After making sure that we were all safe from being turned into Anomalies, I headed to the counter where more suit wearing people were manning them alongside everyone else.
"So what are you doing after this?" Dan asked, queuing up behind me.
"Go home, obviously. What else?"
"Wanna grab something to eat or something?"
"Nah… My mom already told me to eat at home if I was done. Maybe some other time."
He shrugged, "Too bad then. Anyway, you're up."
I turned back to see the guy in front of me step away from the counter, allowing me to approach it.
Behind the counter was a girl with cat ears, one of them flicking in interest as I approached her.
Those were not accessories but actual cat ears.
Before the portals that brought the Anomalies appeared, portals that led to other Worlds appeared first, allowing aliens to cross into Earth.
The aliens in question were not like the types with eyestalks or giant heads with small bodies.
What came through the portals were basically creatures straight out of fantasy stories. Elves, catgirls, dryads and even other humans that were capable of using magic came to our World to seek refuge and warn us of the Anomalies.
Their appearance caused quite a stir back then but after these few short years, people have gotten used to them and they have integrated into our society.
Now, no one bats an eye at their presence anymore.
I placed my sword and my Vanguard card on the counter, sliding it over to the catgirl.
"Good work today, sir," She greeted me, taking my card to place it under a scanner before returning it to me. "We will keep your weapon and your pay will be sent to your account the next working day. Once again, thank you for keeping the world safe from Anomalies."
She picked up my sword and the space around it warped, the entire sword disappearing into thin air as it would be stored in the Ministry's weapon vault.
One of the laws in this country was that we are not allowed to carry such weapons around in public and guns are also banned. But we obviously need weapons to deal with Anomalies so this was the solution that the Ministry had come up with.
Our weapons would be stored in their vaults and we would only be able to bring them out during an expedition where the staff would retrieve them after verifying our identity for the sole purpose of dealing with Anomalies.
I found it rather ironic that our government had this policy in place since even without a weapon, there's a lot of people with awakened abilities that could still cause harm if they wanted to.
But I understood that this was just the government trying to implement these laws as a performative stunt to show the population that they still had control over them. Or, if you want to be generous about it, they're just trying to limit the potential damage as much as possible.
I suppose for some people, seeing people walk around with weapons is more unnerving than the underlying knowledge that they can still harm you without weapons anyway.
Still, most of us just want to preserve the status quo so we just obey the implemented law despite how stupid it was.
I bid Dan goodbye and promised to catch up with him soon before I started the walk home.
Thankfully, the rift this time was just a ten minute walk from where I stayed in Clementi so I didn't need to take a bus here.
I sent a quick message in my own group chat.
'Just finished my expedition. Guess plans are a go tonight.'
Several thumbs up emoticons reacted to my message before I put it away.
I crossed the road underneath the MRT tracks, passing by several students that were on their way home from school.
Despite the fact that I was wearing leather armour over my clothes, I only got a few glances from them before they moved on, as if this was just something that was uncommonly seen but not uncommon enough to be an oddity.
Though… I suppose the fact that amongst the students was a boy with bat-like wings and a girl with dog ears would be way more conspicuous than my leather armour to begin with and they weren't batting an eye at them either shows something.
As the sound of a train thudding overhead reached my ears, I felt my phone vibrate inside my pocket.
Fishing it out, I saw it was a video call from mom.
I slid my finger across the screen to answer it, my screen changing to show a video feed of a rather young looking woman with her dark brown hair tied up in a bun staring back at me.
"Hello, Mom?" I spoke.
"Ah Qing ah, are you coming back yet?"
"On my way, Mom… I just finished."
"Haiyah, when you going to get a proper job? Stop doing this silly thing, no future one."
"Mom… We already talked about this. It's not like the pay is bad either."
"Doctor pay also good, why you don't go be doctor? Can also help people and also don't need so dangerous."
"I'm helping people by fighting these things, Mom…"
"Fight, fight, fight. I never raise you to be hooligan why you only know fighting? Fighting so useless. Your father and I saved up for you to go to Uni and you still don't want to go."
"Mom… Let's not talk about this here ok? I'm on my way home now."
My mom looked like she wanted to say more but another face appeared behind her, interrupting her.
The new person looked like the splitting image of my mom except she was younger and wore her hair in a ponytail instead.
"Gor Gor[1], you coming back already ah? Hurry up leh, food already cook liao."
I let out an exasperated sigh, "Yes, yes, coming back liao. You guys don't need to wait for me. I'll be there in five minutes."
"Ok~ Can I have your pudding in the fridge?"
Tsk… So that was what she's after from the start.
"Fine… Don't eat all of it…"
"Ok, I'll eat all of it~ Bai bai~"
She reached over and tapped on the screen, ending the call before my mother could get another word in.
Giving her the pudding as the bribe to stop mom from questioning me further was worth it at least.
Another short walk down the street and I could see the apartment building that housed my family right up ahead.
We're not affluent by any means but we're not poor either. If I had to put us on the economic scale, I would say we were around the lower middle class.
As I neared the void deck to head towards the lift lobby, I heard a shout coming from one of the stairwells.
Normally I would have ignored it but the shout was quickly muffled like something had covered the person's mouth when they tried to shout.
I paused and looked in the direction of the shout, waiting to see if there was any other noise.
Not feeling comfortable with the silence that ensued, I made my way over to the stairwell and slowly peeked around the corner to see what was happening.
There, in the corner and almost hidden in the darkness of the stairs, were three young men surrounding a single young girl wearing a hoodie that covered her face, two of them holding her arms and the last one with his hand clamped over her mouth.
The girl's hoodie had been unzipped and the guy in front of her had his pants unbuckled and halfway down his waist.
"Shut it bitch… I'm at least willing to be a bit gentler with you but if you struggle, I promise you I will be a little violent. You don't want to get a scar do you?" The guy threatened before lifting his hand to conjure up a ball of flame.
The girl's eyes widened and she shook her head quickly.
The guy smirked, "Perfect. Don't worry, I'll make sure you'll enjoy this too~"
That's all I needed to see before I rushed out from around the corner and brought my fist down on the back of his head.
I made sure to hold back a little otherwise my strength would have killed him from the blow.
Despite me holding back, the blow still sent him flying towards one of the other guys, his head smashing into that poor guy's face with a loud crack which probably broke that guy's nose.
I then turned to the last guy who was still in shock over his supposed friend's predicament when I threw my other fist at him, punching him in the face as well.
I then tried to reach out to the girl to pull her away from there and I only just realised that her eyes were glowing. She was also looking up at me with an odd look of guilt or maybe even pity before I suddenly felt a sense of vertigo and I found myself falling.
I managed to land on my feet and heard three soft thumps near me, prompting me to turn and see it was those three guys I had beat up earlier with the girl nowhere to be found.
Looking around, I found myself in what appeared to be a desolate wasteland where the earth beneath my feet was cracked and dry and nothing else could be seen.
Where the heck am I?
[1] Gor Gor means brother in hokkien dialect. It's basically equivalent to "Onii-chan" in Japanese.