I went downstairs on Monday morning to fix myself a cup of coffee before work — normally I was more of a tea drinker, but after a bit in the UK and the events of last week, I just wanted my good ol’ French press with two creams and one sugar. I did not get to the kitchen to fix myself a cup of coffee, however.

  Instead, I stepped down from the last stair, walked from my carpeted living room towards the kitchen, and set my foot down in a puddle of what I oh so dearly hoped was water.

  I took a deep breath. Then another, and a third, before finally—

  “Gorou!”

  Nails clacked along the hardwood floors of my kitchen as the fox of the hour came out of hiding to meet me, and when I saw him, it took all I had not to burst out laughing. He wasn’t just wet, he was drenched — positively sopping, even. His fur hung completely limp, and the way his tails dragged behind him on the floor made him look like the world’s most ornery mop.

  “It’s raining,” he ground out in Japanese. Except, uh — that wasn’t what he actually said, I’m sorry, that was me editorializing. What he actually said was: “wet”.

  “Oh my — o-okay, I’ll be right back, you s-stay right there, okay?” I barely managed to get that out while also holding back the chuckles, and had to flicker back upstairs in a burst of flames so he didn’t hear me finally lose the war against my own giggle fit. Oh my God, the poor thing, he looked so miserable and despondent and he was trying to look so angry but it just wasn’t working with all the water!

  I decided to walk back downstairs the long way, and this time I had some supplies. A trip of beach towels fell from my arms as I looked around for a good plug for the blow dryer, and by the time I had it plugged in, Gorou had already managed to wrap himself in one towel and fold the other two about his tails.

  “There will be no need for that infernal thing,” he said, glaring at the blow dryer in my hand.

  “Oh, for the love of — Gorou, how old are you?” I questioned, one hand on my hip, the other waving the blow dryer back and forth in front of him.

  “Six hundred twenty-three,” he answered without missing a beat.

  I just stared at him, ears flat, tail limp, and expression unamused. Then I started up the blow dryer and fell upon the little shit, heedless of his crying, begging, and positively adorable foxy yelling.

  Despite all my best efforts, though, I wasn’t able to get Gorou’s fur completely blown out. He didn’t allow me to dry his tails all the way, instead insisting that I just get the water from his undercoat, and he’d let it air dry the rest of the way.

  “Okay, okay, fine!” I shut off the blow dryer before he could finish getting his teeth around the cord, and gathered the towels together before I stood. “Just please let your tails dry completely before putting them on the co—oww!?”

  I didn’t expect a sudden twinge of pain in my back when I stood up, and the combo of surprise and pain had my tail going ramrod straight behind me as I dropped the towels and blow dryer in surprise.

  “Naomi?” Gorou asked, concern coloring his tone.

  “I-I’m okay!” I forced out, bringing a hand to my back to massage out the twinge in my spine. I probed at my back with my fingers, massaging the muscles in my lower back and briefly rubbing at the small patch of fur that spread from my tail onto my back. Ow, ow, what the hell, I hadn’t had back pain like this before? Was it because—

  My ears went limp, and my face fell in horror.

  “Naomi…”

  “Oh, God,” I whispered in horror.

  That was the first time I’d ever felt back pain when trying to lift something; hell, it was the first time I’d properly felt what people described to me as ‘back pain’ ever! And since I wasn’t top-heavy enough to even need a bra in loose enough clothes, let alone get back pain for it… that meant only one thing.

  “Gorou, I’m getting back pain.” I looked him in the eyes, unable to keep the existential horror out of mine. “I’m getting old.”

  Many-Times-Great-Grandfather-Fox’s expression swiftly smoothed over, the concern fading away instantaneously.

  And then he smacked me in the face with a still-damp tail.

  “Ack, thbft!” I sputtered, lost my balance, and fell on my ass. “Gorou!”

  “Please spare me the dramatics for the sake of comedy,” he said with the flick of an ear. “If I’m not getting old, Naomi, then you’re not getting old.”

  “... but you are old,” I pointed out.

  “Ah, but do I look old?” he asked.

  “Uh… I don’t know. You’re a fox.”

  “As are you.”

