There it was. A living mass of nightmares conjured from the deepest fears of humanity with too many eyes and too many mouths. Its bright pupils wandered wildly, its teeth chomped and whined like a feral foal, to call it an abomination would be like calling a dragon a fly. It crawled out of the crashed armored truck, oozing onto the pavement and over the rubble of the street. Looking into its empty abyss only brought an indescribable horror as colors never seen by human eyes faintly swirled into unsettling runes in its inky body.
People ran, screaming with their hands in the air or clutching their heads, desperately shouting as they tried to scrub their minds of the thing they just saw. Bags and phones were dropped to be left on the ground as otherworldly screeching came out of the thing's many maws. Those whose legs froze them to the ground simply collapsed clutching their heart, muttering madness mantras of how the thing they saw couldn't be real, it just looked wrong as if it didn't belong in reality. Everyone was running away in a primal fear, everyone except one man who reached out his hand.
"Are you okay?"
A tentacle rose out of the ooze that slowly formed into a delicate hand to meet the man's own. More and more of its mass began to flow into the hand, growing an arm and then a shoulder. Soon its mouths were silenced, and the eyes slowly faded away. The colors inside the thing began to relax as a female upper body rose up to greet the man, its many eyes fixated on him as a smile formed on its only mouth.
"I am now."
If there was one word to describe Henri's life, it would be staring. When he woke up in the morning, he stared at his phone until he hauled himself out of bed. When he was commuting to work, he'd stare at the endless sea of traffic. When he was at work, he stared at screens and paperwork that never ended. When he went back home, he'd stare at a computer screen or TV to amuse himself. And when he went to bed at night, he'd stare at the ceiling until he fell asleep.
It had been five years since the demi-humans and liminals became known to the public. Known commonly as "monster girls" (or monster boys), they drew the excitement and interest of humans all over the world. Beings once thought relegated to myth and legend now walked the streets with regular humans and after five years, were almost too well integrated to the point of becoming mundane, a testament to how legislation like the famous Japanese "Interspecies Cultural Exchange Bill" and the US Department of Liminal Affairs were maybe a little too good at their jobs.
Henri filled the spreadsheet on his monitor without thinking about it, focusing more on the new ANIM48 song that came out. Normally such an employee wouldn't be tolerated but Henri had proven to be exceptionally good at sorting through documents, filling spreadsheets and completing paperwork. The office sometimes joked that Henri had a choice of superpowers at birth and decided to pick "bureaucracy" as his ability and for having such a superpower, Henri got the greatest thing an employee could want: more work.
"Hey Henri, are you still going to the bar? Or are you going to sleep in the office to finish that spreadsheet?" A feline tail flicked at Henri's cheek causing him to flinch.
"Huh? Oh yeah, give me a second Wisk." Henri pulled an earbud out and turned to the blond-furred cat boy.
"Well don't take too long, I'll be waiting in the lobby with—"
"Aaannnddd, done." Henri pushed his chair back from his desk as Wisk looked in shock. In the blink of an eye, Henri had just filled out a 200-line spreadsheet that would have taken Wisk the better part of a work day.
"Jesus, you are honestly terrifying sometimes." Wisk said as Henri closed down his cubicle and walked with him to the elevator.
"Pft. The only reason you say that is because you're afraid I'll be some kind of office benchmark." The two laughed as the elevator door opened for them.
The pair continued to talk and joke as they made their way onto the street. It was kind of amusing in a mundane way, just a few years ago it would have been impossible to look at a demi-human without staring at them. Now, the pair barely even registered the centaur that ran past them. Or the convoy of Department of Liminal Affairs trucks coming down the road; despite being the newest government agency, its role and importance already put it heads and shoulders above most of the other departments.
However, they did notice it when in the corner of their eyes, the two men spotted a car speeding down the intersection, running the previous three red lights before it slammed into one of the convoy trucks. Wisk with his faster reaction managed to turn and start running before the two vehicles collided right in front of the intersection they were standing at, but Henri could only stand still, a passenger in his own body as he watched the explosion unfold. Some kind of supernatural force blew everyone away and forced them on the ground as an unnatural chittering sound filled their ears.
Then as the dust and smoke cleared, something began leaking from the wrecked truck. It looked like a thick, black tar-like substance that spread out too erratically to be any liquid; and then it blinked. People started screaming at the sight of it, their minds filled with an absolute horror that demanded panic. Mouths formed which started braying and foaming, covering the eyes that now blinked awake. Most people didn't even recognize the secret agent-looking men who jumped out of the trucks in suits and sunglasses.
But Henri stayed still. At first, he was confused as to what was happening, why everyone ran away at the sight of leaking oil. Was there a fire he didn't notice? But when the first eye opened and stared right at him, Henri had a feeling of the reason for the chaos and yet he wasn't preoccupied by it. Instead of focusing on the mouths, the eyes, or how looking into the ooze felt like looking into an abyss, Henri thought he saw a humanoid figure form out of the ooze, instinctively reaching out his arm to help them.
"Are you okay?"
There was a tentative pause as time stopped. Henri could feel the blood in his veins and all of the nerves in his body for the first time before a hand reached out of the ooze to take his.
"I am now."
Agent Broth stepped out of his car and looked over his dark shades in astonishment as other agents secured a perimeter. Not only had a convoy truck been hit by a speeding car, but the being it was transporting had escaped containment and was… holding hands with someone? His eyes strained from looking at the ooze, but he knew he was looking at the solution the DLA had been searching for.
The old agent ran towards the pair, careful to focus his vision mostly on the male, pulling out an ID and badge before introducing himself to the man, "Hello, my name is Agent Broth, Department of Liminal Affairs. I know this is sudden, but are you willing to perform a patriotic duty for your country and all of humanity?"
"W…What? What do you mean?" Henri was completely confused and disoriented by what had just happened in the past few minutes.
The agent grinned, "Tell me, what do you know about the Melting Pot Initiative?"
A/N: I'm to try for shorter chapters in this story, to see if it helps me write more consistently. Hopefully this concept isn't too out there lol
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