The eye beams dim to wire thick beams simultaneously becoming nothing and too much light. A Juggernaut has sensor suites, while their technicians are infamous for replacing organic eyeballs with wider spectrum scanners. I may as well be driving through Walmart on an electric scooter with a dozen air horns blaring.


    Except today I rolled all sixes. Fair compensation for my earlier unluck. Walmart is empty. No one is present. In fact, all lights are off and most the equipment is gone. This isn’t a real bunker, just an ammo cache.


    “Thank Tassadar.” I mutter, oon discovering the cause.


    Hard rock lines the walls, stone protecting the rearmost wall which descends into darkness with a vertical shaft running through it. This is a mine, dug by the mobile cities in an era before these wargames.


    On this side of the chasm, stacks of rockets rise from the dirt floor with red and yellow hazard striping on the nosecones spiraling into the air. High explosive warheads. Too large for a human to move or carry. Sable''s first impulse is to manually detonate the lot of them, even if she dies it will remove these supplies from enemy reserves.


    Hundreds of empty crates line the walls and floor, autocannon ammo of various calibers, all empty. I quickly scrounge through the bunker, finding a flechette pistol and two thousand rounds. Which really sounds like a lot until you realize the ‘pistol’ is the size of a steel briefcase, not really a pistol at all. Instead it''s a miniaturized railgun that fires steel spikes -sewing needles- with aerodynamic fins duck-taped on. Highly efficient on space and ammo, but worthless against armor. Which is probably why the Technocracy loves these pieces of shit. No disgruntled tech can damage their precious machines. But hey, it’ll go bang. I won’t get sodomized by the first rat who looks my way. Or the damn iguanas!


    Relief sends me into a fit of cackles, stroking the steel pistol as I close my eyes and laugh, taking a few steps towards a row of steel near the back. I’m in space, talking to voices in my head, on an alien world, and I just found a railgun.


    “Is this real life?”


    This moment doesn’t feel real. Cackles fill the silent bunker echoing as artillery and missiles explode across the world.


    I’m one person, against an entire world of assholes. What can I do? My cracked lenses fog up.


    “I need a new helmet.” I say aloud, cutting off my laughter.


    The words return me to a place of normality, tickling the flashtraining’s desire to complete my mission.


    That’s right, the mission was to get a weapon and fight back. Cmon girl! Work the problem.


    “Alright. Stay alive. I can kill any Tulverians now. But they can kill me. Find armor. Juggernauts can kill any armor, so find a bigger gun, kill all Juggernauts. Easy. Just like teching up to Thors and siege tanks. OOoooohhh and liberators...”


    Once again I turn towards crate mountain. In the dark it looks like a vehicle of some kind. Garaged behind piles of gear and crates of odds and ends keeping it concealed. My foot snags on something soft, cartwheeling me face first into a pile of lukewarm fabric. Like an idiot.


    "Cmon, nightvision ruins peripheral vision! You know that!" I snap at the shattered lenses.


    Damaged beyond repair. I need a replacement.


    So with trembling limbs I curl my feet beneath me and pause, giving my ability a test run. I focus on my inner creation, kneeling in the dim glow of a ruined bunker, my clothes tattered with the soot of war. Shattered glass fell into my gloved hands, jagged edges still humming with the aftershock of a direct strike. With a slow, deliberate motion, I gathered the energy, fingers splaying as currents of ethereal power coiled around the fragments, lifting them into the air. Threads of incandescent void-light wove through the cracks like living circuitry, reforging the helm not with mere metal, but with something far beyond it—a lattice of raw potential, a fusion of protochronian knowledge and will. The pieces hesitated for a breathless moment, caught in the tide of power, then snapped together with a final, resonant click.


    [-10 energy]


    "Oh baby. This power is the shit." I exhaled, casting the spell again. Then again, and again, and again!


    Until my subconscious refused to drain the energy, for there was nothing left to improve. No damage to mend, no impurities in the steel to remove. I''d reached theoretical perfection for the helmet making it far lighter and custom fit to my head, with a sort of foam lattice above and below the alloys. To serve as an anti-shrapnel or anti-spalling layer that also helped against high energy discharges like plasma. Lighter, stronger, more comfortable, and fully functional.


    Nightvision dimmed, every lens enhanced to the idea, and each diode optimized so thoroughly the electrons within found their motions eased.


    I breathed easy, feeling over the helmet as the last filaments of yellow energy disappeared into the obsidian sheen of the restored helm, my twin eyes reigniting in green beams, wider and fainter as the helmet sealed over my head once more. The battlefield was still—a moment of unnatural quiet, as if the void itself acknowledged the reconstruction. Static rippled through the air. Somewhere beyond the wreckage, distant engines howled, a reminder that war had not paused for my small miracle.


    The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Yet I did not rush, pondering what this power could do, what lives it could save, and if it could be used to build from raw materials and I could do. I needed allies, those who could be enhanced.


    My free hands fell to the pile I was sitting on, soon discovering what it was through my newly enhanced nightvision.


    Flash training did an excellent job of desensitizing me to war life, but the pile of earthlings in gasmasks sends a shiver down my spine. This isn’t right. We shouldn’t be here. Buuuutttt, the pile is kinda bouncy… A great place for a nap if I weren’t fresh from the cryotubes.


    Cognitively I know something inside me has cracked. Some ancient mechanism to prevent emotional trauma from killing me. I’ll probably pay for it with a life of PTSD, but for now I open my chat log.


    >Human Athena: I have biomass. Let me know when you’re ready.


    I stare at the words I''ve mentally typed surprised at how easy it was. Then inhale before sending. Survival comes first. Then we can return to Earth and get laid start a family. Simple as. Well, and maybe punch Bazzhole in the cock-er spaniel. That asshole sent me to the frontlines without a gun or armor! I want to forget him, to erase him from my library of friends, but that sort of traitorous contempt for me is incomprehensible.