  I couldn’t help but flatten my ears and lower my tail in annoyance, even as a low growl escaped my lips. But Gorou ignored that in favor of just leaving the room, hopping up onto the couch, and turning on the TV.

  “No wet tails on the sofa!” I yelled back at him.

  Gorou grumbled, but to his credit, he did drape his tails over the side.

  I let out a great big sigh, and probed at my back again with worried fingers. Was it a bit vain of me to be concerned about something like ‘getting old’ at the first sign of back pain? Well, maybe. But I was also thirty-seven years old. I was just about ‘middle-aged’. If anything, I should’ve been feeling this well before now. So if it was just happening a bit later than average… why did that sudden sharp pain cause me such disquiet?

  … no, nothing for it. I couldn’t focus on that right now. Casey would be here relatively soon so I could help him with his paper, and—

  KRAK-THOOM

  “Eep!” I yelped and jumped at the thunder, grabbing my tail as I folded my ears low to block out the noise. And, in the process, dropped the blow dryer and towels on the kitchen floor. Again.

  … right. I should probably make sure I had some more towels ready for Casey, just in case.

  And then I needed to get myself that damn coffee!

  I’d just finished sending out status update emails to my various clients when I was interrupted by a loud knock on the door. My ears perked up and followed the noise, which was the exact shave-and-a-haircut pattern that I liked using to let people know it was me, which was how I knew this wasn’t just some door-to-door salesman or the like. That meant Casey was here, and it was time to help him with his paper… and, well, have a long-overdue talk.

  I stood from my chair, biting back a grimace at the sudden twinge of pain in my back, ow, then gulped down what was left of my coffee and looked around for Gorou — sound asleep on top of the heated blanket, as expected. I’d be able to wake him up when I needed him, but it was probably better not to break Casey’s brain the same way Gorou melted my boss Alice’s last year.

  After one last check to make sure I was wearing pants, I stepped away from the computer, blinked downstairs in a flash of fire, and opened the front door.

  “Hope it wasn’t too… oh, dear.”

  My greeting to Casey died a swift and sudden death when I finished processing his appearance. Gorou’s sodden state should’ve been my hint, I’d admit, but, well…

  A broken umbrella dangled from poor Casey’s wrist, mangled and wrecked by the strong winds. It had probably broken only just after he’d gotten far enough for the sunk cost fallacy to kick in, and as a result, he was absolutely drowned. His jeans and coat were so full of water that they practically pulled him to the ground, and as he pulled off his beanie, I could see and hear the water getting squeezed out of it by the simple motion. Then there was the shivering, oh dear, the shivering.

  No, no no no. We couldn’t have that.

  “Get in.” I stood to the side, a roiling orb of foxfire blooming to life in my hand as I made way for Casey to enter. He stepped in, then used his foot to drag the door mat far enough in for me to close the door — better that get wet than anything else. Once that was done, I ran my foxfire-laden hand in a rough orbit around him, leaving several of the burning amethyst spheres floating in midair far enough out that he wouldn’t risk hurting himself, but close enough that he could feel the heat.

  “T-t-thanks,” he stuttered out.

  “Nuh-uh, not yet,” I said, extending my hands. “Outer layers off, shoes off too. Leave them by the door and follow me.”

  “B-b-bu—”

  “No buts, I’m not letting you get sick right before graduation. Layers, off, now.”

  Thankfully, Casey complied without making any more of a fuss. He dropped his drenched coat and sweater by the door, leaving him in just a short-sleeve Henley tee with an undershirt barely visible beneath it.

  “Right, up we go.”

  I dispelled the orbs of foxfire, deposited the tip of my tail in Casey’s hand, and waited until I felt some pressure on it to lead him upstairs. Once on the second floor of the townhome, I took a quick right, made a left at the door in the hall that didn’t end in a closet, then spun to get my tail out of his hands as I pointed at a half-closed door.

  “Bathroom’s in there, towels are in the linen cabinet, feel free to either dry off or take a hot shower to warm yourself back up. I’m gonna get some spare clothes I have lying around that’ll be big enough for you to wear, then will knock to let you know they’re set out for you. Get your wet clothes off and leave them in there, I’ll get everything in the dryer and you can change back before you go, okay?”

