The Birth of the New World

With a huff I shrug off my backpack and settle in behind the counter. With no backroom to be found, I decided that the nook of the counter would be as good a place as any to sleep for the night.

Pushing aside the rolling chair where the owner of the place probably used to sit, I pull out my sleeping bag, blanket and pillow out from my bedroll and make myself a makeshift nest under the counter.

With my new shortness, I have no problem fitting in the nook. Crawling into my new nest I drag my bag in behind me and climb under my thick blanket.

Originally, I was planning on cutting my hair before going to sleep, but after dealing with a rather stress filled day; mutating, burning my house down like an idiot and getting chased by giant flying roaches! I honestly just want today to be over.

I can deal with my annoying hair in the morning.

With that decided I curl up in a ball, my tail naturally curling up with me and ending up resting next to my head. With my entire body hidden beneath the cover of my blanket I close my eyes and try to get to sleep.

At least I try to.

And I keep trying to fall asleep.

An hour passes and I am still awake.

Two more pass and I am still awake.

Another half hour passes as I keep my eyes shut, and yet my brain refuses to go to sleep.

After spending three and a half hours trying to make myself fall asleep, I come to a conclusion.

“I can’t sleep…” I grumble to myself.

Not the ‘I can’t sleep’ of tossing and turning at one in the morning while trying to fall asleep. But an, ‘It’s the middle of the day and I am wide awake,’ kind of ‘I can’t sleep.’

I’m not sleepy. Why am I not sleepy? I’ve been awake for over twelve hours now, it’s the middle of the night. After waking up from my mutation and spending all day walking, I should have passed out as soon as I got under the covers…

It has to be my mutation, right?

Still curled up under the covers and playing with the tip of my tail, I think about my mutation. How it’s changed me and how I honestly haven’t put much thought into it.

Sure, I’ve looked at myself in the mirror and found out a few new things about myself, but I haven’t really examined it. I just got myself cleaned up, packed up, and burned my house down right after. I didn’t take the time to think about any of this beyond what was right in front of me.

“Shouldn’t I be freaking out or something?” I ask myself. “After all, I fucking mutated into what? An Imp or something? Shouldn’t I be having a panic attack about not being human anymore?”

Because I’m not. I’m not human anymore…

Humans don’t have horns, claws, or a tail. They can’t see in the dark like it’s midday, they can’t heal cuts in seconds, or run so fast that their surroundings become a blur.

I have no idea how fast I was running earlier, but thinking back on it, I was definitely running faster than any person has a right to.

My body isn’t human anymore; is my mind still human?

This thought chills me and has me curl up even tighter, clutch my tail closer to my chest.

“I don’t have to sleep anymore, do I? Or maybe I’m just able to stay up for longer now, like staying awake for a few days before having to sleep? I honestly have no idea. But if my need for sleep has been changed by the mutation, then what else in my brain has been changed? What if it did something to my personality, and I’m just not aware of it?”

At the very least I know that the mutation hasn’t turned me into a rampaging lunatic. I have seen plenty of mutated animals and almost all of them have been either bat shit crazy or perpetually pissed off and hungry. Like animals infected with rabies. Yet I feel normal. I don’t wanna bite someone’s face off and I’m pretty sure I’m not a jabbering lunatic.

I’m just not freaking out over something that I probably should be freaking out over. I mean, I’m not human…

Deciding that staying under the covers isn’t accomplishing anything, I crawl out from my nest and pull the rolling chair back over to the counter.

With a small hop that I haven’t had to do since childhood, I clamber into the tall chair. Sitting cross legged on the chair, I lay my head on my arms on the counter and just stare out the window to the outside. The crashed convertible in the window is blocking half the view, but honestly there isn’t much out there to look at.

About an hour into trying to fall asleep it had started raining, blessedly it doesn’t seem like I’ll have to worry about flooding despite the broken window.

Outside I can hear the crashing of thunder and the calls of nocturnal creatures.

With nothing but my thoughts to keep me company, I sit there and watch the rain fall.

Not needing to sleep wouldn’t be so bad if I still had video games and anime to keep me busy. Back then, going to sleep was a bother because I had things that I would rather be doing. But now there is not really much to do at night.

Not wanting to spend all night stewing in my thoughts, I start fidgeting about. Clicking my claws against the counter, playing with my tail as I try to learn to manually control its movements, poking at the horns growing out of my forehead.

