's a small hassle, though, and I would never recommend making a habit of it."

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  "Great." Sitting forward, I rubbed my hands together. "Then let's do it."

  I left the office in high spirits. It sounded like everything that we needed to get taken care of had been taken care of, and any work that still needed to be done was something for my new Guardian law representative and not something that had to involve me. Most importantly was the fact that I had, almost as if by some miracle, gone ahead and snagged Valkyrie for my Guardian name. I was still somewhat shocked that it had been so easy.

  Second most important was the fact that there had been no need to worry, at least not for anything we'd discussed today. He never even asked about any kind of abilities I'd developed, and there had only been a few questions related to the incursion or the circumstances of my supposed 'awakening' itself. Ironically, the majority of the stuff I did get grilled on was mundane, normal person stuff that I could have answered equally well before any of this had happened.

  I knew I still had to stay wary, of course, and it definitely wouldn't be the last time I'd meet with the guy. Honestly, it all feels weirdly easy. I would expect being a fugitive Anathema running around LA would be super challenging and full of crazy shit going catastrophically wrong at nearly every turn. So far, though, it just—hadn't. Everything past the point where I drove my car over a cliff like a Goddamn idiot had been bizarrely normal.

  Hell, I even killed a guy! I hadn't just become an Anathema—I'd pretty much committed a non-premeditated murder. Literally nothing had come of that, though, except for the fact that I had lost my phone and car and that David had to deal with some insurance people. Like, seriously, what the hell? As we returned to the car and David started driving to a nearby restaurant we'd picked out for lunch, I started experiencing an unfamiliar and disorienting feeling.

  It was like the slightly surreal feeling of passing through airport security without taking your shoes off, except if you were smuggling through several pounds of cocaine stuffed up your butt, and then amplified by a factor of a hundred. Not that I've ever smuggled drugs anywhere by stuffing them up the rear chimney.

  Even weird was that I almost wanted something to suddenly go wrong. Everything working out in a way that was so simple and uneventful was—and there was no other way to put it—deeply disconcerting.

  The days passed, and the shoe never dropped. I continued practicing my ability to mimic arbitrary sounds, and by the time a full week had passed, I felt like I could do a pretty good job at replicating just about anything. Well, anything so long as it was a conceptually singular sound. Moving from single musical notes to something like chords was my new challenge, and it proved to be a significant one. It was doable, though, and I knew eventually I'd even be able to 'play back' two completely different sounds at the same time. For the time being, though, parroting back a complete music recording was well beyond my ability.

  I also managed to get my voice sounding increasingly natural. Not one to waste an opportunity, however, I made sure that the 'default' I returned to was still a bit higher pitched, graceful, and melodious. I had the opportunity to completely change the way I sounded. Why not take it?

  I also tried finding out more about chameliums, but I didn't have any luck there. Sure, there were a few more sources I managed to dig up, but they didn't tell me anything new. I also brushed up on my understanding of Anathema, Incursions, and Guardians in general. Most of it was stuff I already knew, at least at one point, but I thought committing more of it to memory and refining my overall understanding of the basics was a good idea.

  Unfortunately, my real dad, Daniel, never showed up during that time. I couldn't even contact him, because he never gave me any way to reliably contact him in the first place. He'd only ever show up when he felt like it, and it was rare for his visits to even come with any kind of forewarning.

  I also went in person to an AAG administrative office on Wednesday. Keith—the attorney—accompanied me, and the two main reasons for being there were to verify my identity and do a few basic tests. The first part was pretty trivial, especially with a legal representative present, so it was the second part that massively worried me. If they had any kind of mandatory Anathema testing, I was basically fucked, and even if they didn't, under no conditions was I comfortable letting them take any kind of biological samples. Even testing the stuff like physical strength testing psyched me out a little. I was definitely way too strong for a Tier 1 Guardian, let alone one who'd only just awakened.

  Fortunately, everything I'd obsessively read up on beforehand indicated that they probably wouldn't check that I wasn't secretly an Anathema trying to infiltrate their ranks. I assumed it was because that wasn't something anyone thought would ever happen, and once again, random people arguing on the internet turned out to be right. They didn't put me through any kind of Anathema detector.