  Casey didn’t reply, but that was just because he was shivering too hard to formulate a reply. He went into the bathroom without complaint, at which point I left him to his own devices and headed into one of the two bedrooms adjoining that bathroom. The one I’d come from earlier was being used as my home office, but the second bedroom was currently set up as a guest bedroom. It didn’t see much use — the most common inhabitant was Ambrose whenever he needed to get the hell away from the pomp and circumstance of diplomacy, but I had played host to my cousin Satsuki once or twice — which was why I used its closet and dresser mostly as storage.

  I opened up the top shelf of the dresser and pulled out a few of my more oversized sweatshirts and — uh. Oh. They were… all decorated with either Hello Kitty or other Sanrio characters. That… um. Hm. I clearly hadn’t thought my cunning plan all the way through, had I? Wait, didn’t…?

  I didn’t put those sweatshirts back, choosing instead to toss them on the bed, then closed the drawer I’d gotten them from and opened one of the middle drawers. A-ha — a spare set of casual wear that Ambrose kept here, simple gray sweats and a comfy sweater. Ambrose would probably forgive them being used for this purpose, especially if I gave them a wash before the next time he was in town, so I scooped those up, grabbed the Sanrio hoodies, and deposited the full haul outside the bathroom before knocking on the door to let Casey know a change of clothes was there. Yes, he’d probably pick Ambrose’s spare loungewear, so why did I still leave the hoodies on offer? Well…

  I had a feeling. Just call it a hunch.

  That done, I grabbed my mug from the office and went back downstairs to the kitchen, making sure to walk there in case Casey was listening for my footsteps before opening the bathroom door. I kept my ears trained on the bathroom the whole time I walked down, and sure enough, caught the click of the door opening, closing, and locking. Then I heard the shower come on, and figured I had at least ten minutes to whip something up in the kitchen. Early May was normally a warm time of year, but given how cold Casey had been from the rain, I figured something nice and piping hot would be good to heat him up.

  Also, I wanted another coffee, so why not kill two birds with one stone?

  By the time I heard the shower turn off, I’d gotten myself a second coffee and poured a third into a mug, which I covered with this cute little silicone mug-cover I had — it used a vacuum to hold onto the rim of the mug if you pulled the little holder at the top of it, but would slide right off with a bare minimum of force. The coffees sat at, what else, the coffee table, and I also had a little bottle of creamer and some sugar, in case Casey took his coffee that way. Aside from beverages, I’d also made sure to grab a couple of light snacks, as well as a pad of paper, pen and pencil, and my spare dictaphone so Casey could record it.

  My first sip of coffee was almost hot enough to burn my tongue, exactly how I liked it. The second sip had to wait because Casey came downstairs, and the little fox in my head started doing a victory lap, because a quick glance told me he’d picked one of the Sanrio hoodies I’d left out instead of just going for Ambrose’s spare casual wear.

  But that quick glance gave way to embarrassment once I realized which of the hoodies he’d grabbed. Specifically, it was a special edition collab piece, featuring both Fenneko and Kitsune. Except… um. Well?

  This Fenneko was brown, and this Kitsune was white. With four tails.

  Seriously, I only lived in Japan for two non-consecutive years, but let me tell you that that was more than enough for the country to get territorial over me. And combined with the fact that I was of Japanese descent, and had family still living in the country? Yeah, it only went downhill from there.

  But hey. At least I got some free Hello Kitty merch out of it!

  “Feeling a bit better?” I asked, watching as Casey plodded over to the sofa. He didn’t offer any more than a nod as a response, and slipped onto the couch without a word. “Coffee’s there for you if you want it,” I pointed at the mug I’d poured for him as I stood up. “Cream and sugar as you like; let me grab your clothes and throw ‘em in the dryer real quick, okay?”

  “Kay.”

