For all the medical advancements humanity has had in the st century, we still haven’t managed to find a way to make periods less of a pain in the ass.

  A quite irritated Doctor Sokolski during an interview for The Communal Manifesto of MedicineSara ran.

  Of course she ran, what, you expected some big random act of heroism? Well, there was none of that here.

  First and foremost, because she had absolutely nothing to fight the ‘Doggo Aliens’ – as she’d always liked to call them whenever she heard about them on television or outside on the streets (she now understood why everyone looked at her weirdly whenever she said that) –, second, because there was nobody that would benefit from an act of heroic sacrifice on her part and, third and st, because she had some amount of self preservation instincts, which were currently beating the shit out of the ‘Fight’ part of her Fight-or-Flight-response.

  She turned a corner, hoping against all hope that maybe if she rounded enough corners they’d lose her – and knowing full well that that wouldn’t happen even if she ran for a hundred years. They had her scent now.

  As those thought crossed her mind, the world, karma, destiny, Anansi pying his tricks or whatever the fuck have you decided to give her the middle finger.

  Because there was another one.

  Another Model Three, its feet skittering nearly soundlessly on the broken asphalt of the street she’d run into, appeared seemingly out of nowhere, its beady eyes settling on her in an instant as she turned the corner.

  At the sight, Sara tried to turn around, only to realize that the other Model Three had already caught up with her – apparently going hungry most of the time wasn’t exactly helpful for her cardio.

  “Dio cane!” she shouted, insulting god using the perfect tone that would’ve made any italian from the days before ‘The Flood’ proud. The swears kept flowing as she looked around frantically, looking for a weapon, anything that could be of use in this godforsaken situation, but there was nothing – because of course there wasn’t! – unless she wanted to fight the motherfucking aliens in front of her using some soda cans that had probably seen the rising of the Mediterranean.

  The Model Three that had first blocked her escape jumped at her.

  With a scream, she threw herself to the ground, her arms smming against the concrete beneath as she half rolled, half skidded, below the jumping monster, her brain screaming at her to fucking run, and the moment she realized she wasn’t dead nor bleeding from anything worse than a scrape – because her shirt had ripped on her right elbow, cheap fucking recycled shit – she jumped to her feet and began running again, her heart beating a mile a minute, her eyes scanning the road ahead for anything or anyone that could help her.

  There! An alley! She knew that one, she knew that it wasn’t a dead end, and she also knew that it had access to the sewers: maybe she could hide down there. Sure, it wouldn’t exactly be pleasant, and she’d probably get cancer if the water down there so much as touched her, and for that matter there was a good chance she’d get lung cancer if she spent too long down there without so much as a mask, but hey! A slow and probably painful ‘maybe’ was assuredly better than a fast and painful certainty.

  She turned the corner, her lungs now screaming at her together with her mind, only they weren’t being as helpful as they said that she hadn’t trained her cardio since… never, and running for her life wasn’t the best way to start.

  To which she said ‘fuck you’ and kept going because she could ment the state of her body when she wasn’t about to remain without it.

  Down the alley, and there! Right where she remembered it: a maintenance door that led down into the lower levels of New Rome, towards the depths where the entire megacity’s filth was released, left to rot until one corporation or another tried to turn that warren into some lucrative new enterprise, only to be swallowed down into a quite literal sea of shit.

  She flung herself at the reinforced iron door – because trying to open it normally was something calm people who liked their shoulders to stay in pce did – and her heart did a leap in joy when the door budged on its rusted hinges, creaking ominously. She pushed harder, praying to the same god that she’d just insulted that the door didn’t jam on anything, that she could step inside, that –

  The door swung open with a loud creak and she tumbled into a small room, her nose, normally used to the bad smell that generally permeated the lower levels of the city, getting flooded by such a horrendous stench that she couldn’t help but retch. Still, her mind overcame her body and she rose, still retching as she began pushing the door closed – actually, why did it even open towards the inside? Wasn’t that a viotion of some kind of safety procedure or something? – and, finally, she did!

  Safe! She was safe! Hahahahaha! Wait, no, ughing was bad, the air here still tasted like shit.