After a while I decide to try a classic of bored time filling, I start spinning my chair around and around. Faster and faster I go until my tail becomes a trailing comet orbiting around me. Only, instead of the world around me becoming a blur as my eyes fail to keep up with the moving surroundings, I’m strangely able to keep track of my surroundings despite the rotations.

Reaching out my arm, I grab onto the counter and bring my spinning to a very abrupt stop. For about a second a light bit of dizziness hits me, but almost as quickly as it comes, it passes, and I find myself feeling perfectly normal.

Feeling equally curious, and weirded out, I hop off of the chair and land on my feet with zero difficulty.

I’m not even dizzy… If I had done that when I was human, I would have been a stumbling mess trying not to fall over.

Is this another change to my brain or my eyes? Both?

I don’t wanna think about it, I don’t think I’m really ready to process all of this yet. At the very least I’m not freaking out. Let’s just leave it as something interesting and move on. I don’t want to think about my brain...

Looking around for a distraction, my eyes fall on the nearby shelves of books. Many of them are lying scattered about, having fallen off due to all the earthquakes, while some remain on the shelves. Just from a cursory glance I can tell that quite a number of them are missing. Most likely taken by scavengers for entertainment in an age without internet and tv, or to burn for warmth.

Wondering through the store, I browse through the aisles and see if I can find anything interesting to read.

Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of books that were left were either useless, boring, or far too damaged to read. A lovely example of one of my finds was a copy of ‘Building a Web Site for Dummies 4th Edition,’ which obviously would be very useful when the internet is long dead.

Deciding to cut my losses and quietly mourn the loss of the internet, dead but not forgotten, I grab a copy of some fantasy novel that is still in good condition and return to the counter to spend the rest of the night reading.

Clambering up into my chair, and trying not to think about my shortness, I crack open the book and spend the rest of the night reading about a boy that found a cool rock in the woods that ended up being a dragon egg.

Sunrise draws my attention away from the book in front of me. At first, I thought it would just end up being another run of the mill fantasy book with a dragon slapped on the cover, but so far it seems pretty good.

Placing the bookmark I found in the counter’s drawer in the book, I close it and decide that I will keep reading it later. Apparently, there are four books in the series so if I can find them, I’ll make sure to grab them. Gotta have something to do at night if I can’t sleep.

With that decided I get up a start packing my things. Taking apart my nest, rolling up my sleeping bag and strapping it to my bag and stuffing my pillow into my bag.

Looking outside I see that it is still raining pretty hard outside, so I dig into a side pouch on my bag and pull out a folded-up rain poncho. It will be big enough to cover both myself and my bag, especially now that I am so short, so I won’t have to worry about the rain getting everything in my bag soaked.

With everything squared away, poncho and bag waiting at the counter to be equipped, I get to work on the thing that I’ve procrastinating on all night.

I need to cut my hair.

Climbing on top of the counter, I sit down cross-legged and pull out my knife. Regretfully I didn’t think to pack any scissors and I didn’t see any while searching the drawers on the counter.

Resolving myself to having a bad haircut, I grab a bunch of it with my free hand and try to cut it at about shoulder length.

And I try again.

And again.

Trying to slice it, saw it, chop it and slash it does nothing to my hair.

Getting agitated, I try to take an awkwardly hard swing at my hair with the knife, but this only manages to get me to jerk my head to the side.

“What the hell? First my skin and now my hair? I know I’m hard to cut now but this is just ridiculous!” I exclaim.

Deciding to do some testing, I lay out a bit of my hair on the counter, which is easy considering how damn long it is, and I take my knife and chop down as hard and as fast as I can onto to the counter.

The blade of the knife smashes through the wood of the counter and makes the counter split and splinter as the blade is buried down to the hilt.

“Mutation made me strong, another check mark to add to the list…” I mumble.

With a strong pull, I managed to pull the blade out of the counter. Probably not the best way to treat my only weapon, but it’s pretty solidly built. Smashing through some wood shouldn’t damage it too much.

The real problem is my hair. Despite being hit with a sharp edge with enough force to plow through solid wood, it is seemingly unharmed. Instead of being cut, it was simply carried along with the blade through the wood.