  I gave Casey a bit of an odd look — this glumness was very unlike the precocious 3L I’d gotten to know during the past few months, which had me worried, but there wasn’t much I could do about it right now. What I could do was step away from the sofa so I didn’t burn it, flash upstairs, bend my knees to absorb the inch or two drop, and gather up Casey’s sodden clothes so I could toss them all into the dryer. Which I did, except… huh. That was odd. Where were his socks? No, not in the pants pockets, not balled up in the shirt… yeah, no, I wasn’t seeing them. Weird. Ugh, whatever, maybe they’d turn up later. Regardless of the missing socks, I tossed the rest of his wet clothes into the dryer, flashed downstairs to grab his shoes and sweater from by the door, flashed back upstairs to toss them in there too, and got everything drying.

  Then I crept off to go wake Gorou up with a quick belly rub before flashing back downstairs to check in on my junior and guest.

  “Wish I could do that,” Casey mumbled into the mug of coffee I’d gotten for him. “Who needs to jaywalk when you can just blip right past the crosswalk?”

  “Eh,” I shrugged, then reached down to the coffee table and opened one of the drawers on its side. “Personally, I like to take the long way. Makes you appreciate the little things in life more.”

  Casey just shrugged back at me, then went wide-eyed as I reached into the open drawer and pulled out a wide, flat-headed wire-bristle dog grooming brush.

  “What’s with that look?” I asked, shifting how I sat on the sofa so I could wrap my tail around to my front and brush it out before giving him a teasing smile. “Never seen a girl do her tail care routine before?”

  “Um, that, uh — no?” Casey stammered. I giggled a little at his response, then went back to brushing out my tail.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “Relax, hun, it’s okay. Just…” I sighed. “Honestly? I… always get a bit nervous talking about stuff like this. Professor Golding shouldn’t have let you pick me as a paper topic, especially after I had to email him so you could attend court. He really should have known better.”

  “Known better?” Casey set his mug down on the coffee table, trading them for the pen and legal pad I’d left for him. “About what?”

  “Well — oh, hang on, come on you stupid… there!” I hissed in triumph, having worked out a particularly snarled bit of fur about halfway down the underside of my tail. “Oh, that feels better already, thank goodness; okay, back to the topic at hand?” I pointed at Casey’s legal pad with the bristle brush in my hand. “I take it your term paper was about Moonshot citizenship issues and the jurisdictional snarls that can result when somebody with ties to two countries gets powers when visiting the one they don’t call home.”

  “Um… sort of?” Casey hedged. “I was more looking at it from an immigration and international affairs angle. And I used you as an example because you mentioned having family in Japan, which is part of why Japan tried to say they’d given you Japanese citizenship, and that you’d renounced your American one? Because you were dual citizenship eligible already, then got powers while you were there?”

  “And does it now?” I asked, breaking the eye contact I’d made with Casey to inspect my fur a bit more closely. Ugh, there was a tiny bit of matting on that side, no wonder I felt resistance trying to curl it around my right hip…

  “Not really. I pivoted back to dual citizenship and added some gun control arguments, actually.” Casey’s answer had me blinking in surprise, and I looked up at him, lowering one ear to prompt him to elaborate. “Before you were Moonshot, you were just any other citizen. Customs and immigration could search your belongings for anything you might have tried not to declare, and take it from you. But once you were Moonshot, you had a loaded flamethrower on you at all times that nobody could take off, and I can’t think of a single way for law enforcement to catch up to you if you really wanted to lose them. So if you had dual citizenship in Japan, you could just disappear and nobody would ever be able to stop you.”

  “That’s the general rule,” I agreed. “We Moonshot have a few options there: we either have to renounce dual citizenship, or retain it while accepting that we’re strictly forbidden from going to our other country of citizenship without some way for our home country to track us. And if we were already eligible, we can still seek dual citizenship. Or, well, it’s usually an option,” I admitted. “Japan pushed dual citizenship on me as insurance, even though I should have had to choose one or the other when I turned 20, but I’m an exception.”

  “That… doesn’t make sense, though.” Casey pulled out his phone to check something he had on it, and frowned at what he read. “Why are you an exception?”

  “Let me answer your question with another couple of questions, first.” I waited for Casey to nod before continuing. “First: have any of your classes covered the Repatriation Treaty, including the Camden Amendment?”