  Those were definitely a thing, though, and I was pretty sure they even had some on-site. It meant I would never get to fly on an airplane again—even passengers of private jets had to go through their own special airport security checkpoint, and David didn't even have one. That fact would be kind of surprising, at least to anyone who didn't personally know the guy.

  The issue of biological samples in general proved to be more difficult. All I managed to do was kick the can down the road by lying about having already made an appointment with a more specialized lab to get that kind of work done. That really was a thing—which was why I was able to pull it off—but I didn't actually have anything set up. Like I said, I really was just kicking the can down the road, and I only had a month before it would come due in one way or another.

  More shit for future Alex to worry about.

  The only thing left, then, was testing my abilities. That meant a variety of physical tests—a bunch of different strength measurements, speed, and so on—a basic regeneration test, and finally, demonstrating the effect of any minor esoteric abilities that might have started forming.

  There was absolutely nothing I could do about my regeneration. It wasn't something I had any amount of conscious control over, and I already knew it was crazy fast compared to a normal Tier 1 Guardian. The research I did before the appointment only confirmed it. As far as being an alleged new Guardian went, I was a regenerative freak of nature. Thankfully, it wasn't so extreme as to be totally implausible. What it did was put me a little under four standard deviations over the mean—the lady testing me actually said that—which basically meant I was close to the limit of what 'should' be possible.

  With that in mind, I had to massively undersell myself on literally everything else. For the strength testing, I did everything in the most lazy, low-effort way I possibly could. I also tried to make it look like I was straining, though. Even then, my results were apparently around average. Given that I'd pretended to cap out the moment a weight felt harder to lift than a carton of eggs used to, that was—kind of ridiculous, honestly.

  Finally, I just straight bullshitted the part about esoteric abilities. I admitted to experiencing a 'limited ability to shape metal while touching it' during the incursion, but then claimed that I hadn't been able to figure out how to do it again. That was good enough for them, and I was sent away with a reminder to get that medical data sent in as soon as it was available. Sorry, future Alex.

  The only other thing of note was getting transferred into the special 'Guardian Program' at my uni. It was sort of like the Guardian equivalent of an honors college—I was still in the same degree program and most of my courses would be the same, but it also provided some unique resources, as well as just being a convenient way for any Guardian students to clump together. I'd also kept in touch with Katherine, of course, and it turned out she went to the same school. We were also both juniors—and even both engineering students—but our specific majors did end up being different.

  While I was one of the few people in the still-niche field of materials science, she was part of the army of electrical students. The only engineering department that was larger was computer science. I kind of expected her to be chemistry, what with the stump remover stunt she pulled to take down that skinner—but no.

  Unlike most schools, ours operated on a trimester schedule. That meant the end of the fall break was the start of a new term and a new schedule of classes. Those classes started on Tuesday, but we both showed up at our new Guardian College building on Monday morning. Apparently, there was a sort of mini-orientation for any additions at the start of each term, and neither of us felt like missing out. It's probably going to be super lame, though.

  Pulling the strings of my hoodie tight—it was way too fucking cold, even though the sun had risen hours ago—I made it up the steps and through the fancy, wrought iron gate that surrounded the old-timey building. I had no idea what historical structure they'd commandeered for us Guardians, but I definitely appreciated that they had. This place is kind of awesome.

  There were a handful of people already milling about in the plaza out front, but not that many. It was probably only like, twenty. Therefore, it didn't take me long at all to spot Katherine waving me over. It looked like she'd already joined up with another group of students milling around—four of them, actually—wait. I narrowed my eyes as the group of five closed the distance with me. I didn't recognize them immediately, because they were all in more normal clothes—but it was definitely a group of Guardians I recognized.

  Mr. Agent, Wizard Boy, Little Toxic, and Boots? I was surprised to see them here. I guess they went up North for the break? Maybe they have family there, or something? I didn't know, and I also didn't really care. What was more important was figuring out what was going on—and also how I fit into all of it. Honestly, I have no idea whether to be excited or annoyed.

  Either way, I supposed I was about to find out.

  And thus we conclude the introductory arc of Magical Girl Anathema Arms Dealer! This is basically where we transition into Arc 2—and by extension, the meat of the first book.

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