  A few moments ter though her unwarranted hirity was killed off by something, probably the Model Three, smming against the door, its weight managing to budge the door into her back, making her fall face ft against the floor.

  “Fuck!” she shouted as she rose and, again, smmed her weight against the door, managing to close the gap that had just been created. She looked around frantically, looking for anything she could use to block the door in pce, to give her more time to run. She knew, from Samurai forums as much as sanctioned websites, that Model Threes, while persistent, could eventually lose interest in prey. And for all that they could probably track her down by her smell, well, the horrid air of the sewers would probably save her.

  Still, no luck. The small room had a few lockers stuck against the wall to her right, but they’d long since been opened, looted,disassembled, and what was left vandalized, while the rest of the pce was completely empty except for a set of stairs leading downwards.

  Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck, her mind kept saying on repeat, her breathing getting faster as panic began to finally set in, managing to overcome the adrenaline running through her veins like Usain Bolt with cybernetic legs on steroids.

  But no worries there, because the Model Three smmed against the door again, causing the panic to increase tenfold, which in turn increased, again, the amount of adrenaline coursing through her veins, which… stopped the panic, partially, making her thoughts more lucid.

  “Ok, Sara, ok. You can do this! Absolutely! You can absolutely survive the invasion as an unarmed civilian hiding in the sewers. Dio cane, this is absolute bullshit, couldn’t the fucking aliens just have attacked, I don’t know, the USA, like they always do in the movies? And I should probably stop talki – EEEP!” her self-absorbed ranting-pep-talk was stopped by the pnt monster behind the door hitting the door – was it too much to hope that it would brain itself against it? – only this time around the hit had a lot more power behind it. Were they coordinating?

  “Alright. Well. Ok. Pn. Yes, pn! Next time they hit the door I make sure it stays closed and then run down! Hopefully I’ll get enough distance going, and hopefully I’ll find something to defend myself with down there. Yep, sounds like a great pn!”

  More like the only one she had, and since one pn was better than no pn then this automatically became a great pn!

  When I survive this… I don’t know.

  She had no idea what she was going to do if – no, no, think positive, when – she survived this incursion. The corpos that acted as Italy’s government weren’t exactly… helpful, most of the time. They’d probably put some of the survivors in some shelters here and there and tell the others to fuck off. Probably using some kinder words, sure, but everyone in this fucked up era was jaded enough to read through the lines. And while some kind hearted Samurai would probably help in their own way, well, there never were enough of those.

  Still, better to concentrate on the near future instead of a distant one.

  The Model Threes smmed against the door.

  She kept it closed.

  And then began running down the, she found out a moment ter, slippery stairs! Because of course the filth had gotten this high up!

  Her foot slipped, her hand rising lightning fast to reach for the railings beside her in the vain hope to stabilize herself enough not to fall down the probably long set of stairs.

  She grabbed it, etion and relief rising in her heart as she put some strength in her grip and tried to stay in pce.

  Then the metal made a shrieking sound and she found herself holding a long tube, her eyes blinking, her brain not capable of processing what was happening fast enough, all the while as her foot moved away from underneath her body, as if it were trying to kick the air in front of her for having had the audacity of smelling too badly.

  Her momentum won and she found herself falling backwards.

  Already, she knew that this was going to be painful, but the agony that ratcheted up her spine when she finally hit the edge of the steps below surprised even her, who was used to being in constant pain.

  A scream escaped her lips, both of te surprise and pain, and then she began falling downwards, her descent into hell being helped by the general slipperiness of the steps.

  She tried to stop herself, of course she did, her arms shooting out to grab onto anything, but she only managed to hit herself in the leg with the metal pipe that had once been the railing and, afterwards, to turn onto her side, turning her (all things considered) gentle fall into a ruinous tumble.

  The end of her fall was announced by her head hitting the wet floor, the small pool of stinking refuse doing absolutely nothing to cushion her nding.

  Her vision went white, her mind dissipating into a hundred thousand stars that looked down at her and cried or ughed, judging her life and her choices and finding her wanting. Still, she’d rather have stayed here, in this hell of her own making, then go back into the hell the people before her had built for them all.