  “We have, but I’m not sure what that has to do with this?”

  “Getting there in a moment,” I assured him. “Next: did your class cover the types of Moonshot at all?”

  “Yeah,” Casey nodded this time. “How there was type A and type B, with A being the people and B being the stuff they did.”

  “Okay then.” I tapped the bristle brush against the palm of my hand. “List the A types. Descending order.”

  “Um… A3 were the literal ones?” Casey’s voice sounded more like a question than a statement. “They’re the ones who all say they got shot by the moon, and that’s why we call them Moonshot. Professor Golding liked to use D&D—”

  “Use what?” I asked, ears lowering in confusion.

  “Oh, um. Dungeons & Dragons? Tabletop game?” Casey clarified, but I was still completely lost. “Uh. Well, he liked to use the character classes as an analogy. He said A3s were like Sorcerers, the ones who just have stuff they can do, but they didn’t learn to do it. Then there’s A2, and Golding said these ones were like a druid or paladin? How they had a certain lifestyle, and the powers they get sort of match that?”

  “... that’s surprisingly astute,” I murmured, mind racing. Shit, I’d have to look into this stuff, wouldn’t I? If this game and its ideas were widespread enough, they’d be a great metaphor for when I had to explain the edge cases. “Yes, those both make sense, and you’re correct.”

  “And after that, Professor Golding told us about a third type that some people theorized about, but that apparently hasn’t been found,” Casey said. “Type A1. He said these would be like a cleric or warlock, because they’d get their powers from a specific thing, like a ghost or a religious idol. And then he pointed at that specific thing to explain why the types are numbered like that: because they’re describing how big the potential pool of powers is. The A3s could have literally anything, the A2s are going to have something that makes sense for them, and if an A1 existed, it would be a specific thing.”

  “Well, references I don’t understand aside, that was a flawless textbook answer. Full marks.” I tapped the brush against the palm of my hand, as a sort of soft clap, which had Casey smiling softly. “Except for the fact that it’s wrong. The textbook is lying.”

  “What?” Casey asked, gobsmacked. “But—”

  I held up a hand to forestall any further interruption.

  “The numbers don’t actually indicate how varied the powers are,” I told him. “That’s the explanation given to people with only the bare minimum of vetting, and while it’s still more than what the public gets, it’s also just as wrong. What the numbers actually refer to is how common they are relative to the other types.”

  And fuck the CIA very much for that one. Because of course, of course it wasn’t enough for the public to get a version of the terminology that was deliberately confusing. No, they just had to also give out incorrect definitions of the more descriptive terminology too, and whether you got the real one or the fake depended entirely on what they decided you were cleared to know! Ugh, it was infuriating!

  “As for how common they actually are?” I continued, posing it as a question. “Approximately one in every ten to twenty thousand people will have the moonbeam vision and become an A3 Moonshot. One in every fifty to hundred-thousand people will suddenly notice that they have powers, meaning they’ve become an A2 Moonshot.”

  “... wait, you don’t mean…” Casey trailed off.

  I didn’t respond immediately, though. I closed my eyes, reached for that ember of foxfire in my soul, and followed it along to the connection I shared with Gorou. I didn’t have to nudge it much, but that had the fox awake and ready.

  “And roughly one out of every three million people?”

  I gave mine and Gorou’s soul-deep connection a little tug, and right on cue, a brilliant azure orb of foxfire shimmered into existence a bit above the couch. When it disappeared, a sleek bundle of silver fur fell to the sofa cushion between Casey and me, bounced once or twice, then hopped back as he dropped his four tails into my lap and on top of my lone brown-furred specimen.

  “About two thousand of us in the world have found a compatible example of type C Moonshot, which is directly responsible for making us into an A1.”

  I let the severity of my words hang over us for a little bit. Or I intended to, at least.

  But then the fox of the hour smacked me in the face with one of his tails before pointedly poking me with the full lot of them.

  “Stop, stop — Gorou!” I complained, bundling his tails up under one arm as I tried, and failed, to shove them off of my lap. “I was doing my own tail, damn it!”

  “I was out in the rain, mine need it more,” he replied in Japanese.

