Even though Michael was sleeping, it was actually the time when ‘most’ people were outside, going to work, school, or simply enjoying the day with their families. It was a Friday, so his brother was in college, his mother was dozens of miles away, in Pasadena, cleaning people’s houses, and his father was grocery shopping.

It was fortunate that they weren’t home, because with him unconscious, the entire house was gradually being filled with copious amounts of mana. However, before the parrots, finches, doves and other birds in cages on the second floor could be affected, all of that aura was swiftly sucked back into his body.

At that moment, it was a few hours after noon and he had finally started ‘dreaming’. He had experienced astral projection thousands of times in the past month, whether he remembered it or not, so he was quite familiar with the way it worked.

A pitch-black wisp flew out of his forehead and headed straight upwards, through the ceiling of his room, the first floor, the second and then out of the roof. Within moments, he was already high in the midday sky and gazing down at Baltimore City.

“Looks pretty much the same as a satellite pic, hehe~… Kinda boring though, huh? Well, I guess I could go check out Patterson Park… Okay, nothing interesting happening there at all. Let’s see~, the harbor maybe? Ugh, so lame~… It’s too cold, so there’s no way that people will start rioting today over that ridiculous trial. Umm~, shouldn’t there be like, a bunch of gang-related chaos happening about now? Nope, well, even if there was some kinda shootout, not like I’d be able to do anything about it… this is probably just a dream afterall. Even if it was real, what the hell could I possibly do in this form?” Michael was talking to himself while soaring above the town, searching desperately for something interesting to watch.

Before ‘fusing’ with his Companions, his maximum range for astral projection was only a hundred and fifty miles, but once he became Minari, his limit was over a thousand miles. Of course, that was on the planet Arcana… Earth was different. His current body was also not nearly as powerful either; in fact, it was only a little stronger than when he was level one.

After flying around for a few minutes, he decided to engage in one of his favorite pastimes: voyeurism. Swooping down towards his house, he casually passed down through his neighbor’s roof, scanning around for a few moments, before moving on.

Most people weren’t home and those that were, weren’t doing anything too amusing. There was a chubby hispanic couple who were having sex, but he grumbled “For fuck’s sake… They’re on a goddamn camsite, so there’s no point in me even peeping on them! Why can’t something awesome be happening?! How come superheroes are constantly able to find all kinds of weird-ass crimes nonstop?! Baltimore is supposedly one of the most dangerous cities in America, and I don’t even hear any sirens going off right now! Well, the crime is usually already over by the time the police arrive, so it’s completely unrealistic… Ah, not that having awesome superhuman abilities is realistic though.”

There was a loud gunshot, accompanied by a girl screaming “Ah~?! Daddy~, no~! Help~! Somebody, help me~! No, stop, stay away~! No~!” Then he felt as if someone was calling out to him telepathically.

He snickered, muttering “Holy shit, why didn’t I think about trying this earlier? Hehehe~, no need to go searching randomly like an idiot, if I can just… Wait a second, this bitch is a fuckin psychic?! Is that really a thing? Well, whatever… I guess I’ve definitely had weirder dreams than this.”

His soul moved so quickly that it seemed like he teleported from downtown all the way into Dundalk. It was a relatively small rowhouse, with the front door busted open and at least three large men with ski-masks over their heads and automatic assault-rifles in their hands, standing outside. Black SUVs were surrounding the front and back of the building and it was obviously much more than a simple home-invasion from a glance.

A teenager with extremely pale skin was being held down by two men wearing body armor, gun belts, and with motorcycle helmets covering their faces. She was roughly fifteen years old, and wearing a pink sweater and baggy grey sweat-pants with the word ‘juicy’ written on her buttocks.

However, they were swiftly zip-tying her wrists and ankles against an aluminum fold-out chair. There was a bald, middle-aged man, laying on the floor a few meters in front of her; he had been shot in the left temple, spraying his blood and brainmatter all over the living room wall.

That weeping girl had bright-green eyes and long blonde crimson hair, along with unnecessarily large breasts. She wasn’t particularly skinny, but also wasn’t chubby, hovering somewhere between out of shape and muscular. Her nose was slightly upturned and relatively small, lips were thin and aside from that, she did have mildly pointed ears. Michael wondered “Maybe she’s got like, a bit of elf-blood in her? Anyway~, isn’t this kinda weird? Ah, I guess this bossy bitch is probably gonna start explaining things?”

As he casually observed the situation, a two-meter tall woman, with dark-brown skin, wearing a black leather jacket and jeans walked into the house. Her face and neck weren’t covered by anything and her hair was shaved off; there were dozens of deep scars on her face, which seemed to have been made by shrapnel, knives or some sort of torture instruments.

“Shut the hell up, you fucking Psycher bitch!” She immediately used the back of her left hand to smack the crying teenager in the mouth so hard that a few teeth were shattered and blood uncontrollably sprayed out of her mouth.

After that, she quickly stopped weeping, though her bright-blue eyes were still extremely hazy and filled with tears. However, they instantly snapped wide open when she saw that completely naked, mysterious, shadowy demon that was floating in the air behind that horrible woman.

When the scar-faced ‘boss’ noticed the girl’s gaze, she swiftly turned around, but didn’t see anything. Thus, she grabbed the pale-skinned Psycher’s face with her gloved right hand and squeezed tightly, causing some of those shattered teeth to fall out.

Then she growled “Don’t act all innocent, you evil little cunt! I’ve already lost a dozen men trying to hunt you down so far… Iris Angelic Healy, only fifteen years old and you’re already considered one of the most dangerous ‘Monsters’ in North America.”

She took a step back and pulled out a smartphone from her left breast-pocket and said “Discovered to have latent psychic potential at the age of five, when you ‘accidentally’ convinced your brother to cut his own dick off with a butter knife… He was eighteen! After that, your shitty parents brought you to a psychiatrist, who ‘mysteriously’ choked to death when he attempted to swallow an entire pack of cigarettes. A year later, your brother allegedly tried to kill your evil ass, so your father snapped his own son’s neck to ‘protect’ you. Shortly afterwards, he jumped off the roof of the Empire State Building; three completely innocent bystanders died when his body landed on a taxi.

“You disappeared for a while and didn’t pop back up until you were twelve, in Las Vegas… Your mother was working as a prostitute and her pimp was getting a little too rough, so you asked him to tear his own trachea out with his bare hands. At that point, your whore of a mom actually committed suicide because she was somehow in love with the disgusting pig… All that bullshit can be excused, cause you were literally a kid and still kinda ‘innocent’, but that’s when you started going on a rampage. We didn’t give a fuck when you were offing miscellaneous gangbangers and thugs, like some kinda crazy-ass vigilante, but ya started going after dirty cops and famous criminals who managed to avoid jail-time.”

Iris spat out her bloody teeth and glared at the woman, “Kyle tried to rape me, but he was still my brother and I was a naive pussy at the time! I thought that if he didn’t have a dick anymore, he wouldn’t wanna hurt me… I was wrong. My father hated and feared me, but even more than that, he lusted after me, just like all of those others… That pedo bastard of a psychiatrist was just as bad and deserved much worse. Sure, there were a few real accidents; I never told my dad to jump off the fucking Empire State Building! I just ‘asked’ him to kill himself… I was too young and stupid to understand the consequences of just getting angry at someone back then. My mother was a dirty whore and I hated her for it, as much as I loved her for not despising me… When that evil bastard started beating her in front of me, I wasn’t just going to do nothing; a single thought was all it took to make him end his own life. Anyway, don’t act all self-righteous! You fuckers just want to enslave me, like all the others…”