Bringing the length of hair up to my face and closely scrutinizing it, I can’t seem to find any signs of it taking any damage.

“What the hell? This doesn’t make any sense. It’s just hair, what even is the point of making it so hard to cut? Not to mention so long. What if I get it caught on something? How would I be able to get myself free?” I ask myself while closely examining a few loose strands.

Deciding to do one more test, I select a single strand of hair and hold it tightly between my fingers. Taking the knife, I try cut the singular strand while holding it down.

It refuses to be cut. Eventually, the hair slips out of my grip, the force of the blade pushing on it exceeding my finger’s ability to hold onto a singular strand of hair.

With frustration I stab my knife into the counter next to me, not bothering to properly return it to its sheath.

Angrily glaring at a handful of my hair I sit there on the counter and click my claws against the wood while I try to think about how I’m going to manage my troublesome hair.

I could always try braiding it. I think I still remember how to braid hair… Or I could put it into a ponytail? But then I would have two tails, ha ha. Twin-tails? No, I’m not tsundere enough to pull off twin-tails. Should I roll it up into a bun? I’m honestly not a big fan of buns, much prefer loose hair…

As I keep thinking about different hairstyles like an idiot, I notice the clicking of my claws as I play with them. Looking back to my hand holding a length of my hair, I see the gleaming black claws resting on the ends of my fingers.

“Huh, I’m an idiot, aren’t I?” I ask myself absentmindedly.

A knife can't cut my skin, but my claws could. So, the same should apply to my hair, right?

Deciding to give it a try, I grab some of my hair and using one claw, I try to cut it to about shoulder length. It takes a bit of force, but with some effort I manage to get a very uneven and messy cut.

My hair is going to be a wreck by the time I’m done cutting all of this. But honestly, it’s already a freaking mess, at least it will be shorter.

Getting to work, I cut my hair bit by bit, hand full by hand full, until about half an hour later I am sitting in front of a massive pile of hair. Each strand is a couple of feet or more in length and the pile is quite intimidating to look at.

“All of that used to be attached to my head, crazy.”

I’m used to seeing a lot of hair piling up after a haircut, but this just brings it to ridiculous levels…

With my hair now comfortably at shoulder length and no longer hanging down to my butt-crack, I hop off of the counter and start gathering my things to get leaving.

However, as I’m about to throw my bag over my shoulder, my eyes fall back on the absurd pile of hair.

That stuff is really strong, and I have no idea how long it would take me to grow it out like that again…

Should I keep it? I know that people would make stuff out of horsehair. Not to mention that my hair has my DNA and stuff and is probably supernatural or magic or some crazy nonsense. Maybe the military would want it. For testing or something else, I don’t know…

I’m going to have to talk to the military at some point if I want to be with my family again, right? Maybe it would be best if I had something to offer them.

“Of course, they could also try to dissect me or something…” I tell myself dryly.

I’ve been pushing it off, but I honestly don’t really have a plan for how to deal with the military. My only priority has been to get back to my family, but it’s not as if the army is just going to let a cute little demon walk into a military base without asking a few questions.

Or firing a few dozen bullets…

Bullets? Can I shrug off getting shot or will they actually harm me?

Shaking my head I say, “No no, focus Lain… Hah, there’s no use worrying about it right now. For now, my priority needs to be getting south in the first place without getting eaten by monsters. After I get there, I can worry about how to get to my family and Anna.”

With that sorted out, I gather up the pile of hair, straighten it out, and then tie it all together in a bunch.

Certain that it’s not going to fall apart and turn into a mess of hair in my bag, I pack it away. Zipping everything up and throwing it over my shoulder, I get all the straps tightened and buckled up to secure my bag and then throw on the poncho, covering both myself and my bag.

Yanking my knife back out of the counter, I re-secure it in its sheath and then head out into the rain.

It’s a complete downpour and looking at the clouds, it probably will keep raining all day. Not the safest weather for traveling, But it at least means that the roads will be clear, most people and creatures typically choose to stay indoors with this kind of weather.

With a new haircut to help lighten my mood, I walk down the rain-soaked streets. Each step of my bare feet on wet pavement making a splish and a splash, surprisingly unbothered by the cold water soaking my feet.

“I really should find some boots and clothes that actually fit me. Perhaps I’ll get lucky and find some places with some decent clothes for someone my size…” I say to myself.