  Casey’s pen tumbled from still fingers and fell into the crevice between the couch cushions.

  “Talking fox,” he mumbled. Then his eyes went wide as he looked at Gorou, then down to the sweatshirt he’d borrowed, then back at Gorou, and pointed a shaking finger at the two of us. “That—! What—! You—!”

  I snapped my fingers and conjured a ball of foxfire, the sudden flash of light and heat enough to snap poor Casey out of it and get Gorou to scamper off my lap long enough for me to quickly dispel the foxfire and raise my legs so he couldn’t just hop back into my lap. And that meant I could get back to brushing my own damn tail instead of all four of his.

  “In any case, as I was saying before the fox ruined my moment!” Gorou just gave me a shit-eating grin, which had me lowering my ears and baring my teeth in annoyance before I caught myself. “Regardless — Casey, this is Gorou. If I wasn’t being obvious enough, Gorou is the source of my powers—”

  “Yes and no,” the fox interjected. I glared, but that did nothing to dissuade him. Instead, he reached a tail into the same drawer I’d grabbed my bristle brush from, snagged a second one in his fur (leaf-shaped, this time), and dropped it in Casey’s lap before presenting his tails for brushing. Casey seemed a bit too stunned to object, and began dutifully brushing out the fur on Gorou’s tails.

  “Oddly cryptic foxes aside,” I continued, raising my voice so that I could be heard over Gorou’s laughter, “I have powers because of this wiseass fox I found in the middle of a mountain forest in rural Japan. Now, let’s go back to your initial statement about Moonshot and immigration. How does this,” I pointed at Gorou, who had been slowly inching his way into Casey’s lap, “change your analysis?”

  Casey followed my finger, then blinked, apparently only just noticing how close the four-tailed fox had gotten as he hopped into my adorable mentee’s lap.

  “Um…” Casey bit his lip, deep in thought. A light nudge from one of Gorou’s tails got his hands moving again, and he went back to working the brush through the white-furred lengths. “He can talk. And you… can still claim dual citizenship?”

  “Have it outright, remember?” I gently reminded. “Japan forced the issue after I got all foxy, made it a prerequisite to me coming back to the States before starting my term of service with the NMR.”

  “So… this fox,” Casey pointed at Gorou, “can talk. And is clearly smart enough to hold a conversation. He’s a Japanese citizen, isn’t he?”

  “Got it in one,” I confirmed, pointing the brush in my hand at him. “But that’s not the whole story, just part of it. Remember how I mentioned the Repatriation Treaty?”

  “And the Camden Amendment, yes, but—” Casey cut himself off and about froze, only remembering to keep running the brush through Gorou’s fur when the fox voiced his displeasure. “Repatriation of antiquities and spoils of conquest… like…”

  “You got it. On the surface, the Repatriation Treaty was the result of the UK seeing its importance on the global stage fading out to nothing, and seeking some way to turn the leftover distaste with British imperialism into soft power for the current era. But for those in the know, it was about giving countries a way to extract compensation for trying to steal each others’ old fonts of power.” I pointed at Gorou. “Like this centuries-old fox. Except that there was one possibility the treaty’s drafters didn’t foresee.”

  “Which was?” Casey asked, then blinked. “Wait, centuries!?”

  “Yes, we can return to that later, okay?” But despite my nudging, Casey’s racing thoughts had dragged him off to lala land. I sighed, my ears going flat atop my head as I twitched my tail in annoyance. “Gorou?”

  At my prompting, Gorou reached around and ever so slightly nipped at Casey’s wrist. My junior yelped, pulling his arms away from Gorou, who just lowered his head back down to Casey’s lap and laid his tails across the young man’s arm, prompting him to keep brushing.

  “Thank you. Now,” I continued, once I saw Casey’s eyes on me again. “The treaty was written with the express intent of stopping, say, the US from sending Delta Force to France with the mission of stealing that one old rusted sword that used to be stuck in a cliffside.”