  The stars ughed and cried in turn, telling her it wasn’t her choice before pushing her back into reality, her eyes opening and unrolling themselves, restoring her sight… or maybe not, because it was dark as fuck. Or she’d gotten brain damage because of her fall. Honestly, at this point she couldn’t bring herself to care: the only way this day could get worse was if she died.

  And then she heard cnging coming from higher up – the door smming against the wall, she realized – followed closely by the silent skittering of tiny feet on concrete.

  “Cazzo cazzo cazzo cazzo,” she fumbled back up to her feet, trying to see where she had to go, because of course the lights were off – there was probably a good chance that the light bulbs themselves were broken anyways.

  She took a step forward.

  The air behind her moved.

  Years ter, thinking back to that moment, she got very lucky: her arm, the one with the metal pipe, rose, and an attack that would’ve probably resulted in her head getting bitten off ended up being blocked.

  The Model Threes had already reached her, uncaring of how slippery the stairs were, uncaring of the dark, and very much caring about the tasty moving biomass that had been running away from them for way too long.

  The pipe broke in two, one half still held firmly in Sara’s hand while the other was left in the now very confused alien, which spat it out before going on the offensive again.

  Or rather, as it tried to.

  With an animalistic scream fueled by rage, fear, pain, and no little amount of adrenaline, she pnted what was left of the pipe into the Model Three’s head, point first. Or, at least, she hoped it was its head: she could barely see with the light coming from the alley.

  The alien twitched, having a whole body shiver, before slumping to the ground.

  It took her a moment to realize that… she’d done it. That she had killed one of the antithesi – oh, wait, one…

  And then the other antithesis, the one she had completely forgotten about, bit right into her leg. The left one. Heh. Right into her left leg. That was funny. Oh, wait, she was probably about to die.

  “Nope, nope, nopety nope,” she said, grabbing for the pipe in the dead antithesis’ head, moving on autopilot while her brain tried to parse through every possible sensation and emotion in her body and mind before remembering that yes, pain was something she was meant to feel, even though she’d gotten a been through a lot of it already.

  There was a wrenching from her lower body.

  When she looked down, she noticed that there was something missing.

  Her leg.

  There was also a lot of blood on the ground below her.

  Ah fuck, my period was supposed to come in next week. I don’t have any tampons.

  And then, before the antithesis by her side could do anything more, her mind still looping on the thought about her period, she pnted the pipe into its head, watching in fascination as it writhed around on the ground, its green… blood? Or was it chlorophyll? They were pnts after all, so maybe it was chlorophyll. Anyways, she watched as the two mixed together.

  She couldn’t feel her leg anymore, because it wasn’t there! Nor could she feel any pain, which was a mercy if you asked her.

  “Welp, we had a good run of it,” she told herself.

  A lie, naturally. She had been luckier than most in some things, but her life had still been pretty shitty.

  She closed her eyes, waiting for the blood loss to make her fall asleep. Of all the ways she’d expected to go, she thought, that was probably the kindest of them all.

  …………

  ………

  ……

  …

  ..

  .

  System Initialized!Congratutions! Through your actions you’ve proven yourself worthy of becoming a Vanguard, a defender of humanity against the Antithesis threat. My name is Titania and I’ll assist you in your task to uplift your world!So Rise, Sara de Biasi, and become a protector of the weak!

  …

  Oh, great, she was getting ads for some unknown samurai merch in her final moments. Fucking fantastic!

  Hey! Wakey wakey sleepyhead, we can’t have you dying somepce so dingy! Also, just this once, I won’t hold it against you that you thought I was an ad. Bah, kids these days!

  …

  Oh.

  Announcement Hey eveyone, Zodiac here! Some of you may know me from my main book on RoyalRoad, The Spider Dilemma. And if you don't, well, who cares! I'm gd to have you here. Now, sadly, this story won't get updated as often as my main one, mainly because Dilemma also lets me get some money on the side, while this is just a fun project I'll be doing in my free time.Still, as always, comments and critique are loved and taken into consideration. In this case especially, actually, because this is not my world I'm working with and I want the story to actually align well enough, so do tell me if I make obvious mistakes.Everyone, have a great day!