    The safest path forward would be his death. Whorely''s too. Ick. Maybe I should be grateful to them, if not for their cheating I’d be pining for them both, wishing with all my heart they were with me now. Lying distractions likely to get me killed.


    >Matriarch Hygieia: send 100 kilos cant hide more in-


    >Matriarch Hygieia: cant hide more


    I touch the bodies, mentally tagging them for Alaea’s teleporter. It’s absurdly easy on my end. I need physical contact but after that I just look at the item and mentally think ‘mark’, then a faint outline overlays my vision. Out of stubbornness I try to mark myself, and nothing whatsoever occurs.


    "Had to try." I whisper, testing my newfound Augury while Alaea works.


    The first body vanishes, then after a delay the second goes. Our casts mirroring each other in a duet of harvesting and repair. Bodies vanish, while my spell repairs clothing or boots, ordinary cloth thickens layer by layer, transforming into Kevlar, Garments mold to my form, reshaped and reinforced. It’s as if I carry an army of designers and clothiers stuffed into my pockets!


    An army... I need to find soldiers and armor to improve. That is how I can survive.


    This world is a ruined husk covered in the detritus of a million invasions, plenty of raw materials for me to work with. So similar to the ''Cutthroat'' mission in Wings of Liberty, which was secretly the most macroable map as it had infinite resources despite the quickly depleting mineral fields.


    "Time to embrace my inner trashman!" I giggle, digging through the pile of corpses.


    This squad was at least given weapons. One glance tells a sordid history with the sharpened shovel -coated in red oxides- something I hope is rust. Another belt contains a slender blade, something I once saw Baz call a ‘Fairbain-sykes fighting knife’ whatever that is. Beating someone to death is low on my list of desirable outcomes, but Sable Yurten is capable of the deed. Once in training the instructors brought us cloned technocracy soldiers and made us stab them to death as a team building exercise.


    The single worst day for wig outs.


    “Hmmm... Sable''s kinda a psychopath. Not that I can blame her..." I say, speaking and finally realizing I''m deaf. "Did the flashtraining do that or just bring it out? Whatever, I need a real gun. Something along the lines of a dragoon’s phase disruptor cannon or a Technocracy pulsed ion accelerator.” I say aloud, searching through crates.


    Most are locked with electronic keypads. Tiny powerports adjacent to dim screens show their intention. Not only must you know the pass-code, you must also power the screen, something that would be easy for technician grade power armor. The shovel weighs in my hand like a skeleton key, but I know better. Keypad locks are merely the warning stickers for those who know. If I try to force the crates open then an explosive charge will detonate, ruining whatever is within the crate and my face for good measure.


    “Man, flashtraining is super useful. I’d be dead without it. If I ever get back to earth… NO, WHEN I get back to Earth I need to steal that tech. We’d be able to catch up earth scientists overnight!” I say, rummaging through unlocked crates.


    Missiles and gauss rounds are what I find, munitions for the rolling buildings they call Juggernauts. No way can I use these, even with power armor I can’t carry or launch such high caliber projectiles effectively.


    Outside the artillery barrage redoubles.


    Shells following the Juggernaut Division''s path. One artillery hit won’t knock out a Juggernaut and since artillery comes from the top a mobility kill is unlikely as the treads are tucked beneach armor. But arty could destroy enough guns to make it combat ineffective, forcing a retreat or giving infantry squads a chance to hit them with focused laser fire and anti tank warheads. A few dozen of those nasty bitches is enough to knock out anything unshielded.


    >Matriarch Hygieia: crap i need an immediate teleport!


    >Matriarch Hygieia: Eugenic Hitler is counting babies!


    >Matriarch Hygieia: make one special zergling and the census bureau shows up


    I stare at the text, giggling at whatever a ‘eugenic hitler’ is. What a term. Almost sounds like a cranky Abathur, the geneticist from Starcraft who engineered hundreds of beneficial mutations within the zerg swarm. Though he could never quite overcome their greatest weakness, lemon juice.


    >Executrix Alaea: Zergling? NO. Not on my ship. Thena? Want puppies?


    >Human Athena: A puppyling? THAT’S what you call a WARRIOR? ugh. Whatever. Send it. It’ll listen to me right?


    >Matriarch Hygieia: Only one way to find out. I’ll tell em to play nice.


    >Executrix Alaea: say something if they misbehave.


    I note how Alaea switched from the singular to the plural. What exactly has she been cooking?


    >Human Athena: Yes maam!


    Two blue ripples appear in space time, almost like a Protoss warp in animation, but way faster and less sparkly. Both creatures materialize in seconds. Skeleton first, then organs and the spines running down their quadruped backs, talons digging into the bunker’s floor as they scent the air. Elongated snouts full of teeth slip open. Like a wolf’s maw, if said wolf had two rows of shark teeth and sabertoothed canines protruding above and below their jaw.


    “Sit!” I say, forgetting that I''m wearing a sealed gas mask.


    No way they can hear me-


    -Both creatures sit, leaning back onto their haunches. Spinal ridges elongate with the motion, unsheathing bone spikes atop some kind of pressurized fluid sac. As if they can launch those dorsal spines. In short, these quadrupeds are anything but zerglings.


    My eyes flick from the ET finger to the zerglings, excitement rising in all three Thenas.


    >Terran Thena: Are you thinking what I''m thinking?


    >Executrix Alaea: We don''t know how that power works. Would turning them into golden retrievers count as an upgrade?


    >Matriarch Hygieia: don''t be a bitch


    >Matriarch Hygieia: DO IT