  “Wait, was that sword—”

  “It was, and I met the young woman who has it now just a couple weeks ago,” I interrupted to answer his question. “But the possibility the treaty didn’t imagine was somebody just… being a tourist, stumbling upon one of these fonts of power, and being compatible enough to get powers from it, all through dumb fucking luck. Which is what happened to me, way back in early 2003.”

  “In 2003? Then that would mean… wait. The Camden Amendment, in 2004?” Casey asked, eyes going wide. “That was because of you?”

  “It is. And Professor Golding, who worked with the State Department at the time, is credited as one of the co-authors. Which means that yes, he knew damn well that you hadn’t talked to me about your initial paper, and that you’re writing a new version because I sat you down to give you the full story.”

  “... but why didn’t he just tell me himself?”

  “Not allowed,” Gorou murmured from his spot on Casey’s lap, sounding half-asleep. To Casey’s credit, he had already stopped flinching at Gorou’s ability to talk, which put him well above average as far as acclimation time went.

  “To give you a better answer, under any other circumstance, what I just told you would require top secret clearance to learn,” I explained. “But, since this is me talking about myself, and it’s a one-on-one circumstance, I get to just… ignore all that.”

  “Seriously?” Casey asked.

  “Seriously.”

  “Just like that? Just… wave your hand and say security clearance doesn’t matter anymore?”

  “Only for this,” I clarified. “I can talk about myself with no reservations, so long as I use reasonable discretion. From experience, that means an audience of maximum two people, and only those I trust to not go blabbing about it to anyone who asks.”

  “I…” Casey trailed off, swallowing. He looked between Gorou and me, seemingly realizing the enormity of the trust I was placing in him here, but he didn’t have any other words at the moment. Instead, he grabbed a bundle of Gorou’s tails, and held him close.

  The lull in conversation gave my throat a welcome reprieve. I set my brush down and picked up my mug, taking a long sip of — oh, ew, it was barely lukewarm now. No, no, couldn’t have that… I extended one finger and called up a wisp of foxfire, which I lowered into the coffee, and kept the fire going under the surface of the liquid for maybe ten seconds. With that done, I ever so carefully swirled the coffee around the mug, and took a sip to check. Ah, yes, much better. Hot, but not scalding. Perfect.

  “Hey Naomi?”

  “Hm?” I asked with a hum, setting my mug back down on the coffee table.

  “You kept saying something about being ‘compatible’ with, uh.” Casey raised his right hand, which I now noticed held a different tail of Gorou’s than he’d started with, the first one now looking sleek, glossy, and glamorous, courtesy of the bristle brush in Casey’s left. “What, um. What happens if somebody isn’t, well, compatible?”

  “They die.”

  Casey paused in his brushing, earning a slight rumble from Gorou, but this time that wasn’t enough to get him to start back up.

  “Just… they die?” he asked, to which I nodded. “Just like that?”

  “Just like that,” I confirmed. “Which, if you’re wondering, is another part of why governments don’t publicize how Moonshot like me get our powers. They don’t want people to go get themselves killed in an idiotic attempt to get superpowers, and they especially don’t want people to deface national monuments or pillage world heritage sites in the process.”

  “Yeah, that would… yeah.” Then, “hey, uh. One more question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Is there… um.” Casey bit his lip, clearly thinking over his question before asking. “There’s one through three, yeah. Is there such a thing as, uh. A0?”

  I lowered an ear in confusion, and looked at Gorou, who shook his head.

  “Not that I know of,” I admitted. “And I’m pretty sure I’d know if something like that existed. Why? Who suggested something like that?”

  “Professor Golding, actually.” Casey shrugged, then swapped Gorou’s second tail out for a third. “Said how if A1 was a warlock or cleric, then A0 would be a wizard. Someone who just… I dunno, learned something you could teach.”

  “Yeah, well, unfortunately not.” I was going to say more, but I heard the dryer buzz. “Oh, hang on, let me check on your clothes, then you can go ahead and ask me more questions.”

  “Alright,” Casey agreed. I smiled at him, then rolled off the arm of the sofa so I had some distance before blipping upstairs in a flash of purple flame. A quick check of the dryer told me that Casey’s things were still a bit damp, unfortunately, so I pulled everything out, threw in a dryer sheet, and set about arranging everything so the dryest items were on the inside and the ones with the most moisture were on the outside.

  While I did that, I thought about what Casey had suggested. It was an interesting suggestion, the idea that some people out there could just learn to use the stuff of powers without actually needing to properly become Moonshot themselves. And there were enough old stories and surviving rituals to suggest that something like this used to be the case — religious rituals and priestly castes had to come from somewhere. It would even go a long way to explaining some of the ‘miracles on demand’ that kept popping up in documents and older bits of writing that would otherwise be dismissed as allegory. Hell, some of the terminology from these ideas was still around and in use; Japanese slang for A2 Moonshot was ‘onmyouji’, which were typically the wizard equivalent, so the idea definitely persisted.

  No matter how interesting the thought might have been, though, I found myself dismissing it out of hand. I mean, it would’ve been one thing to hide them back in the middle of the Cold War, but in the modern era of surveillance states? Not a chance. If any of these hypothetical A0 wizards were out there, we would’ve known by now. Old stories about wizards said they were many things, and the one thing they were not was subtle.

  But that didn’t stop me from imagining how funny it would be for a wizard to turn everyone at the FMB into newts. Fumblers deserved it for all the grief they put us Moonshot through.

  Once I had everything loaded back up in the dryer and got it running again, I walked downstairs instead of showing back up in a flash of fire, since that might have spooked poor Casey. When I got down there though, I found Gorou locked in a staring match with Casey, who had an angry expression on his face. Uh-oh.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked Gorou in Japanese, so that I could get his answer before Casey’s.

  “He is angered over both his and your treatment by this professor,” the fox revealed, nudging Casey to keep the brushing going on his fourth tail. “He feels it is a betrayal.”

  Ah. Okay, that was where he’d gone with this.

  “Right,” I began as I sat back down on the couch, “point of order: yes, Professor Golding was on the diplomatic team that eventually conscripted me into the NMR. But Golding was one of the good ones. He fought his hardest to keep me from having to join up at all, and when that failed, tried to give me the option to defer it. His failure in no way reflects on his character, and I do appreciate and respect what he tried to do for me.”

  “Then why make you talk about all this, when it stresses you out so bad?” Casey asked, voice rough with pent-up anger. “And why make me be the one to force this on you?”

  “Well…” I picked up my coffee mug and drank what little was left, which bought me a bit of time to get my thoughts in order. How did I want to phrase this, exactly? “Golding was intimately aware of how lonely my time in law school was, same with the first year of my career. I think this was a bit of… a test, I guess? For me.”

  “… I don’t get it,” Casey admitted, again pausing in his ministrations long enough for Gorou to give him a toothy reminder that the fourth tail wasn’t fully brushed out yet. “What was he testing you on?”

  “Whether I was finally letting people in.” I looked Casey in the eye, lowered my ears in a playful manner, and let my tail wag a bit. “People I could trust with, well. More of me.”

  Casey was silent for a bit after I said that, chewing his lip as he finished brushing out Gorou’s last tail. I used his silence to stand up from the couch and get my mug back to the kitchen, where I rinsed it out and — oh, wait, I ran the dishwasher last night. Shoot, okay, that needed unloading. I just rinsed the mug out in the sink for now, ignored the twinge of pain in my back (seriously, what the hell, spine?), and went back to the couch, where Casey had adopted a more thoughtful expression.

  “Hey Naomi?” he asked after another fifteen seconds or so of dutifully brushing Gorou’s fur.

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks. For trusting me with this.”

  “Mm,” I hummed. “Trust isn’t given, Casey. It’s earned. And even in a few short months, you’ve more than earned it.”

  “O-oh. Still! That, um.” Aww, he was blushing! No, tail, please don’t wag — ugh, fine, okay, wag away. “Anyway! Uh. I had a few more questions?”

  “Well, I did offer to be a primary source!” I reached over the sofa and grabbed Gorou, who protested with a slight foxy screech, but settled into more of a purr-like hum once I started giving his ears and the base of his tails some attention. With his lap free of the fox, Casey picked his legal pad and pen back up. “Fire away, hun.”

  “Well…”